PilotEdge and AFS2

1st Official Post

    Loving what AFS2 is doing and the direction that it is going. My only feedback is in hopes that IPACS is looking at working with PilotEdge to make the two work together. If so, that would be an amazing VFR sim in almost all of the PE coverage area. It would also bring in ATC and possible AI. The big focus would be more on a VFR with the best ATC experience. Add in Orbx products down the road and viola.

    Just glancing at PE - sounds interesting. Seems like it creates a multi-player experience if another pilot calls his turn to final and you can see him in the pattern. There's always the risk of a few wreckers that won't follow the pattern / normal procedures. I remember this from online NASCAR simulation games many years ago - the race would start and you'd have one guy turn around and drive the wrong way - sorta funny but also a bummer if he managed to clip you :)

    PE is expensive though, +$20/month and only covers a limited part of the USA

    Ken,

    The main draw of PilotEdge is not being able to see other aircraft in the pattern, it's the fact that ATC is provided within the coverage areas 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. As you can imagine, that costs quite a bit of money to operate as the controllers are paid to be there. Every multiplayer system lets you see other airplanes (that's the definition of multiplayer), but there aren't any other systems that provide ATC on a regular schedule.

    Regarding the quality of other pilots, the pay wall and age limit (18+ unless you've soloed in the real world) tends to keep away any malicious actors or trolls. If not, every controller has the power to ban and disconnect users.

    As for being expensive, it's all relative, but it's actually $14.92/mth if you use the annual subscription. That lets you choose between ZLA or the Western US coverage area. If you conduct a 2hr flight (or set of flights), once each week, it's < $2/hr.

    Regarding support with FS2, as someone mentioned above, there needs to be an API which permits traffic injection and animation. On top of that, they need animated 3d models (which is a fairly large undertaking). Other than that, integration is simple and could be done with a few hundred lines of code as we have a utility which allows for easy integration with just about any sim. The utility handles 90% of the heavy lifting in terms of interaction with the PE server. We used it to build an implementation for DCS, it worked well.