abrahamsen.fyi

Fjord Lander

Set the ferry down on the quay. Slowly, level, and preferably on purpose.

Fjord —
Altitude —
Descent —
Drift —
Tilt —
Wind —
Fuel —

How to fly a ferry
  • Keyboard — ← → or A D rotate, ↑, W or Space fires the engine. Let go of both rotate keys and the deck settles level on its own. Hold Shift for fine control, for the last few metres: she turns at half the rate and holds whatever tilt she has, and the engine is gentle enough that holding it is a hover. Let go of Shift and she settles level. Space launches, resumes and goes again, and so does Enter, except in the air, where it is the go-around; Esc pauses. M turns the sound off and on, and C copies the result.
  • Mouse or touch — hold anywhere on the fjord to fire the engine. The ferry leans toward your pointer; hold it within the bracket under her and she comes up level. The right mouse button leans her the same way without the engine. On a phone there are also buttons: tip left, tip right, ½ for fine control (as Shift is on a keyboard, until you press it again), and the engine.
  • Near the ground — from 80 m above whatever is under her — the ferry shows three small gauges, ↓ descent, ↔ drift and ∠ tilt, with a line at the limit for each, and a line straight down to whatever is underneath: dashed with a cross over the rock, with how far it is to the middle of the berth, and solid green with a bracket when she is over the berth. She answers the helm more gently as she comes down, until at the quay she turns at four tenths of the rate, so a tap is a small correction. Higher up the readings leave drift and tilt alone, since up there they are how she gets anywhere, and Descent only goes red when full power could no longer slow her in time. From any height her light on the ground shows what she is over, and it tightens as she comes down. The picture closes in on her as she nears the ground, more on a small screen, and opens out again as she climbs. The descent gauge has a green mark at the descent to aim for: a fifth of her height a second, so 8 m/s at 40 m up. Over the berth a beeper speeds up as you come down, and goes high when it is too fast, and a soft tone rises as drift or tilt nears its limit.
  • The wind gusts. The windsock on the quay shows it as it is, and so does the Wind reading, and a gust ruffles the water on its way to her, about a second before it arrives. Before launch the fjord says how much lean it takes to hold station against its wind; every degree of that is Level points, so a windy fjord scores lower.
  • The timetable. Every fjord has a slot, the time a prompt captain takes with a fifth again and two seconds in hand. It is on the title panel and counts down in the corner of the picture. Late is still a landing, and On time pays 15 fewer for every second of it.
  • The go-around. Enter, or ↺ on a phone, throws a bad approach away: she snaps upright on full power for a moment, for 6% of the tank on top of what that burns. The timetable keeps running.
  • Difficulty runs from 1 to 5 and is mostly the wind. New fjord picks one near how you have been doing.
  • Five kinds of place: a fjord, a narrow sound with its quay on a shelf, a wide bay among skerries, a shelf high under the wall, and an island quay in mid-fjord. The green lights on the sea stacks and skerries are navigation lights; what they stand on is rock.
  • A landing is a sequence. Come down on the berth faster than 8 m/s and she bounces; any drift tips her as she does, and she is judged again when she comes back down. Soft counts the harder of the two.
  • The berth is the lit stretch of quay between the two lights, over the word FERGEKAI (ferry quay); the marks on it are every 10 m out from its middle. Land on it with descent under 17 m/s, drift under 11 m/s, and the deck within 13° of level. Miss one and the result says which. The quay lights tell you how it is going: amber and slowly pulsing on approach, steady green when you would land at this rate, flashing red with a ring when you would not.
  • The score is out of 1,000, and every point of it can be had: Soft 250 (in full under 2 m/s), Level 200 (within 1°, averaged over the last half second), Steady 150 (under 1 m/s of drift), On the mark 150 (within 2 m of the middle of the berth), On time 150 (by the slot, then 15 a second late) and Fuel left 100 (in full at about what a thrifty captain arrives with). Each pays nothing at its limit. Levelling out at the last instant does not count for Level; settle her early, and let the wind have the drift for a moment. 620 is bronze, 760 silver, 880 gold, 950 Textbook, and your best on each fjord keeps its medal.
  • Her two feet on the berth are the only part of her allowed to touch anything. The rest of her touching rock — a cliff, the edge of the quay, the spire some fjords have standing in the middle — ends the flight. Set her down gently on level ground anywhere else and she is safe, but it is not a landing: it scores half of how softly, levelly and steadily she came down, and never a medal.
  • The water is not a landing surface. It has been tried.
  • Readings are in metres and metres a second, and she is a 34-metre ferry. The engine burns 6.5% of the tank a second, so a full tank is about fifteen seconds of it.
  • What to fly — P Practice is any fjord, near how you have been doing; T Today’s fjord and K Coastal route are below. N flies a new fjord straight away, and R the same one again.
  • Today’s fjord is the same for everyone today, and the first attempt is the one that counts. Copy the result and bother someone with it. Everything after that is practice. Its panel keeps the last two weeks, a square a day in the colour of the medal. Left open past midnight, T brings the new day’s fjord.
  • Coastal route — six fjords in a row on one tank. Each quay tops her up by 45, and never sends her on with less than 85, so land with 55 left and the next leg starts full. The wind gets worse leg by leg, and one incident ends the route. Every route has a number and a link too. Once a route is under way, R, N, K and T ask before leaving it: press twice. So do they while today’s attempt is in the air.
  • The ghost is your best landing on this fjord (or this leg of this route), flying the same seconds you are, faintly. G hides it.
  • Every fjord has a number, and its link goes straight back to that exact fjord. Your best score on each one is remembered, in your browser only.
  • F or the corner button takes the fjord full screen, and F or Esc brings it back.