Thank you for new airfield in Switzerland DLC: Speck-Fehraltorf

Herve, sorry, we have to temporarily remove it due to a serious bug it had, it shouldn't have been published in the first place but it slipped out of Beta. We will try to fix the issue real soon, sorry for this inconvenience!

@support

question:

when you model small airfields like speck,
where do you get infos about local circumstances sourced from?

the reason i am asking is the following:

speck (as given example) is a typical VFR-field with tricky elements which to consider is part
of the landing approval. That includes the hardened grass runway (metal mesh in the ground),
the visual approach points like agricultural silos in orange, the huge trees on final (not feasable with generic trees),
a small hill with an isolated apple tree at dep 30 and even gewächszelte on base 12, etc.
Speck has also paraboxing and is in the approach line of Dübendorf Military base final,
so F/A-18's on their DUB-final may rush over the head of GA-planes approaching speck at less than minimum seperation (alt 3000-4500ft).
Tailwheel ops, double deckers, sailplanes and helicopters operating really close on busy days, that is Speck.
The range of aircraft represented at this very small place are well known to whoever flies around here.
just like Dick's mom who blocks the runway threshold with her dog and some senior sailplaners parking where they shouldn't but nagging about motor pilots.

Some of these elements are not part of the airfield as seen on charts, but they serve as mandatory approach rules in real life.
Modelling some of these "insiders" means unprecedented mind of quality.

Are you in possession of such specs? Just curious.

thx.

We usually obtain these informations ourself or try to find people that know the airfield in and out. For Speck we pretty much added any special trees or waypoints, local pilots asked us to add. Feedback from pilots flying in Speck has so far been overwhelming.

Speck should be available within the next 1-2 weeks for the general public.

That is great news! Looking forward to this...

Will you publish Speck for AeroflyFS1 as well??

Regards,
Sylvain

thanks support.

support, 3 more questions, i hope these won't bother you too much:

1. adding speck lets me assume you add dubendorf as well?
2. South Approach Zurich gets you close over Adlisberg/Zürichberg.
Altitude above Ground aprx. 150 meters, straight over a village named Gockhausen.
In case someone wants to add a few houses there, that would give the final an even more realistic touch.
3. San Diego: Will someone work on that place? Currently there is a few generic buildings,
but this superfantastic city deserves a lot more. Please let me know.
Thx.

1) We have no plans yet, to improve Duebendorf
2) Improvement of Zuerich with surrounding buildings might come in a future update, see answer to next question
3) If we update Aerofly over time, we will of course think about adding more automatically generated buildings to improve immersion

Hi,

3) San Diego is one of the large OrbX airports. Perhaps they port this as well to aerofly, when they finished LOWI and Meigs.

Rodeo

i do hope so Rodeo. Please let them know how deeply we would appreciate.

i hope many others share this preference. IPACs has gone the right way so far, my compliments.
Miami, Hawaii, Washington D.C i will keep on my wish list:)

San Diego is a truly amazing place to fly.
I could do circuits for hours.

What i miss most in affs2:

- highway crossing approach final Rwy27 with street traffic
- all the shipyards and yacht havens modelled, including water, moving boats, aircraft carriers.
- residentals up the hill (north and west hills) overlooking KSAN airport
(the housing is a must for the surrounding scenery, otherwise you don't recognise that this is san diego.
- more realistic airport buildings (currently generic look)

San Diego is being modernized over the next few years, so the terminal will even get more beautiful elements.
But the terminal today is so nice, why not modelling it a bit more detailed?

can't tell about palm trees, as far as i remember, there weren't any in the sim.
In real life there are many palm trees, all main road lines along the bay are planted up with huge palm trees.
After the monster-tree-bug released with utah, i turned trees completely off. doesn't seem to be solved yet.

downtown looks okay so far, considering (not knowing really) that things could be done as placeholders yet for further detailing.

Quote from IPACS Support

We usually obtain these informations ourself or try to find people that know the airfield in and out. For Speck we pretty much added any special trees or waypoints, local pilots asked us to add. Feedback from pilots flying in Speck has so far been overwhelming.

Thank you for this nice airfield. Why don't you ask for other airports? There are a few RL pilots around the place who would be glad to bring that kind of info.
Talking generally, and this is true not only in AFS2 but for most sims, airport modelling usually don't even feature the landmarks that serve for flying the pattern. Regarding the swiss DLC, each airfield in Switzerland has his own VAC charts (even for some AD an AREA chart) with specific published patterns and the landmarks that will assist you while navigating around the place.
Beyond the "official" landmarks there are unofficial landmarks like those I learned as I was learning and my instructor showed me : the church there on the hill in Saanen you can use as aiming point before last turn in final, the other church above Sion that is exactly at downwind rwy 25 pattern altitude, the bush in La Cote that serves as natural PAPI for RWY22, the blue container in Yverdon that shows the beginning of RWY05 downwind, or the small bridge to start turning base 05, the cutout in the Jura woods (on French ground, thus very low quality in AFS2) that leads to the compulsory NW reporting point to land in Geneva, the CERN building featuring GW reporting point, the Fernay customs office you follow for landing on RWY 23 grass or concrete, or the wooden sphere that marks the end of downwind RWY05, the red and white beacon you can aim to when landing RWY 05 grass, etc. I think there are such convenient landmarks around every airport and most of them are totally neglected when modelling airports.
In Lausanne, the landmarks used as reference to fly both RWYs downwind is the Renens railway marshalling yard, that is unfortunately covered with trees in AFS2, and the surrounding buildings serving as landmark to turn base rwy 36 are not featured...

Cheers
Antoine