What do you guys think of Air Hauler 2?

[SmokeDiddy 262]

On 11/29/2017 at 5:05 AM, Boomer said:

I have AH1 and one aspect I don' like is the game clock runs even when the game is shut down.  Does AH2 work this way as well?

Yes, the clock runs 100% of the time with no way to pause it.  This has been asked a few times in the EA forum, but in keeping with his plan, Slopey says there will be no game pause.  If you don't get in too much debt initially, you don't really need to pause.In addition, I even take the game with me when I travel for work and I can manage my company without the need to have my sim installed on my laptop.

[Flic1 976]

1 hour ago, Jakub Compel said:

any info about this ? worth it to buy ? I saw that is EA since 2 years,  thanks.

I bought it about 3 weeks ago.  I have been flying tubeliners for years but this had gotten me back into GA flying.  I started a small company using 4 A2A Comanches and just added the Milviz C-310r along with 4 AI pilots. This really is a neat program, in fact it was this thread that got me interested in it!  Really enjoying it and have been surprised how beautiful P3D is at lower altitudes😄  I've been doing cargo runs into small fields I never would have flown into.  There is no manual but the forums have a lot of information and it is pretty intuitive to figure out. I 'd recommend it for sure!

Edited September 9, 2018 by Flic1

[Jakub Compel 8]

Thanks for info .. and some internal information from their website ? progress, they have approximately date of the finis ? etc .. I have no access because, I don't have purchased it .

Edited September 9, 2018 by Jakub Compel

[Flic1 976]

5 minutes ago, Jakub Compel said:

Thanks for info .. and some internal information from their website ? progress, etc .. I have no access because, I don't have purchased it .

No word on when the official version will be released but the developer is very active on the forum and it appears updates/fixes have been pushed out every month or so.  I have had to ask a few questions and they are quick to respond.  I have not noticed any issues or bugs so far.  The only downside is again a lack of a manual which will be included in the official release. 

[Jakub Compel 8]

🙂 thank you very much .. sounds good.

[CaptKornDog 282]

I put it down about 9 or 10 months ago.  I was making $50-100K+ on 100 NM flights with AI pilots in Metroliners....just kinda killed it for me.

 

Also, for passenger flights, it irked me that I simply couldn't load up at a gate/time of my choice (i.e. real time) and essentially click "fly now".  Always would be dinged for departing late and parking spots would not coincide with my scenery.  Seemed like I would have to take a half dozen "extra" steps to "make it work" for the flights I wanted to fly.
 

[Chock 17,769]

I wouldn't worry about it being Early Access, it's been perfectly usable since day one of being released for Early Access, it just gets tweaked and has a bit of finessing done to it every once in a while, so all that Early Access thing really means is that the developer (Slopey) is constantly looking for ways to potentially improve it. I do update it when patches and version changes are released, but I could quite happily use the completely unpatched very first version which was released a couple of years ago with no issues, it really is that stable.

With regard to the constantly running clock even when you haven't got the program fired up, all you have to do is buy (or lease) something like a private jet or small airliner, then create a scheduled passenger route which runs a few flights daily (perhaps between London Heathrow to Paris Charles De Gaulle or some such), then hire maybe six AI pilots to fly it for you. Air Hauler will then take care of itself, bringing cash in when you're away from it for a while. If you like, you can just crank it up once a week for a minute or so to make sure the aeroplanes are maintained with their airframe hours checks and are in decent airworthy condition, and that's literally all you have to do if you're too busy to give it some longer attention.

I can leave AH alone for literally weeks, then when I crank it up, it thinks about it for a minute or so whilst it calculates what I've made on my AI passenger routes, then I just have to do a tiny bit of maintenance checking. Then I could again cheerfully not fire it up for another few weeks if I wasn't in the mood for it and know it was ticking over nicely.

It really is one of the best add-ons you can get for your flight sim, because you can either dive in deep, or dabble, you can fly yourself or manage AI pilots and let them do it all, or a bit of both, you can manage routes and bases and such,  trade in stocks, construct materials and building etc, etc. Literally loads of choices in how you mess with it and what you do, or choose not to do.

The developer is a top notch bloke too, who will answer your queries and offer assistance quickly if you ever need it; not that you ever do need assistance to be honest, I think in all the years I've been using AH (I bought the first version on day 1 of release and bought the EA version 2 on day one of release), I've made one enquiry about some compatibility issue with some cargo plane, and the developer was back to me the same day with a solution for my issue.

 

Edited September 9, 2018 by Chock

[eslader 1,783]

There are a couple of annoying bugs that will crop up right now. The main one is that pilots will get un-assigned from their airplanes, and sometimes randomly assigned to other airplanes. When this happens, you pretty much need to do a ground stop of your entire fleet and then manually move the pilots to the airport where the plane they're supposed to be flying is, then re-assign them. 

Pilots gain experience and ratings, which means if the wrong inexperienced pilot gets assigned to your 747, and cracks it up on landing, it's gonna cost you some cash to fix -- a 2% damaged 747 costs half a million to repair, as I discovered when a junior pilot got mis-assigned to it. 

This can lose you lots of money, but if you have a healthy enough company you can recover very easily, and I've no doubt Slopey will get it fixed at some point.

[Aussieflyer38 13]

On 11/26/2017 at 12:05 AM, Chock said:

Well, as it says in the present manual:

'As the early access period continues, more information on features and detail will be added to this document, with a fully detailed manual made available at release.'

There is no point in the developer wasting time constantly recreating new manual PDFs every time a bug is squashed or a feature is tweaked or added. As it stands, AH2 Early Access is usable and completely stable, and sure, some features take a bit of figuring out, but it's not rocket science to suss out how it all works, especially since there is a specific support forum for the product. More importantly, I have literally never had either the original Air Hauler or the present Air Hauler 2 early access version crash, not once, ever, and that's amazing considering I've been using AH since 2009 when the first version came out and have used it with FS9, FSX and P3D.

You can have as many companies as you like, you pick which one you want when you fire it up (takes about 2 seconds to do that). Or if you like, you can have your single company with all kinds of different aeroplanes in its fleet, and your pilot can have personal, i.e. non company aeroplanes too.

I have some AI pilots flying passenger schedules in Citation CJ4s and some flying cargo jobs in ATL-98s, but I've also got some pilots who will be taking a type rating and building hours in another ATL-98 which I purchased in poor condition, which I will repair and then eventually have making cargo runs across the Atlantic with those newer pilots, one other ATL-98 (G-CARV) is the one I use personally for cargo flights. Note on this screenshot that one CJ4 is slightly damaged, this is because one of the pilots that operates that aeroplane is a bit lacking in skills, they will improve with time though and the aeroplane is insured. One of the ATL-98s is also damaged, it was like that when I bought it, which is why it only cost about three million Dollars to buy. It is being delivered to one of my bases by the seller, and that will take a couple of days as it is coming from the Western USA (I could have chosen to fly it myself if I wanted it quicker, but couldn't be bothered, so I chose the option to pay for delivery):

 

You don't need a youtube tutorial for it, it's pretty much common sense, the UI makes it easy to understand and use.

'As the early access period continues, more information on features and detail will be added to this document, with a fully detailed manual made available at release.'

Yeah well that never happened.

[simfan1983 185]

That's very strange because the FSX/P3D version has a really good manual if you go to the options tab. Can't imagine the XP11 version is all that different. No doubt Slopey is working on MSFS version of AH2 and will get round to the manual in due course. The support on the forum is top notch.

[gryper 8]

It's March 2021 and I just bought this for MSFS2020. I thought it was pretty cool at first. But like most every game, once you get a large company with a lot of aircraft and routes, it starts taking several seconds before what you click on actuates. I have 32GB of RAM. Do I need to double this?

[CaptKornDog 282]

2 hours ago, gryper said:

It's March 2021 and I just bought this for MSFS2020. I thought it was pretty cool at first. But like most every game, once you get a large company with a lot of aircraft and routes, it starts taking several seconds before what you click on actuates. I have 32GB of RAM. Do I need to double this?

I wouldn't double your RAM just for AH2.

 

Sounds like you've about hit the spot most folks have with larger companies, myself included.  (And about the spot where I put down AH2...still looking for something else between FSE and AH2 myself 😐.  Preferably not subscription based.)

Edited April 3, 2021 by CaptKornDog

[gryper 8]

4 hours ago, CaptKornDog said:

I wouldn't double your RAM just for AH2.

 

Sounds like you've about hit the spot most folks have with larger companies, myself included.  (And about the spot where I put down AH2...still looking for something else between FSE and AH2 myself 😐.  Preferably not subscription based.)

Right. I'll just make smaller companies. Maybe that will work.