Aerofly (Mobile Version) -Android going strong.

1st Official Post

    The release of "2" on Android seems to have gone well, the reviews are quite enthusiastic and hopefully a lot more people will get to enjoy this lovely sim. They are missing out on "FS" of course, I wonder if there will be an overhaul of FS, some of the planes could do with a touch-up, especially the Baron, and it would be terrific if a revision could have both iOS and Android issues.
    The Swiss scenery is still brilliant and the lack of nav-aids is a chance to brush up dead reckoning skills so it's still a regular for me, in fact I want the desktop version, next rainy day - here comes!

    The choice of tablet format is very welcome. My mini retina is going to be replaced some day and it will be nice to have a choice between what I presume will be a mini Air 2 and some sophisticated top end equivalent Android. The real choice is between the way Apple and Google run consumers.

    I'm curious if iPacs can give any insight in the pros and cons of each platform from their perspective. Not trying to start some fanboi war, just curious if one platform was better suited over the other as it may help Aerofly 2 fans get the best out of the app.

    • Official Post

    .... its IPACS or Ipacs not iPacs. Its got nothing to do with apple products, in fact Ipacs is pronounces as /ɪpɑːks/ - not /epaks/ or /ʌɪpɑːks/. Just pronounce the "I" as you would pronounce it in "it", "big" or "figure" and not as in "you and I" :D
    Sorry I had to correct you there before it gets out of hand :D

    Regards,

    Jan

    It's funny how internationalised names carry the regional baggage of their origins in usually too late debates on pronunciation. LIDL is frequently pronounced as lid ill, the TV ads were a surprise, hearing them pronounced lee dil. Too late, lid ill sticks.
    I've been on holiday to Germany, Austria and the South Tyroll and am trying to learn the German language so maybe I'll enjoy more the planned trains around now familiar "FS" country. At least there are no F,W or Vs in IPACS.

    To be relevant to the introduction of Android "2", I'm interested in device flexibility. The ability to open up and access batteries and storage memory appeals to me. I have just got a new phone and it is not a sealed for life unit. An iPad is not even water ressistant so what does sealing it give to the buyer?

    We have no plans yet to introduce Aerofly FS (version 1) to Android and we won't update the iOS version anymore. Its our intent however to bring the Switzerland scenery to Aerofly 2 as the game engine is far superior to Aerofly FS. As a first update we plan to come out with South California for Aerofly 2. If this AddOn turns out to "work" we will try to offer Switzerland again. Keep in mind however the limited space on mobile devices.

    As far as the platform goes, there are Pros and Cons for both. From a developer perspective, programming for Android is a real pain in the ...
    I won't go into details here, but porting to Android turned out fairly diffcult. The second issue is the huge amount of different devices. Each with its on quircks. Our initial intent was to use OpenGL ES 3, but as we tested different devices we had to do work arounds for driver bugs, that eventually forced us to use only OpenGL ES 2 features. The good thing with Android however is that we do not have to go through a review process to publish new versions, so the Android version will probably see newer versions slightly earlier.
    Also in general the high end iOS devices like iPhone 6 and iPad Air are awesome devices, allowing us to add more features for future versions. To get the same on Android you have to go either for a NVIDIA Shield or Nexus 9.

    Thanks for the information about the scenery add-ons. I would personally buy the Swiss scenery but I'm not really sure about southern California. It is a bit deserty, a run from Barstow to Mohave would not be as pretty as one from Sion to Interlaken. I suppose the San Diego area would be interesting but not the rest. I never use the greater Los Angeles area in FS X.
    I noticed in the Android version that in HUD view the scenery quality could be increased without slowing the frame rates or crashing the program. Could a similar graphics selection option allow an iPad to show the scenery a level up?, for example a mini 2/3 in HUD mode displaying Air 2 scenery.

    Well, we thought adding South California would be most logical, so thats why we come out with this first.

    >> Could a similar graphics selection option allow an iPad to show the scenery a level up?...

    The quality option in Android is actually something "bad" that causes lots of issues. Unfortunately people tend to set it to a too high setting, resulting in bad performance or crashes. The direct consequence of this is a bad review :(

    Just saying, IPACS dev, I love Southern California scenery! I've been to San Diego 2 times, and the airport is awesome! Other places are quite beautiful too. Since others also said that San Diego would be interesting, maybe can you make that area high-res?