Aerofly vs FSX & P3D

  • Like most, I have invested a lot of time and money over the years in FSX so have quite a lot of addons for aircraft, scenery, etc. With this in mind I invested in Flyinside to try out my new toy, the Oculus Rift, to experience VR flying.

    I have to say that mountain flying with the Orbx scenery was enjoyable to say the least. A truly new experience for my hobby. Then I started looking at YouTube videos showing off Aerofly FS2 and I thought, after spending all the cash on the Oculus I might as well spend a little more to see whether it compares well to my experience of FSX.

    Speechless.......!!!

    I now find myself looking daily for any news of upcoming scenery and new aircraft for this truly amazing advance in the world of flight simming, especially VR flying. My whole experience has been moved to another level and any expectations of betterment has disappeared. This is the new way forward for flight sim enthusiasts. We will all keep trying to make FSX and P3D look good but they have got a long way to go to offer anything close to what Aerofly FS2 has to offer with VR currently and with the likes of ORBX and Aerosoft showing what they can add to the mix I really believe, once we have the weather programs, the aircraft systems and more scenery that all other contenders will become insignificant.

    I may drone on about this but, after being a flight sim enthusiast for over 30 years and watching the genre grow I have finally had the experience that I thought was never possible, out of the box and with no config changes whatsoever.

    Thanks to the IPACS team for all your achievements to date as well as all those we have to look forward to...8)8)8)

    Edited once, last by EdmundV (January 11, 2018 at 8:08 PM).

  • Yep, amen brother! Certainly one key factor with regards to the flight sim VR experience is flat out performance. FSX/P3D developers are constrained by legacy and lack of desire to rebuild the inner graphics core - therefore, they get less than one-half the framerate performance of FS2 which is a killer for VR.

    Dave W.

  • FS2 is just a much more modern game engine, which takes advantage of recent hardware, so it runs wonderfully well, especially in VR. Those older game engines, especially FSX, are from the days before multi core processors and fancy graphics cards, so it must be really difficult for the devs to unlock any more performance. It's obviously not fully mature yet, but it has the most potential of the currently available sims IMO.

    Now that OrbX are enthusiastic too, with their immense back catalogue, you will see a steady stream of add on scenery coming down the line. We haven't had much by way of add on planes yet, but that can only be a matter of time as momentum builds and word gets round. It's certainly an exciting time in the hobby.

    i5-12600K/MSI RTX 3080/Win11/64Gb RAM/Asus Xonar DX+ Beyer DT990 pro headphones/LG 34" UM65 @2560x1080/Quest Pro/TM Warthog+VKB MkIV Rudder pedals

  • wow this is the story I just posted the other day..... after 30 years of simming (I can't believe it at all as I feel like I am only 30 years old) ... the last week I rediscovered AF2 and was shocked! Now I haven't messed with X-plane 11 or FSX SE since. With the addition of a utility called Soundplant I have enhanced sounds while flying AF2 (the biggest downfall is a weak sound engine).... I am sure the future will fix this natively. I check daily for news... what a beautiful sim, exciting. So far I've taken real time flights out west and soon want to try the 744 to Europe.

    good to meet everyone here... Peter

  • And yes, I am the same as Peter and Edmund... 30+ years as a simmer, former Flight sim addon company owner, simpit builder.. the lot. AFS2 is the future of this hobby. Peter, we should talk. I'd love to begin a company that develops exclusively to support AFS2, and you are a former programmer/developer in the genre? Time to mobilize the troops and the resources.

    - Kenneth

  • wow this is the story I just posted the other day..... after 30 years of simming (I can't believe it at all as I feel like I am only 30 years old) ... the last week I rediscovered AF2 and was shocked! Now I haven't messed with X-plane 11 or FSX SE since. With the addition of a utility called Soundplant I have enhanced sounds while flying AF2 (the biggest downfall is a weak sound engine).... I am sure the future will fix this natively. I check daily for news... what a beautiful sim, exciting. So far I've taken real time flights out west and soon want to try the 744 to Europe.

    good to meet everyone here... Peter

    One question remains: from where did you get the sound files?

    Regards,

    Thomas

    Regards,

    Thomas

    i7-14700KF @ 5.6 GHz, Geforce RTX 4090, 32MB RAM, 1TB SSD M.2, 1TB SSD M.2, 2TB SSD M.2, 32" Monitor 4K, Pimax Crystal

  • Totally agree with everything that everyone has said... there is a downside..any scenery developed needs to be a very high standard.. which of course means lots of detail and lots of time. It's easy for ORBX to port something over as they have already built if for FSX but new build is something else

    Thankfully FS2 seems to be able to handle ooodles of objects and not slow down.. my EGGP scenery currently has 1000 plus objects and now bump mapping and it still carries on without a hick up... maybe one day I'll break it but not yet.. Yes its coming soon but still need to build more objects.. so many objects.... think I'm going nuts

    Steve

  • Have a fly out of Innsbruck in FS2 with the ORBX addon and compare it to the FSX equivalent. It is a sight to behold as you climb away from the runway in glorious VR.

    Aerosoft Helgoland looks to be coming along beautifully and I have no doubt there will be many more high quality add ons in the very near future. I, for one, will be looking daily with eager eyes..

  • Gentlemen, you know our stance with comparing us with other current flight simulators out there. We have deep respect for all of those other sims and the developers that work tirelessly, and we believe there are good points and bad points for all of them, including us. I just want to make sure no one references any challenging remarks 'ours is better than yours' because we feel that each flight simulator out there has their own market and we can all feed off of one another. You know who wins here? the entire flight simulator community, that's who.

    This is a good thread, let's just not forget that the other sims are also our friends here.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • Agreed Jeff.

    However, as we convey our subjective enthusiasm for AFS2, it will sometimes involve objective comparison. Somehow we must do that without invoking biased judgement against the other platforms. If we accomplish that, inside and outside this forum, we will increase awareness of the comparative benefits of AFS2 among the "old guard" of simmers, and, as a result, the addon companies will increasingly wake up to the business sense of supporting this platform.

    - Kenneth

  • If we accomplish that, inside and outside this forum, we will increase awareness of the comparative benefits of AFS2 among the "old guard" of simmers, and, as a result, the addon companies will increasingly wake up to the business sense of supporting this platform.

    Agreed. AFS2 really needs support of addon developers. Without them I fear AFS2 may always stay a sim of the future. If HiFi would be able to somehow port Active Sky and ASCA to AFS2 I'd be back to AFS2 in an instant! (Well, and A2A, Majestic, ProATC, GSX, etc. 8) ). Until then I need P3D for my 'serious' simming. A flightsim without a proper weather engine is like a sailing sim without water. ;)

    You 30+ years simmers shouldn't be so positive about AFS2 in its current state otherwise IPACS might think they can stop working on it...!!! 8o;) But seriously, I also think AFS2 is the sim of the future... but I just want it to become the sim of today in my lifetime... ;)

  • Agreed. AFS2 really needs support of addon developers. Without them I fear AFS2 may always stay a sim of the future. If HiFi would be able to somehow port Active Sky and ASCA to AFS2 I'd be back to AFS2 in an instant! (Well, and A2A, Majestic, ProATC, GSX, etc. 8) ). Until then I need P3D for my 'serious' simming. A flightsim without a proper weather engine is like a sailing sim without water. ;)

    You 30+ years simmers shouldn't be so positive about AFS2 in its current state otherwise IPACS might think they can stop working on it...!!! 8o;) But seriously, I also think AFS2 is the sim of the future... but I just want it to become the sim of today in my lifetime... ;)

    Fear not grasshopper, we aren't going anywhere until our community becomes satisfied that we have added enough :)

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • Agreed. AFS2 really needs support of addon developers. Without them I fear AFS2 may always stay a sim of the future. If HiFi would be able to somehow port Active Sky and ASCA to AFS2 I'd be back to AFS2 in an instant! (Well, and A2A, Majestic, ProATC, GSX, etc. 8) ). Until then I need P3D for my 'serious' simming. A flightsim without a proper weather engine is like a sailing sim without water. ;)

    You 30+ years simmers shouldn't be so positive about AFS2 in its current state otherwise IPACS might think they can stop working on it...!!! 8o;) But seriously, I also think AFS2 is the sim of the future... but I just want it to become the sim of today in my lifetime... ;)

    Maybe it's time for us 30+ year simmers to start nudging IPACS a little harder. Like you I want to see some of those features before I "auger in". :P

  • OK, let's see how old I really am. One of the very first flight simulators that I had (and flew) was IFR Flight Simulator on the Commodore VIC 20.

    Anyone remember this one?

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • Someone mentioned A2A earlier... Here's what I wrote on A2A's facebook wall a few days ago.

    "Would A2A consider developing for Aerofly FS2? I know the sim is new, and basic compared to what we have elsewhere, but after three months of using it, I would love to see even a non-accusim A2A Piper Cub in those AFS2 skies. Personal opinion, if ORBX are now creating products for this platform, more companies will follow. Please become one of them. I think the platform has a bright future."

    I was happy to see that the comment received a LIKE from A2A themselves. Seriously, it's this kind of grass roots campaigning that will tell companies that a demand exists.

    Now, on the IPACS side of things, they need to ask themselves if the way in which aircraft are made for the sim is going to encourage filling our virtual skies. In other words, can the designers of aircraft for other platforms EASILY port their designs over?, or are they going to have to spend a year learning a whole different design architecture and starting again from scratch with unfamiliar tools? That's something I hope someone is looking at, and I hope the answer is encouraging.

    - Kenneth

  • Yes ... and also making sceneries ...especially free ... when we have a tool like ADE for P3D ...in FS2 ..

    .THAT would be great :) Or better ...a tool to use ADE Files for FS2 ? Then will the FS2 world explode ( like in P3D / FSX since 15 years )

    mfg, Jens ... Flight-Sim.org

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    Alles fliegt irgendwie,
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  • Jeff, you got me. I never owned a VIC 20. My first machine was a C64 purchased in 1982 when I was in college.

    My first flight sim was Solo Flight for the C64. It was an early MicroProse/Sid Meier program. It beat subLOGIC's FS2 to market by a few months, but it was kind of a dog lol.