Slow progress

  • With the flight sim market being quite busy and alive lately I am doing my best to defend the honor of Aerofly FS 2 on various forums. However, it is becoming more and more difficult to convince people that Aerofly FS 2 is a valid option because progress simply is too slow. Yes, there are minor updates and yes, there was Utah, but I am talking about serious simming nog options. Planes with (a lot) more functionality. Things like ATC, AI. Things that have to do with the actual simulation of flight. I notice more and more people are dismissing Aerofly FS 2 because it is lacking in too many departments and there simply is no progress. I have been waiting for the Dash for a long time now: that would finally be a plane that would show that Aerofly FS 2 is a serious sim. That would show the potential to a lot of doubting simmers. But nothing. I know the default planes are being worked on but... I have no clue when we will get more functionality.

    Even though Aerofly FS 2 is lacking too much I still prefer it by far over the competition. The upcoming LOWI addon from Orbx is a great thing but I would rather see something serious coming from IPACS. I am sure you are working hard on things but that won't convince anyone to invest in Aerofly FS 2. I sometimes feel a fool defending the sim. Now I don't care about feeling a fool but I do care about the future of Aerofly FS 2 and I am more and more afraid the sim is falling behind and people spend their money elsewhere and Aerofly FS 2 may end up dead.

    I know things are ready when they are ready but still... I would prefer a bit more insight on how things are progressing. And I would like it even more of things actually get released.

    So, I just had to get that off my chest. ;)

  • Ah, those impatient users :)

    We have quite a few things coming up soon. For one we will finish the Q400 real soon and next month we will also have LOWI and KCGX from ORBX. Besides that we work in parallel on a much greater cockpit functionality as well as new airplanes. As we learned from the past, sorry if we are not more concrete, but like you said, new stuff is ready when its ready. There is no point in publishing the Q400 if it just doesn't fly right, but I think we have tackled that real soon.

    We also come up with revised SDK tools, this way you can easily get your own aerial images into the simulator.

  • Apart from Aerofly FS 2 - which I do not even have installed - I presently own only IL2 Battle of... and DTG's recently released and already great FSW, but my position regarding AEFS2 is that of someone who can own a Bugatti but can't take it for work every day...

    It stays, at the garage, for special moments, special needs of the joy of driving a Bugatti...

    Will it be updated ? For sure it will, but not at the typical pace simmers expect programs and their developers to bring them news, and I am very badly trained on that by 1C / 777 and their incredible update rate on the IL.2 Battle of series.... but still, AEFS2 IS AEFS2, and has a potential that I can only compare to that of IL.2 and DCS World flight dynamics and performance wise...

    It's my Bugatti :)

    Limited by Main Thread...

  • Thanks for the reply, IPACS Support. ;) I agree about the it's ready when it's ready part but it would help to have some more detail in WHAT will be ready when it's ready. I only know for a fact that the Dash will be coming (soon or not) but other than that I have nothing to promise my sim friends (with a 100% certainty) who are interested in Aerofly FS 2. The roadmap on this forum is more about things which haven't been decided on than things that have been decided on. I for one would LOVE to at least see a list of things you have actually decided on, even if those things won't be coming within a month. Or two. ;)

    Right now I am betting on Aerofly FS 2 (don't even have any other sim installed) but it's a bit odd since I don't really know what I am actually betting on. ;)

  • J van E

    Just be patient. While I agree I would like to see a bit more feedback from IPACS about what's coming (like a confirmation it's being considered in my multiplayer thread would be nice) I completely understand IPACS way of doing things here. It's always better to keep quiet and then surprise everybody with a nice update than promise something and then miss a deadline.

    Regarding on "I'm betting on AFFS2" well if you want to do that then great but what I would say is that you are missing out on a lot of other great sim experiances out there which AFFS2 currently doesn't offer and may not offer for some time. I suggest rather than being frustrated about the lack of FS2s progress you install some other sims as well and go have fun elsewhere. I fly FSX, DCS, X-plane occasionally, there is lots of fun to be had with these sims. Specially with friends in multiplayer. I'm not saying stop flying Aerofly I'm just sating that if you move you attention elsewhere for a while the perceived lack of progress might be less frustrating for you.

    AFFS2 Needs Multiplayer - Please make it happen!


  • Regarding on "I'm betting on AFFS2" well if you want to do that then great but what I would say is that you are missing out on a lot of other great sim experiances out there which AFFS2 currently doesn't offer and may not offer for some time. I suggest rather than being frustrated about the lack of FS2s progress you install some other sims as well and go have fun elsewhere. I fly FSX, DCS, X-plane occasionally, there is lots of fun to be had with these sims. Specially with friends in multiplayer. I'm not saying stop flying Aerofly I'm just sating that if you move you attention elsewhere for a while the perceived lack of progress might be less frustrating for you.

    I could do that but to be honest... after experiencing Aerofly FS 2 on the Rift there is no way I could go back to the other (civial aviation) sims. Even without the Rift I just can't stand obvious problems as popping up autogen, late loading textures and mesh, generic landclass, etc. but what really is a problem with those sims is the performance. Even with all settings completely low they can't match Aerofly FS 2 (with all settings high). All that is frustrating me a 100 times more than the lack of progress of AFS2. And I certainly can't find any fun in them anymore. Those who love FSX say that 30 fps is perfectly smooth, well, they are wrong. You don't know what smooth means until you have experiences AFS2. ;)

    Aerofly FS 2 spoiled me... ;)

  • Dear IPACS team, (and dear Aerofly FS 2 users)

    Thank you for these good news.
    You sure know many things better than us based on actual facts like sales volumes, information we don't have.

    We're apparently only a handful of enthusiastic and eagerly forward-looking users on this forum, and as J van E states we sometimes feel like the last of Mohicans on many other forums, still seeing in Aerofly FS2 more potential than merely a “quick fix”, as the most positive users tend to think (even Orbx’s JV wrote it), or an empty shell failure as most simmers currently see AFS 2.

    Looking at the add-on developer’s market from my simmer point of view, I’ve been overwhelmed for months (even years, by now) by special discount offers (Black Friday , Xmas sales, New Year sales, Valentine’s day sales, Easter Sales, special days off, special sales, Mother’s day sales, etc.) and my understanding is they’re all more or less struggling to sell add-ons.
    Not that the quality doesn’t reach the expected level, but the market is simply low and saturated due to lack of technical possibilities.

    For a third party editor the perspectives are pretty much unclear. They’re currently facing an avalanche of “new” sim platforms beyond the current ones and there won’t be room for them all to be successful, sharing more or less equally market shares or bringing new sales/markets. In order to survive, add-on editors will have to make some strategical choices between these platforms:
    - FSX
    - FSX SE
    - Flight Sim World (FSW)
    - P3D v3
    - P3D v4
    - XPlane 11
    - Aerofly FS 2
    - Condor
    - DCS
    - IL-2
    - …

    The 5 first sims are the very same FSX base, with coding/compilation variants that force editors to adapt their products to ensure compatibility without much reward : simmers won’t repay the add-on full price they purchased for P3Dv3 in order to have them running for P3Dv4. Most add-ons may probably be imported without much change.
    Looking at FSW, I could manually declare my FSX/P3D sceneries and they work without trouble. It isn’t as easy for aircraft, here the backward compatibility link is more or less broken, but should not be too difficult to establish provided a SDK gets available.
    The problem with FSW will rather be the Dovetail+Steam financial model that might be a no-go for most editors.

    X-Plane has unfortunately low market perspectives due to several reasons, especially cultural.

    Soon will come your porting of Orbx’s LOWI into Aerofly FS 2. The most interesting IMO is simmers will then have a one-to-one comparison point with FSX, FSX SE, P3D v3 or P3Dv4 when it becomes available. This will sure demonstrate AFS graphical engine potential and its overwhelming superiority to FSX base.

    But what makes a sim successful is not just the engine’s power. All the successful simulators live only by the community they gather (users, freeware add-on makers, payware editors, peripheral controller manufacturers, etc.) and the least we can say is the Aerofly FS2 community still doesn’t really builds up. From my (partial) point of view we’re always the same bunch of users posting on this forum, and I feel very lonely when trying to talk positively about AFS2 on other forums – looks like I’m not the only one here feeling so.

    There are many, many simmer profiles and in order to build a community a sim must adapt to simmers wishes and propose consistent content.
    Most users, on the opposite, merely see what’s currently lacking to Aerofly FS 2 and by far it’s not ready to replace yet any sim on the market. Rome wasn’t built in one day and that’s pretty much normal.

    I agree with comments (J van E, HiFlyer, etc.) who feel a bit frustrated by the lack of communication from IPACS; it was already the case with AFS1, when Ikarus kept telling us they were planning big things but preferred not to communicate before it was ready, be patient… Some users managed to tweak some add-ons, without much official support, questions and posts started to get more and more seldom, then the last users vanished in the forgotten nice try’s darkness, together with Flight Unlimited, MS Flight, Dovetail Flight School, etc.

    I agree it won’t be possible to address all simmers wishes, but reading the few answers we get here and looking at the development progress my feeling is you have a sometimes very dogmatic approach (we don’t do anything until we have found the perfect solution to do it) and want to keep all add-on development under close control. In other words you decide what’s good for Aerofly FS2, who may provide what kind of add-on, and users have to adapt. The big strength of successful sims is users make it the sim they want (within performance limitations, of course).

    Seen from my desk the development direction isn’t much clear either: you spend a lot of efforts to develop airliners (Q400, A320 systems, etc.) but (from what I read) intend to keep simple FMS programming level (i.e. not intended to hardcore airline simmers), while essential basic systems of GA aircraft are still missing – mixture is not even featured (atmospheric engines develop the same power at MSL as at FL100), engine start / shut down have no sequence, magnetos, carburetor heating, etc. are not featured.
    DLC’s propose a superb HD photoscenery quality where available, with a pretty good elevation mesh, but roughly spread trees and no buildings, except some tiny hand-made places. Here also the answer is rather dogmatic: 3D solutions seen in other sims are not totally perfect, thus you prefer doing nothing and spreading randomly trees than doing something that wouldn’t be perfect.

    In my opinion, for an users community to build up AFS 2 needs a more consistent content in aircraft systems and sceneries seen as consistent flyable regions, no just airports and very local tiny patches with a lot of details in the middle of nice but features-less photoground scenery.
    This all takes time, and IPACS shouldn’t try doing everything from scratch on their own.

    I don’t see much potential for AFS 2 among hardcore airline simmers community, they have sometimes invested many thousands of euros building their home cockpits with a lot of high end components, add-ons, programming. Seen from FL390 a generic scenery like default FSX/P3D or with Orbx generic products is far enough, they don’t need 200 FPS (in an airliner, with 25-30 FPS you’re pretty much happy, don’t need more). What they need is in-depth true-to-life systems and a consistent scenery quality all over the World from San Francisco to Hong Kong, from Sydney to London, from Helsinki to Rio de Janeiro, and this won’t be possible with photoscenery on home computers. Even Google Earth do no provide consistent photo quality over such range.
    Current sims based on FSX are excellent for this purpose and their main limitation is the 32bits architecture. This should be going to be history when P3D v4 comes out, scheduled pretty soon.

    As already said somewhere, Aerofly FS2 has however a really strong technical potential for general aviation simulation, where all other sim’s graphical engines currently struggle displaying high quality sceneries with millions of objects.

    I’m pretty confident the upcoming LOWI AD will show AFS 2 graphical engine’s technical potential. But GA users will need to have at least the same depth of simulation as what they’re used to before to think of investing their money into a new sim.

    IMHO IPACS should concentrate on GA aircraft systems and SDK, to provide users the simulation level they expect from aircraft and an easy entry level for add-on designing.
    Editors have gathered and processed plenty of material to produce consistent high quality flight regions. I’m quite convinced they would be overjoyed to be able to compile them for Aerofly FS2, this could bring them the fresh air they’re desperately seeking for, while consistent content and nice aircraft systems will bring new users => win-win-win situation.

    I’m looking forward to seeing the new SDK release.

    Please don’t take me the wrong way. If you read until here (my apologizes for being so long, it had to get out of the chest), I really don’t want to sound negative. I see a real strong potential of Aerofly FS2 but I’m afraid it could get wasted and there are too few clues that you’re actually taking users and editors feedback into consideration. I’ve been talking to some add-on editors around the place and they feel pretty much the same.

    Keep up the good work and long life to Aerofly FS2, please don’t let it fail!

    Cheers
    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

    Edited 5 times, last by Trespassers: typos (May 20, 2017 at 3:42 PM).

  • J van E,

    we appreciate ipacs' attempt for a smooth ride, just like you do,
    it is obvious how strong Marc's and Torsten's competences are (both PHDs i think),
    and how much effort they put into lean code and fast but brilliant graphics while achieving top-FPS-performance.
    My old bastard PC gets me through the L.A. basin with 60 fps! They have done an incredible job.

    Chasing them is a bit like asking a beautiful woman to get undressed,
    they both tend to hesitate, probably for a good reason;).

    Yes, we starve.
    And yes, we have no clue about what we will find behind that wonda bra.

    The load of content and functionality which is missing to become a grown up sim
    lets me assume how careful they advance.

    If they plan to add more areas, an ATC-module, full FPL/NAV-module, Aircraft Mgmt (W&B etc.),
    A.I., M.P., ground traffic and airport ops, Weather Module,
    Water and Water traffic, Damage modelling, Effects (FX), Night Textures, Night Lights,
    that 60FPS-thing will most probably come down dramatically.

    Compare DCS. Their physics and functionalities are so tremendiously realistic, but people can't fully operate it
    because they have performance issues all the time.

    All IPACs came up with, has been different than what we have seen from other developers,
    including the way they communicate, yes, they seem absent. They made me go balistic in the past,
    but today i feel a bit more relaxed and hopeful, since i see a bit of their results based on background works.

    Steve Job's last public words - in case you want to find analogies to ipacs -
    about what he felt was his biggest mistake with apple,
    was not his marketing communication style, but the perception that he should have opened the system
    earlier for external developments. His attempt for protecting the apple source prevented him from growing faster into
    more markets. They kept a 3 percent market share over decades, until the iphone with the app-market bounced him to top and the whole game would finally change.

    I see these guys at ipacs preparing for a greater thing than what we see, but they do it with utmost care and that release-by-surprise style. Reminds of Forest Gump with his candy box.
    What surprises me most in a positive way is their preference for the technical objective over commerce.

    I hope after the release of Speck, Chicago, Florida and the Hawai'ian Islands, they will spend all their resources into vertical modules
    before going on with further maps. Despite it seems obvious that the users can not achieve the same quality when
    providing their work (what i learned from the skin thing), ipacs seems to get us some tools to add stuff. All i am looking for is something that allows me modelling
    environmental details to enhance realism with a less complex sdk and integration process.

    Somehow we expect them to re-generate in a better way what others like FSX, xplane and friends have done:
    A full scale flight simulator.

    And somehow they seem to put a lot of thoughts into re-inventing things,
    so we feel spoiled;)

    And that, my friend, is a true time-consumer.

  • I could do that but to be honest... after experiencing Aerofly FS 2 on the Rift there is no way I could go back to the other (civial aviation) sims. Even without the Rift I just can't stand obvious problems as popping up autogen, late loading textures and mesh, generic landclass, etc. but what really is a problem with those sims is the performance. Even with all settings completely low they can't match Aerofly FS 2 (with all settings high). All that is frustrating me a 100 times more than the lack of progress of AFS2. And I certainly can't find any fun in them anymore. Those who love FSX say that 30 fps is perfectly smooth, well, they are wrong. You don't know what smooth means until you have experiences AFS2. ;)

    Aerofly FS 2 spoiled me... ;)

    Exactly my thoughts.
    I wasted so much time with tweaking FSX and P3D. I spended more time on it than on flying. There was always the hope that the new tweak I heard about would fix the sim.... I can not stand it anymore. My whole hardware were bought and built around FSX in the hope it would run smooth. Basically it was just a waste of money. Yes, there are people out there who claim their FSX runs totally smoothly but I don't believe them. :p
    I never thought a "synthetic motion" could be so fluent. In my Rift I was blown away after I tried Titans of Space 2.0 the first time. The same with Aerofly, when you fly low along skyscrapers and they move absolutely smooth. FSX/P3D folks realy don't know what fluent mean... (FSX with FlyInside in a Rift is not the same)

  • FSX/P3D folks realy don't know what fluent mean...

    Exactly. I am getting so tired of poeple saying their sim is running utterly smooth at 30 fps. It can't be. FSX/P3D/XP11 were never totally smooth on my PC. Only when you have experienced Aerofly FS 2 you know what smooth REALLY is. My eyes hurt after seeing video's in which people are rying to land their plane in FSW... so NOT smooth. They are all fooling themselves.

  • Hi, I jump in this thread to question about what I expect the most in the current progress of this sim .....
    I play with CV1 only and my problem is related to continuous loading stutters .... When I fly a low speed Aircraft it's excellent but when I fly high speed the "loading stutters" (? is it really?) are constant (every few second a micro-pause occures) and in VR it's a problem .... and it's a pain since beginning of the sim.
    Of course it's early access / work in progress but does new information about this specific performance aspect exist or could be given by IPACS team ?
    Other aspects of developpement appear less important to me (will take the time it needs) cause I enjoy much just flying around with all the variety of locations and aircrafts !!
    (Also I like very much the fact vertical surfaces of ground can be well textured like in monument valley and the new animated people on the ground very well modelled !)

    • Official Post

    Hey guys, just to clear a few things up:

    "Concerns about the performance with more systems?" No, I don't think so...
    From my point of view more systems won't affect the performance that much if at all. If you are using the CPU to its full potential it can do a lot of things very quickly (3.400.000.000 things second! per core...). And Aerofly has an engine that is very powerful, using multicore, 64bit... I've been adding thousands of small systems in the past year now, I've not had an issue with CPU performance even once. The frame rate stayed at 60FPS since the graphics is running on another thread and mainly on the graphics card anyway - so rendering will still be very smooth even if theoretically we would somehow managed to bring the physics engine to its limits. Then the phyics would probably just get less acurate if we had to slow it down... That shouldn't affect the frame rate at all though, it does in other simulators but it shouldn't. But I doubt we will ever get to the limits of the physics engine, even if we add study level system depth.

    "FMS simplified?" No, accessible, still highly accurate.
    When we add FMSes they will probably be editable from within the navigation dialog (directly injecting the entire route) as well from inside the virtual cockpit. That means you will be able to edit the flight plan exactly like in the real aircraft. But there probably won't be any fake menus like in all the add-ons, to save a flight plan or panel state - that will most likely be possible from the navigation dialog or aircraft selection screen or some other interfaces that might be added.

    From my point of view these are the following items are what is probably coming next in terms of system, not official list, no guarantee
    - autopilot is basically finished, should be released soon-ish
    - turbo-props will be improved and with that comes the Q400
    - then we will probably continue to update engine physics, adding the long awaited start/stop of the engine and probably mixture
    - I'm hoping after that we will improve the sound quality, especially adding realistic engine sounds, incl startup sounds
    - FMS are also very likely to be added, I don't know when, I'm hoping sooner than later...
    This list is incomplete (not the official roadmap), just the things that I will likely be involved in, the other developers will be developing other great features in parallel, as mentioned on the official roadmap http://www.ipacs.de/forum/showthre…ng-Early-Access
    (ATC is one of the things mentioned there)

    Regards,
    Jan

  • Thank you Jan for your always appreciated feedback.

    Cheers
    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.

  • Jan, it does concern me that in your roadmap and the one you linked to that multiplayer isn't even hinted at. With the state the sim is in currently (mainly good for VFR GA aircraft) multiplayer would be a huge draw and could result in a lot more sales. I know many people who would buy FS2 if they could fly with friends. To me it would be one of the absolute priorities to try and bring more people to the sim in general. It multiplies all the good aspects that the sim currently has and makes it a much more attractive proposition for people to drop £30 on. Also I'd quite like to fly with you guys sometime! Lol

    AFFS2 Needs Multiplayer - Please make it happen!

  • Oh boy, I just tested Flight Sim World for two hours for the first time. O.O
    I don't want to spread hate or something but I want to say thank you, IPACS. Thank you so much for your great sim! :o

  • I'm new at Aerofly FS 2 and I have to say that I'm pretty well impressed by this sim. The FS engine seems wonderful, very fluid. Hopefully IPACS will allow users to get access to their SDK in order to have new user content as soon as possible and in paralell with further development of the platform.
    Cheers, Ed

  • Jan, it does concern me that in your roadmap and the one you linked to that multiplayer isn't even hinted at.


    CavendishD, I understand Jan is working for IPACS, mainly on aircraft.
    Iinformation he provides regard what he's working on, or maybe what aircraft modelling teammated have for plans.
    It's not a general IPACS roadmap.

    Cheers
    Antoine

    Config : i7 6900K - 20MB currently set at 3.20GHz, Cooling Noctua NH-U14S, Motherboard ASUS Rampage V Extreme U3.1, RAM HyperX Savage Black Edition 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz, Graphic Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Power supply Corsair RM Series 850W, Windows 10 64 bit.