I'm going to have to give this one another look. When they first introduced it a few years ago, I thought it was a good alternative to FSE...until they announced the $15/month subscription plan. That's a hard price point for me to get behind personally. But if they have included a no-subscription option, that's a good move. I'd look at subscription content as well, but it would have to be something pretty extraordinary to demand their original price.

The subscription will be optional. You can get it later if you want for the additional features, it's just an extension to the stand-alone app.

Looks like it's just been launched.  I'll be heading straight over to Orbx to try this out. £23.62.

TheSkyLounge.tv - Flight Simulation

Live stream of The Skypark in action now!

Initial impression from me after only a very brief look is that there are nowhere to near enough contracts available.  

 

For example, I'm sitting at YKBY, a small airfield in New South Wales in my C172 and I'm only offered one job from that airport of 540 miles!  Now, I don't have the time for that sort of flight although I believe it is possible to do it in several stages I still wouldn't have time to do it before the deadline in 3 days. 

Compare that to Neofly that I've been trying.  That offered 77 jobs of up to 200 miles from YKBY, ranging from cargo, passengers, mail, etc etc. Lots more options to choose from. 

 

It's not a criticism as it's early access so hopefully the jobs will be expanded considerably in due course. It's just my initial thoughts on the program. 

Did you fly into YKBY from an existing contract? And does Neofly offer you a similar variety when browsing randomly across the map?

You can also manually add a destination and arrival airport and it will find available contracts for you if you have a specific route in mind. Although it won't pay as much.

Edited December 15, 20205 yr by captain420

I am really impressed so far.  Just flew my intro flight.  I notice that there are no tours or bush trips, despite having those as search filter options, so I'm sure that more content will come during the early access.  

Some more videos for those interested in seeing what The Skypark is all about.

 

Holding out for FSCaptain which I've used for years and love.  They say the SDK isn't giving enough Lvars to do it justice yet, but the devs there like what they see in MSFS for sure.

3 hours ago, captain420 said:

Did you fly into YKBY from an existing contract? And does Neofly offer you a similar variety when browsing randomly across the map?

You can also manually add a destination and arrival airport and it will find available contracts for you if you have a specific route in mind. Although it won't pay as much.

1.  No, my flight so it was where I was. 

2..With Neofly I don't think you can browse the map, you just enter the ICAO where you want to fly from.  It defaults to the last place you landed. 

3. I had to enter the ICAO to find any flights from YKBY to start with and haven't yet found a way of selecting the required destination.  Early days though.

Looks nice but er... it has no sounds (like loading cargo or boarding passengers), the lady you hear during the beginning (in the video's I've seen) can only be heard during the introduction, there are no penalties for flying bad or landing hard or destroying the cargo, you own all planes right from the start, there is no career, no promotion... NeoFly has all that. For free. And it has more jobs too, so I've gathered.

So what else apart from the shiny interface does The Skypark offer? Again, it looks nice but seems to offer very little extra.

The Skypark has only been released in early access since yesterday. Give the developers time, and I'm confident it will shape up nicely to be a very good add-on for MSFS.

They are very open to feedback and suggestions.

Edited December 16, 20205 yr by captain420

15 minutes ago, captain420 said:

The Skypark has only been released in early access since yesterday. Give the developers time, and I'm confident it will shape up nicely to be a very good add-on for MSFS.

Could well be but the problem here is that they don't say anything about what might be added in the future. I don't mind something being early access but I do mind not knowing what we will be getting access to in the future. As it is now it looks like a very basic flightgenerator (A to B and nothing more). A very shiny interface for very shallow content. Add to that the fact that some future enhancements might require a subscription and well...

That's totally understandable. If you're interested in seeing what it has to offer and want to know more about the future of this project then you can voice your concerns and questions on their discord. I'll share the link for anyone here who may be interested in joining. They are very open to feedback and suggestions and will address any concerns and doubts you may have.

https://discord.gg/EcdRs2V5UC

8 minutes ago, captain420 said:

you can voice your concerns and questions on their discord

No, I can't...? First of all there are hardly any posts about The Skypark yet on Discord and I am not allowed to post anything. Secondly, it seems you have to post requests etc. in the //42 channel, not the Skypark one (which makes you wonder why they have that channel). However, I also can't post anything in the //42 channel. Almost seems they don't want customers.