Worth bearing in mind that the reason it is performing like it is, is because it is missing the things you talked about in your first paragraph.

It is missing complex aircraft, ai, atc, weather etc etc. Once those are added I bet it will slow down quite a lot.

It hopefully will still perform well but I doubt it will be hitting those fps once a very complex aircraft is involved.

I'd love to see it succeed but it definitely needs proper sim level aircraft and more scenery and features to be taken seriously as a competitor to what is out there already.

 

Chris

 

I'm not so certain this is still completely true. A lot has changed in the last ten years or so, and its probably about time some deep preconceptions based on FSX experience were faced with some challenges from modern programming and technology.

I agree that a lot has changed but I'm not basing my assumptions on fsx rendering.

 

I'm basing them on the fact that the things I mentioned are not graphics based so cannot be passed off to the gpu.

 

Something as complex as the latest pmdg like airliner requires huge amounts of maths. So does accurate weather with up drafts, downdrafts, proper multilayer and vertical weather, real cells you are scared to fly in, wind shear, microburst, precipitation, wave and hill and mountain based effects. Add in complex Ai and decent atc that controls you and the Ai and interacts with how real weather is changing. Not to mention ground based cars, trains and ships.

Hopefully third parties will be available to provide everything I have listed as it is unlikely that they will all be provided as default to the current standards of existing add ons.

 

Everything I have said above is available more or less in prepar3d or xplane right now.

None of those things are light on cpu so if they are being done properly there is no way aerofly will have enough grunt to still throw out 120fps with everything maxed out. I can run fsx or prepar3d at well over 100fps if I don't use add ons like those.

It is easy to make a lite sim look fantastic and run super fast. Modern games have been doing it for years.

I'm not saying aerofly is only sim lite but let's be honest at the moment it isn't exactly complex either is it?

I'm not saying it can't be complex either but the unavoidable fact of simulation is that once you start emulating all these other complex systems, even if you are only flying a cessna, there is so much more background maths that it will defiantly slow down.

 

Chris

You might be forgetting just exactly how poor our current offerings are in leveraging the power of multiple GPU's, or that said gpus are programmable and can actually take charge of some of the PhysX burden, including 3d weather and etc.

 

I think we've simply never ever seen a modern flight simulator designed from the ground up to take advantage of modern hardware. I'm also not completely sure that Aerofly will be that sim. But I do think that if we ever do see such a sim, a lot of paradigms we've become familiar over the past  few years with will fall into the dustbin of history.

I have a lot of hope for continued high FPS in Aerofly FS2. For example, if you disable all the complexities that we are looking forward to in FS2 (ATC,AI,more detailed weather,etc..) , you will notice that the frame rate maxes out at 100 ->120 fps in  FSX/P3D - instead of 200->250fps for FS2. I believe that almost all the additional complexity can be added to cores that are only being used partly at present. There is still plenty of computational (math) power available but the graphics rendering loop in FS2 is recently programmed and efficient with careful attention to optimized performance.

I cannot even consider it until it can support playing on Virtual Airlines.

I'm having a ball in AFS2. It has so much potential, and development is moving forward a lot faster than I thought it would. I'll choose AFS2 any day over P3D + the ORBX California regions.

 

I hope AFS2 never turns into a world simulator, but instead focuses on doing smaller areas well. 

I agree, it doesn't need to be a world simulator, AeroFly should just keep doing what they are doing, just add airports, areas and planes , the combination of photorealistic and 3D airports seems to work very well, maybe a bit more functionality with the planes, add ATC maybe dynamic AI ?, AeroFly is the future of flight sims, at least to me.

I have been watch this product carefully.   The power of this engine is impressive.   I cannot switch to it until like others above said it can support VA flying in heavy iron with detailed high-level simulation of systems.    Give me a PMDG 737 quality Boeing, a completed United States, good weather engine and powerful AI Traffic engine and you can have ALL my money.    Is AFS2 support DX12?   If it supports DX12 you will not see a slow down when features are added or at least not enough of a slow down to care.     I don't care if my FPS drops from 200 to 120 with everything added.   I only need 60 for VR and I am already use to 30 anyway.    The videos I have seen have been impressive.

I agree, it doesn't need to be a world simulator, AeroFly should just keep doing what they are doing, just add airports, areas and planes , the combination of photorealistic and 3D airports seems to work very well, maybe a bit more functionality with the planes, add ATC maybe dynamic AI ?, AeroFly is the future of flight sims, at least to me.

 

Problem is: none of your expectations is going to happen as long as sales will grow up significantly:

https://steamspy.com/app/434030

 

Let's face it. With a user base of less than 14,000 simmers, it is highly improbable that major developers will ever jump on this platform, especially when other competitors like P3D, X-Plane and DTG will continue to release new versions. That's the sad reality. Despite its amazing potential and the effort of some of us to promote it here and in other fora, this product received so far very little attention from the community. As of today, the only "addon" is a mod to have the default C172 started from Cold & Dark created by a long-time IPACS user. That's very sad, but is the truth. Apparently, simmers are uncomfortable to spend $ 49,00 for an early access, but have no problems to waste $ 39,00 for an Ezdok replacement in Alpha or more 30 dollars for useless HD textures for default airports they will ever hardly use. The argument I read most from potential, but still skeptical users during the last months was "As long as it has no support for […], I am out". Truth is: without a decent user base, I am afraid that the amazing potential of this product will only remain potential. Which is very unfortunate, as this is by far the most promising flight simulator currently on the market.

 

Obviously, I hope to be proven wrong, but this my realistic view at the moment.

I have to agree barrel, even if sadly :-(

Whatever happens, I'm going to enjoy what's there now. High resolution photoscenery of California, Nevada, Arizona and Switzerland is darn good bang for buck in my opinion, and the performance is just awesome. No tweaking and all my controllers and TrackIR work out of the box (I've got nine Saitek controllers and panels). I've never experienced usability on this level in a flight simulator. Time of day and visibility can be changed on the fly with zero fps impact or reloading. The default aircraft look stunning and are beautifully textured inside and out. If you like to do some VFR over great scenery there is no better option at the moment. 

 

Sales might be disappointing (for reasons I cannot understand as people throw good money on crappy addons for FSX and P3D all the time), but I think they make some cash from the iPad version.

 

I'm not gonna talk this one down and stay positive. We need some new blood into this hobby, and as a beginner I wouldn't even consider DTG Flight School. Aerofly FS 2 is the way to go! 

Yes, don't understand how folks can throw 60 bucks at a crappy addon but not this product which has so much potential, and will get better and better if devs would only get behind it just a little, as it is right now it looks 1000 times better than some of the other so called "new" sims

Its strange how we think about these things.....

 

Aerofly Fs2 costs $49.99 and lets say has sold approx 12,000 copies.

 

DTG Flight School has sold about 16,000 copies, but an an average due to steam sales of less than $10

 

Now which company made much more money? 

 

Ipacs has about 12 employees, and DTG has a gazillion, not to mention a full fledged advertising department. So who is spending much more for a much lesser return on investment at this point? 

 

Which one has great frame-rates, and which one runs like a rock?

 

Which sim has rave reviews, and which one is being torn a new one on almost any review fora you can mention?

 

Yet "the community" has a zillion threads about Flight School, and seems to be almost deliberately ignoring Aerofly FS2 in comparison. This is probably the result of having a personable and capable advertising outreach on DTG's part, but it also indicates (to me) a certain amount of tunnel vision on the part of simmers.

 

Despite that, I think Aerofly, with an already profitable RC market and much lower overhead, not to mention a very worthwhile product with a veritable lock on VR flight simulation, has the basis in place for success even if not from the traditional FSX centered community.

 

Time will tell.

Don't get me wrong - I find the potential in Aerofly FS2 ex-aequo with DCS World and IL2 in as far as flight dynamics go, and with the advantage for me of being a civil sim,

 

Problem is that a small user community will not attract the major players in the industry.

 

I don't even mention DTG FS because it was more like a testbed / market probe for their upcoming sim IMO...

 

It took years for PMDG to develop something for XP10. Let's see how it will go with XP11...

 

When 3pds look at the X-Plane user community as not yet sufficiently stable / sound, how can they get interested in AEFS 2 ?

 

OTOH I really expect that IPACS continues to provide it's users with additional features and maybe we can attract more from the FSX / P3D / XP side...

Don't get me wrong - I find the potential in Aerofly FS2 ex-aequo with DCS World and IL2 in as far as flight dynamics go, and with the advantage for me of being a civil sim,

 

Problem is that a small user community will not attract the major players in the industry.

 

It took years for PMDG to develop something for XP10. Let's see how it will go with XP11...

 

When 3pds look at the X-Plane user community as not yet sufficiently stable / sound, how can they get interested in AEFS 2 ?

 

OTOH I really expect that IPACS continues to provide it's users with additional features and maybe we can attract more from the FSX / P3D / XP side...

 

 

Half of the addons I own for P3D is just to get it to work and look as it should (FSUIPC, SPAD, REX Soft Clouds, REX Airports HD, Zinertec Airports HD, Accu-Feel, PTA, Navid's Sky Set, Adam Mills texture replacements...). Aerofly FS 2 just works out of the box - and it's not even a finished product yet.

 

If they can get just 2-3 advanced aircraft in there, I'll be a happy camper for a long time. If they can make it in-house I'll be even more happy. I'm a bit tired of having to relate to all these different developers for FSX, P3D and XP. That said, Steam is a terrible platform for DLC. It's really hard to browse through the addons for FSX SE. It just wasn't designed for the number of addons available for FSX/P3D/XP.