Posts by Armitage

  • Custom missions: Landing patterns

    It is done: The Aerofly Landegerät has created the first downloadable missions file, landing patterns for Martha's Vineyard. The missions files are hosted on the Filebase of Flight-Sim.org.

    First results of landing pattern generator

    The Landegerät asks for an aircraft and an airport to start with, and then creates random landing practice missions by

    1. downloading airport data,
    2. downloading history weather data for 10 missions, distributed over the last 12 days,
    3. determining what the active runway will be and
    4. placing your aircraft in a random location, for you to join the landing pattern.

    There may be some quirks in the files, as the data is taken from a public API instead of Aerofly directly, so the airports in the missions files may differ from the airports in Aerofly FS4. Nevertheless I had great fun trying to land my Cessna 172 in Martha's Vineyard.

    What do I do with the files?

    There is a small set of instructions taken from the for installing custom mission files. After you have placed the mission file in the correct folder, the missions should show up under "Challenges".

    What else can the Landergerät do for the community?

    I am planning on releasing the tool to the public as soon as it is stable enough, for you to generate any combination of aircraft and airport you can imagine. Until than I am open for suggestions on what combination of airport and aircraft I should build mission files for. ;)

    (As of now I also have generated files for Key West, Jackson Hole as well as Sylt Island, all to be flown with a Cessna 172 - but have not tested them yet.)

  • Which feature do you want most in Aerofly? (Poll)

    Thankfully we have a small community which builds aircrafts and airports. But the community cannot build features like weather, ATC or multiplayer, so I think the original idea of this thread asking for features is rather smart.

    As a GA pilot I am also very much in favour of ideas which all Aerofly pilots benefit from. Think of airliners, jet fighters, GA planes, helicopters, gliders and every other type of aircraft having some new challenges.

  • Which feature do you want most in Aerofly? (Poll)

    More weather effects would also be my hot pick to make Aerofly more challenging and less static. Imagine starting in bright sunshine, only to encounter bad weather which forces you to you use an alternate landing. Or a change in wind direction which needs you to reconsider your approach. Or a decrease in atmospheric pressure which you hopefully remember when your IFR flight comes near terrain.

    I remember a simulated flight which became quite intense when all of the sudden visibility dropped and the airport was nowhere to be found...

  • Heartfelt suggestion

    As the VR performance is very good, I think it would be great to support the low-flyers with new GA / small prop aircraft and maybe some up-to-date Garmin avionics. I especially like the Cessna 208 idea for the Carribbean / Indonesia settings.

  • Häuser=Performance-Killer auf Norrison Island?

    I second that observation: big cities or environments with lots of wind turbines will send my performance down the drain in VR. New York and Chicago have become invisitable, and even humble places like Key West result in a stuttering VR performance.

    As I paused with AFS4 for some months, this must have happened somewhere in the last year. Before that my VR performance was great, even in crowded cities like Stockholm. Nowadays the wind turbines of Norddeich kill my rig. :(

  • VIRTUAL AIRLINES

    I am intrigued. How does this work? Are these Aerofly virtual airlines organised in any way? How and where do you report your flights?

    I took a glimpse at Aerofly's flight log file, which is in some binary format. Otherwise this could have been a nice start to report your virtual flights back to your virtual airline.

  • Why is there no Navigraph support yet?

    If we only knew the file structure of Aerofly's navigation database. ;)

    Obviously navigation concerns the position of VORs, NDBs and fixes, STARs and SIDs, airspaces, the magnetic model of the world and the corresponding name of runways as well as the exact state of airports (ILS, new runways, closed runways, taxiway naming, etc.) and frequencies for navigational aids. I imagine updating all of these into a cohesive model again can be quite tricky, be it by updating the internal model or building a service which updates the model from an external source.

    (While building the Missionsgerät I encountered quite a lot of details about navigation which blew my mind.)

    But actually it would be very nice to optionally pay for a service which updates these informations.

    Hm, or should we start a Kickstarter to ensure funding for the acquisition of new navigation data and/or a Navigraph API importer? ;)

  • Detailed Airports List after World Update

    Thread

    See all of Aerofly FS4's airports

    I was intrigued by the every growing list of airports in Aerofly's airport database. So I clobbered together a quick visualization:

    aerofly.com/community/gallery/…/8732-airports-of-europe/

    My first approach made my browser a stuttering mess, but after some fiddling with MapBox I would like to present to you:

    aerofly.com/community/gallery/…shows-aerofly-s-airports/

    The map is now part of the Missionsgerät, and can be used without actually entering a flight plan. So if you are on the go and like…
    Armitage
    February 4, 2024 at 1:27 PM

    Hope this helps ;)

  • See all of Aerofly FS4's airports

    Thank god you found out that the custom missions did not kill you navigation database. I was slightly concerned. ^^

    The best solution definitely would be if all current SID, STAR and other procedures would be right inside Aerofly. IPACS mentioned the prohibitive costs of this option, so let's start a fund raising. ^^

    Second best would be to load flight plans (pln, fms, tmc) via a small dialog directly from thr navigation screen in Aerofly. I remember that IPACS liked the idea, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

  • See all of Aerofly FS4's airports

    FrankLFRS Thank you for your input and testing. I fixed the bug where the flight plan would start you aircraft up in the air on importing pln flight plans. You are now starting on the ground. ;)

    I also improved the documentation - this helps to understand how to use the map to fix the start position of your plane by dragging it to the right spot. (This is actually a trick I used to modify my jet flight plans to fly through narrow valleys.)

    The runways get read by the Missionsgerät, but it does not yet create the waypoints necessary for Aerofly FS4, as they need to match names known to Aerofly FS 4 (at least the last time I checked). As the magnetic heading of runways has changed in the last few years, some runways are today named differently from the names used by Aerofly. But maybe I come up with another idea on how to fix this.

  • See all of Aerofly FS4's airports

    Quote from FrankLFRS

    My aim is to create a flight plan with Navigraph > export it as a MS FS2020 .pln file > import it in Missionsgerät (it works, including the SID, STAR, TRANS, APPR points) > embed it in Aerofly FS 4 to fly it. Knowing that most of the waypoints of Navigraph (AIRAC 2401) are unknown from the Aerolfy data base (~AIRAC1301).

    Actually this is more or less everything you need to do:

    1. Upload the pln to the Missionsgerät.
    2. Add the settings which the pln file does not contain, like weather and aircraft.
    3. Download the TMC file from the Missionsgerät.
    4. And than stick to https://fboes.github.io/aerofly-missio…stallation.html on how to add the TMC file to your AFS4. Your mission should now be visible as custom mission in AFS4.

    FrankLFRS Does this help you? Or is there any other explanation missing I might supply?

    And indeed this method should allow to import fixes and waypoints into AFS4 which it does not have - because the Missionsgerät will import waypoint names and geo coordinates and convert them into Aerofly's free form waypoints. A smart way to have Navigraph data at least for your flight plan. ;)

  • See all of Aerofly FS4's airports

    I was intrigued by the every growing list of airports in Aerofly's airport database. So I clobbered together a quick visualization:

    Airports of Europe

    My first approach made my browser a stuttering mess, but after some fiddling with MapBox I would like to present to you:

    The Missionsgerät now shows Aerofly's airports

    The map is now part of the Missionsgerät, and can be used without actually entering a flight plan. So if you are on the go and like to know if an airport exists in AFS4, here you go.

  • Learning to fly

    I like your approach. ;)

    For me the most eye-opening book was Stick & Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche. The very basics of flying explained in very simple terms made my flying in every kind of plane more solid. As soon as you get the idea of the Angle Of Attack (AOA) and that your planes moves in a medium which also moves and is your actual reference point, your patterns, course-keeping and landings will drastically improve.

  • Fighter Jets (JAS 39)

    An ejection seat and G effects (blackout / redout) would be very welcome additions. The G effects would also be nice for aerobatics planes like the Pitts or Extra 300.

    A new combat jet or jet trainer would also be very welcome. Doesn't have to be a 5th generation fighter. ;)