Has anyone tried The "Skypark" for MSFS?

[simaddict 46]

Hello. This looks very interesting, but I haven't heard any feedback from anyone. Thinking about trying it.

Thanks,

Mike

[kiwikat 506]

I use it on every single flight. No going back now. Love the freedom and route suggestions. The Discord community is great too!

[TomCYYZ 208]

I love it. It has renewed my interest in VFR flying, especially since I got my Honeycomb yoke. As many have stated in the forums it gives you a purpose to fly and visit airports and places around the globe  you would otherwise not visit. It is still in the early stages of an ongoing development, but has enough to keep me busy with MSFS2020 at the moment. I believe it will only get better with time as they continue to add new features. It’s a great fit for MSFS2020.

Edited January 19, 2021 by TomCYYZ

[ParaMan 53]

Yep, I use it heaps. That and Air Hauler 2. I can't recommend either product enough!

[tup61 1,542]

I also won't fly without it. It's quite light on features in its current state but it gives a sense of purpose already I can't fly without. I also like how it's not restricting you to specific planes or locations. It has me flying in locations I never flew before and the idea alone that you are carrying some cargo does the trick for me. Love it. Besides Little Nav Map it's the only addon I use with MSFS.

I do hope though that they keep the non-subscription version interesting enough...

[officercrockey 196]

I am a bit surprised to see such enthusiastic reviews here. Yes it is nicely done but it doesn't add too much after you chose the route. It is more or less a very expensive random route generator at that point. I really hope more depth will be added at some point.

I like the random feature as it also brings me to areas I am not thinking of. But unfortunately 90% of the times it brings me to the USA from one farm to another. I think the huge amount of airfields there just outnumbers the rest of the world.

[Chock 17,769]

If you want to add a bit of motivation to your flights, it's a pretty good add-on. It's not as in-depth as some other alternatives, and some of those are free, but on the plus side it does have the best-looking and simple to understand GUI out of all of them, and unlike with most other offerings it can be viewed in flight without alt-tabbing out of the sim.

I'd recommend watching a couple of youtube vids on it to see if it floats your boat.

[tup61 1,542]

16 minutes ago, officercrockey said:

I am a bit surprised to see such enthusiastic reviews here. Yes it is nicely done but it doesn't add too much after you chose the route. It is more or less a very expensive random route generator at that point. I really hope more depth will be added at some point.

I like the random feature as it also brings me to areas I am not thinking of. But unfortunately 90% of the times it brings me to the USA from one farm to another. I think the huge amount of airfields there just outnumbers the rest of the world.

I guess it depends on where you search for flights. I can use The Skypark all the time without ever visiting the states.

I also like the 'experiences' (or whatever they call them) which are new every week or so: one week you could do special flights in the Pyrenees, earning extra cash, the other week you could fly into small airports in Japan, earning extra XP, during the holidays you could do flights in the northern parts of the world, etc. This made me fly in specific regions for a few days everytime and it's always nice to see where they are planning new experiences. And whenever an experience doesn't suit me I can search a random area I'd like to fly for interesting flights that suit my time (I often limit them to max. 100 nm). The fact that you have to 'load' stuff and 'deliver' it, simple as it my be (at this moment) adds to the experience. It happened twice that I forgot to load the cargo and to my own surprise I actually flew back to the airport to pick it up. Wouldn't have done that without The Skypark.

And of course things will be added: you will be able to spend the money you earned, that add on will monitor more things (like if you slewed or on), I've also read about an optional mode that offers persistence (like having to take off from where you landed previously, for whoever likes that). Take note that the addon is easly acces and hence not too expensive: it might be a clever idea to jump unboard now before it gets more expensive.

Only pity is that no one knows yet what the upcoming optional subscription will offer and what that will mean for the non-subscription version. Still, I am already happy with what I've got now, so... The interface is great indeed, it offers some nice features like an elevation view (often being wrong though LOL), a progress bar, information about the destinations altitude, etc. It simply is fun to use and makes it all a bit more interesting.

[Ricardo41 5,935]

8 hours ago, simaddict said:

I haven't heard any feedback from anyone.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/591565-the-skypark-for-msfs-2020-looks-awesome/

[orchestra_nl 923]

I am too interested in Skypark, but based on previews sofar it adds little to the likes of Neofly or FSEconomy. In fact, it is stilling missing a few features that those freeware applications have.

In Neofly for example, a hard landing can ruin your precious cargo and wear your aircraft down, increasing the need for repair. FSEconomy automatically adds the weight of the cargo to your aircraft. Skypark doesn neither, you could probably fly heavy cargo in a 152. Neofly doesn't add weight automatically but monitors whether you have added sufficient weight in the sim and limits what you can carry to the type of aircraft you have chosen in the simulator.

Skypark, for a paid product, has quite a way to go.

What I ultimately want in a product like this is:

• To give me routes to fly
• Make flying badly have consequences (damage / wear)
• Give me a sense of achievement and growth
• Immersion

Skypark at the moment only ticks one of these boxes at the moment. The initial immersion is great, but after the introductary phonecall, it seems it is just about choosing a random route and aicraft from the available options. In all the youtube video's I have seen about Skypark, I didn't see any feedback about the flight. Neofly for example talks to you before start, at takeoff and after landing on every flight. It also lets the passengers scream if the mission requires you to fly gently and you don't. I think I even heard the sound of broken glass when landing hard while transporting sensitive goods, and have the cargo partially destroyed. It certainly adds pressure when you are trying to land on a short dirt runway and must keep speed below -200fpm.

Edited January 19, 2021 by orchestra_nl

[tup61 1,542]

8 minutes ago, orchestra_nl said:

In all the youtube video's I have seen about Skypark, I didn't see any feedback about the flight. Neofly for example talks to you before start, at takeoff and after landing on every flight. It also lets the passengers scream if the mission requires you to fly gently and you don't. I think I even heard the sound of broken glass when landing hard while transporting sensitive goods, and have the cargo partially destroyed. It certainly adds pressure when you are trying to land on a short dirt runway and must keep speed below -200fpm.

Correct. What's missing most in The Skypark is the monitoring of your flight and feedback. I do know things like that will be added but I don't know how and what exactly. Feedback can have problems too though: I found the fpm calculation of Neofly during landing a bit random: sometimes I thought I'd greased it and got a penalty for a hard landing and sometimes it was the other way around. And concerning the sounds in Neofly: yes, they talk to you at various moments but the lines of audio are very limited and usually the same for specific missions. After a very short while you start to recognize them already. I rather have no audio than obviously canned and repetitive audio: that only kills the immersion imho.

[orchestra_nl 923]

3 minutes ago, tup61 said:

Correct. What's missing most in The Skypark is the monitoring of your flight and feedback. I do know things like that will be added but I don't know how and what exactly. Feedback can have problems too though: I found the fpm calculation of Neofly during landing a bit random: sometimes I thought I'd greased it and got a penalty for a hard landing and sometimes it was the other way around. And concerning the sounds in Neofly: yes, they talk to you at various moments but the lines of audio are very limited and usually the same for specific missions. After a very short while you start to recognize them already. I rather have no audio than obviously canned and repetitive audio: that only kills the immersion imho.

It hasn't killed it for me (yet) but for a paid product I expect more than what freeware is offering already. I know that Skypark is early access software, but I would expect it to be at least on the same par as its freeware competitors already.
One of the things a paid product can do better is add custom feedback for specific missions. Since it is serverbased, it could offer missions based on realworld events, like flying Covid vaccines to remote places and offering customised commentary on your (un)succesfull landing. It could even change your assignment during your flight, based on weather or random/real world events. Right now you it seems you are paying for a slick interface mainly.

One of the things that I do like about Skypark that no other tool does is offering not only cargo- or passenger flights but also specials like ferrying an aircraft. These sort of flights might force you to fly aircraft to their limits or take risks you normally wouldnt take (like ferrying a light prop over large stretches of ocean).

I personally do not care about airline management or bookkeeping, so they shouldn't take that route, but encouraging me to fly an aircraft well, into challenging or simple new and unknown areas does interest me. Having random events like flying a doctor to a remote area to help a patient, with the chance that there are further complications forcing you to having to fly them both to another airfield where an ambulance is standing by, having customised sounds along the way would be great. If you fly in remote areas, its possible that you could get such an event when flying a regular flight, forcing you to change destination enroute.

It is a shame that Asobo missed the opportunity to add support for this in the sim. They might have made a deal with A2A using parts of Accusim to monitor wear and damage on all aircraft, and make it possible to embed part of these third parties in the simulator itself. I thing of going VR and at the moment that might be difficult when using a third party "Skypad".

[tup61 1,542]

3 minutes ago, orchestra_nl said:

Since it is serverbased

Actually, it isn't. Yet. Afaik the subscription based version will be server based (which is why it will be subscription). The current version, which will evolve in the non-subscription version, will be non-server based. At least that's what I understoond from my visits to Discord.

[SierraHotel 974]

10 hours ago, simaddict said:

Hello. This looks very interesting, but I haven't heard any feedback from anyone. Thinking about trying it.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[DarkMantle 24]

Please excuse my daftness, but what is Skypark?

Edited January 19, 2021 by DarkMantle