Aerofly FS 2019 for IOS Released

[WingZ 547]

This sounds to me like a guaranteed recipe for keeping everyone unhappy, most of the time, then.

7 hours ago, Murmur said:

Probably it's not wasted time, because maybe with relatively little effort they could release the iOS version and thanks to its revenues, have more time and resources needed to improve the desktop version. That was the point of my post.

It's an insight that escaped me. Although 2 years' effort is hardly "relatively little".
And while I would agree to be out of step with the instant gratification of the phone brigade, I still don't get it. The business model as mentioned is: cheap or free app, then make the money on the DLC. I haven't seen too much on the app stores that goes over 10 bucks.  So... ORBX True Earth for $4.99? A lite version for phones??

I actually hope I'm wrong; that IPACS makes heaps of money from the app and can develop lots of platforms simultaneously and keep everyone happy all the time.  But mostly the PC brigade, who after all, are the only true flightsimmers on the block. 🙂

Edited December 16, 2018 by WingZ

[HiFlyer 9,336]

If my memory of history is correct, sales of the tablet and phone version of X-Plane 10 is at least partially credited for saving the company during its leaner years.

And as far as I remember, Laminar did not sell any DLC scenery at all, just planes for at most, $4.99.

Whereas Ipacs threw all of its current planes into the bargain, which is typical Ipacs.

Back to XP-10; I think in fact it's now free at this point, and probably considered by Laminar to be a gateway drug to the PC version.....

Meanwhile. whatever we think of the phone and tablet market, it's definitely a place where money can be made, in volume if not in price, and probably not with anything like the huge cut Steam takes as its portion of sales.

[KBUR 178]

On 12/16/2018 at 1:46 PM, edpatino said:

I suspect the business goal for IPACS is maybe not to offer a professional simulator with the same depth as P3D or XP11+, but a good entertaining game instead.

Cheers, Ed

....exactely that's one of the main issues I've with AeroflyFS2 / IPACS and their decisions of development:

 

• They are even far far away from beeing a good, entertaining game at all !!!!!  Dumb flying around the scenery can't make a user happy on the long haul.

 

• Their Flying-School (of course my personal observations) in "aerofly FS (from 2012)" was a lot better and more entertaining than it's current version in AF2 (e.g in version 1 someone had direct access to the missions, without this stupid voice-over guide) --> they've done it worse; and decisions like that cannot be explained with terms like "...we have a small team" , "...no budget", etc.... .

 

• Not stricted to "no-entertainment-provisions" like Lockheed Martin and their P3D they could have done a challenging and game demanding sim with lots of missions and interesting defiances at least (e.g a carrier landing challenge including their F-18C and this already existing flattop)

 

 ....but nothing, nothing of this at all, this is really sad. 

A lot of unused potential of this sim couches around because of wrong arbitrations - not because of a small team or lack of money !!!

 

Just my two cents.

Edited December 18, 2018 by KBUR

[edpatino 1,959]

3 hours ago, KBUR said:

but nothing, nothing of this at all, this is really sad.

I was very enthousiastic at the beginning of this year after ORBX announced it would develop scenery for AFS2 and except for two or three sceneries that were released a while ago, is evident that ORBX is not showing a real business interest in AFS2 anymore.

After several months of using AFS2 and developing photoscenery regions and detailed airports for myself and exchanging it with a small group of AFS2 fans, I started to feel bored while flying over a "naked and dead" scenery, with no cars, aircraft and ships traffic, no real weather and no ATC. Flying low above an AFS2 scenery to me it´s like flying over Hiroshima or Nagasaki after the second world war, all grey buildings with no life.

At the end I still feel AFS2 could be a better product but in my opinion IPACS lacks a business plan, a roadmap or a goal to further develop the product. While all this is hapenning, you can see P3Dv4 with PBR capabilities and better textures resolutions and XP-11 improving every day, and most importantly, with a substantial number of existing third party developers that support the sims, so it would be a long way to go for AFS2 to be able to compete with them.

I tend to think for IPACS it will be probably better to look for an association with Lockheed Martin or Laminar Research to further develop those sims in order to stay itself alive in the following months/years.

The best of luck for IPACS in 2019.

Cheers, Ed

Edited December 19, 2018 by edpatino

[torium 207]

12 hours ago, edpatino said:

I tend to think for IPACS it will be probably better to look for an association with Lockheed Martin or Laminar Research to further develop those sims in order to stay itself alive in the following months/years.

IPACS does not attempt to create a product that will replace P3D or X-plane. They have tried to explain this repeatedly.

For some years back the FSW-team (Dovetail) conducted an extensive survey - and concluded, quote:

"We have learned that flight simulation appeals to an incredible amount of people, but a lot of them find it too hard to get started with. It is our aim to reclaim and attract those would-be simmers, but in order to do so, we need to present flight simulation in a way that doesn't initially overwhelm them."

IPACS recently stated something similar, quote:

"The one thing that we are trying to do differently compared to the other flight simulators out there is we don't want our users spending a ton of time messing with settings and making under the hood adjustments, we also want a simple to use interface with limited settings so that casual flyers can also just pick this up and start flying."

Do you see the point?

Edited December 19, 2018 by torium

[edpatino 1,959]

Of course I see the point, that confirms to me what to expect from AFS2.

Thanks for your comments, always welcome.

Cheers, Ed

[tonywob 4,768]

No Android version, pity 😞

[HiFlyer 9,336]

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

No Android version, pity 😞

They might get to it but then again, maybe not. The problem here is that there so many form factors of Android with such varying capability, that a lot of developers find it hard to create hardware intensive apps with any guarantee they will work across the constellation of possible devices. Its essentially an industry-wide nightmare, and I knew even before they announced their reasons, that Android was probably going to be hard for them, especially as its ogl implementation is also poor.

It's just asking for a zillion users to be wailing that its not working right on their unknown device from god knows who, and how is Ipacs going to support that? 😕

 

[HiFlyer 9,336]