ATC won't be here anytime soon (and mod annoyances)

[Guest]

EDIT
Some things arent' worth it. I think I'll better stop posting about AFS2 and IPACS for a while. Have fun, all. Enjoy what you've got.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Guest

[OzWhitey 3,353]

This is such a strange thread.

So many people who either don’t fly the sim being negative, and others who are fixated on feature “x” - and who feel that its absence is life-ruining.

Chaps, just get a good video card, an Oculus and Orbx Trueearth, and go flying.

There’s a heap of depth in this sim, compare the Q400 to any default plane in FSX for example, this is miles ahead. Of course its not as complete as the Majestic, but its not an A-grade payware addon.

Orbx scenery looks great, I’ve been flying over the Netherlands tonight in the 172, and just greased a landing in the Q400 at EHAM.

Love this sim! And no, it doesn’t fully replace X-plane or P3D for me, but it does give me a smooth, rich Orbx experience that in some ways is far superior to that provided by the other platforms that I use.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

On 8/17/2018 at 12:59 AM, GCBraun said:

If they would give me at least one advanced GA plane and support something like VATSIM or IVAO, I would give AF2 a chance. Love the VR performance, but there is no way I am going to spend time flying arcade-like planes.

Thiago, I know you’re a VR guy, so you really should fly this sim. They’re not “arcade-like” planes, for example Q400 is missing some systems depth but is better than some of the payware planes that i’ve bought for the established sims.

For GA, the planes aren’t “arcade” either, they fly with a decent flight model and have a moderate degree of complexity - i’ve been flying the 172 tonight, and the autopilot functions as it should, for example. The VR implementation here is good also, as you use your finger to press the AP buttons, which feels much more true to life than using a mouse.

Systems depth is constantly increasing, dev team are clearly not trying to cater to the gamer market, rather they’re building a serious sim in a modular format (so some things, like proper FMC functionality, are still pending).

Trueearth completes the package somewhat, by giving us a decent-sized playground in which to make GA flights.

Edited August 19, 2018 by OzWhitey

[HiFlyer 9,359]

54 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Trueearth completes the package somewhat, by giving us a decent-sized playground in which to make GA flights.

This.

Florida and this finally give fliers a bit of legroom to stretch out and explore a bit. True Earth GB will add even more, and more is coming.

Is it slower than some want? Sure. But Ipacs is not Microsoft or LM, with endless cash spilling out of its pockets.

Nor are they DTG, that always scared me with their appearance of bottomless pockets...... until the pockets were apparently empty, and that was that.

I will take slow and steady, if that ups the chance of the journey eventually reaching its destination.

[GCBraun 2,392]

12 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Thiago, I know you’re a VR guy, so you really should fly this sim. They’re not “arcade-like” planes, for example Q400 is missing some systems depth but is better than some of the payware planes that i’ve bought for the established sims.

For GA, the planes aren’t “arcade” either, they fly with a decent flight model and have a moderate degree of complexity - i’ve been flying the 172 tonight, and the autopilot functions as it should, for example. The VR implementation here is good also, as you use your finger to press the AP buttons, which feels much more true to life than using a mouse.

Systems depth is constantly increasing, dev team are clearly not trying to cater to the gamer market, rather they’re building a serious sim in a modular format (so some things, like proper FMC functionality, are still pending).

Trueearth completes the package somewhat, by giving us a decent-sized playground in which to make GA flights.

Hi Robert, thanks for the suggestion. I have bought AF2 and almost all of its DLC's in order to support development. Currently it is not installed, but I am looking forward to give it a go sometime in the future.

I did not mean to bash the simulator when I used the "arcade-like" expression. The problem is that, owning the Majestic Q400, the A2A C172 (or even the XP11 C172 with the REP module), I cannot find much enjoyment flying the default planes of AF2. 

I am more or less of a systems-freak. While VR performance in AF2 is great, I need an advanced plane to get any enjoyment out of my simming session. For that reason, DCS is slowly becoming my no. 1 sim. It has multiple (extremely) high-fidelity add-ons, stunning graphics, good VR performance, awesome flight-model on planes and helicopters and also the ability to blow things up when needed. For non combat-folks, a YAK-52 was just released that I still have to try...

Anyway, I do hope the best for AF2 and I will definitely keep an open eye on its progress. 

Edited August 20, 2018 by GCBraun

[dave2013 1,130]

On 8/18/2018 at 12:04 PM, HiFlyer said:

Wouldn't they be doing the very same if they prioritized your desires?

I remember well the DTG "simmers desires" threads.

Everyone wants to be at the head of the line in this hobby. It must drive developers mad.

Ipacs decided to go ahead and do ATC. I wanted otherwise, but I did not go ahead and start announcing that not answering my particular needs equaled doom.

I remain cognizant that with a self-made engine they have lasted longer and gotten more support (in some ways) than the much flashier and more well-funded DTG sim, which is now history, while they are still here.

Maybe slow and steady sometimes does have a better chance of winning the race.

Maybe they know what they are capable of, and what they are doing better than we.

Time will tell.

 

They're not simply *my* desires. Take a look at the poll I posted and it's already clear that ATC is way below the importance simmers place on weather and scenery.

The developer's decision to use precious resources and time to work on ATC over other features tells me that they are out of touch with flightsim users.  To me it's common sense to add a good weather simulation to a flight simulator before worrying about ATC.  Oh well, you can't teach people common sense.

I have always said that I wish these guys well, just like I did for the DTG developers. Time will tell if these IPACS folks are successful or not.  Personally, I have my doubts.

Update: I just discovered that the developers are complaining about negative reviews of their simulator on Steam. They feel these criticisms are unfair and are encouraging their user base to counter the negative reviews. This despite the fact that their reviews are still overall "mostly positive". Not a good sign...

Edited August 20, 2018 by dave2013

[dave2013 1,130]

15 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

This.

Florida and this finally give fliers a bit of legroom to stretch out and explore a bit. True Earth GB will add even more, and more is coming.

Is it slower than some want? Sure. But Ipacs is not Microsoft or LM, with endless cash spilling out of its pockets.

Nor are they DTG, that always scared me with their appearance of bottomless pockets...... until the pockets were apparently empty, and that was that.

I will take slow and steady, if that ups the chance of the journey eventually reaching its destination.

I did a little calculation to get an idea of how much it would cost to cover just Europe and the United States with the TrueEarth type scenery:

TrueEarth Netherlands: $35 for 16,000 square miles of scenery.

South Florida DLC: $35 for about 20,000 square miles of scenery - it isn't clear just exactly how much of Florida is actually included here, but the advertising focuses on Key West and Miami so I'm assuming it's the lower 1/3 of the state.

At this rate it will cost over $6,000 to cover the United States and about the same to cover all of Europe, not to mention how many years, or decades, this will take.

I'm just being realistic. Aerofly FS2 will never be able to equal FSX/P3D unless something drastically changes in the way it's developed.

Dave

Edited August 20, 2018 by dave2013
Spelling mistake

[HiFlyer 9,359]

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

At this rate it will cost over $6,000 to cover the United States and about the same to cover all of Europe, not to mention how many years, or decades, this will take.

You do realize that Ipacs has already released the tools for users to create their own scenery, and that many people already do so? And that there is already a growing community of user and developer created tools expanding that functionality?

That would be for free. That includes tools for nearly automated airport creation.

Do you know that Ipacs created an entire website for users to share those creations?

Did you note the growing community of users showing their previews of large swaths of territory, and working together to make creation even simpler to accomplish?

It seems when looking at Aerofly, we are focusing on much different things..........

I wonder, do you even have the program? Your post history shows no mention of anything except P3D before this thread.

[torium 207]

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

At this rate it will cost over $6,000 to cover the United States and about the same to cover all of Europe, not to mention how many years, or decades, this will take.

I'm just being realistic. Aerofly FS2 will never be able to equal FSX/P3D unless something drastically changes in the way it's developed.

Please do not compare apples with pears. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

At this rate it will cost over $6,000 to cover the United States

How's that any different than what we have today with other platforms?  I'd happily pay that for this level of quality if it were available on any platform ... the amount of time it takes to get all the buildings created, placed, mesh set, color matching PR sources, alignment of sources, etc. etc. $6000 would be a bargain!  OrthoXP is great but it's not really as simple as press a button and viola instant scenery, far from it, there is still a lot of other work involved if you want it to get "close" to looking like AF2 + Orbx Netherlands.  I don't have the free time to spend doing scenery work.

Buying high quality imagery that is "legal" to distribute costs a fortune ... costs even more if the imagery source is color matched, cloud free, with minimal shadows and high resolution.  I've inquired several times and picked what I thought would be a "cheap" location ... "Newfoundland" and costs started at $6 Million US just for the source.

I'm uploading a video I made of AF2 + Netherlands and how to get it to work with Foreflight on my iPAD ... it's in 4K and 60 FPS but almost 1 hour long and I'm not sure YouTube will allow or be able to work/convert a 1 hour 4K 60 FPS video (may have to split it up into smaller parts).

Cheers, Rob.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Does it really make any sense to have worldwide high resolution orthoimagery? Think about the waste of storage space by using imagery in deserts, open oceans and jungle areas. No one could tell the difference. Just try Google Earth in one of these locations of homogeneous landclass. 

In any case, everyone having local copies of massive amounts of imagery is a dumb idea. A cloud-based solution via a subscription is a more likely long term outcome.

[dave2013 1,130]

28 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

How's that any different than what we have today with other platforms?  I'd happily pay that for this level of quality if it were available on any platform ... the amount of time it takes to get all the buildings created, placed, mesh set, color matching PR sources, alignment of sources, etc. etc. $6000 would be a bargain!  OrthoXP is great but it's not really as simple as press a button and viola instant scenery, far from it, there is still a lot of other work involved if you want it to get "close" to looking like AF2 + Orbx Netherlands.  I don't have the free time to spend doing scenery work.

Buying high quality imagery that is "legal" to distribute costs a fortune ... costs even more if the imagery source is color matched, cloud free, with minimal shadows and high resolution.  I've inquired several times and picked what I thought would be a "cheap" location ... "Newfoundland" and costs started at $6 Million US just for the source.

I'm uploading a video I made of AF2 + Netherlands and how to get it to work with Foreflight on my iPAD ... it's in 4K and 60 FPS but almost 1 hour long and I'm not sure YouTube will allow or be able to work/convert a 1 hour 4K 60 FPS video (may have to split it up into smaller parts).

Cheers, Rob.

Good for you.  I'm glad that you can afford to spend that much money for flightsim scenery.  I doubt, however, that most folks can afford to spend this much money.  I certainly cannot.  Perhaps you are a bit out of touch with most flightsimmers as well?

My intention is not to bash Aerofly FS2.  I do not own it but have seen videos and screenshots and find the scenery  very nice. If it covered a larger area of the world, like the U.S. or Europe, then I'd purchase it. I'm very disappointed in the pace of development and the fact that the developers chose to focus on ATC instead of adding a good weather simulation and expanding the scenery area.

It's my opinion that this particular product is just a niche simulator and will remain so for the next several years, if, that is, the business survives.

My overall point is that it is not, and will not be, at least for a very long time, a simulator on par with FSX/P3D.  I've seen a good deal of hype regarding this simulator just like we saw for DTG FSW and I think people's expectations for it are overblown.  One poster here stated "don't compare apples with pears", and he's right, you really can't compare FSX/P3D with Aerofly FS2 because one is in the Little Leagues and the other in the Major Leagues.

Dave

[pmb 5,137]

23 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Does it really make any sense to have worldwide high resolution orthoimagery? Think about the waste of storage space by using imagery in deserts, open oceans and jungle areas. No one could tell the difference. Just try Google Earth in one of these locations of homogeneous landclass. 

This!

AeroflyFS2 comes with world-wide low-resolution scenery which, however, is sufficient for flying 10 km AGL. Perhaps IPACS can boost resolution a bit more, but worldwide high-resolution scenery would neither make sense nor be feasible.

For airliners, you need high-res areas while taking off and landing, in-between what we have is sufficient. You can well take off from KSFO and land at KJFK in the 747 right now, there's no wall in-between (as it was in AeroflyFS1 around Switzerland). For GA flyers (like me) we certainly would be happy about a few more high-res areas (and some like FTX PNW are in the pipeline), but my wee little C172 doesn't make it from KSFO to NZAA 3000 ft above the sea anyway.

This said, I agree to Dave that the speed of development is insufficient, and I have my doubt their style of development (and communication!) will buy them a lot of new users. Even more, as the other sims don't stand still and wait for AeroflyFS2 to arrive. Notably dynamic elements like weather, moving water, driving cars etc. are overdue (IMHO). I think one major stumbling block is their intention to make all those features by a team of 2+3 (give or take one) guys.

Kind regards, Michael

[Guest]

3 hours ago, dave2013 said:

I did a little calculation to get an idea of how much it would cost to cover just Europe and the United States with the TrueEarth type scenery:

TrueEarth Netherlands: $35 for 16,000 square miles of scenery.

South Florida DLC: $35 for about 20,000 square miles of scenery - it isn't clear just exactly how much of Florida is actually included here, but the advertising focuses on Key West and Miami so I'm assuming it's the lower 1/3 of the state.

At this rate it will cost over $6,000 to cover the United States and about the same to cover all of Europe, not to mention how many years, or decades, this will take.

I'm just being realistic. Aerofly FS2 will never be able to equal FSX/P3D unless something drastically changes in the way it's developed.

Dave

How much would it cost to cover just Europe and the United States with the TrueEarth type scenery in FSX/P3D? ;)

If you are talking about scenery only even FSX/P3D itself, with its landclass scenery, will never be able to equal FSX/P3D plus TruEarth. Even if "something drastically changes in the way it's developed". And btw FSX will never ever equal AFS2+TrueEarth because FSX can't even handle it.

You are comparing "apples with pears" because you are comparing AFS2+TrueEarth with FSX/P3D+landclass scenery. Everything you say goes for FSX/P3D as well if you do an honest calculation.

BTW AFS2 could be made equal with FSX/P3D pretty quickly (scenery wise) if IPACS also went the landclass way. Luckily they didn't. And luckily Orbx didn't either.

I myself don't care for worldwide coverage so I am lucky. Even in P3D I spend YEARS in PNW alone and in Norway alone. I can understand the disappointment though if you only like to do long hauls but those are already possible in AFS2.

I do agree with your overall point though, and the slow progress. I also share Michael's concerns but I think EVERYONE does. But I don't want to be the cause of IPACS going out of business in 4 months so I'll better leave it at that.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

Perhaps you are a bit out of touch with most flightsimmers as well?

I've never claimed to know anything about "most flightsimmers" ... I was presenting you with the costs and time investment in scenery development.  If cost is an issue for you, then all 3 platforms (P3D, XP11, AF2) provide you with the tools to make your own scenery using free lower res public domain sources.  If you look at MSE scenery (FSX/P3D) for US and multiple versions of that scenery, that cost me about $3000 and that's without any Autogen (which is a huge time/expense when making scenery).

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

I do not own it but have seen videos and screenshots and find the scenery  very nice.

So how is development supposed to "speed up" if you and/or others aren't buying the product for what it is?

We all know AF2 is missing much, they've never pretended to go head to head with other platforms on a feature by feature basis ... where they exceed other platforms is performance to visual ratio ... is that enough for flight simmers?  I have no idea, not even going to pretend that I do.

As features are added, I'm certain FPS will drop, nothing comes for free on the computational front ... during my flights with AF2, just flying thru a smallish cloud and my FPS dropped from 120 to 72 then picked up as I exited the cloud.  Vulkan is a great API, but it can't perform miracles and optimization compromises will be need just like any other platform.

No I'm not being a "clapper" but I have realistic expectations based on what I know about what's involved in scenery development and the size of development teams.  I've gone over the $$$ involved in making a flight simulator and this market just isn't big enough to carry $100 Million development projects.  If it were, we'd already have seen the results in 2018.

AF2 is NOT the same as what DTG and FSW were trying to achieve, very different environments and definitely NOT Apples to Apples.  Look at the Bush Pilot product due out sometime this year, that's all fictional scenery ... for obvious reasons, saves on costs.  That's why LC exists, do we really need "snap shot in time" scenery? ... it's only really accurate for whenever the images were taken ... not to mention it comes with cars/trucks that need to be overlaid with vectored roads other wise we have cars driving over cars, etc. ... and we're back to the blind eye.

Being a software engineer my perspective is perhaps different and coming from a background were a few outlined polygons to represent a runway with 2 colors and beeps for "sound" of a prop engine, I'm amazed at where we are today ... I guess it's all in your experience and expectations.

Cheers, Rob.