Aerofly: Encouraging news

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

I was right...this IS going to be the ESP-based flight sim (x) killer...yep.

I can't wait to be able to load up AF2, as I have with Ortho4XP inside XP11, for photo-real, in areas that I fly mostly, like for instance, the Great Lakes Region, and New England.

To be able to take off from an airport (like Detroit Metro) and fly across Lake Michigan for a touch down at Meigs....drooling already...!

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

54 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Size increases almost exponentially depending on the resolution of the scenery.

A resolution approximating that of current fsx textures is not necessarily ginormous.

I have already generated 6 TB's with Ortho4XP, with no end in sight.  You need storage capacity...so just wait for 4-6 TB My Books to come on sale. That takes care of it... :)

[HiFlyer 9,343]

3 minutes ago, Sesquashtoo said:

I have already generated 6 TB's with Ortho4XP, with no end in sight.  You need storage capacity...so just wait for 4-6 TB My Books to come on sale. That takes care of it... :)

https://jet.com/product/Toshiba-HDWE160XZSTA-6TB-DESK-INTERNAL-HDD-7200RPM-128MBMD04ACA600/948de398cf384473ba23d127d2bdb42d

 

 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

9 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Size increases almost exponentially depending on the resolution of the scenery.

A resolution approximating that of current fsx textures is not necessarily ginormous.

Current FSX textures are pretty lame, that's last decades tech. The photoscenery in Aerofly is OK, but not great. Once you combine high quality images with high resolution, photoscenery comes into its own, as objects start to have more apparent depth and the scenery is flyable from even quite low altitudes.

In P3D, I fly 25cm per pixel scenery where possible, and its not that hard to create large areas at that resolution if you have the time. I'm hoping that once I convert some of this for AF2 use it will look even better. 

WD will be coming out with some seriously large helium-filled HDD in the near future (as you probably know, you can already get decent-sized helium drives, but the bigger ones are coming) - I'm looking forward to the serious increase in storage capacity that that tech will bring. 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

8 hours ago, Sesquashtoo said:

I have already generated 6 TB's with Ortho4XP, with no end in sight.  You need storage capacity...so just wait for 4-6 TB My Books to come on sale. That takes care of it... :)

I've got 2Tb+4Tb+4Tb+4Tb+5Tb, though some of that is the source data (tiles, .bmps). Can't have too much storage, go for a fast internal drive where possible - external are OK, but I do notice the difference. I use WD Black, and have just added a new 6Tb one of those, which is as big as you can get at present, unfortunately. I also have a 1Tb SSD for the sim, but tiny drives like that fill up quickly. :)

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Ipacs has to walk a fine line between resolution and download size.

There have already been near insurrections from some people at how hefty some of the downloads have been.

Not everyone has a fast connection, and for some, larger downloads might take days and days.

I suspect third parties will have to offer higher resolutions, or, alternately, people can use the tools Ipacs is about to release to roll their own.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Just now, HiFlyer said:

Ipacs has to walk a fine line between resolution and download size.

There have already been near insurrections from some people at how hefty some of the downloads have been.

I know, some consumers have a poor level of committment to this flight sim endeavour!

That's why I know that I need to make my own scenery. There's also the issue that commercially  available scenery is generally of moderate quality at best - I still buy it, but its not a patch on what you make of you're not bothered with the size or time required.

For me, this has been a project spread over many years - as some of you well know, it us a beatuful thing to fly over high-quality orthoscenery that you have made yourself.

[MikeT707 1,181]

On 6/8/2017 at 10:07 PM, OzWhitey said:

In P3D, I fly 25cm per pixel scenery where possible, and its not that hard to create large areas at that resolution if you have the time. I'm hoping that once I convert some of this for AF2 use it will look even better. 

How does one create his own scenery?

[OzWhitey 3,353]

1 hour ago, MikeT707 said:

How does one create his own scenery?

MIke, download FS Earth tiles and you'll find that making orthoscenery for the USA and Western Europe, for use in Prepar3d, is a breeze. I've spent years doing this, and its great fun! 

Consider buying a tree package - I use Nuvecta and Open VFR - to populate some objects on the flat orthoscenery base. I also use a payware product called instant scenery 3 to add objects around airports, and a freeware product called ADE to align runways to the photoscenery. 

Keep the .bmp and .inf files that FS Earth tiles makes, and you'll be able to convert them to orthoscenery for  Aerofly 2 once the appropriate tool is released by IPACS (which we're promised in the very near future).