Aerofly FS4 is out!

[monica6211 175]

5 hours ago, jcomm said:

We're twin souls 🤣

I was considering a purchase, but hwne I saw I would have to pay for it way moire than what I paid for MFS, and probably XP12, I had to give up...

It should have nice feel of flight because their approach to flight modelling is great, but they're asking way too much for me 😕

Regarding the freezes I would guess that the new world air traffic ( live ? ) should probably impact performance ( ? )                                       

I also requested a refund. In my opinion, this should have been released as an update, not an entirely new sim. It is too much like AFS2 to justify paying for a whole new sim. These changes are what should have been in AFS2 to begin with. But it is my own opinion. It did fly buttery smooth for me, and I didn't have any stuttering. But I did see bright white clouds at night, and during the day something was causing some flickering on bright surfaces of the aircraft and scenery.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

So, I asked at the IPACS forum about the Flight Dynamics and Systems modelling, as well as Weather.

The answer was surprising, and again AEFS is ahead of either XP or MFS in some really interesting aspects as the following answer from the developers can make clear:

New Flight Dynamics / Systems ? - General Discussions - IPACS Aerofly Forum

When Aerofly FS2 first came out, there was a general rush to dismiss it from many corners, and even some active hostility. 

Lost, as usual, in the general stampede to judgment was just what you mentioned: that there was surprising depth coming from a very small and eclectic, but obviously brilliant team, who behaved as if actively allergic to the concept of promoting their product or talking to their customers.

I still contend to this day that as much as we praise the FBW A320, the Aerofly counterpart remains almost unbelievably close in capability.

Which does not mean Aerofly will ever get its day in the sun; but it is a notable achievement in flight simulation, despite the constraints of the teams severely limited size and budget.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by HiFlyer

[FBW737 511]

Good grief! why would anyone even bother to entertain this these days?

[HiFlyer 9,359]

25 minutes ago, FBW737 said:

Good grief! why would anyone even bother to entertain this these days?

You've just convinced me to buy it.

[rka 916]

6 hours ago, jcomm said:

So, I asked at the IPACS forum about the Flight Dynamics and Systems modelling, as well as Weather.

The answer was surprising, and again AEFS is ahead of either XP or MFS in some really interesting aspects as the following answer from the developers can make clear:

New Flight Dynamics / Systems ? - General Discussions - IPACS Aerofly Forum

"Previously only two trailing edge control surfaces could be assigned and only two airfoils (root and tip) were simulated per wing. Now there can be a lot more control surfaces and airfoils "

"More than two" is already ahead of XP and MSFS? I don't think so 😉

[jcomm 5,929]

2 hours ago, rka said:

"More than two" is already ahead of XP and MSFS? I don't think so 😉

Not onlythe number but the way they are defined and interact, but I was particularly referring to the engine modeling, the turbofans with multiple stages and fur thermodynamical cycle simulation, etc...

I would love to find out how the leading edge slats in the new Bf 109 work (*). Can they deploy asymmetrically ? If they can then it means that AEFS is even more detailled in this aspect than XP11, and AFAIK XP12 too, which in it's turn is by it's own nature of simulating the airfoils and contrrol surfaces ahead of MFS...

Maybe I'll end up buying it for the very same reason I bought AEFS and AEFS2 - the pleasure of feeling a nicely / coherently modeled set of representative aircraft of various types, including the gliders !

Does it lack of lot of detail in important areas such weather and in particular weather effects such as precipitation, various layers of clouds, settings for temperature and pressure, but also nifty featrues like ground opoerations at the airport, etc... ? OFC it does, and that's really a pity 😕

   (*) Well, for now just like in XP11 😕 Bummer !  - https://www.aerofly.com/community/forum/index.php?thread/18574-aerofly-fs-4-new-bf109/&postID=114069#post114069

Edited July 5, 2022 by jcomm

[johnbla 31]

Hi guys, 2 quick questions. Do you need an internet connection on all the time like MSFS and is there any ATC? Thanks in advance.

[andy1252 3,859]

I bought this immediately, and downloaded it and all the three addon scenery packs.

Very disappointed. Doesn't seem any different to FS2 to me. Don't get me wrong, I really like FS2 (as I did the original FS), but I may well also join the queue requesting a refund. No benefit whatsoever for me in this new version, unless I'm missing something completely. Which may be the case, given the customary level of information available.

[jcomm 5,929]

14 minutes ago, andy1252 said:

I bought this immediately, and downloaded it and all the three addon scenery packs.

Very disappointed. Doesn't seem any different to FS2 to me. Don't get me wrong, I really like FS2 (as I did the original FS), but I may well also join the queue requesting a refund. No benefit whatsoever for me in this new version, unless I'm missing something completely. Which may be the case, given the customary level of information available.

😞

Thx for sharing your thoughts. Unfortunately reading through the forums posts, you're not alone...

A pitty that th epotential AEFS always shows in some areas is then taken by their inability to comply with some "standard" features, including Weather, Airport functionality, etc...

[HiFlyer 9,359]

May be of interest to some, and not so much, for others.

Aerofly FS 4 - Changes compared to Aerofly FS 2

 

 

For existing Aerofly FS 2 customers we would like to summarize what has changed in the new Aerofly FS 4 Flight Simulator and what new features there are in the new sim.

System Requirements

Aerofly FS 4 uses relatively new graphics features which may not be available on older hardware.

• Quad-Core CPU
• 8GB or more RAM
• Graphics card with 4GB+ RAM, Vulkan support and OpenGL 4.0 (or higher)

If you previously used high or ultra graphics quality you now need to bump that down a notch or even two. We changed the graphics settings to make full use of new and modern graphics cards and the ultra setting is only recommended for these cards.

Graphics

New lighting engine

Aerofly FS 4 features new real-time dynamic multi-color lights that illuminate the ground and objects in the scene - You'll see landing, taxi, nav, beacon, strobe lights, etc. and airport apron flood lights in some of our screenshots. These lights are quite optimized and there barely any performance impact from them.

Performance optimizations

We've changed the way how and when airports and scenery tiles get loaded. With a global airport database we know ahead of time when we get close to an airport that needs to be loaded for rendering. The loading then happens in the background and only for the closest airports that you can see. Images and elevation data as well as the new buildings and trees are also loaded in this manner.

 

With this change the Aerofly FS 4 application loads even quicker than Aerofly FS 2, On our hardware we measure a time from desktop to flying in as little as 12 seconds on a freshly restarted PC with SSD.

 

In the simulator you'll now see a lot more buildings and trees. Depending on your graphics card all these buildings increase the load on your graphics card and to keep the same high FPS you may need to decrease the graphics quality a bit.

 

Aerofly FS 4 now uses our own cloud rendering techniques which allows us to increase the cloud draw distance significantly.

Available Regions

Aerofly FS 4 still has global coverage of lower resolution aerial images and elevation like Aerofly FS 2 as global navigation data. So you can still fly around the world like before. To limit download size Aerofly FS 4 has several free Addons (DLCs) that you can install to increase the high detail region size or ground image resolution.

Airports

• Over 1200 hand made high quality airports are available with all free DLCs installed
• New apron flood lights
• New taxiway edge and centerline lights
• New hold short guard lights
• Several U.S. airports were updated and some were added as well

Scenery & Cultivation

All US regions that were previously DLCs for FS 2 are now included in the base scenery of Aerofly FS 4.

Oregon and Washington states have been added to the base scenery region, so now the base simulator scenery now covers the entire west coast and reaches far in land up to Colorado and Arizona. The Florida Keys and Miami region as well as the New York metropolitan area are also included.

 

A very large section of Europe is available as a free DLC covering everything from West-Europe up to a line from Estonia to about Moldavia, Bulgaria, not included yet are Greece and Turkey at this time, but we're continuing our work in Europe as well as other regions.

• 3d buildings everywhere and trees based on several different data sources
• Full coverage with buildings and trees in the entire flying area
• Custom modeled points of interest (POIs) like castles, famous buildings (in Europe more than 500+ POIs)
• New library buildings and structures like towers, cranes, antennas, powerlines, churches, chimneys and cooling towers, fuel tanks and grain silos, etc.
• New wind-turbines that rotate in the wind
• New building types and textures
• New building shapes like T and L shapes or custom footprint
• New roof shapes

Air Traffic

• Simulated air traffic based on tens of thousands of real world global airline flights
• Airline, Cross country and local flights
• Optional flight labels and flight path traces
• Animated aircraft models with rotating propellers, moving flaps and landing gear
• Traffic is automatically removed when the player wants to takeoff or land and a collision is imminent

Flight Missions

• Select from recommended 10,000+ real world airline flights and immediately start flying
• Adjust the flight conditions, routing and/or aircraft if desired
• Lots of custom flight presets for sight seeing, practicing and flying challenges like the circling approach into Innsbruck

Time-Skip

• With the push of a button the aircraft can be teleported along the planned route to skip long and boring cruise segments
• Combine the time-skip with the immediate selection of a new flight mission and you'll be able to visit many new places very quickly

Career and Achievements

• Pilot and aircraft log books to review recent flight paths and to track flight time
• Statistics of takeoffs, landings and flight time per aircraft and in different aircraft categories
• Achievements for different aircraft categories
• Achievements are non-invasive, there is no pop-up or sound during flight
• Flight school removed: Was only working with the C172 and wasn't flexible or expandable, now we have more assistances during the flight and more of a learning by doing approach

Assistances

• Many quality of life features like automatic tiller nose wheel steering with rudder input when not assigned otherwise have been added
• Optional assistances have been added that can help the user during the flight
• Copilot can fly the aircraft from A to B fully automatically, just press 'c' to give control to the copilot
• Copilot can be used to maintain current path while the user goes AFK for a second, like having an autopilot with autothrottle in every aircraft
• Assistances like automatic landing lights, automatic caution/warning mute after a few seconds, auto-tuning, auto-propeller speed, auto pressurization, etc.

Flight-Info

• New aircraft configuration display showing gear, flaps, slats, airbrake, parking brake, pitch trim
• New mini-map in the flight info showing extended centerline to best suitable runway
• Improved attitude indicator with autopilot flight mode annunciator

Control Assignments

As before a lot of the common joysticks and yokes available on the market already have the correct assignment out of the box

• We've added even more default assignments for more devices so users can start flying right away
• Users with multiple devices or devices with several levers can now define specialized assignments for:
• Twin prop, twin jet, quad jet (and default)

Menu improvements

• Improved navigation menu with easier route creation
• Improved controls menu with more options
• New menus for assistances, career & flight-log, missions

New Aircraft

• A320 with Sharklets
• A380 (*)
• B787-10 (*)
• Bf109e (*)
• CRJ-900 (*)
• Ju 52 (*)
• Fokker DR 1

(*) Aircraft AddOn DLC

Aircraft Features

• All aircraft now with landing flights that illuminate the ground
• Almost all aircraft now feature a 'cold and dark' preset option
• New aerodynamics simulation (see details below)
• New turbo-engine simulation (see details below)
• New electrical systems added in a lot of aircraft
• New master caution and warning systems for most aircraft that have this IRL
• New realistic radar height callouts
• New GPWS terrain warnings
• New and more realistic engines sounds in A320 and many other new sounds like APU and avionics fans
• New experimental first hydraulics simulation in A320
• New experimental fuel system in C172 and A320
• New simulated touch screen displays in modern airliners (simulating the cursor control device)
• New electronic checklists in modern airliners
• New EFB in the B777 and B787 (work in progress)
• Added approach marker indications
• Many improvements to autopilot, FMS and CDU
• Improvements to the individual EFIS systems and screen rendering
• Aircraft with EFIS door pages or door indicator lights now have clickspots on them to open that specific door from within the cockpit (applicable to aircraft where the doors are modeled)
• Countless small new features added to the entire fleet of aircraft, several thousand changes in each airliner
• Many small bugs have been fixed

New Aerodynamics Simulation

• Airfoil simulation now uses the current flaps, slats and spoiler deflections to compute lift, drag and moment coefficients
• Multiple control surfaces (not just 2 like before) are now allowed, e.g. inboard and outboard aileron and inboard and outboard flaps on the same wing as well as individual spoilers
• Added Mach drag rise

New Turbo-Engine Simulation

• Turbofan engines and turboprop engines now use our new thermodynamic component based engine physics simulation
• All components of the engine are simulated based on physics laws and characteristic parameter such as intake area, design compression ratio, efficiency, etc.
• Modular approach allows realistic simulation of engines with multiple spools like the three spools found in the RR Trent 972B engine
• This engine simulation inherently has a more realistic behavior and dynamically responds to environmental conditions such as temperature and density changes

[FBW737 511]

11 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

You've just convinced me to buy it.

A fool and his money! 😛

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

21 minutes ago, FBW737 said:

A fool and his money! 😛

 

If you think that making choices other than those you agree with makes other people fools, that's quite telling.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Decided to grab the aircraft addon DLC as well.

[andy1252 3,859]

Just tried another test flight, out of KSEA. Still doesn't feel like any improvement, or indeed difference, to me so I've just put in for a refund/removal. More than happy to carry on using FS2 occasionally, but this doesn't cut it for me. Great shame, I was really quite excited when I heard about this new version just a couple of weeks back. Let's hope XP12 doesn't go the same way.