It's mostly a mobile game, so don't expect too much.
Posts by jayeye2011
-
-
Following the beta comments has been interesting, but nothing it provides is a must have for me. Overall, at this point in time, the future development path of Aerofly FS 4 is totally opaque to me. Big unanswered questions remain for AFFS4:
1. Will more HD regions be added.
2. Will more general aviation aircraft be added (including light sport and ultra/micro light and gyrocopter).
3. Will world wide cultivation be added.
4. Will trees other than pine trees as well as bushes/cacti be added.
5. Will GPS (G430, G530, G1000, etc) ever be added to existing IPACS C172, Baron 58, DR 400 aircraft.
Or will these improvements be left for a future version of AFFS to implement?
Regardless, I feel like I got my money's worth out of AFFS 4, since I got 130 hours of entertainment so far from it for an expenditure of $62 (USD).
-
Ipacs has gave me a cultivation-file for whole Japan. I have some trouble getting it to work with the airport, but I can say, it looks amazing.
if you don't mind me asking, will IPACS be allowing you to include this in your scenery package download or is this just an experiment to work out any bugs in their cultivation without allowing it to be released to the general public?
-
As far as I know, ScenProc doesn't need an update.
When creating the cultivation for FS2 there are many different so called templates. These templates have to be adapted to Aerofly FS 4 and not scenproc itself.
So, if Ipacs uses ScenProc, then they have to provide the community with these templates.
I think that the AFFS 4 TOC cultivation files are binary files that are using a different format than AFFS 2. It seems to me that would require a new dll in sceneProc that is different from the AFFS2 dll it uses currently. Not sure if it was the sceneProc developer or if it was IPACS that created the existing sceneProc AF2Utils.dll DLL file used in sceneProc, but a new one for AFFS 4 to handle the conversion to the new binary TOC file format would likely be required made by someone who knows the new binary file format definition. I looked at rodeo's sceneProc definition file for AFFS 2 and it did not contain any code instructions that would generate a format specific toc file. It just specifies option settings for sceneProc to use. Looking at the sceneProc manual, it only has instructions for AFFS 2 cultivation creation. Again, if it was the author of sceneProc who created the existing dll, then IPACS should make the binary file format definition for AFFS 4 toc files available to the author.
https://www.aerofly.com/community/index.php?attachment/6675-aerofly-rodeo-zip
Development releases | SceneryDesign.org
Edit: Actually, I now think sceneProc is irrelevant as there is no indication that the its author is interested in continuing support for the Aerofly FS community. I think, reading between the lines on his website that his primary focus is MSFS 2020 tool support.
-
Creating a world wide cultivation data can range from 300 to 600 GB of data, possibly more.
Seems pretty big and un-optimalized. X-Plane 11 and 12 have world wide cultivation in the base game files and don't require more than 60 to 100 GB of storage total for the complete game. Granted this is using the generic scenery tiles which do not require much storage, but the cultivation part that provides the trees and buildings positioned about the same as what is in AFFS 4. Personally, I hope IPACS does not switch to a just-in-time streaming scenery system like MSFS 2020 because my old house wiring causes periodic cable modem resets which prevent me from using MSFS 2020 which is why I use AFFS 4 instead.
Also, did the cultivation generated by sceneProc (not an IPACS product) from Open Street Map data when used by the community volunteer devs consume that much space in AFFS 2 for the regional scenery packages they made?
Maybe breakup the world cultivation into separate 80 GB regional cultivation (but maybe include better resolution elevation mesh) only DLCs so that players can choose individually which ones they want to download based on what is of interest to them. That way, if a community volunteer developer creates a photoimage scenery of a specific world region (say Japan or Australia or New Zealand) they can just specify which regional cultivation DLC to use if the user wants to see cultivation in that area than rather include the cultivation in their scenery pack. Downloading cultivation only DLC from Steam is much faster than downloading photoimage scenery packages that include that cultivation from flight-sim.org.
-
Ipacs has gave me a cultivation-file for whole Japan. I have some trouble getting it to work with the airport, but I can say, it looks amazing.
Nice. But going beyond Japan, it seems like having to rely on IPACS to give you the cultivation for each region you want to create scenery for is going to be an exercise in disappointment.. Better that the sceneProc tool gets updated to be able to generate AFFS4 compatible cultivation files from OpenStreetMap so that anyone can create orthophoto scenery with cultivation for wherever they want to fly, much like people over at X-Plane users group have Ortho4XP to use.
-
Yes, sadly no buildings yet because Ipacs hasn't released an SDK for cultivation (buildings etc.) yet.
I was looking into this, and according to the old IPACS Aerofly FS 2 wiki on the AFFS2 scenery SDK, it seems that a third party tool called sceneProc was used to generate cultivation for Aerofly FS2. If that's the case, then it probably means that the sceneProc developer rather than IPACS would need to update this tool to support the new file formats used by Aerofly FS 4.
sdk:scenerydev4 [Aerofly FS Wiki]
EDIT: Further digging into this, I guess you are right after all. IPACS has not made their Aerofly FS 4 cultivation file format public, so even if the sceneProc developer wanted to update his tool for AFFS4, he cannot at this time.
-
Not sure if this works for mobile, but there is a freeware Piper PA-38 Tomahawk for Aerofly FS 4 you can download from Krzystof Kaneiwki's Github repository.
GitHub - krzysk1/tomahawk: Piper PA-38 Tomahawk for Aerofly FS4Piper PA-38 Tomahawk for Aerofly FS4. Contribute to krzysk1/tomahawk development by creating an account on GitHub.github.comThe screenshot shown in prior comments is probably the Just Flight payware PA-38 for Aerofly FS 2.
Here is Kaniewski's PA-38 for Aerofly FS
24Works okay for the most part, just some minor issues.
-
As they say where I come from, Can't hurt to ask.
-
Hey IPACS, in the good ol' USA, companies (both private and government agencies) have the practice of hiring summer co-ops (usually college students for just the summer break) to do little odds and ends jobs both to give them relevant work experience and to evaluate for potential future full term employment and pay them pretty much minimum wage and minimal benefits as temporary hires. In your case, I recommend taking a summer co-op from your local college/university who has 3D Blender skillset (even an art major maybe) an task them with modifying your SDK DR400 to have a G530 + G430 combo replace the existing analog radio navigation instruments. That would also allow you to verify that your existing codebase support for G530 and G430 carried over from AFFS 2 still works or debug it so that it does work. Then once that is known, if there is still time left before school starts have them work on the C172 and Baron 58 to update those to G530/G430. If time runs out, then at least you know it works and once your full time 3D artist finishes mucking around with all those jetliners, maybe they can spend a month or so doing the update for the C172 and Baron 58.
-
Here is the WWII pilot's handbook for the F4U Corsair
-
Not sure that's usually specified for those old WWII fighters, probably all seat of the pants flying. Also, the flight sim models may not exactly match what you see on Google search. Best thing is to just test the aircraft yourself to see what its performance is. You can find the WWII training manual online.
http://akvictoria.by/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/P-38-Lightning.pdf
-
Oh, that I didn't know! I'm pretty new to Aerofly - coming from X-Plane 11. In this case, it would be totally worth re-implementing those garmin devices, I think. Indeed, the corresponding GA aircrafts currently feel somewhat incomplete without them...
Unfortunately, it's a case of "the devil is in the details". IPACS seems a bit reluctant to dedicate the resources to update its GA aircraft including the DR400 in the aircraft sdk even though the code base exists to support G430 and G530 (but not G1000). My ongoing complaint is that IPACS is too focused on airline planes, primarily for mobile market. Yeh, all those kids playing Aerofly FS 2022/23/24 on their iPhones and iPads like jetliners a lot for some strange reason (wanna grow up to be a globe-trotting airlines pilot some day) and that's a lot of pocket change in sales that add up to a lot more in total when compared to the full Aerofly FS 4 simulation PC game sales.
-
In Aerofly FS2, the Just Flight Tomahawk, Duchess, and Turbo Arrow had G430 and G530 implementation with the latter two having autopilots. The underlying GPS code and 2D LCD panel displays where included in the IPACS flight simulation code according to Jet-Pack (IPACS) and still exists in the Aerofly FS 4 codebase. So it should mostly be a matter of redoing the 3D instrument panel to include the GPS bezel, buttons, and knobs and tying that into the CMD and TMD files for any of the IPACS GA aircraft that could use it.
-
IPACS, next time how about throwing in something for those of us (the few of us) who are not really into jetliners, such as adding a GNS530 to the C172 instrument panel.
-
Yes, sadly no buildings yet because Ipacs hasn't released an SDK for cultivation (buildings etc.) yet.
Thanks, I hope IPACS gets its act together so you all can have what you need to put together full up scenery packages rather than these bits and pieces.
-
Orthos, Elevation and trees can be used in AFS4 too.
he image tile textures do work in Aerofly and of course there is an airport for FS 4 as well.
So elevation and trees only. No buildings for Aerofly FS 4 is what I am reading here.
-
Is this for Aerofly FS 4 and if so, does it include cultivation and terrain elevation mesh or is it just the image tile textures?
-
I doubt that the entire earth will ever be in Aerofly FS (any future version) unless IPACS switches to something like X-Plane's plausible but not photorealistic tiles terrain system or MSFS 2020's online streaming of orthophoto scenery from the cloud. Under IPACS current scenery implementation with low to medium resolution orthophoto scenery, the so-called HD scenery DLC packs each take 80 gigabytes of storage for a total of 240GB for the three that only cover western Europe and maybe about 15% of the USA. A wild guess is that it would take about 20 more 80GB DLCs to cover the rest of the world which would be too much dedicated drive storage for most people to commit for a single game. Plus all that would most likely cost more than the net capital value of IPACS company several times over.
My suggestion for IPACS, granted I know absolutely nothing about scenery development, is that they go ahead and build in to the base game all the cultivation (trees and buildings and roads) and higher resolution terrain elevation mesh for the rest of the world. But to keep the costs and disk storage requirements down, IPACS should not bother to attempt to provide the orthophoto scenery images because that would cost too much in licensing costs. They should just continue to use the ultra low resolution images they have currently under license for the rest of the world. Then leave the job of creating the high resolution orthophoto image scenery tiles to Aerofly FS community volunteer devs who can freely use Google and Bing Satellite maps and post on flight-sim.org like they already do now for Aerofly FS 4. That way IPACS avoids the license fee costs for sourcing satellite images and the volunteer devs avoid the difficult task of creating cultivation and higher resolution terrain elevation mesh for their orthophoto scenery packages. Leave the airport creation for the rest of the world up to the community volunteers using the new online airport creation tool.
An example of how this would work already exists for Aerofly FS 4. Well sorta anyway. If you look at Florida in the USA, IPACS seems to have created cultivation for most of the state (except for the northern part and the panhandle part I think) but not the HD orthophoto tiles or the HD elevation mesh (which does not matter since Florida is pretty flat anyway). And our excellent community volunteer developer, IZ0JUB has previously created the HD orthophoto image scenery tiles for Aerofly FS 2 that should also work for Aerofly FS 4 per RE: IPACS - Any Plans to Finish USA HD Scenery Offering? using the Aerofly FS 4 cultivation that already seems to be present for central Florida.
More info about this on USA - Florida Keys
-
Blade false can just be removed. Is there a blade true in the DR400? In that case we may have to update the SDK soon
No, you are right, there is just a [Blade][false] in the tmd.
