Posts by Hoinz

    Hello,


    after 8 years of Apple I just switched to an Galaxy S7 edge and couldn't help but get an Gear VR too. Although using the device makes it quite obvious that the development of VR is still at the beginning, the experience is already very interesting.

    When I first got the device, without any knowledge about its capability perfomancewise, I did not expect any apps with complex 3D Graphics. I therefore didn't waste a thought on a VR Version of aeroflyFS on mobile devices anytime soon. But to my great surprise there are in fact a few apps, that feature graphics that are a lot more complex then what I expected. (e.g. End Space).

    I know its still a bold thing to ask, but are there any prospects to see VR in the mobile Versions of aerofly within the coming months? It would take a lot of adjustments and the current graphics would certainly not make it to a VR Version, but with over a million Gear VR already sold I could imagine VR to take momentum in the mobile sector a lot quicker then in the high-end gaming market. Putting a foot in the door in this market, given IPACS current monopoly on mobile flight sims that are a good enough combination of looks, scenery size and flight models could be an important step.

    I would love to hear your thoughts on that.


    Hoinz

    http://youtu.be/Ay68xJBoMDM


    Did some airwork around golden gate. Unfortunately I haf to abort the final landing and go around because I got to slow on the final turn.

    Tried it with the Airbus too, didn't fit. ;) It almost worked on the part of the very long bridge in the east, but down at 60 knots I clipped a streetlight and cartwheeled because steering is almost impossible once you slow down. I think I will keep trying this, if it works it will make a funny video.

    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

    I don't use the navigation feature as it is too basic and does allow you to select waypoints and arrival routes. It would great if the navigational page looked like a vfr chart and had intersections, vortacs, NDBs and airways overplayed on a map of the area.

    Are you kidding?

    Looking at something that actually shows you to which VOR/ILSwhatever the frequencies shown in your cockpits radiostack belong would make the brain of the average aerofly player explode. Too much complexity for us. :(


    One example: We get lots of emails complaining, that the sound of the KingAir or Corsair doesn't change when you move the throttle. Well, reality is, that you do NOT hear any difference ( or at least not what they are expecting! ). So we are in the difficult position: Shall we introduce some slight sound modification when you move the throttle, hence making it less real, or leave it as it is, maybe confusing most users.

    100 people play aerofly and pull the throttle back. 80 notice, that the RPM didn't change. 10 know whats going on. 50 think: "Hey, that's odd. But I suppose they know what they are doing." Then they forget about it. 19 think: "Hey, that's odd. But I suppose they know what they are doing." Then the look up on Wikipedia whats going on.

    They all don't write you an email.

    1 person does.

    drftorres: (I think on your picture it is actually not aeroflys fault. You see the localizer of the left runway and right one doesn't have an ils.)

    CORRECTION: it is aeroflys fault. 28R has an ILS.

    @IPACS

    Our experience is that if users get used to our flight info bar, they use it quite naturally


    Somewhere at IPACS, someone is designing the most beautiful cockpits, that turn out to be the closest you can get on a mobile device to real aircraft cockpits. The layouts of real cockpits are the products of decades of extensive research of how people perceive complex information, done by aviation engineers, behaviourologists and other experts on professions my iPads dictionary doesn't contain. Just by mimiking the real cockpits, the guy who designs the cockpits for aerofly takes all this wisdom and brings the underlying concepts to the app user, who now would be able to be as close as possible to reality when he looks at his virtual panel and wants to find out what his plane is doing.

    Would. If there wouldn't be the college of our cockpit designer, who runs the customer underestimation department.

    He found out that users today are often to short tempered to learn how to use a complex program, that they often try for 5 minutes and then trash the app after failing at the first intellectual obstacle, leaving a one star rating in the store. Starting to look for ways how the app could be improved in this regard, he found out that perceiving information on a handheld device with a high resolution display works differently from an aircraft cockpit and, first off all, offers some possibilities you often don't have in the real world. The ability of the retina displays, to show complex graphics on ridiculously small spaces, makes it possible to put almost everything that the instruments show in something really small AND make it even more accessible and easy to understand then in the panel, where the guys I mentioned above, decades away from a retina displays being held 30 cm from the face, worked their asses of to achieve a good presentation of the relevant information.

    So the inventor of our flight info bar sounds like a pretty awesome dude, who just used advancing technology to free us all from looking at these stupid panels the other idiot spend months building in CAD, and thereby made us better (virtual) pilots. Right?

    Wrong. Somehow we all appreciate the work of the cockpit designer. That is because we bought a flight SIMULATION. We want to be as close to the feeling of sitting in a cockpit as possible. It gives us confidence and thereby fun to see that we can control the plane the way it was designed, not by IPACS, but by Boeing, Airbus, Cessna or Schleicher. This feeling of immersion, created by an 3D cockpit, is the main selling point of aerofly!

    But regarding this goal, the info bar is not an aid, but an obstacle. As you stated, the player will get used to using it instead of the panel. The part of the brain, that is responsible for turning information into action does not ask the consciousness if it prefers the tiny watchfaces with their little numbers and the numerous hands or the big, clean info bar. It takes what works best for it, and that is the info bar. That is what happens when you say that people use the bar naturally.

    Guess what I download from the App Store when I want this kind of instrumentation. It has the genome of a potato translated in XCode as an graphics engine and BECAUSE OF THAT, cockpits on the level of detail that you have were never considered. To make it work, they started with something way better then your info bar right away: the HUD view, that was also demanded by some on this thread, is the current stage of the real world development of presenting information to a pilot. But it isn't as close to the real world as your cockpits.

    You would have a huge selling point with your great cockpits. But the way it is right now, you put an info bar in my field of view and turn the panel into dead display real estate.

    Get rid of it. Those who need it will like a HUD view better. Those who don't need it want to use the autopilot without giving up the upper quarter of their display. The fact that people use it naturally is the reason it is an unrepairebly flawed concept.


    Jonas

    The following pictures show one approach into runway 11 at KOAK. NNote the frequencies in the upper right corner of the NAV display.

    ILS should be somewhere, but nothing going on.

    There it comes! Finally!

    ...and things get interesting on short final.

    Never fly the A-Model of something.

    I have waited for this app like for no other app before, and it is very hard to say, but in its current state Aerofly 2 is no fun to me. I somehow get the feeling that IPACS tries hard to make certain things different than the competition and fails. One of the most demanded features was radio navigation and proper flight planning. Knowing what IPACS is capable of, what we got now feels like the desperate try to do things different lead to something that is intentionally screwed up.

    Lets assume we take the Airbus, put the viewing distance to the last quarter of the slider, and try getting from KSFO to runway 11 of KOAK. We set the start airport and runway, get to the navigation menu, set everything up. Fine. After takeoff, the trouble starts. On our unreadable "map" (what is the right display in the Airbus for???) in the right corner of the flight status bar we see that no straight climb included in our progrogrammed route. So after initial climbing, look how you get back on track (updating the route in regard to current position - heard of that?). We somehow manage to make it to the approach. Calculating climbs and decents is impossible, since, unlike the competition, there are no waypoints, ETE or ETA information. When you still, by accident, intercepted the glideslope and localizers (that sometimes, on a perfect approach from ten miles out, only show up 2 miles from the threshold - otherwise it would be far too easy) you can only hope that it doesn't jump to some other ILS (crossing finals in KOAK) what works in an awesome 50% of my attempts.

    It is harsh and hopefully far away from reality, but here is what I feel about your product:

    You have realized that people wanted airliners and big sceneries. So you made the Airbus and the Boeing for AFS 1. You saw that it didn't work in the setting that was made for gliders and Cessnas and that something bigger needed to change.

    Now you took San Francisco, showed your competition right on their front porch who is boss on building nice sceneries (like there was ever any doubt with that) and then you where so happy with yourself that you forgot about the fact that the flight info bar, unlike the interface of the competition, will never work (like you have been told over and over again) and stuffed it up with whatever you could find. Than you took the beta-stadium radio navigation, and made your release goal "still in 2014".

    You got your 5 star rating from me, for this is still the best flight simulator on the app store. But please, start thinking about the interface.


    Jonas

    Congratulation IPACS on this great release. The amount of work that went into this product is pretty obvious. On my iPad Air (first generation) the app runs very smooth without heating up the device. Also it appears like the high resolution scenery is sometimes loaded.

    I have played the new version now for some time and would like primarily to address the things that could be improved in my opinion. The main problem that I ran into, especially using the ILS (that is very nicely depicted), is the lack of overview in the main flying view. Automatically choosing the navigation frequencies leaves me without any knowledge of what navigational devices are in use right now, since, unlike in the major competing product, the cockpit view does only show which frequencies are turned in right now, but not to which respective runway these frequencies are assigned to, an pretty essential information, that is also not provide within in the navigational map.

    That way it is right now, it is just very hard to plan things like training ILS approaches, because you will often end up using runways that are not ILS equipted.

    Perfect! The automatic choice of ILS frequencies is fine in most cases, but approaches on parallel runways (like KSFO) are sometimes a hassle when the game chooses the localiser you intercepted first. Making both possible is awesome. :)

    Funny, I was thinking about bringing this topic back up again, too. The main problem I have with the flight info bar is that the majority of the space it occupies is used for information you already have in the panel. When using the info bar, it drives me out of my instrument scanning routine, because I tend to solely rely on it very fast, except for the F/A-18, which is the only plane where the depiction of the relevant information in the HUD is even better then the info bar.

    I hope that IPACS comes up with something better in the update (if there is an update...). Entering VOR/ILS frequencies via buttons that don't go away when not used would be a further waste of already tight display real estate.

    Personally, I would like an arrangement of transparent buttons that open transparent submenus in place of the info bar better. We could have a systems menu for stuff like arming auto brake and ground spoilers, a navigation menu, a map with flight planning functionality, camera settings etc. I know that this adds complexity, but the success of Infinite Flight, which relys on a lot of (poorly executed) submenus lets me hope that people will get trough this.

    And again IPACS, talking about complexity, please reconsider the restrictions to the flight model in high angels of attack. Anything that happens above 20° degrees alpha is no fun at all in the iPad version, which makes the F/A-18, Extra and Pitts just half the fun they could be given the potential of their flight models.

    I think there are a number of factors for the commercial success and superior user awareness of Infinite Flight compared to aeroflyFS, but the major point is still the update policy.

    Updates for Infinite Flight arrive within a more or less strict 2-month cycle. The number of changes are modest at best and rarely address the stuff that "advanced" players would like to see improved (those who like to make ILS approaches at 0 visibility and 30 knots crosswind in turbulence - I never got what IF can be used for other than that. It can not be about looking at the scenery). That makes sense, because to do that I don't need more then 1 type of aircraft. So I am a bad customer for In-App purchases (IAP)
    Instead, every 11-year old gets the airliner he flew in for vacation as IAP. Since the flight model holds no challenges for this kind of customer they created a customer base that is easy to satisfy and buys the IAPs that are the center of with every update.

    With aerofly being a far better simulator, it can't go without saying that this is still its greatest weakness. Although they have a Facebook page now, it has been updated one and a half month ago (yes, look again at IFs update cycle). We don't know if they are bankrupt, have been run over by a bus or are just working really hard at bringing CAT III approaches, VORs and aircraft carriers on the Bodensee to land on. What you can tell from their Facebook page and newsletter is that they are working on great looking stuff, enough for 5 updates of the quality that IFs spits out every 2 months.

    The last time it got so silent it ended up with a massive update that contained everything promised 6 months ago and made the best app for aviation enthusiast on the App-Store just twice as good. But even when I say that I hope for an update of this quality this time, I still have to admit that I didn't play aerofly in weeks. Even the best app gets boring at some point with nothing new to try.

    The greatest hope you can have for aeroflyFS is that at some point the concept of doing one thing after the other, including testing and release, will make it into IPACS business model.

    You have the Cessna and an envelope protected Airbus for the 95%. They are and easy to fly and suit people without any experience really well. Like in real life, accessebility should be reached with a broad collection of aircraft (which you have) and not with compromises regarding realism with individual aircraft. If someone becomes frustrated flying the Extra because he can not fly the Cessna properly, flight sims are not his kind of game. Not on any platform. No reason to compromise the quality of your product (for flight sims=realism) there.

    Bug has been mentioned before and should be (?) a known bug that IPACS works on. For now I fixed it by logging out from the Game Center completely (in the main settings).

    Hey, thank you for the fast answer! Keeping the frame rate up is much more important then this issue and the method you choose here is obviously only affecting me (no one else complaining). It was more "scientific interest" that kept me looking at this problem. Staying under 7 degrees pitch on liftoff solves the problem.

    So nothing here to invest precious development time in. :)

    You are absolutly right, it is a tailstrike. But it is still more of a bug than a feature. The tail strike pitch attitude is too small.

    Take the Boeing, put it on the longest runway in Zurich. Accelerate to 120 knots, stop acceleration, pull all the way. Tailstrike now happens at 7-8 degrees pitch up. Outside view shows the problems I have discribed, but the tail is actually faaar away from the ground. Same happens when you pull to fast at/over 150 knots (flaps always at "25%" whatever that meens).

    Actual tail strike pitch attitude for the 747-400 is 12.5 degrees (page 3): http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aer…07_article2.pdf

    Picture shows a full contact tail strike.