A Note From The FSW Development Team

[DTG_Cryss 244]

Just cross-posting this note from Stephen Hood on the Steam forum since it should be of interest: 

"It’s been nearly two months since the release of Flight Sim World, and I hope that everyone is enjoying it – we certainly are! Before I say anything else, I would like to wholeheartedly thank everyone who has supported us with the launch and continued development of Flight Sim World. 

This project is very much a labor of passion for myself and the rest of the Flight team, and it’s an incredible feeling to be working alongside an equally passionate community to advance FSW towards being the very best it can be.

In case you have missed the individual updates, here is a brief summary of what we have achieved so far:

The implementation of Steam Workshop functionality has been a big deal for us given the importance of freeware creation in the community. We’ve seen some talented simmers create some really fantastic and unique missions, which has been great fun to see. We look forward to seeing more of your creations!

When we weren’t busy implementing new features, we have been navigating the FSW forums to collect and prioritize constructive feedback from the community. Optimization has been one of our main priorities during the Early Access period. Since launch, we have fixed various crashes including those which affected Pilot Profile and the Pro Mission Editor Tool. Additionally, we have improved performance in areas reported to us such as full-screen mode and multi-monitor support. The community feedback has allowed us to more quickly appreciate the issues people are having and eliminating these problems has been made much easier with your help.

Tweaking the light scattering settings it is something else we got a lot of feedback on. It’s taken a few weeks, but the effect the changes have had on the environment are substantial. And this is only the beginning of some incredible visual improvements you'll see in the coming weeks (more on that another time!). We have also made some major strides with our aircraft. Just to name a few things we have improved - the resolution of typical visual issues (texture and mesh irregularities etc), improved avionics (autopilot systems, DME, VOR etc), the addition of ambient motion animations, we've added new landing light effects, and even completely made over the RV-7’s cockpit!


We are now working on our sixth update, adding some passenger animations to help bring Flight Sim World to life, along with some fixes requested by those of you who have chimed in on our channels. 

The last few updates have been relatively small in comparison to what we have planned. We are looking to drop some huge updates later this month. We are particularly excited about these as we believe they will dramatically and positively improve the experience for everyone, regardless of how you like to fly. Watch this space for more news.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to everyone who has supported this project so far. It’s been a dream come true working on Flight Sim World, and I can’t wait to share the future of FSW with you all.

-Steve Hood, Executive Producer, Flight Sim World"

[jymp 168]

FSW needs realistic ATC & AI, but nope, you guys are working on passenger animations.....

[Chock 17,769]

Thanks for posting this here, saw it on other places but it's good to know Avsim is firmly in the loop. It will be nice to see a bigger update showing up soon.

[Chock 17,769]

20 minutes ago, jymp said:

FSW needs realistic ATC & AI, but nope, you guys are working on passenger animations.....

DTG have already improved the ATC a bit, but to be honest I suspect that is something they will really be thinking they'll leave to TPDs with things such as Pro ATC and Ultimate Traffic, which one assumes will be fairly easy to port over to FSW given that it retains much of the structure of FSX.

Besides which, they never said they were only working on passenger animations, just that it was one of the more exciting new things coming what with the greater possibilities of going to 64 bit architecture. Given how much people bang on about wanting rain on windows, which they have put in there, you might be surprised how many people would want to see other more realistic stuff such as people wandering about. Look how much that was welcomed when Orbx did it.

Personally I think it would be cool, it's about time the airports in a major flight sim stopped looking like something from 28 Days Later, so that when you yell 'clear prop' as you crank up your Cessna, it will actually be for a believable reason lol.

[Raven9000 272]

2 hours ago, jymp said:

FSW needs realistic ATC & AI, but nope, you guys are working on passenger animations.....

Couldn't care less about the items you mention...

 

[ClearedtoLand 149]

2 hours ago, Chock said:

Personally I think it would be cool, it's about time the airports in a major flight sim stopped looking like something from 28 Days Later, so that when you yell 'clear prop' as you crank up your Cessna, it will actually be for a believable reason lol.

Some time ago, around the release of the PMDG 777-200LR, I messed around with it at a small airport in Turkey. The guy who made the airport included animated people, but he forgot to program them with spatial awareness or any regard for airport safety regulations. Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before I saw one casually walk straight into the starboard engine as I was taxiing to the stand ... obviously, an area where DTG should consider making some improvements.

[Paraffin 2,197]

4 hours ago, Chock said:

Personally I think it would be cool, it's about time the airports in a major flight sim stopped looking like something from 28 Days Later, so that when you yell 'clear prop' as you crank up your Cessna, it will actually be for a believable reason lol.

He said "passenger animations." I don't think that extends to a populated airport or it would have been mentioned. 

And yeah, one day it would be nice to see fully populated large airports, if we get to the point where it isn't a frame rate killer, and the AI could handle not walking into a prop. But it's not exactly high on my list of priorities in a flight sim. 

A more realistic expectation -- if not now, then maybe later -- would be animated support vehicles like fuel trucks, food trucks, luggage carts and so on, which is being done in other sims. It still has that "28 Days" look with no people, but it's one way to make an airport less static without requiring too many resources.

[A32xx 129]

12 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

A more realistic expectation -- if not now, then maybe later -- would be animated support vehicles like fuel trucks, food trucks, luggage carts and so on, which is being done in other sims. It still has that "28 Days" look with no people, but it's one way to make an airport less static without requiring too many resources.

That's GSX by FSDT and AES by Aerosoft. I use both (GSX in FSX:SE and AES in FS2004) and they are both configurable, GSX slightly more so, in that you can define the distance from the aircraft that the vehicles/personnel will appear in. The animated passengers in FSW may be like the raindrops on the windshield though, in that the scenery developer has to program that effect into his model for it to appear in the sim - we shall see!

[Paraffin 2,197]

3 minutes ago, A32xx said:

That's GSX by FSDT and AES by Aerosoft. I use both (GSX in FSX:SE and AES in FS2004) and they are both configurable, GSX slightly more so, in that you can define the distance from the aircraft that the vehicles/personnel will appear in.

Airport vehicle traffic (no ground walkers) is also a a default feature in XP11. The pathways have to be set up by hand for each individual airport, so you don't see it everywhere (yet).

Quote

The animated passengers in FSW may be like the raindrops on the windshield though, in that the scenery developer has to program that effect into his model for it to appear in the sim - we shall see!

Yeah, I'm guessing it's on a per-plane basis, but it would be nice if it's a modular feature available to all plane designers. At any rate, it's one way for FSW to have a slightly different look with the default planes at least.

[Chock 17,769]

Yes, it remains to be seen what they mean by 'animated passengers' although note that they did write 'to help bring Flight Sim World to life', emphasis on 'World', so that may well mean more than simply people in the aeroplane.

[theohall65 64]

There is some vehicle traffic at airports if you crank up the traffic setting.  Will attempt to duplicate earlier flight at Boeing Field when truck drove across the runway in front of me while I was final.

[A32xx 129]

Maybe the passengers will be boarding/unboarding the aircraft via the airstairs and getting on/off the airport bus?

One feature which I think would make a huge difference is ambient sound at airports when in spot view - some wind noise, distant traffic, airport vehicles, ground staff talking etc. Up to now there has been total silence once you switch your own engine(s) off and any AI aircraft have stopped theirs or left, I find it quite eerie.

[Dazkent 113]

Hopefully part of the major update will include cold and dark and the ability to start from the gate.

 

[fs4fun 366]

8 hours ago, jymp said:

FSW needs realistic ATC & AI, but nope, you guys are working on passenger animations.....

You mean like the fantastically realistic AI and ATC that are in X-Plane and P3D? Oh wait...

FSW is squarely aimed at the entertainment market and they have put a lot of focus on the mission system for which passengers is a nice enhancement. That doesn't mean they are not working on other things. DTG has hinted that ATC is on the roadmap, but there are other improvements in the works that are ahead of it on their priority list.

[fs4fun 366]

5 hours ago, ClearedtoLand said:

Some time ago, around the release of the PMDG 777-200LR, I messed around with it at a small airport in Turkey. The guy who made the airport included animated people, but he forgot to program them with spatial awareness or any regard for airport safety regulations. Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before I saw one casually walk straight into the starboard engine as I was taxiing to the stand ... obviously, an area where DTG should consider making some improvements.

Are you suggesting that DTG add paramedic services?