Vectorhold

You are the approach controller. Aircraft check in at the gates on the edge of your airspace, high and fast, and it is your job to get every one of them onto the runway — separated, in order, and without wasting a minute of anybody's fuel.

Vectorhold is a radar approach control simulator that takes the job seriously. Three miles laterally or a thousand feet vertically: that is the rule the whole game is built on, and everything else follows from it. Turn the leader or slow the follower. Build the gap before the merge, not after it. Find room for the departure that has been waiting six minutes on the runway.

REAL PROCEDURE, NOT DECORATION

Separation minima, wake-turbulence categories and the spacing they demand on final, minimum vectoring altitudes derived from genuine terrain, standard-rate turns, the speed limit below ten thousand feet, and radiotelephony phraseology with proper pilot readbacks. Aircraft fly a real lateral and vertical navigation state machine — they intercept the localiser, capture the glidepath and land themselves. They do not slide along a line towards a waypoint.

TWELVE SECTORS BUILT ON REAL GROUND

Every sector's terrain is sampled from ETOPO 2022, NOAA's public-domain global relief model. Minimum vectoring altitudes are computed from that terrain, so the floor shown under an aircraft reflects the ground below it.

You start on a single runway on a flat coast. You finish on independent parallel approaches with a satellite field underneath the arrival path, alpine terrain to the west and a departure bank leaving in the middle of it. In between: crossing runways, an island field, a valley with one way in, a fjord, dependent parallels in a desert basin, a metropolitan operation with a noise-abatement turn on every departure, and an escarpment where the wind reverses the landing direction while you have eight aircraft committed to the old one.

WHAT IS IN THE BOX

· 12 hand-designed radar sectors, from a quiet regional field to a saturated metro operation

· 216 authored sessions, 7,400 scripted aircraft movements

· 635 fixes, 37 instrument approaches, 43 arrival and 104 departure procedures

· 44 aircraft types across seven classes, each with its own climb and descent tables, speed envelope, turn rate and fuel burn — the turboprop genuinely will not keep up with the jet behind it

· Emergencies that change the problem: minimum fuel, a medical divert, an engine failure after the turn, and an aircraft that stops answering the radio and flies its last clearance

· Weather that degrades: crosswind runway changes mid-session, a convective cell that closes an arrival gate, low visibility that widens your spacing on final

· Six guided lessons that teach the whole job before it is asked of you

· A Controller's Manual covering every rule the simulation actually enforces, the symbology, the phraseology and the scoring

· Career statistics, per-session stars, and a difficulty curve that earns each new sector

HOW IT PLAYS

Tap a target to select it. Drag from it to give it a heading and watch the vector draw. Step the altitude down while the panel shows you the terrain floor underneath that exact aircraft. Slow it, send it direct to a fix, put it in a hold when the final is full, and clear the approach when the intercept will actually work — the button tells you when it will.

BOUGHT ONCE

One purchase. Everything is included. No advertising, no in-app purchases, no subscription, no account, no sign-in, no telemetry.

Vectorhold contains no networking code at all. It makes no requests and collects nothing. It works exactly the same in airplane mode, which is the correct place to play it.

NOT FOR NAVIGATION

Every airport, runway, fix, navaid, procedure, aircraft type and operator in Vectorhold is fictional and was invented for this game. Only the terrain is real. Nothing here may be used for real-world flight.