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
