Posts by DennyA

  • Updates Coming Your Way

    Excited to hear this! Looking forward to all of these features, and it feels like a good set of priorities.

    I really hope an aircraft SDK isn't far below that list, though. One of my favorite things about other sims is the ability to add so many different planes, current and historical, both using commercial products and freeware. And given the number of third-party planes in the various sim stores, I'd think I'm not alone in this.

    AFS2 does a great job of proving a wide variety of aircraft types, from single-engine general aviation to jet and prop fighters to commercial airliners, and the built-in planes are great. But I'm really anxious for the chance to build out a hangar of new planes in the future.

    Guessing the aircraft SDK might be being held off until more avionics and propulsion systems are added to the base sim, which is understandable. But I'll be super-excited to see it come!

  • Any hope about GA planes...?

    I'm was really surprised the ability to add new planes wasn't an SDK priority for IPACS. They said that scenery was the bigger user request in a post a while back. The ability to try all kinds of planes is one of the most appealing thing about flight sims to me.

  • Locations Just Crying Out for More Detail

    I kind of find it fun to fly over the actual photoscenery in places like that and see what was really there. Yesterday I was coming in to Travis AFB and discovered there was a C-5 on approach when they took the pic used in the photoscenery. :) But yeah, the only real downside to this sim is the flatness of areas that haven't been populated with objects.

    That said, at this early stage I'd personally rather they put their scenery efforts into expanding the areas they cover before enhancing the existing scenery. I'd love to be able to fly around Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, NYC, and Burlington, TV, and would happily spend money on new scenery to help fund further development!

  • Comments from a former Flight Sim journalist...

    Jet Pack,

    Wow! Thank you so much for the detailed response to my brain dump about what I'd like to see in the sim! I was just hoping for a quick "Yep, we saw it, thanks for the ideas." I realize that a lot of the stuff I mentioned like "ATC" involves tons of system design, coding, writing, and lots of other stuff, and I appreciate that there's a lot of time, planning, and prioritization involved. But very cool to see where many of your long-term goals are heading.

    Definitely agreed that Aerofly's SDK should have planes use the existing physics engine and not custom rewrites/DLLs like FSX. I think a lot of that is due to FSX being built on ancient code that went back to the DOS versions, so there were some limitations on engine types, plane envelopes, etc. The range of craft you're already accommodating is a good sign that you should be able to create a wide variety of planes without having to hack/cheat the simulation engine. (The stretch goal for the "2019-ish version" of Aerofly FS would be to allow a mix of props and jets, and up to 10 engines, so that cool old post-WW2 planes like the B-36 and Ryan FR-1 Fireball could be done as add-on aircraft.)

    I've been having a wonderful time just flying around California and finding sights from when I used to live in the San Francisco area (such as the mothballed ships in the water at Port Chicago). The experience with the Oculus Rift is just nothing short of amazing. I've spent as much time in AFS2 in the Oculus as I have all the other Oculus apps combined!

    BTW, found two issues with the Oculus today, only one of which I've seen reported: You can't see the replay timeline (I've seen this reported already) and if you take any screenshots, they just end up being blank black BMP files (haven't seen that reported).

    Anyway, thanks again for the epic response, and for all the work you guys have done on the sim! I've been trying to spread the word, and I wish you guys great success so you can keep making it even more awesome. :cool:

  • A320 performance

    It's already far more than "arcade," and hardcore sim fans who don't feel that weird Internet compulsion to adopt and defend a single sim will find so much to do here already.

    Any real fan of flight simulation shouldn't sit on the fence. They should embrace what the Aerofly FS team is trying to do, invest the very reasonable cost in the program, and support the sim with constructive feedback as it comes together.

    Rivet counters and switchology fans mostly killed the FS hobby. This sim has the potential to help it come back. We should all love that, even if there's still detail to be added over time.

  • Comments from a former Flight Sim journalist...

    Hey Aerofly FS 2 team,

    First of all, congratulations! It's so awesome to see a superb next-generation flight simulator taking form. For context, I used to be the Flight Simulation editor for Computer Gaming World magazine, which was the top-selling PC gaming magazine in the USA in the 1990s. Back in those days, there was enough activity in the sim market that I could write about a new sim every month! So you can imagine how excited I was to come across this sim after such a drought of simulation advancement!

    I haven't seen a sim with so much potential in over a decade! Great job so far. I have some feedback below. I know some of this is already in the in the works, and some of it's going to take time, but just wanted to share my thoughts as someone who's been writing about flight simulators since the 1980s, and has seen how the market has changed over the years. I fully know that prioritizing customer feedback has to be balanced with the realities of marketing and bringing in new customers -- and how companies listening too much to the most vocal users in the past helped push sims into a tiny niche. But hopefully you'll find something useful in the brain dump below! :)

    Also, one quick thing to add: I'd seriously consider branding the mobile and PC versions slightly differently, as I know some users dismissed the PC version as being just a mobile game ported over. The mobile game is super-impressive given the platform, but the PC version obviously IS more advanced, so maybe brand the PC version Aerofly FS 2 Professional or something? (Though I bought the mobile version and all the add-ons and it's really impressive on my iPad Pro 12.9!)

    Bugs:
    • Fuel gauge never changes when flying F/A-18 in afterburner.
    • Clouds rotate when you change angle of attack or look up/down
    • Some shimmering polygons on tops of mountains in Switzerland in VR. (GTX 1080, Win 10 Anniversary, Oculus Rift.)

    Some cool features that would be pretty easy to add:
    • Ability to turn off the engine (so you can practice dead-stick landings)
    • An external camera that's not as rock-solid as the current one, but is just subtly shaky or delayed so it feels like someone is in another plane filming you. Those make external views feel so much more realistic. The "6" view is close, but too "solid," like the camera is on rails. Check out the F2 view in IL-2: Battle of Stalingrad for a nice external camera view that isn't overdone, but feels realistic.
    • Ability to set fuel load
    • Local time. UTC calculations are annoying when you get as far away as the USA

    Key Features I'd like to see eventually:
    • AI Air traffic, particularly around airports!
    • Air Traffic Control
    • Night lighting on the photoscenery textures
    • APIs for third-party planes, scenery, and maybe stuff like weather/air traffic. That's going to be the key for pulling the FSX/P3D crowd over.
    • Storms and really bad weather. Morning fog over rivers.

    Other nice-to-have features:
    • G-force effects in high-performance planes
    • Settable and random system failures
    • Emergency scenarios
    • Multiplayer

    Wishlist for paid add-ons:
    • Pacific Northwest US/British Columbia scenery
    • Hawaii scenery
    • Alaska Scenery
    • Space Shuttle landing (your Edwards AFB looks so good, a Shuttle gliding in would be awesome)
    • Carrier ops (this could be a paid add-on)

    Things I noticed that I love, so this isn't just a list of wants, but also a thanks for a great job!
    • The planes look spectacular. Sounds are great too!
    • Turbulence! I've never flown in a small plane and had it feel like it's on rails like in MSFS. Love how Aerofly FS 2 planes actually bump around a bit.
    • The VR. Wow. It's amazing. My favorite thing for my Oculus Rift. It's so good.
    • You guys did an amazing job on the scenery. Hopefully we'll get moving traffic (at least lights at night) and stuff later, but what an amazing start!
    • On my first PC it picked up almost all the settings automatically for my Logitech G940. It was nice to only have to program a few things!
    • Frame rate is much better than other sims on both my monitor and Oculus, despite all the detail here
    • Excellent sense of speed
    • The Grand Canyon. Wow.
    • Hit airbrakes in the Corsair and the front wheels extend -- nice attention to detail!

    Anyway, super-excited to see what you guys have coming down the road!

    And thanks for making my Oculus Rift purchase worthwhile!