Short term mobile update roadmap

It must be annoying to see people who are doing beta testing publicly complaining about and knocking imperfections in the beta release, they miss the point.

If no lighting is made, please improve taxiway lighting

Quote from admin

This again is an update on what is planned on a short term basis, we are of course working as usual on more airplanes, helicopters, regions and features but would not like to communicate too much here right now.

Hoping for the Concorde, Apache Helicopter, Nepal Region and Ground Service+ATC

a question for the developers... how is it possible that the lighting is so complicated, a simple arcade game like RFS has incredible lighting, it's realistic and it looks great....

so in conclusion, it will come or it won't come in that update that they plan to make in the short term, lighting in Android... many of us are already bored of flying in the dark

is it possible to send different beta build for beta testers?

Quote from admin

- US sceneries are currently converted to the new format and we are doing some internal testing already. Closed beta testing is planned for next week. Once completed, we intend to offer the western states in an upcoming update as an In-App purchase, but at a low price. The main reason, is that we need to finance the huge amount of data that needs to be downloaded. Keep in mind, storage requirements are further increased by around 4 to 5 extra GB so if you download everyhting for Aerofly FS 2022, you now need over 20 GB of free space on your device.

Thanks! When you say western states, I'm assuming you mean California, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, but not Florida? Are there plans to maintain the 3D cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles and the night lighting at Denver?

I'm willing to pay more to finally get the U.S. regions. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but the initial $10 for the app with Europe and all aircraft is an insanely good deal. I'm glad to pay more if it means helping the developers add more to Aerofly.

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Eduardo190: In Aerofly FS the lighting has an effect on all objects including the airplane itself and also works during daylight to achieve the best visual effects. Aerofly FS on mobile can support around 512 simultaneous lights either from the airplane or the airport. This fact together with the fact that complex airplanes in Aerofly FS feature over 300000 polygons require some very complex shaders ( Some of our shaders feature more than 150 lines of code ). It's those shaders that are not being executed or compiled properly on Android, and to repeat it again, no matter how powerful your device is, it's a GPU driver issue. And like stated before, we are still working on it, so we might find a solution for Android some day.

Please keep in mind that other products simulate certain lighting effects in a simplified manner. This could in theory be added to Aerofly FS as well, but it would actually slow down development as we would have to implement those special solutions on the different platforms. That's why we have decided against it.

I think it's hard for you to find the right balance. Most low-end phones support OpenGL, while high-end phones also use Vulkan. The most important thing is that whether Vulkan or OpenGL, their functionality is not comprehensive. I can't think of any solution.

Really hoping for Oregon and Washington. It would be a beautiful place to fly with a great variety of scenery. I would love to fly Seattle to LA and SFO. I would pay $20 for Washington and Oregon if it was good quality! Thank you for the update! Communication with the community is so appreciated!

Quote from OKTwister

Really hoping for Oregon and Washington. It would be a beautiful place to fly with a great variety of scenery. I would love to fly Seattle to LA and SFO. I would pay $20 for Washington and Oregon if it was good quality! Thank you for the update! Communication with the community is so appreciated!

I would also pay that amount of money for those regions but with good quality... Hd landscapes and 3D buildings

Quote from Ishrion

I'm willing to pay more to finally get the U.S. regions. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion

This is not at all. I am even ready to pay city lights by night!

Quote from Ishrion

I'm assuming you mean California, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, but not Florida?

And Nevada!!

Quote from admin

Dear Aerofly FS mobile users,

here is a short overview and preview of the next planned updates in the coming weeks for iOS and Android:

- US sceneries are currently converted to the new format and we are doing some internal testing already. Closed beta testing is planned for next week. Once completed, we intend to offer the western states in an upcoming update as an In-App purchase, but at a low price. The main reason, is that we need to finance the huge amount of data that needs to be downloaded. Keep in mind, storage requirements are further increased by around 4 to 5 extra GB so if you download everyhting for Aerofly FS 2022, you now need over 20 GB of free space on your device.

- 3D buildings around european airports are also currently being evaluated. The main issue is the increased requirement with respect to memory, not primarily storage. Since we are already using 1 to 1.5 GB of RAM, we are hitting a critical limit here, as iOS already closes Aerofly FS once we exceed this limit even on devices with 3 GB of RAM. So we need to further investigate this.

- We are still working on the night lighting on Android. But our new solution is unfortunately not working on OpenGL for unknown reasons on quite a few devices, even modern and powerful ones. The Vulkan version works, but again, Vulkan support and GPU driver stability is just not good on Android. In 5 out of 10 devices we observe severe GPU drivers issues when using Vulkan. We can't offer this rendering option therefor and need to stick to OpenGL. So at this point we can't promise anything regarding night lighting on Android.

This again is an update on what is planned on a short term basis, we are of course working as usual on more airplanes, helicopters, regions and features but would not like to communicate too much here right now.

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Thank you IPACS for your customer progress updates here. We know your working hard to bring us the best experiences in the simulator. It's a shame about the Gpu issues but please keep trying. Some people are flying with lights simply moving files. Maybe talk to them?

Thanks again.

Darren

Quote from Darren Watts

Some people are flying with lights simply moving files. Maybe talk to them?

It's about city lights, not plane lights that illuminate the ground.

Yes sorry city/ground lighting was what I was ment to say.

Quote from Darren Watts

city/ground lighting

City lights are here in Aerofly FS 2021 at Denver only.

With Android and Aerofly FS 2022 it is possible to add some files (it is not official) to enjoy very wide endless city lights by night.

City lights are a pre-calculated thing (this is how I would do), so once calculated it's like managing normal ground (with different colors: the lights). But plane lights are all along calculated. So it could be hard for some devices or if devices are different in many ways.

RE: 1.5GB? RAM limit on ios

Great information here for tablet users. I am about to get a 16GB RAM ipad pro and as annoying as a RAM limit is I suppose the ipad is designed for multi-tasking. That is, having multiple apps open at the same time - a no-no for flight simmers due to flight sims being memory hogs. I suppose having one app using all the memory causes Apple a problem and would be too difficult for them to apply. They would rather treat all apps the same. Aerofly have to consider a range of tablet and phone users, but it would seem that the Apple throttle limit sorts that problem out.

As games are memory hogs, it will be interesting to see where this goes in the future as more people use tablets for gaming. A bit more of the RAM would be nice though on Apple's part as the ipad M1 is redefining the tablet scene.

I have noticed already that on AFS2021 I can have multiple apps open on the ipad at the same time - something I avoid from habit, but handy when going into settings or another system app.

It may be one of the reasons Apple is in court and having issues about its App Store and gaming (including potential Xbox streaming games online via a website without an app) - the requirement that all 'individual' games must go thru the app store on a case-by-case basis. I suppose they want to control many things including RAM usage by programs.

Distant lights at Denver need to be dimmer, keeping a distant light’s simulation pixel at full brightness kills the inverse square law realism. A virtual pin-point at twice the distance should be a quarter as bright. I hope FS2022 gives a nod in this direction.

Cloud glow would be nice.

Overloaded, yes I liked your past comment about nighttime and how black it is outside! Very true. Its been the cause of many accidents in real life.

I have noticed that in dark locations (no ground lights and no moon) that even white clouds are not always visible at night, but cloud glow would be nice and dark locations are becoming rarer every day.

Quote from HKATER

RE: 1.5GB? RAM limit on ios

For an iPad Pro M1, the RAM limit is 5 GB by app even if you have a 16 GB RAM iPad