Any chance of an AeroFly FS 2 topic in The Simulators?

[DennyA]

Any chance we can add a topic about AeroFly FS 2 to The Simulators? This one is significantly more ambitious than the first game, and it's being improved on a regular basis while in Early Access. It's certainly got a long way to go before its feature set rivals FSX/P3D, but what it does, it does amazingly well. Beautiful photorealistic graphics, VR support, flight modeling better than stock FSX in many ways (try the Extra to see this), etc. And SDK is in the works and once we can see third-party scenery and planes I think it's really going "take off." (Heh.)

And if you have an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, the experience is amazing. The VR support is the closet to feeling like I'm really in a real plane that I've ever encountered in a sim. The quality of the graphics and the smoother frame rate compared to the current VR performance of DCS or P3D makes it an unmatched experience.

Here's the initial topic on it:
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...ht-sim-with-VR!

Anyway, would love to have a dedicated section to talk about flying in it, post screens, etc.

Here's some shots from trying the Corsair... Note that I had haze turned off to see the scenery in all its glory. A little haze makes things look even more realistic, as you can see from the video below the screens.









And here's a tutorial video of a month-old version that does a good job showing the graphics and some of the capabilities that are currently there...

[DennyA]

And by "topic" I meant "section." :-)

[DennyA]

Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?


B)

[sixstrings5859]

My question is can the aircraft shoot it out or is this just another flight sim ?

[DennyA]

No combat at this point.

The only new combat sims I know of are Combat Air Patrol 2 (out now in early access) and IL-2: Battle of Kuban (next year).

[sixstrings5859]

Many more Combat Flight Sims out there besides the few mentioned. Maybe the best cfs out there is WOFF . ROF,DCS series,Strike fighters 2,Il-2 '46-modded and ,of coarse,CFS3 and it's many expansions ..... Like things that go BOOM !

[DennyA]

You missed a word when you read my message: NEW.

Most of those sims were already around when I was the flight sim columnist for CGW and CGM magazines in the late 90's/early 2000s.

[wombat666]

Speaking as an individual and not as a member of staff I'm asking why?
It's an early release and pretty rough at that, IMHO more of a 'Game' than a 'Sim' and overpriced for the current standard.
And look at the various 'sections' we already have on the SOH board, a (very) rough count shows almost 50% log zero activity.
Please note, this is my own personal opinion, but if the subject came up as a formal request via the Admins I'd be voting no.

[DennyA]

Okay, fine, I'll calmly explain why I think it's not just a good idea to create a topic for AeroFly FS 2, it's important to the future of our hobby.

Speaking as an individual and not as a member of staff I'm asking why?
It's an early release and pretty rough at that

Yes, it's an early release game. So it's important now to get people to check it out, so that it will get enough interest and early purchases that it will continue to be developed and become more sophisticated. And actually, what's there now is a tiny percentage of what you'll find in FSX, but it's not "rough." I've spent many, many hours having a blast flying VFR in the sim and in general the experience is more immersive and less glitchy than my FSX/P3D installs with a number of add-ons.

IMHO more of a 'Game' than a 'Sim'

Well, you're entitled to your HO, but that's an unfair characterization. Turn up the turbulence to medium and take the Cessna for a flight. It feels significantly more like flying in a real small plane than FSX, which with its lack of "bumps" typically feels like it's on rails. (Until you turn the turbulence up to wacky levels). Right now it's limited to VFR, GPS flight, or navigation using VORs, but if we support it, then hopefully down the road we'll get ATC, air traffic, and so on.

If you call every sim that doesn't have the feature set of FSX/P3D or DCS a "game" we're never going to get new sims. FSX had the benefit of a code base that had been worked on for 30 years.

The Pitts and Extra do aerobatics and departures dramatically better than FSX. The other flight models feel good, and differentiated, as well, from the torque on the Corsair to the momentum of the 747. There are edges of the envelope that still need development, but overall the flight models feel more like the real planes I've flown than any stock FSX plane.

Also, this industry needs some sims that have a level of "game" to them to entice new people to try it. Otherwise, it's going to become a niche old man's hobby like model trains and HAM radio. Except both of those will still be around in the future because they're cheap to develop, unlike sims.

and overpriced for the current standard.

You mean the current standard of $5 sale games on Steam? If we expect that, we might as well all sell our PCs now and head to consoles because it costs money to develop games. And from a money standpoint, you can make a lot more developing a shooter or RPG per invested dollar than you can making a niche game like a flight simulator.

$49.99 is a very fair price. It's $10 below the cost of most mainstream games. It's the price, or LESS, than most good FSX add-on planes.

Yeah, FSX costs half as much. But it's a 10-year-old program, and its development was paid for and abandoned a decade ago. Prepar3D Pro is supposed to be $199 if you're not a student.

And you know what? When I bought SubLogic Flight Simulator II for my Amiga 1000, which I might remind you looked like this:



It was $49.99 in 1985 money. Hitting up an inflation calculator, that's $115.78 in 2016 money.

And look at the various 'sections' we already have on the SOH board, a (very) rough count shows almost 50% log zero activity.

Well, I never asked for X3 Terran Conflict or Train sim topics. But this is different. This is a sim that right now brings an immersive experience that's a generation ahead of anything we've seen before, and if it gets support and people are encouraged to check it out, maybe it will be the gold standard after a few more years of development. But if we poo-poo it because it's not FSX and it costs as much as a Pokemon game for your Nintendo DS, then I guess we'll be staying with FSX forever and hoping by 2025 we'll have computers fast enough to get a smooth frame rate over downtown Seattle.

Please note, this is my own personal opinion, but if the subject came up as a formal request via the Admins I'd be voting no.

WHY DO YOU HATE FLIGHT SIMMERS? :-) <kidding!>

But in all seriousness... Back in the 1990s and early 2000s there was so much activity in the flight sim market I could write a monthly flight simulation column (first for Computer Gaming World, and then for Computer Games/Strategy Plus magazine) and each month I could write about a different sim. Sometimes more than one!

Now this year seems incredible as there have been two new sims released in early access and another one announced for next year. Compare that to the days when we had MicroProse, Spectrum Holobyte, Digital Integration, Interactive Magic, Microsoft, Kesmai, Jane's Combat Simulations, Velocity Development, Novalogic, Looking Glass, and others I'm forgetting all releasing flight simulators in the same year. (Sims that cost $50+ in 1990s money.)

So now we have a sim that offers VR support, photoreal scenery at smooth frame rates on a 3,400x1,440 display even over scenery-packed cities, and a developer who wants to build it long-term.

So I vote yes. Because I would love to see this sim get every opportunity to move flight simming forward, instead of being stuck in a rut of trying to patch ancient FSX code with add-ons until the industry finally dies.

If the other admins agree with you on not supporting the sim, then perhaps we could at least create an "Other Sims" section so that there's somewhere logical to post about new simulations when they pop up?

Sim fans should be psyched someone's doing a modern-technology flight simulator, not dismissive of it. If we don't support the new guys, and support them enthusiastically, then we're dooming a hobby that's already on life support.</kidding!>

[DennyA]

And sorry if it sounds like I unloaded on you, wombat666.

But I work in the game industry and I know the challenges in launching and supporting the development of a new flight sim. And as a former flight sim journalist, I watched as the loudest of the hardcore managed helped marginalize the game genre.

So when I see someone making the first serious effort to do something new and impressive in a long time and see it dismissed as a game, it makes me want to throw my hands up and give up. If I didn't love flight sims so much I'd have done that long ago. Certainly most of the industry did: People like Andy Hollis and Paul Grace from Jane's Combat Simulations, for instance, don't miss the negativity from their "fans" at all.

[Tom Clayton]

Once it's in wide-spread release, I would consider supporting a new section, but only if the program is open-structured like most of the rest of what's currently available, and if the add-on developer community picks it up and begins releasing aircraft, scenery, etc.

[DennyA]

Thanks, Tom!

In the meantime, any chance we could get a generic "Other Sims" topic to talk about other sims? With stuff like Battle of Moscow, Combat Air Patrol 2, and AFS2 out, it'd be nice to be able to talk about them without having to slum it at some other sim site.

[wombat666]

And sorry if it sounds like I unloaded on you, wombat666.

But I work in the game industry and I know the challenges in launching and supporting the development of a new flight sim. And as a former flight sim journalist, I watched as the loudest of the hardcore managed helped marginalize the game genre.

Don't sweat it Denny, as I pointed out it was my personal opinion and you were asking comments.
I know a little of how hard it is to develop a quality sim (or 'game') as an early adopter of a crowd funded race sim, three years or so of trying to cover as many areas of interest for the minorities as practical is a royal PITA.
Tom has covered the situation from our side very diplomatically.......

[dogfish]

Fifty dollars to Me is a great deal considering what You are getting, high quality photographic scenery for California, Nevada, Arizona and I believe parts of New Mexico. You can fly at high altitude over Oregon and Washington and still have very good scenery to look at, plus add in everything else not a bad deal. If You purchased all this Scenery it would far more than fifty dollars.

[n4gix]

Once it's in wide-spread release, I would consider supporting a new section, but only if the program is open-structured like most of the rest of what's currently available, and if the add-on developer community picks it up and begins releasing aircraft, scenery, etc.

Actually Tom, an early version of the evolving SDK is already available on request, and at least one developer (Lionheart) has begun porting some of his GA aircraft over to the beta version of AeroFly FS2.

The SDK will eventually be available for both freeware and payware developers to use.

[sixstrings5859]

Sorry this isn't a combat flight sim. All flight sim are at risk as to profitably the rpg's and others make lots of money. We need to welcome as many flight sims as we can.Except cfs's like RoF,WOFF,DCS , Thirdwire and a very few others there's not much choice as to the way it was many moons ago. CFS3(9 installs),Il2 '46-(updated and modded),OFF BHaH,Falcon 4.0-BMS,Flaming Cliffs 2,Free Falcon 6 are what i have now.Planning to get the whole Strike Fighter series. I say the more here at SOH the better the community would be. We need to grow or we could say good by to really good flight sims and be left with only "games".

[DennyA]

Yep, posted by team member "Jet-Pack" this week:

We have sent out the scenery SDK for evaluation and we are adding final touches to the aircraft SDK. As described we are expanding the system complexity and prepare new aircraft and airports. If you take a look at our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Aerofly.Fli...lator/timeline) you will see what kind of aircraft you can expect in the future. They will be released when they are finished of course and not in an unusable state.

Complex aircraft like the Q400, A380 or 777 take a lot of time to set up. Not only does it require quite a lot of work to create the visuals and get the look of the materials realistically and give the model the correct shape; the implementation of the systems, rendering of the displays and functionality of each switch in the flightdeck is also quite a time consuming task. Because we want to maintain the high quality of our product we won't rush through this process. So please be patient, we are preparing new content even though we are not contantly writing about that.

Awesome news on the scenery and aircraft SDKs. If AFS2 become an "open platform," it could really provide an awesome modern alternative to the creaky FSX/P3D codebase. And hopefully pick up enough new supporters to keep the development fires stoked.