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. 

 

Realistically speaking, i.e. looking at cold figures and not to our wishful thinking, the only hope for Aerofly FS2 not to be completely forgotten by the community now, is that a bunch of passionate users with high skills will start developing freeware or donationware addons, mods or whatever using the new IPACS' SDK. After all, this is how X-Plane survived for years to the fierce ESP competition. It is amazing what the community was able to do with FSX in ten years. As soon as a reasonable base of addons and eye candies will be available, the number of simmers will certainly grow and small and major developers will sooner or later also show up.

 

The potential is there. What we need now is to start to fill the gap.

What might help is the Developers of Aerofly put out a video answering questions about the future of the sim, then actually showing/previewing new content, and telling their ideas for the future, nothing gets the community buzzing like previewing new content, seeing the faces working on it.

What might help is the Developers of Aerofly put out a video answering questions about the future of the sim, then actually showing/previewing new content, and telling their ideas for the future, nothing gets the community buzzing like previewing new content, seeing the faces working on it.

 

The developers have spoken up occasionally....

 

https://www.helisimmer.com/interview/interview-aerofly-fs2-developer-tosten-hans/

If you want absolutely no add-ons then AeroflyFS OR P3D native....clean out of the box...will give you all that you ever want. PS only default aircraft, default scenery, nothing else.

There is zero chance that in 2016 a regionally-limited flight simulator, perfect as it may be, becomes competitive with the major ones and attractive for a significant part of 3rd party developers. Except of course if it's a specific purpose flight sim (gliders, military, RC), but in that case the range of possible add-ons would be of course severely limited.

 

To have the slightest chance for that, AeroflyFS should have been at least worldwide capable. Missing that, P3D, DTGFS and XP remain the only major players for the foreseeable future.

As I said, time will tell, but I would be really disappointed if Aerofly turned into yet another copy of FSX.

 

We already have P3D, FSX, FSX-SE, Flightgear and X-plane attempting to fill that role, and every single one of them has continued the practice of producing products geared towards extremely specialized niche audiences.

 

Snap out of it! Jeez, actually try something new for once! 

 

Like maybe every decade, or so.

Making it worldwide capable would not make it another copy of fsx. Again, a regional flight sim has zero chance of wide appeal to the community, and always will. Too limited to be interesting in the long run for 99% of simmers. You can moan as you like but that won't change things.

Making it worldwide capable would not make it another copy of fsx. Again, a regional flight sim has zero chance of wide appeal to the community, and always will. Too limited to be interesting in the long run for 99% of simmers. You can moan as you like but that won't change things.

 

Well I wasn't moaning specifically at you, but I will say if you knew the subject your were pontificating on, you would be aware that it already is "worldwide capable" albeit with only selected areas at higher resolution.

 

This was done specifically to appease the people they knew would "moan" about worldwide coverage.

 

This might actually give more opportunity to 3rd parties as they have the chance to add high detail airports, cities and and photo-scenery as well as practically inviting something like world2Xplane and the chance for users to populate areas of interest.

 

Ipacs aerofly  [developer] Jul 3 @ 6:13amficial] Need your opinion on world wide texture pack DLC

 

As we have announced a few weeks ago we are also considering a separate DLC with higher resolution aerial images world wide. When we talk about 'higher' here it is of course not the same level as our south west USA texture pack, but considerably lower. As a rough guideline expect to have around 30-60m per pixel.

 

However the main motivation for us it to basically have an almost world wide coverage with images that look good from altitudes of 20000 feet and above, so this means you should in general recognize where you are flying. Some sample images can be found here:

 

http://dl1.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_screenshot_dlc_ww_01.jpg

 

http://dl1.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_screenshot_dlc_ww_02.jpg

Making it worldwide capable would not make it another copy of fsx. Again, a regional flight sim has zero chance of wide appeal to the community, and always will. Too limited to be interesting in the long run for 99% of simmers. You can moan as you like but that won't change things.

 

My two cents.

1. A worldwide simulator means default textures at lowest resolution. If we want a simulator that covers the entire globe, we must accept to have deserts by default, as more or less is the case for FSX and P3D. Unless we find a way to distribute hundreds of terabytes of photoscenery and high resolution data (for free?), this is the price we have to pay for a worldwide simulator. And this would make Aerofly FS2 basically an advanced copy of FSX/P3D/X-Plane, as Devon correctly pointed out. Either we choose a regional approach or we must forget that level of resolution. We can't have the cake and eat it.

 

2. Aerofly FS2 may, at least theoretically, very well expand to a multiple region simulator in the future, whereas the decision whether to get additional regions or not is entirely left to the single user. You want it, you pay for it. You don't want it, you simply pass on. Honestly, after years of simming, I confess I never flew in Africa and in 95% of Asia. Are we sure we really need another worldwide simulator?

 

 

Except of course if it's a specific purpose flight sim (gliders, military, RC), but in that case the range of possible add-ons would be of course severely limited.

 

3. Aerofly FS2 is very specific in that it offers a level of realism and immersion which is currently unprecedented in the entertainment market (among the other things it offers native VR support) and has by far the best graphic engine. It was not developed to be a competitor agiants FSX/P3D/X-Plane, but it can become a very interesting niche product if supported by the community and some serious third-party developers.

 

Ipacs aerofly  [developer] Jul 3 @ 6:13amficial] Need your opinion on world wide texture pack DLC

 

As we have announced a few weeks ago we are also considering a separate DLC with higher resolution aerial images world wide. When we talk about 'higher' here it is of course not the same level as our south west USA texture pack, but considerably lower. As a rough guideline expect to have around 30-60m per pixel.

 

However the main motivation for us it to basically have an almost world wide coverage with images that look good from altitudes of 20000 feet and above, so this means you should in general recognize where you are flying. Some sample images can be found here:

 

That is bloody awesome! Just not sure will 30m per pixel be enough even over 30000ft. On these example screen it looks too blurry, but I guess the size of download will be huge at let's say 10m per pixel.

Also, not sure why we need the whole world currently in FS 2 when we have the airports only in default areas?

Also, not sure why we need the whole world currently in FS 2 when we have the airports only in default areas?

 

That's why they've created a scenery SDK so that developers (and maybe users) can add those airports at will. In the meantime, the underpinnings of worldwide coverage are at least theoretically in place, laying the groundwork for expansion of the sim.

 

1) In aerofly FS 2 the Earth is an ellipsoid. Under navigation you can select airports and navaids worldwide. At the “Location” menu the orientation is purely geographical.

 

2) Go to the main menu and open “navigation”. The map can be moved and zoomed worldwide. Under navigation you can select airports and navaids worldwide. You can add any waypoints worldwide.

There is zero chance that in 2016 a regionally-limited flight simulator, perfect as it may be, becomes competitive with the major ones and attractive for a significant part of 3rd party developers. Except of course if it's a specific purpose flight sim (gliders, military, RC), but in that case the range of possible add-ons would be of course severely limited.

 

To have the slightest chance for that, AeroflyFS should have been at least worldwide capable. Missing that, P3D, DTGFS and XP remain the only major players for the foreseeable future.

 

Curiously yesterday after reading one of the posts in this thread I decided to look in SteamSpy for the scores of the other flight simulators: fsx:se, il2 battle of.. and dcs world..

 

I got this for dcs world, and it is just in Steam - I like many thousands of users buy directly from their source, both il2 and dcs... But I confess I wasn't aware it had such a HUGE score, way above even fsx:se !!!

 

As a side not with DCS's scores I really don't understand why some well known developers do not invest on it.... PMDG once replied that although they even played it ( some of them at the PMDG team ) they only supported Worldwide coverage sims... Well... I think they're losing their chance here...

 

BTW, give a look at DTG Flight School - a sim I returned after a couple of days using it...

 

http://steamspy.com/app/223750

Why would a regional flightsim have zero chance of success? We already have several global flight simulators. Why do we specifically need another one? That south western USA region is large enough for all kinds of flightsim enthusiasts, with the bonus of being rendered in a lot more detail than the likes of FSX or P3D. People can waffle on all day about how ORBx FTX Global and other generic texture "enhancement" packages can make the virtual world more realistic, but......to be perfectly honest.....they really don't. If you think that ORBx FTX Global looks like the real world, then you haven't been outside too often.

 

IMO, AeroFly FS2 needs to be a next generation Flight Unlimited. There is no reason whatsoever why this could not be a success, provided that it includes the basics like a decent ATC system, realistic AI planes, solid flight dynamics, variable weather, night lighting, and a superbly rendered and detailed recreation of that south western USA region. That would make it different from the existing options, and therefore viable. As many people on this forum and elsewhere keep saying......why can't you have more than one civilian flight simulator on your PC? You can use FSX/P3D for your trans continental/oceanic flights, and then fire up AeroFly FS2 when you want to enjoy flying over scenery that actually looks like the real world.

 

In fact, if the developers of AeroFly FS2 deliver on this simulator's potential, then it is just possible that I would dump P3D, and fly this one exclusively. I did it with Flight Unlimited 3 (for eight years), so I can do it again if the quality is there.

BTW:

 

BTW:

 

Quicker than me! I was just about to post this in the video thread.