Just flew AeroFly FS-2 OMG!

[Guest]

 

 

strong for VFR and VR.

 

I see you posted about RiftCat's VRidge on the Orbx forum. You all probably know by now that AFS2 in 2D doesn't convince me yet  :wink: but I am very curious about what it does in VR. I own a S6 and a Samsung Gear so this VRidge solution sounds interesting and might be interesting for others too.

 

https://riftcat.com/vridge

 

It connects your PC to your VR gear, probably at the cost of fps and quality (?) but at least it may give a taste of what AFS2 does in VR. So my first question (to everyone) is: has anyone ever tried this? You can try this for free and I will certainly give it a try! Unfortunately I don't expect being able to do so until after the weekend so if anyone else tried it or is willing to try it... let us know how it goes!

 

I can imagine AFS2 having more impact (on me) in VR than in 2D!

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

I'd love to get VR gear for this sim, but...I wear glasses, and worry about those within the visor, as well as eye, or heat (sweat) fatigue after perhaps half an hour of use. I can only imagine it to be quite spectacular, even more so, if you have never had experience with it before....

[Christopher Low 5,376]

 

There aren't any realtime weather systems yet in AFS2 and the current SDK is only for scenery afaik. The devs said in an interview that a real time weather system is a daunting task and they aren't even thinking about it right now. I think this is one of the things they hope a third party will develop.

 

Personally, I see no reason why AEFS2 needs a real world weather system.

[Guest]

Personally, I see no reason why AEFS2 needs a real world weather system.

 

 

The problem with non real world systems is that weather is usually very limited or very hard to setup. A good real world weather system gives you an extreme amount of variation with a single click of the mouse. If AFS2 is to be used mainly for short 20 minute fixes a complex weather system might be over the top... but in that case we'd still need a better system than what we have now because having a few very similar fluffy clouds in a small circle around your aircraft doesn't really cut it imho.

[Christopher Low 5,376]

Oh, I agree that a dynamic weather system would be nice. It's just that real world weather requires (I would imagine) a lot more complexity, as it has to access Metar data online, and then regularly update it.

[Guest]

I'd love to get VR gear for this sim, but...I wear glasses, and worry about those within the visor, as well as eye, or heat (sweat) fatigue after perhaps half an hour of use. I can only imagine it to be quite spectacular, even more so, if you have never had experience with it before....

 

I have glasses too and have no real problems with Gear VR: I can choose to keep them on or not because I can change the focus of the device. Heat isn't much of a problem for me (it is for the Samsng S6 though) but fatigue is a problem. Specially in the beginning I got headaches if I used the Gear for longer than 15 minutes. Later on the headaches stopped but I started to look er... weird... as if I was sleepy... a bit odd... I did stop playing VR games that were fast or speedy and that helped. Still, I think that using VR for longer periods can be unhealthy although it depends on the person. But I've read reports from someone who ended up in a hospital with eye problems so... beware. 

 

Anyway, I stopped using the Gear VR 10 months ago already after using it for 2 months or so because everything is very low res and to me it was mainly a funny gimmick. The available games were a bit boring too. (Or to fast and speedy.) But I would LOVE to give AFS2 a try with it...! If I like what I see I might even get a Rift with my new PC this year...

Oh, I agree that a dynamic weather system would be nice. It's just that real world weather requires (I would imagine) a lot more complexity, as it has to access Metar data online, and then regularly update it.

 

True. Dynamic would be fine with me too: I don't really care for current real world weather and I couldn't care less if what I see outside is different from what I see in my sim: I mainly want surprising skies.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

I have glasses too and have no real problems with Gear VR: I can choose to keep them on or not because I can change the focus of the device. Heat isn't much of a problem for me (it is for the Samsng S6 though) but fatigue is a problem. Specially in the beginning I got headaches if I used the Gear for longer than 15 minutes. Later on the headaches stopped but I started to look er... weird... as if I was sleepy... a bit odd... I did stop playing VR games that were fast or speedy and that helped. Still, I think that using VR for longer periods can be unhealthy although it depends on the person. But I've read reports from someone who ended up in a hospital with eye problems so... beware. 

 

Anyway, I stopped using the Gear VR 10 months ago already after using it for 2 months or so because everything is very low res and to me it was mainly a funny gimmick. The available games were a bit boring too. (Or to fast and speedy.) But I would LOVE to give AFS2 a try with it...! If I like what I see I might even get a Rift with my new PC this year...

 

True. Dynamic would be fine with me too: I don't really care for current real world weather and I couldn't care less if what I see outside is different from what I see in my sim: I mainly want surprising skies.

Thanks for the actual-use head's up.  I've always wondered...

[HiFlyer 9,363]

Personally, I see no reason why AEFS2 needs a real world weather system.

I avoid the heck out of real world weather, most especially in xplane, where all those fancy layers tend to drag fps right down into the dirt.

 

I very much tend to use themes, and would enjoy those in AF.

[Guest]

Thanks for the actual-use head's up.  I've always wondered...

You're welcome. Of course YMMV. Some people don't have problems at all with VR while some get sick in a minute.

[Chock 17,769]

A few things:

 

First up, whether it is a scenery developer or an add-on aeroplane developer, some developer has to be at the forefront of saying: 'yeah, we'll do stuff for Aerofly', and it seems at least one (that we know of) has. They will effectively open the floodgates, and in doing so, others may choose to come (I'd venture to suggest there are many other developers considering it). All flight simulators started out like that as far as payware developers were concerned, there had to be one who jumped in first. So I wouldn't take it as gospel that all Aerofly will ever be is a VFR simple sim purely because one developer has said: 'we're doing pretty scenery and screw the complex flight systems', of course they're gonna say that when that is their particular area of expertise. I'm pretty damn sure if A2A, PMDG, FSL or whatever said to Aerofly's developers: 'Hey, you want us to port over our super-real tubeliner to Aerofly and help you with implementing ATC and Nav aids?' the answer would be, 'hell yeah, when can you start?'.

 

Second, yeah, it's nice to have dynamic weather downloading from real metars, but frankly, if you wanted to fly in realistic weather, it'd be easy enough to look up a metar and then emulate it with a half decent stab at canned built-in weather scenarios and a few custom sliders, which FS2 does already posses. So if that is how FS2 is for weather, it's really not a big deal.

 

Third, I'm pretty sure that all the developers who make ATC add-ons for FS will be seriously considering the potential to make a killing by being the first to have a crack at getting ATC into FS2. They are businesses, and they'd be fools not to look at a potentially new market for their efforts. After all, they've already got all the sounds done, there is an SDK for FS2, so it's simply a case of seeing what is required to glue what they already have onto that sim, using the SDK.

 

Ultimately, if PMDG, A2A,  Aerosoft, Just Flight, FSL, FS2Crew, Rex  et all can pull off realistic Concordes, A320s, 737s, B17s, PBY Catalinas, ATC, CRM add ons, virtual airline companies with an index-linked economy, weather add ons, missions, flight school apps, etc, etc, which all work in a ten-year-old sim which hasn't had any developers working on it for the past eight years, then I'm pretty damn sure they could do it in a sim which is brand new and has a development team all present and correct right now, regardless of where FSx-SE and P3D are going.

[jcomm 5,961]

Very - VERY! - good points Alan!

[OldFlyboy 30]

To be fair, he also clearly said when it's fleshed out, which is an indeterminate time period in the future; and his subsequent posts have mostly stressed its value as a supplementary sim, strong for VFR and VR.

 

After six years (or thereabout) its present level of development makes me believe that "an indeterminate time period" may last longer than I will.  So I gave it another hour or so yesterday and decided it just isn't for me.

Refunds were requested and Steam supplied it within two hours.

On a positive note: I think it is great that so many are enjoying AeroFly and hope that it draws a lot of new enthusiasts to this great Flight Sim world

[Guest]

Ultimately, if PMDG, A2A, Aerosoft, Just Flight, FSL, FS2Crew, Rex et all can pull off realistic Concordes, A320s, 737s, B17s, PBY Catalinas, ATC, CRM add ons, virtual airline companies with an index-linked economy, weather add ons, missions, flight school apps, etc, etc, which all work in a ten-year-old sim which hasn't had any developers working on it for the past eight years, then I'm pretty damn sure they could do it in a sim which is brand new and has a development team all present and correct right now, regardless of where FSx-SE and P3D are going.

Yes, but well, if they all port their stuff to AFS2, what do we get...? What exactly does AFS2 offer that other sims don't offer? Add all you mention to AFS2 and I wonder what the benefit of AFS2 will be. I am thinking more and more that the strongest point of AFS2 is that you can very quickly do a quick VFR flight. Add too much to it and it loses its strongest point, it will defy its purpose. It would become some sort of XP with photoreal but without all the detail.

 

I think more and more that iPacs should focus on being a quick and easy flying sim with VR being or becoming one of its strong points.

[Paraffin 2,197]

Personally, I see no reason why AEFS2 needs a real world weather system.

 

Not everyone wants that, and it's probably very low on the desired features list for the target market JV recently mentioned.

 

However, it's still a good goal to shoot for, because real weather injection requires very good weather modeling in the sim. When there is no real world weather injection, a sim can get by with eye candy clouds and weather effects that don't represent real weather very well.

 

If a big part of the appeal of this sim is how amazingly realistic the ground looks (at altitude, anyway), why wouldn't you want the same degree of realism in the sky?

I avoid the heck out of real world weather, most especially in xplane, where all those fancy layers tend to drag fps right down into the dirt.

 

That's not a failure of the sim though, it's a failure of one user's hardware setup. I get consistent 40+ fps using real weather in X-Plane.

[Chock 17,769]

Yes, but well, if they all port their stuff to AFS2, what do we get...? What exactly does AFS2 offer that other sims don't offer? Add all you mention to AFS2 and I wonder what the benefit of AFS2 will be.

 

well, let's look at what some of the other ones offer at present with those things already in there:

 

FSx-SE is much improved over FSx boxed with patches and acceleration added, but, we still have to contend with the fact that Steam can be a pain in the &@($* (I should know, I've used Steam for years, think I've got about 70 games in my library on Steam lol). As far as I'm aware, the continued development is of it (as far as new features or versions are concerned) is nebulous at best, with various announcements about new versions for 2016 etc, and/or development of a new sim based on MS Flight from Dovetail having come to nought. Not saying it won't happen, but it's anyone's guess as to whether it will transpire. You can get most old FS add-ons to work with Steam FSx (if you know what you are doing and are prepared to mess around with manually editing config files etc), so it's not all bad to have a much optimised version of FSx to add stuff to, but it's still a bit frozen in time in spite of the tweaking and recompiling which Dovetail did.

 

P3D, is already pretty split up in terms of numbers of versions out there, and one look at these forums will confirm that it doesn't always work smoothly for everyone. As with most things flight sim, I was one of the 'early adopters' of P3D and I don't mind it, but there is also the question of the different licensing of it. As it stands, whilst it hardly counts as to be the crime of the century, it does seem that many users of P3D are using an Academic Licence when strictly speaking, they should not. Like I say, not exactly gonna make you public enemy number one, but let's be honest, having a customer base for add-ons founded on most of them indulging in not complying with the EULA is not exactly great from a business point of view. Personally, being someone who runs their own software training company, I know I'm okay to use it with an academic license, and even if that were not so, it's quite evident that LM are turning a blind eye to checking whether people truly qualify for the licensing, but the fact remains that LM could pull the plug on people any time they liked to do so because of EULA transgression, or indeed may even be forced into doing so, and then where is the market going to be for all those add-ons? After all, what if someone pointed out that they are turning a blind eye to EULA transgressions when they were bidding to get some new Government contract to build a new jet fighter for the USAF? They'd drop P3D like a hot rock if they thought bad publicity like that was gonna screw that lucrative pooch.

 

So then you've got x-Plane. Currently at what is it - Version 11? I've had a few versions of it, including V10, but I've never really liked the GUI for it, frankly, I think MS got the GUI spot on with FS9/FSx. All the other flight sims out there (including Aerofly FS2) could learn a thing or two from the FS9/x GUI, as it is elegant in its simplicity yet comprehensive to let you set up pretty much any flight you like easily. Sure, they could adopt a similar GUI for x-plane (I wish they would). But more critically, in spite of all the trumpeting for that blade element flight modeling system which x-plane uses, anyone who has ever developed anything for it using that system knows the theory is one thing, but in practice you invariably still have to tweak the hell out of flight models to make a convincing one, to the point where you might as well have been using the MSFS table-based system to create the flight model in the first place. I'm not saying that it ends up being a bad sim, but frankly I've just never got on with it, and I've given in plenty of tries over several versions.

 

Of course, I admit much of the above is just my opinion, but it is an opinion largely based on facts and experience.