Hello,
The answer to this post from IPACS will probably be, that the forum is not the place to discuss the topics brought up by me in the necessary depth and that we need to arrange a user meeting someday. I did not get an invitation so far, and since this is your support forum, get ready for some support.
When I first started to play AF 2 after it was released, it got me into my rant against the flight info bar in another thread, but that was only a fraction of the post I wrote back then. I decided only to publish this part to give IPACS time to sort the things that were obviously bugs out, and because I had a slight hope that they would start addressing the major issues (see my post above) by themselves, before I proceed crashing the party around a freshly launched product.
So I waited. And played a competing sim that may have working ILS, but can only be used with 500m visibility to avoid eye cancer.
In the app store, costumers are used to a certain timeframe where the initial bugfixes after the release of a new version or major updates need to show up. As a developer, you can stretch this timeframe by acknowledging that the bugs found by users are being worked on. This would actually be no deviation from IPACS company policy of giving no dates and little info on what to expect next. A bug, unlike a new feature, is something which I as a costumer payed for not to happen. If it happens, it does not put me in a state of cheerful expectation when I do not know if someone is working on the problem. It makes me angry.
You did not publish an update, nor did you give any info on when to expect it. And slowly but surely we are getting to the point were probably not only in my user experience the awesome (working) new stuff brought by AF 2 starts to be getting outweight by the stuff that is also present, but not working properly.
So what needs to be fixed?
Radio Navigation
Albeit the great work that obviously went in making flight planning and radio navigation possible in AF 2, from a user perspective it is much closer to a bug then to a feature. There is not one ILS approach I tried in this sim, that worked properly: the automatic choice of frequencies is erratic to the point of dysfunctionality, the glideslopes and localizers are often inconsistent with the corresponding runways, which is often the result of VORs being displayed as ILSs with a stuck glideslope (at least thats my theory) and most often they show up around 3 miles from touchdown at best, on perfectly established visual approaches from 15 miles out. The only airport where low visibility approaches are a little fun is the eastbound approach to Monterey Regional.
This is not something were I as a user can sit down and write down for you what works and what does not. It is to far from working for this. I know that there are not yet a whole lot of people out there who use this extensively in a mobile sim, but you came so far bringing a perfect representation of this functionality to iOS, given the platforms constraints, that it hurts me seeing it fail due to a few bugs.
Flight planning
In its current state, the flight planning mode gets something done, that the competition actually can not do: plan a complete route with climbout and turns to a straight landing in under 5 seconds. Which is alright for most users who have never played a sim before. For everything and everyone else, it sucks. The flight planning feature as it is would be awesome for aerofly FS (1): it gives me a line I can fly with my Cessna and finally arrive at my destination
It does nothing for me when I want to know the course to my destination, the altitude profile I need to fly, which VOR or NDB I can use on the way, which runways have ILS etc. Of course I can look all this up, but someone talked about making an accessible sim on this forum, and I remember it was IPACS.
So what we need is:
- Map with all NAVAIDS
- Planning mode that makes it possible to integrate them in a route
- During the flight, only the preselected NAVAIDS from the flight plan are used (solves the problem with erratic selection for most users)
- ...and shown, optionally, together with the route, on the MFDs of the EFIS equipped aircraft and not only in the (pointless) info bar. (optional: swipe across the MFD to zoom, would be a great start to try invisible touchzones)
- an ETE (NOT in the info bar) or something else to make rudimental descent calculations (optional: let the flight planning calculate this automatically. If you do this, you also have everything you need to offer a basic LNAV and VNAV functionality for the autopilot)
These things are not "nice to have". They are essential to bring purpose to the amount of work you put in radio navigation.
Last point includes everything from the flight info bar to limited rudder authority:
Stop making a sim for people who do not play sims
Right now, it is a fact that the (overall inferior) competing product outsells aerofly by a huge margin. It does not only sell better, but after buying, people keep using it more often then aerofly. Look how many videos are posted on Youtube playing either sim. Look at the activity in the corresponding Facebook pages. It is the continuation of the old rule in the simulation market, that consistent functionality regarding the representation of real aviation on a given platform will always prevail over eye candy.
That is why add ons to MSFS by PMDG sell for more then the original sim. That is why Falcon 4.0 is still played today. That is why nobody here has ever heard about Flight Unlimited.
You can lament that with App Store economy everything has changed, that your game is only downloaded by 12 year olds who can't use an ILS and that you can not charge them more then 5 €. We had this discussion before. Meanwhile, your competition sells annual memberships for almost 50 €.
Fifty.
Euros.
Annually.
Which I payed. Happily. Together with thousands of others. Like in the old times, when Sims where 50€. In an App Store were the average revenue per customer is something about 0, x €. Because I get from them what I am asking for in a good sim, which has nothing to do with the central feature for this price being multiplayer.
If you want a feature for your sim that is a massive selling point, like multiplayer for your competition, make it system depth. Your concept of reducing complexity, until the Extra does not do anymore what an Extra is build for, did not work. People are buying your sim, but you destroy long term motivation and lose in in-app sales. And neither you nor your product deserve this.
I am still looking forward to a user meeting someday.
Jonas