barrel_owl

What sim time was that shot taken?

Still don't like colors and brightness. Also, I noticed strange textures in the clouds that I hadn't noticed in the first release. And finally, in my only flight so far with the same settings I had a slight FPS decrease, but I am not 100% about this. I will reproduce all the flights and situations I made after the first release to see if and what actually changed.

Confess. You knew this from long time and you kept it for yourself away from us plebs! Now, what are we going to say against Aerofly? Oh those flat sceneries... Amazing, Devon. Thank you very much, this is really an exciting news.

Wait a moment. Let me read again. Is this real? Are you kidding right?

Very nice shots!

I have read something very similar by Jarrad Marshall on the Orbx forum that more or less confirms this statement. People who are actually working on Aerofly FS2 share the same view: while more addons will certainly decrease performance, they are very unlikely to seriously jeopardize the user experience.

Impressive shots, Francesco!

Absolutely amazing!

Again: AeroFly FS2 is by large the most promising simulator out there in my opinion, however it is not yet a "serious alternative" to FSW, FSX and P3D. X-Plane is currently the alternative to the aforementioned platforms. Aerofly FS2 is still an early access. Maybe and hopefully it will be our reference platform one day, not today. No simulator will ever succeed as long as it is not supported by a robust 3rd party ecosystem.

Can't hardly understand this thread. Apparently, I can't find any real news on the Orbx forum that we did not know already until few hours ago. Or maybe am I missing something? Anyway, I owe AeroFly FS2 since Day 1 and purchased all the DLCs so far available. While I love it and strongly support it, I can't see the relation with DTG FSW and why the LOWI release should be considered as a DTG killer. AeroFly FS2 will be hopefully a serious competitor for all the current major platforms (FSX32, FSW, P3D, X-Plane11) in a couple of years or maybe more. ESP is dead? Not yet, at least not as long as developers will seriously start investing on AeroFly, which I obviously encourage. I've heard similar statements (Ezdok is dead when Chaseplane was announced) just two days before Ezdok v2 was released. No more hype, please. Back to reality.

Orbx LOWI for AeroFly FS2 has been announced weeks ago and, to the best of my knowledge, is due on June 15. What exactly has been revealed today? And why should it be seen as a "DTG killer"?

Why should a 'wow factor' exist in first place? Is it a new requirement? As far as I am concerned, I was not expecting any 'wow factor' from a product which has long been announced as another FSX version. So no unrealistic expectations here. Simply false. You don't have to believe me, care to read what reputable AVSIM veterans like @Bert Pieke, @Chock or Jim Barrett posted in the last few days. All of them agree that autogen popping, blurries and other historical FSX shortcomings have been significantly reduced along with a higher GPU load. No 'wow factor', of course, FSX will ever be FSX, yet a lot of more smoothness and a decent performance even at highest resolutions. This does not mean that other aspects like lighting and colors are not below the expectations or that too many important features are not missing. There are no real next gen simulators out there. There are several optimized and decently working old platforms with a strong 3rd party or freeware ecosystem (FSX, P3D, X-Plane) and new advanced platforms like AeroFly FS2, which still lack many features and 3rd party support. That's what we have and what you have to choose from today. Wow factors and next gen sims are just marketing hype.

Most are definitely better, though. I have myself shown shots over Rio de Janeiro here in another thread. Compare this to FSX vanilla and judge yourself. If you do cherry-picking, you can definitely find areas that are worse and conclude that terrain in FSW in worse than in FSX, but most of us have evidence to the contrary.

I am only speculating. One possibility is that some airport areas have been left blank intentionally to be eventually filled by something else. Since FTX Global is already part of the default scenery, I find plausible that the Global Airport pack will be implemented at some point. Or maybe not. Anyway, no purchase needed, global airport pack is free.

Maybe there is a reason for that. I suspect the reason is a four letter word, starting with 'O' and ending with 'X'. And in fact, Leesburg is part of the Global Freeware Airports pack. Maybe.

Bob, I believe you. The point is: it does not matter whether you or I have OOMs or not. The market is demanding 64-bit! There are many ways one can prevent OOMs while using a 32-bit platform. Unfortunately, the more addons you pile up, the more you are prone to suffer an OOM or compromise your user experience and with so many 3rd party developers out there, the physical limit of 4GB has been a huge limitation so far. We all know that 64-bit itself will not change other issues, but it is a step forward and if LM and DTG are working on this, I conclude they're doing it for a reason.

Sorry Bob, this proves absolutely nothing. Believe it or not, I only suffered OOMs in FSX-SE in very rare cases. I can count on my fingers the times I have suffered an OOM in more than 2 years but this does not make FSX-SE any better than it is. It's all about how you set your sliders and configure your hardware. P3Dv3 is an excellent platform with optimized VAS management, however it is a 32-bit platform. Period. There are hundreds of threads of people complaining about VAS management and OOMs. I understand personal preference, but you can't change physics with wishful thinking.

I absolutely subscribe your post. However, brand loyalty is not a peculiar mark of flight simmers or the members of this forum. Navigate in any high-tech forum where smartphones are debated and see yourself. The mentality is always the same: my tool is better than yours no matter what. I understand that many people develop a preference for a particular platform and particular addons for whatever reason. Why this should lead to a constant bashing and disqualifying of any alternative product, though, is beyond me.

Of course, no OOM with 64-bit, but raising the LOD up to a certain level is one of the many ways you end up getting stuttering and low FPS at some point, at least based on my experience. Probably not in vast areas with low autogen density like Missouri, but definitely in others with higher density and mixed terrain.

What about stutters and FPS? My tests at 6.5 went good so far, but 9.5... wow.

@DaveCT2003 Standing ovation!

Hi Dave, DTG is in early access. A pretty long list of features are still missing, several flaws (to put it mildly) need to be corrected or at least optimized to an acceptable level and, first of all, serious issues with third-party developers need to be sorted out. Nonetheless, yes, there are positive aspects who go well beyond raindrops. Despite reports to the contrary, my tests at full resolution and LOD 6.500000 (the last one this morning over Manhattan) showed a pretty good stability and smoothness, something that I achieved in FSX-SE 32 only after a lot of tweaking and, of course, not without the risk of an OOM. I have noticed a very low or negligible level of popping and blurries compared to FSX-SE 32, but I read reports from people complaining about this (hard to tell here, possibly the reason depends on the hardware, the configuration and the resolution used, too early to draw conclusions). Moreover, all tests confirm so far that a significant part of the load is now transferred to the GPU instead of on the CPU, which is another great benefit along with 64-bit. To put it short. It's all about your expectations, your readiness to wait for developments and, above all, how much you're ready to spend for this hobby. Yes, there is potential and room for optimization. If, how and when DTG will be able to provide a complete simulator with a decent level of quality and features, though, is still unclear. P3Dv4 is rumoured to be released sometime this year at 64-bit. I have no idea what they're doing with it, but, given their record and the fact it is already a mature product, I think it's safe to speculate that it will be a complete product. If you are OK with their price and their license policy, maybe that's the way you should go. Or, as an alternative, you might consider X-Plane11 and meanwhile keep an eye open on FSW developements. Hope this helps.

That's a shame, Jeroen. Believe it or not, I was just curious to know your detailed report about what exactly you did not like in FSW, although I suspect that your list would probably be very long. Nonetheless, your report could have been useful for other people who are reading these threads and are still on the fence. Honestly, I have hard time understanding why you decided not to comment after trying FSW having commented so much before doing that. Anyway, your decision. Also, in all honesty, I have hard time understanding how so many people, in general, decide to try a new simulator, be it FSW, X-Plane 11, AeroFly FS2 whatever, and then uninstall it after a couple of hours. Maybe it's me who is too stupid to understand, but again, this is anyone's decision. Apologies if anything I said here or in the other thread hurt you or made you feel someway forced to do something you were not comfortable to do. That was not my intention. I think you know this, but I just wanted to make it clear again. Regards Filippo

Wow. Thanks God we were not discussing about Samsung S8....