It’s a special day in Upland as we’re celebrating the first ever flight between SFO Airport in San Francisco and JFK Airport in New York City!
But before all the excitement takes place and the skillful player to have caught Lecter the lizard-villain gets their aviator badge, we wanted to share some technical details about how air travel will to work in Upland (from now and up until the point where airlines become businesses).
Speed of Traveling
As we’ve hinted before — with the introduction of air travel, Upland is beginning to move towards a system of constant travel speed. This means that when the system is fully implemented, the timing of the sequence of sending your Block Explorer (BE) will depend on the physical distance between your BE and the destination.
Sends could be hastened via different forms of transportation, the first of which (you guessed it) is air travel.
‘Walking Speed’ — the speed at which explorers get sent by default is expected to be set at 0.015 miles per second (or 0.024 km/s), while air travel is set at 1 mile per second (or 1.6 Km/s) for a commercial flight.
So for example, you can expect your commercial flight from SFO to JFK to take just about 45 minutes en route, during which your BE will be pegged to the aircraft and unable to participate in features that require BE discovery.
Cost of Traveling
Until the point where airlines become Upland-run businesses, an UPX fee of 1 UPX per mile traveled by air (via a commercial flight) will be charged from the traveler in favor of the UPX Community Pool. Budget fares, and private flights will also be offered giving alternatives for prices and time of travel.
Limiting Travel Capacity
One of the main reasons for creating the travel mechanic in Upland is casting substance to location-based communities in Upland. We envision the decision to travel to a different location as a meaningful one, one that shouldn’t be regarded with an afterthought and one that requires investment of some resources. This will help build sustainable local communities as well as add a whole new platform of engagement between players, owners and businesses.
As part of this effort, the capacity for air travel via an airport (expressed as daily send limits for each airport hub) will be limited and re-evaluated compared to the average daily active players found in each locale.
Terminal Owners
Finally, a shout out to the exclusive club of terminal parcel owners in Upland.
The opening of air travel marks the initial steps for allowing airport terminal parcel owners to reap the benefits of their built-in functionality.
Terminal owners get to set their send fees like any other property and have a limit of sends proportional to their ownership part in terms of UP2.
Travelers, on the other hand, will have a dedicated interface that would allow them to easily see the lowest available send fee for each terminal.
As the amount of Uplanders grow from thousands to potentially hundreds of thousands and beyond, these transportation hubs will become bursting with activity along with opportunities to run side businesses for travelers who pass by.
Once the vision of airlines as Upland-run businesses materialize, airlines will need to strike deals with terminal owners as they are required to establish a base of operation.
A Familiar Disclaimer
The numbers and settings put in place are output of our models, simulations and estimations. Reality often proves to play out differently than expected in complex systems such as Upland, so as always, air travel mechanics will be deployed with the aforementioned settings, and then tweaked as necessary to achieve the right balance.
So buckle up and enjoy your flight. It’s going to be a smooth ride, and the weather in whatever destination you are going to in Upland is always awesome!
