Posts by Fabs79

  • Control settings for different planes

    IMHO the best approach is the way FSUIPC by Pete Dowson handles it for FSX and P3D. You create a profile and assign each axis and function to a lever or button of your hardware. Then you can save different profiles, for instance : single engine prop, twin engine prop, twin jet engine and so on. Or you can create a profile for each single aircraft, theoretically even for different subtypes of aircraft like float, ski and tundra versions of the Turbo Otter. Whenever you load a new aircraft, you are asked which profile should be assigned to it. You can still change that later if you made a mistake. Every change to a profile applies to all aircraft assigned to it. You should keep in mind that some of us not only have a yoke and throttle but maybe a full blown Homecockpit with dozens of switches. I had a generic Homecockpit with interchangeable controllers, simplugins panel builder for instruments and around 50 switches and buttons on a panel. With FSUIPC I could customize it to many different types of aircraft.

    If all this is not possible then let us at least save a number of controller profiles that can be used for different aircraft.

  • Control settings for different planes

    I'd still prefer that a profile could be saved for each aircraft. For example I use two Saitek throttle quadrants for the Duchess with the two levers on the left for the throttle, the two in the middle for the prop pitch and the two on the right for mixture. When I fly the Learjet, I use the same Saitek throttle blocks with the lefternmost lever for the spoilers, the right lever of the first and the left of the second for the throttle and the right lever of the second quadrant for the Flaps. Same for the A320, I use some modified Levers for that. Either way, I have to reprogram the throttle blocks every time I switch from the Duchess to the Learjet iror the other way around. So separate control configs for each plane like in FSUIPC or at least an option to save different profiles like in default P3D would be nice.

  • Object texturing

    Hi, I was wondering what kind of texturing conventions for custom objects Aerofly has. I know that night textures, bump and specular maps are used, but do I need to use a certain naming code for those? I faintly remember that in Prepar3d you had to use the suffix _lm for lightmap to assign a night texture to the respective diffuse texture, eg you'd have a hangar.dds main texture and a hangar_lm.dds as a night texture. Does Aerofly have any restrictions like that too? And what's the maximum texture size that can be assigned to an object? I like to have a single texture sheet for each object to keep number of draw calls low, but for larger objects you'd need 2048x2048 or even 4096x4096 to avoid blurriness, is that possible?

    Thanks, Fabian

  • Hello Houston, the Turkey has landed

    Quote from GregDude

    That was it thanks!

    I can't believe I've been running at lower resolution. I'm going to look around Florida and Netherlands again now. I had been whinging to myself about the low resolution terrain for low flight. Perhaps I've been missing out.

    EDIT: While this fixed this specific imagery, the existing Florida and Netherlands terrain appeared the same.

    This is probably because the standard resolution of most photoreal terrain is 1 m/Pixel which is roughly equivalent to Aerofly Level 14 resolution. The developers stated that their Turkey Point scenery was created at Level 15 which roughly equals 0.5 m. If you increase the resolution by two, the file size will be quadrupled because it's an area. Now look at the file size of your Netherlands and Florida imagine you'd need four times the disk space. Level 15 is normally reserved for small areas where people are likely to fly low, but it's not really feasible for all scenery unless you have a huge hard drive. Also, most of the orthoimagery freely available by the USGS is at 1 m / Pixel resolution, with small areas at a better resolution. Higher quality source images are usually only available from commercial vendors and very expensive, so noone could afford to buy the Addon anymore if the developers wanted to make a profit from it.

  • Orbx TE Washington state USA + UHD not AFS2

    Quote from Tomfa

    Yes, in a way your philosophy of seeing things is correct, but remember that in the past, ORBX had already supplied countries like Germany, Ireland, Norway or Scotland for FSX and P3D! So in my opinion, and this despite I also appreciate the landscapes of the United States, it would be better in the first place, to see developed in TE these for AFS2. But the path is still very far from reality.;)

    Landclass regions are much cheaper to develop because land use data is often freely available by local governments. If sales are lower than expected it's not that much of a problem. Orthophotos are usually quite expensive. In Germany, AFAIK only two federal states and three cities offer free orthophotos. According to a post by developer Christian Bahr Orthophotos for all of Germany provided by government sources cost 36000 Euros alone plus development costs for the scenery. You'll have to sell a lot of copies to make that profitable.

  • Orbx TE Washington state USA + UHD not AFS2

    Quote from antigoon

    I must readily admit that I would most likely not buy another US Scenery. UK, Germany, Austria or France I'd buy in a heartbeat. TE-NL I bought the day it was released. I'm just not interested in flying in the US.

    I like flying where I've been in real life before or where I'd like to be in the future. I did a 10 weeks trip with my wife and baby daughter through the heartland of the Aerofly default scenery and for that reason alone Aerofly is my go to Sim, the photoreal scenery makes me feel I'm being there again. I've never been to Washington but it's on my to do list. That said, orbx has to consider where they will get the best sales numbers, and the biggest flight Sim market is still the US, followed by the UK. The pacific northwest was one of their best selling landclass sceneries ever and it's just common sense to start their True Earth product line for the US in that area again. They have countless airports there already that obviously are easy to port over to Xplane (look at how fast they turned out their British airfields for that platform) and even if they offer 40% discount for existing users they can make a lot of money with much less effort than if they developed a completely new region. On top of that, the USGS provides free orthophotos with 1m/Pixel resolution even for commercial vendors, so development cost are lower than for other countries. According to JV they had to pay 20000 dollars just for the tiny fraction of British Columbia included in the Washington scenery, imagine the cost if they made a complete Canadian scenery. Ortho imagery for France seems to be equally expensive, while in Germany some federal states provide high resolution aerial images for free while others charge for them. So from a business perspective, we most likely won't see many sceneries outside the US for the foreseeable future. Just my 2 cents.

  • Orbx TE Washington state USA + UHD not AFS2

    I also think Treue earth GB gets made for Aerofly because John Venema himself wants to see how it performs in Aerofly, he stated that he is a great fan of Aerofly on several occasions. Also he's living in the UK so this region is of personal importance to him. Washington on the other hand will have to meet business expectations, which will be difficult considering the small user base. The only thing we can do is support the development by buying their scenery,I don't want to advertise here but I think it's worth it. Also IPACS is just too small a team to deliver large scenery areas on a regular basis.

  • Orbx TE Washington state USA + UHD not AFS2

    Same here. User created scenery is nice to have obviously, but if you want to even remotely come close to the quality ORBX has shown you'll spend hundreds of hours for a fraction of the area. First, orbx ground imagery is color corrected aerial orthophotos all taken in the same season. Google and Bing are satellite images (NOT orthophotos as many seem to believe, just look at the footprint of a tall building and see how it's distorted) with wildly variating colors, in my home area there's a line running right through my hometown where the surrounding green fields suddenly change to brown, obviously one image has been taken in spring and the other one in late summer. A few miles away there are several clouds obscuring some forest and village areas. That alone kept me from using satellite image scenery for Prepar3d when I was still using it, even generic landclass looks better than badly colored photoscenery IMHO. Second, for a believable scenery you have to place VFR reference objects like wind turbines, masts and powerlines. Although the new Object Generation Utility helps with this, it depends on OSM data which is pretty bad and incomplete in many places. Third, there are POIs like castles, stadiums, landmark buildings and so on which need to be made as custom 3D models to look believable. I know that many people use sketchup models from the 3D warehouse for this, but those are often poorly designed for simulator use, with way too many polygons and drawcalls. If Aerofly ever gets advanced features like real weather, cloud and terrain shadows, animated water, AI traffic and the like badly designed models like that could be the bottleneck that finally kills performance in an otherwise smooth performing scenery.

    Orbx even creates whole City areas as custom 3D models where each building has its exact footprint, even irregular or round shapes are possible. The standard cultivation only knows rectangular buildings. Just fly over Amsterdam or Rotterdam in True Earth Netherlands and you'll see what I mean.

    In short, I for myself just don't have the time to create scenery that even remotely resembles the quality ORBX or IPACS have shown so far. I hope to see many more quality products for Aerofly in the future, maybe also new developers making the leap to the new platform, but this will also depend on sales numbers.

    Regarding user base, I faintly remember a poll at the ORBX forums where about 2% of the forum members where using Aerofly. Isn't that sad?

    Cheers, Fabian

  • Orbx TE Washington state USA + UHD not AFS2

    Quote from ZoSoChile

    The preview looks soo fantastic. My gut feeling says that they will make an AF2 version given some time. Perhaps the long term investment approach. It's such a great area to pass up. Maybe XP12 will offer a smooth VR expierence. Until then..

    I think the only reason we see ORBX scenery for Aerofly at all is that John Venema has a liking for smooth VR performance and wants to experience his own products in Aerofly. He already stated that they don't make much money of their Aerofly product line.

  • Just Flights Duchess Ready for the Aerofly Skies!

    Quote from J van E

    Hm, I hear a VERY loud tick every 10 seconds... Strange.

    I understand what you're saying but that doesn't mean we shouldn't report obvious errors or bugs. Reporting those HELPS to make the aircraft better and I am sure everyone, including JF, wants that. No need to sugarcoat things out of fear a dev might lose interest. But hey, that's me. ;) As some of you know I seldom sugarcoat things. ;)

    Just like I said constructive criticism is good, maybe just phrase it a little differently.

  • Just Flights Duchess Ready for the Aerofly Skies!

    Quote from GACSavannah

    Well, here is how "I" see it.

    They could have fixed every tiny thing...but it would take a long long time. And some things, such as the sound tick, do not show for everyone ( I can not hear it on my installation, with my computer for example, although clearly others can). I can say with all honesty that they made a lot of effort, and I am pretty certain ( as Beta testers we only hear an outside message, not the inside discussions) that they did delay release at least once when we came up with more things to address. I can also say that what was released was SUBSTANTIALLY better than the first Beta test. This is not to criticize the initial Beta, this is to point out the time and energy that they put into making it as good as possible before public release.

    I can also say that having been a part of flight sims since the early '90s, and been a 'tweaker' of all of them, I can say that AeroFly is by far the most challenging to work with, and I am sure that with this being JustFlight's first Aerofly release, they may still be trying to work out exactly how to handle some of the more minor items, that were easy in the FS franchise, but are much more challenging with Aerofly.

    Plus, remember that AeroFly is still a relative infant compared to the competition, and there are still some features that no matter how bad you want to fix them, there is still currently no fix available.

    Bottom line...in my book, as a first release on a new platform, JustFlight did an AWESOME job!!! And I, for one, am 'loving' this bird.

    Quote from J van E

    Fair enough. ;) And I am loving this bird too btw!

    I am surprised though to hear the tick doesn't show up for everyone...!?! Very odd! I wonder how that's possible: must have to do with some specific sound hardware...? Or Windows settings? I stopped using dedicated soundcards ages ago and simply use the motherboard's stuff. Really surprised to hear things like that depend on your hardware or maybe settings...!

    I hear the sound loop bug, too, through the headphones of my rift, though it is very faint and barely audible. If I hadn't known about it I probably wouldn't have noticed it.

    Another thing to consider. IMHO Just Flight should be applauded for even considering to port their aircraft to a totally different platform where the only thing they can use from their previous releases probably is the 3D model, while the systems and flight dynamics have to be built from scratch. Aerofly is still a tiny niche within another small niche of PC Software, and if the developers just hear complaints about their first release they'll probably lose interest in developing for the platform at all. Constructive criticism is most welcome, but comments like "how did this get through beta" are not really helping. The Xplane community just scared off Milviz, one of the most acclaimed P3D aircraft developers, from porting their more complex aircraft to Xplane with the their toxic behavior. Let's not make the same mistake, okay?

  • Maybe a small step for Just Flight, but a giant leap for Aerofly!

    Ok, here´s my first impression of the Just Flight Beechcraft Duchess 76. Although I can´t provide a comprehensive review, there are a few things that I noticed within the first few minutes. Short version: It´s freaking amazing!

    Long version: First, a few things that I didn´t really like, but which may be improved in the future:

    - Mixture works but the effects are minimal. EGT needles move as expected but only a fraction of the scale even with pulling the mixture levers completely back. You still get the best performance with mixture full rich, even at the service ceiling of 20000 feet. So leaning is possible but in the current state useless and unrealistic. Maybe something to improve in the future.

    - Sound is better than the default planes, but still awful. This seems to be a limitation of Aerofly rather than Just Flight´s own work. There is almost no discernable difference in engine sound with different throttle settings, only when you pull the throttle back almost to idle you get a slightly different sound. but as soon as the throttle is more than 10% open the sound stays the same. If you´re used to other simulators sounds, that is still pretty disappointing.

    - Propeller animations are a little too "quick", when you cut the engine the props come to a complete stop within the fraction of a second, which does seem a bit fast to me.

    But now the good stuff:

    - Cold and dark works like a charm. I failed to get the engines started until I realized that both Fuel Selectors were still off. Switching on the batteries make the instruments come to life, fuel pumps increase fuel pressure, switching the alternators changes load and everything works as expected.

    - realistic magnetos! performing a magneto check before takeoff works as expected, turning either magneto from both to left or right you see a significant drop in rpm

    - carb heat causes slight rpm drop, as expected!

    - cowl flaps setting changes cylinder head temperature as expected!

    - Prop speed setting changes RPM as expected!

    - overall feeling in flight is great

    - texturing in the cockpit is top notch, the best I´ve seen so far in Aerofly. Readability of the gauges is great even with the low resolution of my Oculus rift. All gauges are completely readable without leaning in too much, contrary to the default planes.

    All in all, this is the best flying experience (along with the R22) I ever had in Aerofly. with a few minor changes the B76 could improve even more. Just Flight raised the bar for addon aircraft for Aerofly to a whole new level. This is the first plane that is on a similar level of system depth as a payware GA aircraft for the big, established simulators like P3D and Xplane. It reminds me of the RealAir B60 for FSX/P3D in many aspects, which was one of the greatest planes for that platform IMHO

    Edit: if the rumors are true that Just Flight are planning to add a lite version of a realistic GNS 530 unit to the aircraft, I'd be even more impressed. When I first saw the WIP Screenshots of the B76 I was disappointed that they used the standard moving map inside a GNS unit frame instead of featuring at least a basic working GPS. On second thought I realized that the fact that Aerofly doesn't feature a default GPS means that Just Flight has to deliver one from scratch, where in fsx / P3D you only have to add a single line to the aircraft.cfg. So if Just Flight add a GPS in one of the next updates it would really show they care about the platform.

  • Just Flights Duchess Ready for the Aerofly Skies!

    Quote from Jetjockey10

    Mixture works to improve fuel/air ratio. Check EGT needles. You can use the tmd to set fuel quantity to 0.5 for half fuel, or any amount greater than yellow band for legal takeoff. Fly til you exhaust supply, engine spits and sputters and quits. Feather and get ready for the other one to conk out. Feather and find a good landing area. Use full flaps and gear down. Enjoy.

    Ray

    And by enjoy you mean crash, probably 😉

  • Just Flights Duchess Ready for the Aerofly Skies!

    - during cruise setting throttle from 23 MP to 15 MP has an effect on speed but not on altitude... Shouldn't the plane lose altitude too?

    -> the aircraft losing speed without losing altitude could be caused by the autopilot ALT hold mode, have you checked that? If ALT hold is pressed throttling down would slow the plane down while altitude is held because the AP pitch trims up to prevent loss of altitude. Theoretically this could cause a stall if you throttle down too much while the AP forces the plane to fly straight.

    - mixture works!

    Do you mean it works in a realistic way, that is that you have to lean the mixture above a certain altitude to improve engine effectiveness? Or does it work like in the default Cessna where full rich always leads to best power no matter how high you fly?

  • Preview of JF Duchess 76 for AFS2 Review, part 1, 2, 3

    Quote from Jetjockey10

    Fabs79,

    Only if you move enough fuel to cause a flight imbalance. The 50 gal fuel tanks are in the wings and close to the roots so they are perfectly located to keep the CG in balance and generally offset any turning motion.

    Normal operation calls for using fuel from both tanks simultaneously so This would preclude any significant imbalance.

    Regards,

    Ray

    My question was more pointed at if fuel is really accounted for as weight which influences center of gravity and balance of the aircraft in flight. I'm aware that a situation with one wing tank empty and the other full will rarely occur in real operations, but part of the fun in a simulator is that you can try situations that you wouldn't encounter in real life. The Duchess is the first AFS 2 aircraft to even feature a fuel system, and I just want wanted to know if the fuel Onboard the aircraft was treated as a real substance with physical influence on the aircraft or just an arbitrary number that counts down depending on fuel consumption and then sends and "engine out" command when it reaches zero. And if I remember correctly, the Piper Arrow III that Just flight created for P3D and Xplane had 🧒 manually switching the fuel tanks between left and right and if you forgot to switch regularly you could run dry one tank with the other one still full, and that could also influence the balance of the plane.