Posts by Jay 737

Thanks for the detailed description JetPack, it's quite impressive specially the candle example. However I would like to steer this subject back on it's original rails:)
What I wanted to point out was the fact that when you look at the gauges, they have strong reflection of white-ish patches. This effect is not very disturbing at direct sunlight but as it becomes very apparent in shadow, my eyes are automatically drawn to it cause the brain would expect nothing less then reflection of my legs or my beer belly (looking from this angle). Instead I see reflection of clouds and that just doesn't make any sense.. Am I the only person finding this weird?

Also what you guys think about the idea of seeing your avatar inside the cockpit and the concept of moving/following upper body?
Is that something very difficult from programmer's point of view? I'm obviously talking VR purpose:)

Yeah sorry for confusion, I meant the "High Resolution Texture Pack for Southwest US"

Hey guys

I spend whole Saturday night "sightseeing" over the new updated scenery and I just could not stop until the morning:)
Awesome work, amazing experience, thank you..
There is couple of things I wrote down throughout the flights, that I wanted to mention here.

Avatar..
I did realized how much VR immersion is going out of window when you look down and there is an empty cockpit. Perhaps this subject was already here but I would like to point out one extremely great concept of avatar/pilots body I saw couple of years ago on my DK2.
I looked up the project and it is still alive so please check it up IPACS, It's called "Discovering Space 2". The mechanics of the pilots body are tight to your oculus tracking so not just a shadow of your head but whole upper body of your avatar is following your head movement which is absolutely brilliant idea..
Honestly even if it's just an add-on pack, I would happily spend £20 for something like that guys.

Then there was a thread here about instrument reflection being little overdone. I was really focusing on this as I also thought that they are overdone. I have to say that in direct sunlight when whole cockpit is gloving in light, the instruments look very well and there is no disruption from that. The strong unreal reflection becomes very apparent when the instruments are shadowed but still reflecting very bright textures..

I ques that's enough for now as you are obviously quite busy with us so keep up the wickedly great work:)

Over and out

I have to reply to this as I mentioned the same thing in my earlier thread as well..
I agree that the instruments are overdone and it is little distracting in VR.
On the other hand, canopy reflection is just right in my opinion..
I ques everybody have different recipe for the best experience so maybe just two lines in a config file that we could edit..?
With this IPACS can maintain the simplicity of UI as I think they really want to keep the whole thing simple.. (sadly)

I am no modeling expert but the one think I love about Aerofly FS 2 is the incredible detail on the planes and I'm pretty sure they use bump or normal mapping for those textures.. When you look on the wing (through Oculus Rift of course) with the sun really low, you get amazing 3D on the surfaces as much as individual rivets:)
Same goes for runways, they are awesome to look at.. I agree that some areal bump/normal maps for the actual photo scenery would be very nice but you will also need those "photos" in much larger resolution and that is a real challenge m8..

When I posted my "first impression" comment, I honestly did not think that IPACS would turn towards VR as well as they did..
Many of us begged for VR support but guys, you did it sooooo well..
I can not believe how much detail you crafted into the modeling at the first place. I would have never notice that on the largest monitor ever. I really love just exploring all these little things around the cockpit in VR.
The play of light, normal maps, textures, amount of detail, awesome work!! Thank you for that IPACS and for those still considering whether or not to buy VR set: GO AHEAD, DO IT, IT'S WICKED!!

As per future updates, I would like to mention few points:

-Direct sound through Oculus headphones without need to switch devices..
-Cockpit gauges have kind of very rich reflection on the "cover" glass which is little bit disturbing.
-Mechanical sounds for flaps, brakes, touch down etc..
-Exterior lights, plane illuminating ground and night ground textures for cities.
-More "real" functions like engine mixture, cold start, ATC etc..

I'm sure you have most of these on the list already so I will just wish you good luck here and thank you again..
I have to say for me, Aerofly FS 2 has now grown full potential to become an equal alternative to our best flight sims and I'm very proud to be part of it's birth..

Over and out

Quote from Jet-Pack

Hello Jay,

thanks for explaining things further. I agree, the images of the water are very boring. Its just a plain color, not very interesting to look at.
With your mouse, that sounds interesting. What kind of mouse do you use in particular, maybe that helps to sort out the issue? And which version of Windows do you use?

Cheers,
Jan

My system runs Windows 7 Home 64bit and the mouse is Microsoft Wireless 5000.
I understand that you are not experiencing the same issue so I will look for a driver update straight away..

Edit: Honestly that didn't even cross my mind when I found this issue but updating Microsoft mouse and keyboard center helped to fix it..

Thanks

Quote from Jet-Pack

And by that you mean that what? I think game engine wise this is the state of the art. If you only compare what the engine does (e.g. wing-flex), yes we have seen that before. But I know the developers for quite some time now, they only do things right the first time. So what exactly would you like to see them improve. Please don't confuse content with actual programming. Fluid frames and background loading come from programming, where the details of an aircraft or airport are made by hand and belong to "content".

I most certainly don't want to scroll through a list of thousands of controls just to find the exact button that I need. Sure a few more would be good but not all buttons of all airliners.

Yes, totally agreed. Currently there are a few buttons that only have two state: on or off; and there are buttons that have three states. The binary ones you need to click, the three-state ones you need to remember to scroll, not very user-friendly at the moment. But I am sure its not a very difficult fix.

No, the time used in aviation is UTC, not the local time. Yes 8 hours are quite annoying if you want to set sunset for example. Therfor I suggest that instead of changing the slider to local time there should be symbols where the sun rises and set depending on the currently selected airport.

Cheers,
Jan

Hi Jan
Thanks for your input, I'll try to explain a little better.

1 - By "take it the right way" I meant the sort of audience/users that IPACS is trying to approach. I personally wish for AFS2 to become equal alternative to FSX, P3D, Xplane and DSC. All of these titles have something special to offer but none of them have it all, which is all right because it's simply impossible. What I'm saying is that AFS2 has a great potential although there are some minimum requirements to make it to the "big league". In my opinion, probably most important to begin with is the decent Oculus support. If I remember correctly the team will start working on this in June.
That's a great step and for me as a flightsim enthusiast who's doing this "home cockpit madness" for about 20 years, it's really one of the "must" features of nowadays sims.
I don't care very much about mobile or console platform as well as arcade sims because they simply won't fulfill my demands of realism and immersion. At the moment I'm not really sure where to put AFS2 or where is it heading to..
Regarding the engine/content subject (does it really mater which is which?), I think there is few things to improve.
And yes, IPAC has done a great job creating environment with amazing physics, thermals, wing flex, winch launch and so on however things like flat texture representing water surface or blurred ground photo textures are not cool any more..
Also different weather conditions, time flow, engine start up procedure to name just a few, are again the minimum requirements for me as a user to stick with the sim for looong time.

2 - I didn't say that all buttons and knobs in the cockpit should be clickable. What I said was that we need to be able to assign all buttons and knobs that are actually controllable by mouse. For example we can turn on autopilots APP function in the cockpit with the mouse but we can not assign this function to joystick button. There is not so many of them to make it look like DCS control menu where you have hundreds of functions. I agree that would be too far and very confusing.

3 - I have no problem controlling buttons and switches. It's only knobs which you have to turn with your mouse wheel.
As I place the pointer above the knob and turn the mouse wheel, the knob is turning in one direction only regardless if I scroll up or down. It has some issues when zooming or scrolling through IU's menus as well so I think there's a bug related to mouse wheel input.

4 - The IPACS could simply introduce a tick box where user can switch between Local and UTC time as we all have different preferences..

I'm not criticizing what the guys from IPACS have done here, it's just a feedback and first impression of one user
and it's absolutely and only with them to decide next steps.

Anyway I would like to see more opinions on this subject from others and maybe IPACS themselves, so guys go on and join in please;)

Thx Jay

Hey guys

As this is an early access I wanted to give you some feedback.
Although the game engine and overall graphics are obviously not the latest technology I think there is a huge potential in your sim if you take it the right way..

First of all I have to mention that the decent Oculus support is crucial for success within the comunity. Slightly outdated look of AFS 2 without Rift support makes it just "another game" that does not really attract many of the hardcore simers wiling to pay this much money.
VR is really a big bang of future gaming and I can imagine having endless fun flying your sim in the Rift.

The acctual impression..?
I really like the physics of the sim. The wing bending, stalls, spirals, the mass swing when you load or stop the aircraft. All that feels very natural, thumbs up here.
It is true that the UI looks a little "console like" but is fairly simple and synoptical so I don't really see any issue here as some other people did.
More importantly we need to be able to assign more functions to the controllers. Ideally all clickable buttons and knobs in the cockpit.
Here I need to memtion that the mouse wheel turn knob sellectors in one way only no matter if I scroll the wheel up or down.
Also zooming with mouse wheel (outside view and map) is very laggy and doesn't really do the job.
Change the time settings to local instead of UTC - 8 hours because it doesn't make much sense now.

The textures in AFS 2 seem very basic for PC platform so I would recomend to focus on this subjest too as the visuals along with good physics is what makes good flight sim stand out.. I honestly don't think we need another "world-wide scenery" sim in terrible resolution..
Smaller but highly detailed regions are the way for endless fun!
Maybe you could support 3rd party addons like ORBX to take some work load off your shoulders.
I read another topic about engine start up procedure and I agree with the author that this would also add more fun into the experience. Same with rain and working windshield wipers, ground lights and so on..

I know the "wish list" is long and so are the hours of programing but you have our support guys and I want to encourage people to stop asking for refunds !
Just appreciate every new attempt for a good flight sim as we don't have many to choose from..

Thanks and good luck IPACS