Not sure that I can agree on your first premise. A working GPS and map was always part of FSX/Prepar3D. And even more in XP where it's upgradeable with new data. But I do agree that it might be too much asked for a new player in the market.

 

 

You can do basic navigation in Aerofly FS 2 too. Even now, in early access. Of course, lots of features are still missing. The one I miss most is the mixture lever in the Baron :-)

Some of them will be released with the full version, others will be probably left to the market's or community's care. After all, this is exactly what happened with FSX and its derivatives.

Only time will tell. The only thing I can assure you is that they're really working hard. They released at least three patches since the first release, made a high-res 60 GB terrain package available for south US for free and today they released a payware DLC for Switzerland.

It has an amazing potential. When i look at the free patch made available by Jan (cold&dark C172), I wonder what we could get out of it, if there only were more people from this community working at it.

 

 

With respect to the comment about "many people do not want to fly only in the USA", I think it would be a bad move for IPACS to try and compete with FSX/P3D/X-Plane where global scenery is concerned. I see Aerofly FS2 as an opportunity to recreate a smaller region in very great detail (the Flight Unlimited approach). If IPACS can deliver that south western USA region as a complete package (full high res photoscenery coverage/3D landmarks and autogen/realistic AI planes/competent ATC system/believable clouds and weather/solid flight dynamics etc), then I think it would be a very welcome option for flight simmers. That region is easily large enough for me to enjoy for years to come if they can deliver the goods. We really don't need the entire globe all over again. We have the three simulators mentioned above for that.

I am sorry, but I disagree here, Christopher.

 

We certainly don't need a whole HiRes world for now, However, one of the main complaints from AeroflyFS1 users I recall was just they only had one region, albeit highly detailed. I think it's important to show they got beyond this and have at least a few highly-detailed regions availabe. Even more as they could reuse Switzerland from AeroflyFS1 and a considerable percentage of their users supposedly are from Europe..

 

In my opinion IPACS's strategy - as far as I understand it - isn't that bad. They are going to deliver a medium resolution world wide texture pack as a bed for 3rd parties to embed their high-resolution airports and their suroundings for the IFR captains. Add a hand full of highly details regions for the VFR pilots (include me here) and you should be prepared for most of the demands. The rest would be airplane systems, AI, ATC etc. as mentioned and you'll certainly have a winner.

 

Kind regards, Michael

If they do that, I just hope they are still able to provide a richly detailed "full fat" south western USA region for flight simmers like me that prefer relatively limited, highly detailed areas to explore.

I completely agree with you. No need to compete with FSX/P3D for scenery coverage. Less is more. We need higher quality scenery than in those sim more than ever.