Aerosoft posts screenshots of new VFR Flight Simulator!

[sascha 314]

A very interesting concept: http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/128306-vfr-simulator-preview/

[Chock 17,769]

Looks good.

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

Kinda strange looking ground in some places, but cool looking sim. Graphics are nice and bright. 

[pracines 823]

First thing that comes to mind is, what happened to Ready for Takeoff, MS Flight, and DTG Flight School? Same themes, same outcomes...waste of time and effort. 

[himmelhorse 1,276]

pracines,

Methinks that statement might be a just little hasty. You may however, be on the right track given the quoted history.

Aerosoft though, may well be a little more dedicated to the sim Industry and from their past history, support alone is a lot of steps ahead of the game.  

Whilst it is NOT a platform (VFR) that is going to interest me in the short term, I can only wish them all the luck in the world with this development. My preferred platform, FS2004 and its associated sceneries are not a superb combination. Adequate to good at best.

I think you also have to bear in mind the progression of DTG Flight school to the current on going development of FSW. This, at least, has the potential, to be a great sim with further development and a lot more quality addons. Again, FSW is not yet for me, but hey... I am keeping an eye on it.

This is the glass half full approach and I am deliberating at great length on the glass half empty point of view LOL

Cheers guys n girls

Tony

 

[Chock 17,769]

8 hours ago, pracines said:

First thing that comes to mind is, what happened to Ready for Takeoff, MS Flight, and DTG Flight School? Same themes, same outcomes...waste of time and effort. 

In the case of those...

RFTO is okay, it's a reasonably fun game/flight sim which kids will probably like, I dunno how many copies they've sold of it, but it'll probably make its development costs back as its not a massively complex sim.

MS Flight was always going to flop, it ignored what all the exisiing flight sim fans wanted and wasn't enough of a game for those less inclined that way, not to mention rubbing many developers up the wrong way.

DTG's Flight School was a little bit different in that regard, it's fairly obvious that it was a 64-bit technology demonstrator for potential  investors in Flight Sim World, which they decided to bundle into a saleable product and then that eventually got incorporated into FSW, so that's the one which hasn't flopped, at least not yet, and if they can get it a bit better optimised it stands a pretty good chance at being a successor to FSX-SE. DTG have never admitted any of that as being their plan all along, but it's obvious enough that it was since FSX-SE is a good money spinner, but they couldn't keep going on 32 bit forever. Fortunately, they do appear to be innovating a lot with it too.

So what does this new one from Aerosoft offer? Well it looks very much to me like instalment number one will have massive appeal to all the glider pilots out there, since it has the Wilga (not a common towplane in the UK, but it is elsewhere and the Aerosoft Wilga for FS is a really good add-on), then it has three fairly popular gliders used at club level, of which, most glider pilots will have piloted at least one, then it has a motor glider too, a type which most glider pilots will also have flown. So, you've got gliding, and aerotowing, and if they put in winch launching too and decent thermal and ridge lift, then it'll be something every glider pilot will buy.

Lorby's Firefighter X does okay, as does his crop-duster add on, so one can certainly understand why they might consider the base platform for that too, and as you can see from the Aerosoft forum post, they've got some other ideas brewing for specialised versions of sim themes which use their own sim engine and terrain system.

This is not a million miles away from what Third Wire Simulations do, with their simulator platform being the basis for numerous WW1, WW2, Vietnam War and more modern combat sims, and all of those are actually not bad sims, especially their Vietnam one with its carrier operations, which I still crank up from time to time as it is one of the few sims which will let you simulate Intruder bombing and Iron Hand missions over Vietnam off a carrier.

Anyway back on that newly announced sim, providing it has some decent thermal and ridge lift simulation, it'd be an instant buy from me and probably most other enthusiastic glider pilots, because whilst we do have a few dedicated glider sims out there, we're well overdue for one with modern graphics. I think you might be surprised how well that sim might do if it can pull that off.

[Chock 17,769]

Oddly enough, that preview thread is now gone off the Aerosoft forums.

[sascha 314]

18 hours ago, Chock said:

Oddly enough, that preview thread is now gone off the Aerosoft forums.

Hmmm, now what does that forebode...

[HaraldG 559]

On 10.11.2017 at 3:33 PM, sascha said:

now what does that forebode...

Questions about Aerosoft...

By the way, what shocked me most after visiting their forums for the first time since some months ago was the rude sound there. Angry and disappointed customers, arrogant staff. Strange.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

1 minute ago, HaraldG said:

Questions about Aerosoft...

By the way, what shocked me most after visiting their forums for the first time since some months ago was the rude sound there. Angry and disappointed customers, arrogant staff. Strange.

I’ve always found their forums to be a little clickish, kind of like the ORBX forums. You’re either with them and in agreement with everything they say or if you’re not, then you’ll have a hard time and most likely your posts will be locked or disappear.

[HiFlyer 9,338]

Well, I was very interested in in information about this apparent new sim, and what suddenly happened to the post regarding it, so I've been ghosting around the Aerosoft forums and came across this. http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/128335-aerosoft-vfr-simulator-thread-gone/

 

 

[sascha 314]

HiFlyer, thank you for digging that up! I'm looking forward to that particular sim, it's a bit similar in scope to Flight Unlimited, which I loved.

[Chock 17,769]

11 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Well, I was very interested in in information about this apparent new sim, and what suddenly happened to the post regarding it, so I've been ghosting around the Aerosoft forums and came across this. http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/128335-aerosoft-vfr-simulator-thread-gone/

 

 

Yup, I figured it'd be something like that behind the initial preview thread disappearing, on which they were already saying that the name of it was in flux and the content wasn't finalised. From what they were previewing, it looked way more like a glider focused iteration of their standalone sim than a VFR one. Yeah I know gliders fly VFR, but most people think 'Cessna 172' when anyone says VFR.

I'd be interested to know if it was using the same 3D engine as Ready For Take Off, which can certainly display nice visuals and is 64 bit. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

[WingZ 547]

I'm intrigued by the reasoning behind such a release.

Aerosoft supports the Aerofly AFS2 sim does it not?

This is now publicly released and focused on high-quality visuals. In fact, some of the aircraft are Aerosoft models!

What niche would you be trying to fill with a separate glider sim?
Maybe I missed the point entirely, I don't spend too much time over at Aerosoft...

 

[HiFlyer 9,338]

Aerosoft is pretty omnivorous in what reaches its store. Graphically, the title looked very nice, probably with excellent framerates.

Limited area, but perhaps a cool change of those bored with flying over landclass based offerings and looking for something that could honestly represent reality (heavily detailed) across the entire flyable area, which I believe is intended to be 50 x50 miles.

I think this is intended to be part of a series of "experiences" based on this concept, with later releases covering different aspects of flight.

Meanwhile, Aerosoft began its official Aerofly promotion just as the sim left early access (yesterday) 

Meanwhile AF showed pics of a yet another new free plane it will be releasing soon.