Curious bug with the F-15E Strike Eagle

  • As a long-time FSX and X-Plane user, I'm really impressed by the visual quality and performances of AFS2 !

    I just noticed a curious bug with the Strike Eagle: the head of the copilot (weapon systems officer) disappears in external view when the building density is set to low in the graphic settings.

    Can somebody else reproduce and confirm the bug? I'm using the DVD version from Aerosoft.

  • This is not a bug, it's intentional for this to happen as setting lower settings lowers graphics quality.

    We suggest that all questions, concerns, or issues get posted on here first. We monitor this forum day and night.

    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

  • Jeff,

    Just curious in regards to building density settings, especially in lieu of your comment above. When I began as a newbie on AFS2 I initially thought the building density was a no brainer - I would adjust it to change the "numbers of cultivation buildings" just like I had done in other sims for Autogen Density. What I have come to find out, if I am not mistaken, is that this is not what the setting does. One post I recall indicated that Building density affects the detail of textures used on the buildings, so a higher setting would give you a more detailed building. Another example is this thread regarding the visibility of the "copilot" in external view at low settings.

    I do question the rationale behind using the term "building density" in the settings menu - this strikes me as a bit misleading, especially given the love/hate relationship many of us bring from esp based sims where density was the most dramatic setting there was in regards to performance as it greatly affected the amount of 3D objects.

    Many have said they like the streamlined, less cumbersome settings menu, others lament the lack of control over detailed settings in Aerofly. I assume this too will evolve as the sim matures and is intentionally kept uncluttered. Yet, if my comments from above are accurate, I would like to give a user suggestion for IPACS to consider slightly different terminology in the menu, add some "hover text" describing what each setting does, or add (info) buttons that link directly to the WIKI that can describe the settings in more detail ---- this leads me to the WIKI which I note is devoid of detailed info on what the graphics settings actually do. Did I read somewhere that a facelift for the user interface is slowly being worked on behind the scenes or am I just imagining that?

    I'd rather spend time flying in a sim that just performs as expected and where you don't really need adjustments cause everything just works; the IPACS motus operandi.

  • We will be working on updating the menu system in time so some of what you see currently may change. The building density doesn't control cultivation, it controls the density of textures mainly seen on buildings but serves other factors as well to gain performance, basically the overall image texture quality so the 3D pilot can be effected.

    As for adding more settings, that will be unlikely unless there's a definite need for adding more options. We are keeping this as simple as possible but yet have the power needed to make substantial reductions for users with lesser performing computers.

    With our performance, it's very likely that most users will opt for ULTRA settings for just about everything except for 'tree density' for your preference on how many trees you want to show (or none) and shadow setting which is another user preference as all settings yield good results anyway.

    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

  • Thanks for your response and insight Jeff. I am amazed at how much more flying time i'm getting since I purchased Aerofly FS2. I'm no longer constantly fiddling with settings and config to try and eek out every last cycle and frame - I just click a few buttons and fly. :thumbup:

  • Thanks for your response and insight Jeff. I am amazed at how much more flying time i'm getting since I purchased Aerofly FS2. I'm no longer constantly fiddling with settings and config to try and eek out every last cycle and frame - I just click a few buttons and fly. :thumbup:

    That's the idea 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

  • Dumb question: why only the head and not the entire pilot? For the end-user, this behavior looks like a bug.

    More seriously, what is the logic to define if an object should be hiden or not?

    Does the 3D model of the plane use LOD groups? Or do you use some sort of variables to hide objects according to the view distance?

  • There are two way really. One way is to add an alpha channel to the object and the other if to have a variable to present or not present a specific object.

    Aerofly basically loads the entire area prior to reaching it. The size of the load is defined by a variable 'size' in the airport TSC file or for scenery by using a level loading system.

    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