Where to begin again

  • I was an active contributor to the world of FS2 for the first two years of its development. I have been "away" for the last six months, but I feel like I would like to try to get back into the sim. What new things would my old friends suggest I try out to see how far developments have come in the last half year? Knock my socks off! ;)

    Bill

  • If you are on Steam: enable the beta for some additions/improvements to the MCDU of the A320 and the FMS in the Q400 (and two other planes). That's it as far as IPACS is concerned.

    You could check out the Lukla scenery from Aerosoft (if you are into that kind of scenery) and JustFlight released the Duchess for AFS2 a while ago but it's still incompatible with the beta so I wouldn't get that one right now.

    Afaik that's all. Not much happening. Maybe try again in another six months. ;)

  • Thanks for the reply! I am on steam and on the beta, so most of those improvements should be waiting for me.

    The Netherlands and South Florida are actually much older than six months!

    Have there been any startling home-brewed, not to be missed scenery additions since January?

    I am not optimistic enough to have thought things like weather, ATC or fuel flow had been implemented, and if they had I'm sure the forum would be buzzing with details so i couldn't have missed them. I am just hoping that in some subtle but important ways the sim has moved forward in my absence. :D

    • Official Post

    Thanks for the reply! I am on steam and on the beta, so most of those improvements should be waiting for me.

    The Netherlands and South Florida are actually much older than six months!

    Have there been any startling home-brewed, not to be missed scenery additions since January?

    I am not optimistic enough to have thought things like weather, ATC or fuel flow had been implemented, and if they had I'm sure the forum would be buzzing with details so i couldn't have missed them. I am just hoping that in some subtle but important ways the sim has moved forward in my absence. :D

    I'm sure that you will like this. We are still working hard on new features but to get to those new features we have to rebuild the Aerofly infrastructure a bit. This is taking us some time.

    FMS TUTORIAL

    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

  • There has been some excellent freeware scenery developed over the last months by a hand full of clever contributors being willing to share their work. Just check my list

    https://michael-basler.net/Flight_Simulat…re_Scenery.html

    For weather you can try the Wettergerät

    https://flight-sim.org/filebase/index…tterger%C3%A4t/

    It's not Active Sky but imports METARS in advance of starting AeroflyFS2. Unfortunately, I didn't find time to try it myself yet.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • If you are away from home a lot I would strongly endorse FS2 2019 mobile, it is genuinely outstanding, 90+% of what is available in PC is now to be had on the road. I recently did the off-set LDA PRM approach into SFO 28R, the localiser was tunable and all the fixes were available for a perfectly usable nav display friendly route.

    I wish it was available on Android, it is strictly iOS only at this time. I have an iPad but I’ll never get an iPhone. I am 100% sick of Apple sod-the-customer-ness, shame that the iPad is mechanically very good.

    I want Android!

  • Cannot understate the greatnes of the new Lukla scenery - possibly the best, most detailed scenery I have seen for any sim-platform. We are still hankering for a helicopter capable of exploring the scenery in full, but the R22 can hover in ground effect around Lukla and with a bit of coaxing (and willfully ignoring low-RPM warnings;-)) you can set it down on rooftops and courtyards in the vicinity. Would also suggest you check out the Dornier taildragger available for free - lot’s of fun!

    Flying A330 as a day-job and enjoy VR-flying with PIMAX 5k+. NextLevelRacing v.3 Motion platform, Watercooled and overclocked i9-9900k, 32Gb 3600RAM, Samsung 970EVO Pro 2Tb m.2, nVidia RTX-2080Ti FE, Thrustmaster HOTAS, VKB pedals, Cockpitforyou motorised throttle quadrant, Precision Flight Controls Jetliner column

  • Cannot understate the greatnes of the new Lukla scenery - possibly the best, most detailed scenery I have seen for any sim-platform.

    Er... Lukla is nice but the best, most detailed...? I suppose it's very personal but although the five main airports are on par with for instance Orbx Innsbruck they are a lot smaller and the surrounding textures are mostly (extremely) low res and sometimes even rasterized... Houses and trees stick out very obviously all over the place... I do enjoy flying around it with visibility set below medium but Orbx's airports are all better and so is TrueEarth Netherlands. Imho. Lukla is nice to have because it portrays a part of the world you won't find too often in a flightsim but I mainly bought it because there hardly are any add ons for AFS2 and to support development of the sim by 3rd parties. Even IPACS's Florida looks a lot better than Lukla.

  • Er... Lukla is nice but the best, most detailed...? I suppose it's very personal but although the five main airports are on par with for instance Orbx Innsbruck they are a lot smaller and the surrounding textures are mostly (extremely) low res and sometimes even rasterized... Houses and trees stick out very obviously all over the place... I do enjoy flying around it with visibility set below medium but Orbx's airports are all better and so is TrueEarth Netherlands. Imho. Lukla is nice to have because it portrays a part of the world you won't find too often in a flightsim but I mainly bought it because there hardly are any add ons for AFS2 and to support development of the sim by 3rd parties. Even IPACS's Florida looks a lot better than Lukla.

    I should have added that I say this from the POV of flying almost exclusively in VR. I disagree that TrueEarth Netherlnds is better though. It has much coarser textures on buidings and terrain. again as viewed in VR, but obviously covers a bigger land area etc.. Not my intention to engage in hyperbole, but I am genuinely blown away by Lukla for AFS2!

    Flying A330 as a day-job and enjoy VR-flying with PIMAX 5k+. NextLevelRacing v.3 Motion platform, Watercooled and overclocked i9-9900k, 32Gb 3600RAM, Samsung 970EVO Pro 2Tb m.2, nVidia RTX-2080Ti FE, Thrustmaster HOTAS, VKB pedals, Cockpitforyou motorised throttle quadrant, Precision Flight Controls Jetliner column

  • I see that this is still a place where we disagree over stuff! Thanks again for the input.

    I just got the latest version of the corded Oculus, so today I will make sure that I have the beta version of Aerofly on Steam and see how well everything is doing in VR. I always was of the opinion that it was the VR experience that made FS2 most worthwhile.

  • Floating houses (Warning: Pet peeve) in mountainous terrain in sims is pretty much the most common thing ever. Years ago I proposed making all houses have "sub basements", which meant essentially containing structure that went down maybe about three floors below ground level so that when a house found itself on a steep slope, it would not end up hanging in the air, defying gravity.

    Microsoft Flight apparently had the same idea, and is the only sim I know that ran with the concept, ending the issue of dangling houses. I proposed it here again a long time ago as Aerofly was a new sim at the time and it seemed a good idea to implement such a concept at the very beginning, but again the idea was lost (sigh)

    Maybe the concept will have its day, on some sim or the other.

    MSFlight Fixes the issue

    [Blocked Image: http://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/3373/8IS8Rj.jpg]

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

    Edited once, last by HiFlyer (June 19, 2019 at 6:06 PM).

  • Floating houses (Warning: Pet peeve) in mountainous terrain in sims is pretty much the most common thing ever. Years ago I proposed making all houses have "sub basements", which meant essentially containing structure that went down maybe about three floors below ground level so that when a house found itself on a steep slope, it would not end up hanging in the air, defying gravity.

    Microsoft Flight apparently had the same idea, and is the only sim I know that ran with the concept, ending the issue of dangling houses. I proposed it here again a long time ago as Aerofly was a new sim at the time and it seemed a good idea to implement such a concept at the very beginning, but again the idea was lost (sigh)

    Maybe the concept will have its day, on some sim or the other.

    [Blocked Image: http://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/3373/8IS8Rj.jpg]

    I reported that problem years ago too. I guess it must be harder to fix than it seems.

  • Thank you delfinpm! That site is indeed very interesting!

    Take note though that almost none of the buttons and systems work (most are very basic models) and that the aircraft may not work well at all with the latest version of AFS2.