With regard to this, does anybody know what are the capabilities of the engine with regard to round earth and high altitudes? Is it possible to do uninterrupted transcontinental flight? Does it provide a realistic depiction of earth at very high altitudes?

 

Is the Coriolis effect even modeled at all ?  Is the Earth a Gehoid or a perfect sphere ?

 

Just kidding of course :smile: , but, in fact, "fictious" Coriolis force is modeled in FlightGear, btw....

While I may understand their motives and do not regret the purchase, I find the idea of releasing a twin piston aircraft without mixture modeled definitely questionable. Yes, i know it's early access, but this is no secondary feature nor any eye-candy, it is a basic feature.

 

I agree. I just think that at this stage of the game, with no more big players on the field, the age of "everything included" is long gone.

 

Now we have small companies (minuscule by Microsoft standards) pushing forward as best they can in the wake of the giant, and sheer reality says we'll have to adjust our expectations accordingly and be patient, because they just don't have the resources to cover every base right away.

 

All these new entrants are going to ease forward, making mistakes and learning all the way, since this is a new endeavor for them.

 

This goes for DTG, Outerra, Aerofly, and even whatever comes or doesn't come from the Nexgen guys.

 

I paid my $15 for DTG Flight school for weird skies, florescent water, phosphorescent clouds, nonfunctional instruments, honking huge floating magical globes that are supposed to be streetlights..... (errgghhh) 

 

I'll accept some shortcomings (for now) from Aerofly as well, because after watching their forums for years, I think they're enthusiasts themselves and want very much to do something good. They've squirreled themselves away producing this offering and reached out to this community, and if we don't reach back, well..... we deserve be trapped forever in 2006.

 

honking huge floating magical globes that are supposed to be streetlights.

 

I wondered what the hell they were when I saw them in a DTG Flight School video!

The resolution of some of those ground textures is WAY too low (assuming that the screenshots were not taken before the higher resolution tiles had loaded). I am well aware that higher resolution images require a lot more storage space, but I am afraid that blurry textures like that would make it a non starter for me.....and that would be a shame.

 

Yeah, I originally thought my game was bugged and I was suffering from "the blurries", but that's the actual resolution provided, even within the supposedly high-resolution coverage area. There's also a very noticeable line where it changes high-res to low, a few miles from most airports.

 

The devs said that the global low-res scenery takes up 14GB, which seems like a waste to me when only the s-w USA is currently modeled. They should have spent those gigabytes on more high-resolution areas instead. The base resolution should be at least 5 meters/pixel, with major airports and cities at 1m/pixel. That's not unrealistic compared to Megascenery and even Flight Unlimited 3 from 15 years ago. The installation would grow larger, but the loading times are very short, so you could probably run this just fine from an HDD. It currently loads in about 2 - 5 seconds from my Kingston V300 SSD.

 

 

With regard to this, does anybody know what are the capabilities of the engine with regard to round earth and high altitudes? Is it possible to do uninterrupted transcontinental flight? Does it provide a realistic depiction of earth at very high altitudes?

 

Not sure about the actual technology, but it should definitely be possible to fly seamlessly around the world. In fact the whole world is already modeled, but the resolution is about a bazillion meters per pixel ie really poor, and no airports are modeled. I'll try climbing really high to see how the earth looks. One issue is that there's just one haze layer, so visibility would potentially be 0 at high altitudes.

Looks great, thanks to those who have posted vids and screenshots.

 

I think a lot of people are used to landclass after all these years of FSX, and are not really aware of the pros and cons of photoscenery. As someone who flies in prepar3d 90% of the time using this sort of landscape, I'm not going to expect hi-res, full world coverage. That's only going to happen in the core sim with a landclass model. For prepar3d, I've got around 4tb of photoscenery and I'm still only covering a fraction of the planet. Given some peoples unhappiness with the 30 gig download here, I'm not sure the market is ready for. 4tb+ download!

 

Photoscenery isn't some 1990s thing, as a couple of earlier posts suggested. It's in fact what all of the best Orbx areas are - a chunk of photoscenery with hand placed autogen, which seems to be the model aero fly are going for with high detail areas. It's the only way to replicate reality, landclass can NEVER do that.

 

Whole world modelled and a good core engine are a great start. If you open it up to 3rd parties and provide some decent tools, the scenery and plane content could easily follow. If Aerofly are smart, they'll make the SDK freely available to the community and get it out promptly.

Aerofly @ Angels 70k

 

 

The base resolution should be at least 5 meters/pixel, with major airports and cities at 1m/pixel.

 

Base resolution @ 1.2m per pixel minimum

Airports and cities @ 0.6m per pixel minimum

My preference? 0.6m per pixel across the entire region

 

Last time I checked, time and technology advance in a forwards direction. I am not prepar3d to go back to inferior resolutions.

Someone mentioned Orbx using photo scenery. They do, but it's only in select places where resolution is very high. Then they hand annotate it. Otherwise, they use a land class system. 

 

I think if Aerofly took a hybrid approach like that, it'd end up with a better presentation. Both approaches hold value, and when combined can overcome the other's short comings. 

 

Someone mentioned Orbx using photo scenery. They do, but it's only in select places where resolution is very high. Then they hand annotate it. Otherwise, they use a land class system.

 

I think that rural areas can look quite good at times with the ORBx FTX landclass scenery. Unfortunately, it all falls down with large urban areas, identikit golf courses, and poor coastlines. If AeroFly FS2 was to include a hybrid landclass/photoscenery mix, the landclass element would need to be considerably better than ORBx. It's amazing to me how some flightsimmers can be so picky about the accuracy of instrument panels and (in the case of the PMDG 737NGX) window dimensions, and yet not be bothered that the scenery down below bears little resemblance to the real thing.

Problem with this kind of scenery is ... Seasons - just like in X-plane 10 even without photoreal scenery....

Looks great, thanks to those who have posted vids and screenshots.

 

I think a lot of people are used to landclass after all these years of FSX, and are not really aware of the pros and cons of photoscenery. As someone who flies in prepar3d 90% of the time using this sort of landscape, I'm not going to expect hi-res, full world coverage. That's only going to happen in the core sim with a landclass model. For prepar3d, I've got around 4tb of photoscenery and I'm still only covering a fraction of the planet. Given some peoples unhappiness with the 30 gig download here, I'm not sure the market is ready for. 4tb+ download!

 

Photoscenery isn't some 1990s thing, as a couple of earlier posts suggested. It's in fact what all of the best Orbx areas are - a chunk of photoscenery with hand placed autogen, which seems to be the model aero fly are going for with high detail areas. It's the only way to replicate reality, landclass can NEVER do that.

 

Whole world modelled and a good core engine are a great start. If you open it up to 3rd parties and provide some decent tools, the scenery and plane content could easily follow. If Aerofly are smart, they'll make the SDK freely available to the community and get it out promptly.

 

Well I was a huge fan of the Flight Unlimited series and later Megascenery for FS9 and FSX, so I used photo scenery from 1997 until ~ 2008. However by 2009 or so, landclass based scenery had IMO caught up (first with the freeware and payware areas by Holger and FSAddon, and later by the OrbX regions). The OrbX airports contain a small area of photographic scenery, but the FTX regions are mostly landclass based, with very accurate vector data. However they do a lot of corrections and enhancements by hand, so it's essentially "hand crafted" landclass. It looks fantastic, and covers large regions at a reasonable cost and download size - the best of both worlds.

 

I'm fine though with the photographic approach they've chosen. I'm not asking for the entire world in high resolution. However I don't want the scenery to turn into mush 2 miles from the airport like it does currently in AFS 2. They should focus on the region they've chosen (south western USA) and make sure the resolution is consistent and high enough to look sharp from ~3000 feet throughout their coverage area. Because currently there's no joy in exploring the scenery when a few miles from the airports, it's just abstract blobs of color.

I want it to look sharp from 500 feet, and for that you need high quality 0.6m data with consistent colouration.

I think that rural areas can look quite good at times with the ORBx FTX landclass scenery. Unfortunately, it all falls down with large urban areas, identikit golf courses, and poor coastlines. If AeroFly FS2 was to include a hybrid landclass/photoscenery mix, the landclass element would need to be considerably better than ORBx. It's amazing to me how some flightsimmers can be so picky about the accuracy of instrument panels and (in the case of the PMDG 737NGX) window dimensions, and yet not be bothered that the scenery down below bears little resemblance to the real thing.

 

 

The problem is how to do it. Are they going to hand annotate the entirety of South California and Nevada? I just don't think it's realistic and you have to compromise on land class in some areas to populate autogen. 

 

Like said above, seasons is another issue with pure photo scenery. 

 

But I think their engine can handle other types of scenery. We'll have to see where they (or 3rd parties) take it. 

That's the problem I have, Bonchie! I have always been a perfectionist, and it seems to be getting worse as the years roll by! :wink:

Someone mentioned Orbx using photo scenery. They do, but it's only in select places where resolution is very high. Then they hand annotate it. Otherwise, they use a land class system. 

 

I think if Aerofly took a hybrid approach like that, it'd end up with a better presentation. Both approaches hold value, and when combined can overcome the other's short comings. 

 

Yup, that was me. I've got all the Orbx regions, global/vector etc, lots of airports, so I certainly know what their core product is.

 

As Chris has mentioned, landclass has some definite weaknesses. I wouldn't say it's 'caught up' to photoscenery - they both have their pluses and minuses.

 

When you look at the video above at 70,000ft, you see a view that looks like reality - something that a tile-based product such as landclass will always struggle with.

 

And down low, once you look carefully the fake nature of any landclass scenery is readily apparent - the vector data will never, ever match the tiles. So roads run through houses and anything else that gets in their way!

 

Appearances aside, the fact that photoscenery is real is useful for VFR training and familarising yourself with an area. I also enjoy learning about parts of the world I haven't been to, I can't do that based on looking at a bunch of imaginary tiles.

 

Photoscenery is at its best, though, when you place objects on top of it PLUS use high-res data that gives a false impression of 3D elsewhere. I make my own, mostly using 25cm per pixel resolution.

 

Adding trees is the next step. Nuvecta or Open VFR are the products I use for this.

 

At present, buildings still remain a problem in the US. For Europe, Open VFR provides a solution, though not a very elegant one. For the US, I hand-annotate the objects around airports I use frequently.

 

What Aerofly should do is:

 

1. Make sure they've got some high-quality photoscenery being prepped for release

2. Ideally, work out how FSX photoscenery can be converted to their engine. I'm not sure of the legal issues of another sim using a .bgl file, but if someone could write a version of FS Earth Tiles for Aerofly I'd be very happy indeed.

3. Produce a tool that is distributed with the sim that allows easy 'autogen' annotation - similar to Instant Scenery - and find a way to allow users to upload their annotations easily (ie crowd-source the annotation work).