Aerofly 2 Released; Beta; Steam Games

[lionheart]

I did a run from Phoenix up to Flagstaff last night in the Learjet. Nice flight. Very unstable at touch down. I was overcontrolling her quite a bit. She wants to porpoise. Similar to how they are from what I have read and how FSX and P3D have them. My own does, but I tuned her to be a little more safe on her pilot.

I tuned the time for an evening flight with quite a few clouds.

Some notes;
* Super simplistic weather engine. Set up your clouds; cumulus and cirrus, high and low altitudes (sliders) and zero to heavy or maximum settings for visibility of those. You can also adjust time (T and Shift-T) in the simulator like X-Plane, watching the sun move across the sky, or at night, the moon arcing overhead.
* Clouds to me look very real. Probably a bit of older tech on these, but they look realistic enough for me.
* Some planes have alternate liveries, usually about 3 or 4. One doesnt that I know of, I think the Beech twin gasoline is a single choice.
* The airliners (747, 737, Airbus A320) have quite a few liveries and ULTRA detailed flight decks. A lot of the switches and knobbies are non-active, non-functioning. Some are. Similar to FS2004 days.
* Autopilot is basic with small planes. More of a on/off with option of heading. There are a couple of other options I havent checked yet on AP. It can 'freeze' your ascent/descent when you turn it on, A key.
* Views are done with 1 thru 5 keys. 1,2 are your main interiors, 3,4 are main exterior, and 5 has orbit exterior ability and also 'fly by' which works smoothly.
* Keyboard key controls are very low in number compared with FSX/P3D. Flaps for instance is F and Shift-F; down/up. G is gear. Its not overwhelming like X-Plane is, for FSX pilots who go into XP and find themselves looking at learning an ENTIRE keyboard to re-learn. This has few and some are basic and logically named (G for gear, F for flaps, B for brakes).
* Fuel appears locked. On the Lear last night, the fuel levels werent moving. Perhaps something they 'might' change in the future, I dont know.

It boots up fast. I have it on a 2.5" external drive (where my Steam games live). My OS is 7 Ultimate, on an SSD high end drive, fast. Boot up is in seconds, as in perhaps 5 to 6 seconds to go into main menu. From there, about 7 to 10 seconds going into a flight. Sometimes faster. I just tested it to see, 3 seconds going back into the Lear.

If you exit, and you restart back into the sim and just hit 'Start' without touching any settings, you go right back to where you left off, which is interesting, as you can log out if friends drop by, then go back into a flight (in flight) where you left off, and quickly.

From what I have seen in the past several days, this is a 'simplistic' simulator. It runs fast and smooth (on my rig, though with high clouds, I will get jitter, but not as bad as FSX, and its like occasional vibration rather then harsh jitter. I hate jitter and this doesnt seem to bother me. One of the reasons I hate FSX SP2 is jitter and stalling (micro seconds, frozen, clouds disappear, then it resumes, in FSX). This doesnt do that on my rig. (I have 16 gigs of RAM, 8 core chip, air cooled VW style).

So far, for me, it has been great fun.

Downside;
* I do not see an ATC system. But radios are clickable on the knobs and things, so maybe that isnt installed in this version of the Beta. Perhaps I am missing it?

 

[lionheart]

If I'm not mistaken, Aerofly is a derivative of the "Fly!" franchise that got discontinued back in 2002. Looking back, that sim was ahead of its time (although there were some blatantly missing features.)

That would be cool if it is. I remember that sim well. You started off in a small FBO office room where your flight plan was filed. You had like 4 airport choices to make, one was in Montanna, one was in Sedona, etc. The world was mapped like a tile, only in that small area could you fly. Even though it was so limited, I loved it. Mainly because the ground was photo mapped, and the planes were well done.

 

[=rk=]

It seems that you're brand new to the Aerofly franchise, and I have some (hopefully) helpful additional information to add to your post.

I am so brand new, aside from my oblique connection many years ago. And I try hard to do go work in simulation without spreading myself too thin. I am not a veteran developer with many quality payware addons to port over to another sim.
I am very basic. I think "a B-29 bomber would be hard to acquire and fly, but people do it." I could possibly simulate flying one, I might even develop the skills to recreate a famous B-29 mission. I could also possibly build a flying model of a Stratofortress, to scale but rewarding as an accomplishment. Now, before I go and possibly wreck my model B-29, I might simulate my simulation. I suppose I would measure span and chord, thrust or glow power or whatever scientifically accurate unit that is and then I am going to determine what, that it can or can't fly? Little left trim and keep the tip tanks under half full and all good? I'd think I'd think the charts were adequate, if I actually ever got that far.
So anyways, Aerofly's got photo scenery, check, lens flare, check, SDK coming, check, even a handful of addons. What are the awesome things in Aerofly that the other sims don't feature?

 

[Heretic]

You're thinking of the original Flight Unlimited from 1995, Bill. One of my first flight simulators and it featured flight characteristics based on fluid dynamics, which is close to what X-Plane does.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Unlimited

P.S: Even Landing the otherwise tame Bellanca was a nightmare.

So anyways, Aerofly's got photo scenery, check, lens flare, check, SDK coming, check, even a handful of addons. What are the awesome things in Aerofly that the other sims don't feature?

Well, it appears to be made primarily for tablet PCs, which might just be great for people wanting to fly while on the bus/train/airplane.
Other than that, I really can't see much of an appeal compared to other flight simulators.

 

[=rk=]

Well, it appears to be made primarily for tablet PCs, which might just be great for people wanting to fly while on the bus/train/airplane.
Other than that, I really can't see much of an appeal compared to other flight simulators.

So, kind of like a simulator within a simulator then? Fire up the train sim and then do some flying while between virtual stations kind of thing? Wait, I sense you are referring to some sort of real world activity where a person is able and alert, but unable or unwilling to interact with the surrounding environment and without access to a full scale terminal.

 

[HiFlyer]

Aerofly's got photo scenery, check, lens flare, check, SDK coming, check, even a handful of addons. What are the awesome things in Aerofly that the other sims don't feature?

Well, if the question is phrased that way, one could easily then ask: "What awesome things will Flight School or even DTG sim have that could not also be added to (or is not already included) in X-plane 10 or P3D?"

I think Aerofly brings a fresh approach to the table. Something designed from the start to take advantage of modern computer and graphics cards. Also a new look, and a breath of fresh air in an ecosystem that's becoming set in its ways and resistant to change.

To many, FSX looks absolutely horrible in 2016, with its mismatched jigsaw-puzzle collage-land-class, and with roads running across footfall fields and stadiums, not to mention generally poor performance relative to modern programs.

We've become inured to paying through the nose to alleviate those deficiencies, but not necessarily happy. A new sim that looks beautiful right from the start and runs well without the need for endless tweaking (and also offers a good chance of frame-rates sufficient for true VR) is a glimpse at a road (finally!) leading away from 2006.

 

[HiFlyer]

Aerofly's got photo scenery, check, lens flare, check, SDK coming, check, even a handful of addons. What are the awesome things in Aerofly that the other sims don't feature?

Well, if the question is phrased that way, one could easily then ask: "What awesome things will Flight School or even DTG sim have that could not also be added to (or is not already included) in X-plane 10 or P3D?"

I think Aerofly brings a fresh approach to the table. Something designed from the start to take advantage of modern computer and graphics cards. Also a new look, and a breath of fresh air in an ecosystem that's becoming set in its ways and resistant to change.

To many, FSX looks absolutely horrible in 2016, with its mismatched jigsaw-puzzle collage-land-class, and with roads running across footfall fields and stadiums, not to mention generally poor performance relative to modern programs.

We've become inured to paying through the nose to alleviate those deficiencies, but not necessarily happy. A new sim that looks beautiful right from the start and runs well without the need for endless tweaking (and also offers a good chance of frame-rates sufficient for true VR) is a glimpse at a road (finally!) leading away from 2006.

Just because we are at the beginning of that road, and it might be as long as the road from FSX 2006 to now, is for many, no reason to decline the journey.

In fact, its exciting. Something that after a decade, multiple versions of FSX are not.

 

[=rk=]

Well, if the question is phrased that way, one could easily then ask: "What awesome things will Flight School or even DTG sim have that could not also be added to (or is not already included) in X-plane 10 or P3D?"

You can be assured that I will ask Flight School or DTG sim the same question when they come to the developers site where I lurk, touting the excellence of their simulation. I'm ready to hear it from you and I'm not yet sold, despite the beautiful prose and screen shots. I like what you write, about exciting futures and tweak free simming, but to my simple ears it sounds like you are comparing Aerofly to FSX which isn't even supported by it's original developer any more, go figure. Do you even own a copy of P3D V3 to know what you are up against? I don't mean to blow LM's horn and they certainly don't need it like you might, but man, they've done all that and then some. Right now, it seems like this is the company slogan: "Aerofly, not just another flight sim."

 

[HiFlyer]

You can be assured that I will ask Flight School or DTG sim the same question when they come to the developers site where I lurk, touting the excellence of their simulation. I'm ready to hear it from you and I'm not yet sold, despite the beautiful prose and screen shots. I like what you write, about exciting futures and tweak free simming, but to my simple ears it sounds like you are comparing Aerofly to FSX which isn't even supported by it's original developer any more, go figure. Do you even own a copy of P3D V3 to know what you are up against? I don't mean to blow LM's horn and they certainly don't need it like you might, but man, they've done all that and then some. Right now, it seems like this is the company slogan: "Aerofly, not just another flight sim."

I do own P3D as well as Dovetails Flight school, FSX, FSX-SE, FS9, X-Plane 10, Rise of Flight, DCS, Microsoft Flight, War Thunder, AeroFly, Outerra, Wings Of Prey etc.

I move back and forth between them as the mood strikes, because none of them do everything perfectly, and its interesting to see different developers solutions to the same problems. In the last week I've been switching back and forth between Flight School and P3D several times a day, and occasionally firing up X-plane, comparing.

I'm not sold on P3D, though I believe its a very very nice version of FSX. Its still defined by its heritage, (dated) though, and simply not aimed at regular people: Its aimed at the simulation professionals and the military, and (just like X-plane) supplies no real ladder upwards for any but the already initiated.

Of course, Flight school and eventually DTG sim intend to address just that lack, and DTG Martin has stressed the word "Accessibility" repeatedly enough to more than make the point. I think the need is (desperately) there, but the clay they are working with is brittle with age.

Now we have Aerofly FS2. Actually beautiful out of the box, 64bit, takes advantage of modern hardware, also has a Flight School with arguably better instruction, more lessons, more planes....

And very very accessible for the great mass of people held at arms length by the learning curve of ten years of development from the MS era sims.

I like its freshness, and air of possibility, without the whiff of stagnation that comes to me more and more strongly from the FSX clones. I'm hopeful that, if supported, it has a chance of its own new future that modern audiences can learn and grow with, like we did with FSX, into a future uniquely theirs and finally unencumbered by the legacy of Microsoft.

And that many people still not tied to any one sim or ecosystem have room to ride along and enjoy the sights.

 

[=rk=]

Huh, I suppose anyone with a pilots license could be considered a simulation professional then, because a lot of licensed pilots practice procedures and even maintain skills with the higher end sims, like P3D - and then military people, heck, they definitely like to plan and practice things. Give them your tablet drone controller sim and watch them go crazy.

Then there is the other thing, about a ladder or hand up. It's kind of why normal people can only drive cars and the intelligentsia need pilot's licenses. Everybody (in development) wants flight simulators to be as popular as Grand Theft Auto and everybody wants to be able to swoop around. The actual truth is that you can't just jump into an airplane and start blasting around like you can in GTA and your promises of a hand up are only that. Amelia Earhart didn't need a hand up, but hey, it's our little secret; I'm not going to go out and make a sim that says "rkfly, more of a hand up," but the point is there. So, if everybody that wanted to fly real airplanes actually had had a real hand up...road rage in the skies.

If I had a R/C sim that was ok, great even, that had been around for many years with only mild success and I watched FSX crawl back up out of the grave and find new life through Steam, I would probably compare my sim favorably against FSX, nothing wrong with that. I think I would want to either distance myself from that impression, that simming for R/C isn't nearly as profitable as simming the promise of flight; or I think, more likely I'd embrace it. I would probably focus on my sims unique history as a true fly-by-wire experience. No other "public" simulator in the world, commercially available, comes close to Aerofly in terms of actual hours flown, is this not true? Personally I think that is gold and that is the direction I would go, something the others can't touch.

 

[HiFlyer]

Then there is the other thing, about a ladder or hand up. It's kind of why normal people can only drive cars and the intelligentsia need pilot's licenses. Everybody (in development) wants flight simulators to be as popular as Grand Theft Auto and everybody wants to be able to swoop around. The actual truth is that you can't just jump into an airplane and start blasting around like you can in GTA and your promises of a hand up are only that. Amelia Earhart didn't need a hand up, but hey, it's our little secret; I'm not going to go out and make a sim that says "rkfly, more of a hand up," but the point is there. So, if everybody that wanted to fly real airplanes actually had had a real hand up...road rage in the skies.

I would counter that the most successful civilian simulation ever created (FSX) was successful precisely because it offered a very large hand up, and explicitly catered to all levels of interest, not simply to "intelligentsia", a fact that as the hobby has evolved seems to have been lost as the already initiated clamor for more and more specialized minutia of the sort that defines nichedom.

Like flight school, it had game-like qualities (missions) that P3D and X-Plane dropped as unnecessary/childish; abandoning any attempt at a wider audience.

Leaving a large gap that Dovetail seeks to exploit, and I suspect Aerofly as well.

As for road rage in the skies, for me that's an argument of exclusion, and (again) a recipe for nichedom. A broad tent full of people is almost by definition noisier and more chaotic than a tiny one with relatively few people. Children run and yell, but they also grow and learn!

No other "public" simulator in the world, commercially available, comes close to Aerofly in terms of actual hours flown, is this not true? Personally I think that is gold and that is the direction I would go, something the others can't touch.

I have no idea if that's true, but I know that FSX graphics are almost painful to the eyes of modern audiences, and Dovetails glimpse of DTG Sim via Flight School doesn't appear set to alter that fact appreciably. I believe there's a path forward for a visually appealing, modern, base level sim that audiences can grow with, in a less saturated and confusing ecosystem.

The very popularity of tablet flight sims speaks to the fact that there's indeed a market if approached correctly. I think its not coincidence that Flight School and Aerofly FS2 appeared so close together with similar goals to once again attract a wider audience.

I hope they succeed, but have greater hopes for something unique from Aerofly rather than yet another rehash of FSX from DTG.

Reading the reviews, I feel a bit encouraged!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/434030/

 

[=rk=]

Got it, Aerofly is the sim to go with because it will have game like missions that appeal to a wide audience. Thanks for answering that. I don't know that I agree that just about anyone should have control of objects capable of propelling people over my house, if that is what you are saying, although I do see the commercial value of such a perspective.

 

[HiFlyer]

Got it, Aerofly is the sim to go with because it will have game like missions that appeal to a wide audience.

An interesting paraphrase, but not quite my argument.

I would say rather that missions, lessons and other things create a greater level of accessibility to new users, helping to ease the learning curve that's been acting as an increasingly high barrier to entry.

I don't know that I agree that just about anyone should have control of objects capable of propelling people over my house

To my knowledge, no consumer-level simulation has ever propelled anyone over anyone's house, ever. Somehow the image brings to my mind absurd things like Monty Python and exploding cows.

 

[=rk=]

Somehow the image brings to my mind absurd things like Monty Python and exploding cows.

Maybe it is your imagination. I asked you what Aerofly did that other sims don't. I even went so far as to suggest possible market niches to pursue, some tongue in cheek, some overly generous. You finally pull the "this sim is going to bridge the gap" card. OK, that is straight up BS. No sim can bridge the gap, it is like saying Operation by Milton Bradley can train someone to be a surgeon, the idea is ABSURD. Pilots have to LEARN THINGS, like how to navigate and not crash down on top of peoples heads. It is WAAAY harder than parallel parking, trust me on this. That is the eternal burning reason why flight simulation always seems cool to people and always turns them off. For pete's sake, they pay pilots lots of money to do this occupation for a reason. I tell you this, in a way I think is polite
then there is the other thing, about a ladder or hand up. It's kind of why normal people can only drive cars and the intelligentsia need pilot's licenses. Everybody (in development) wants flight simulators to be as popular as Grand Theft Auto and everybody wants to be able to swoop around. The actual truth is that you can't just jump into an airplane and start blasting around like you can in GTA and your promises of a hand up are only that.
and you come back with:

I would counter that the most successful civilian simulation ever created (FSX) was successful precisely because it offered a very large hand up, and explicitly catered to all levels of interest, not simply to "intelligentsia", a fact that as the hobby has evolved seems to have been lost as the already initiated clamor for more and more specialized minutia of the sort that defines nichedom.

Like flight school, it had game-like qualities (missions) that P3D and X-Plane dropped as unnecessary/childish; abandoning any attempt at a wider audience.

Leaving a large gap that Dovetail seeks to exploit, and I suspect Aerofly as well.

As for road rage in the skies, for me that's an argument of exclusion, and (again) a recipe for nichedom. A broad tent full of people is almost by definition noisier and more chaotic than a tiny one with relatively few people. Children run and yell, but they also grow and learn!

At this point I don't even know if you what you mean by argument of exclusion, I sure don't. I was referring to why real people can't just up and fly airplanes over my house and it is a very similar reason as to why they don't want to bother to learn how to fly while they are gaming. As to everything else, good luck with it.

 

[HiFlyer]

I asked you what Aerofly did that other sims don't.

And I responded that the question could be asked of any sim, and the answer would be primarily the same for all of them: not much beyond of course differences in visuals, graphics engines, target audience, and focus of attention, of which Aerofly taken as a whole differs in just about all categories from P3D and X-Plane for instance.

Pilots have to LEARN THINGS, like how to navigate and not crash down on top of peoples heads. It is WAAAY harder than parallel parking, trust me on this.

Was there some disagreement on this point?

At this point I don't even know if you what you mean by argument of exclusion, I sure don't. I was referring to why real people can't just up and fly airplanes over my house and it is a very similar reason as to why they don't want to bother to learn how to fly while they are gaming. As to everything else, good luck with it.

We were in the process of discussing the merits of a computer flight simulation called Aerofly, and somewhere in there you began discussing real pilots. The facts are however, that the vast majority of "Pilots" in this community are pilots only in this community, and nothing of the sort in real life. They are, at least according to the Avsim survey, regular people, tending towards the upper end of the age (though not necessarily the income) spectrum, and in aggregate not identifiable as this "Intelligentsia" you are mentioning, somehow more capable than other human beings of grasping the minutia of Flight. I don't know how the surveys skew for real pilots, but that's pretty irrelevant in a discussion of a consumer level sim.

Consumer level sims draw from all spectrum's of society, and the popularity of airshows, air museums, flying games like DCS and War Thunder (and FSX-SE!) show that at the very least basic interest is there. What's not there now is accessibility to newcomers, not to turn them into real pilots because most have no interest in becoming such. Instead accessibility is meant to ease people into the possibilities of the hobby in a gentle fashion that doesn't start with something like X-plane flinging them into the front seat of a jet with a zillion buttons and little guidance besides "You'll eventually put in the work to figure it out if you really wanna be a pilot"

Which the vast majority don't. They want to feel like a pilot to whatever degree they feel comfortable with, and satisfy a curiosity/fantasy. Just like driving a truck simulator doesn't mean you want to learn all the details of unhitching trailers.

Our current sims and community tend to think that people do want to learn all of those details (or should want to) and that's the beginning of the disconnect that leads to nichedom.

The vast majority just want to fly, and then maybe take it farther at their leisure, which doesn't include an FSX tweak guide, $800 in addons to make it halfway presentable and a month of digging into the innards of the CFG.

Sometimes something a bit less intense that you can grow comfortably with, like Flight School or Aerofly (done well of course) has a value all its own.

A value some see the beauty of, and some don't.

 

[HiFlyer]

 

[lionheart]

Bjoern, I think someone is pulling your plunker.. He is set on making it look bad. I wouldnt worry.

You did bring up a good point. The platform was designed for tablets. Android and iOS. This means, its lightning fast in a PC. Thats why photo real scenery was able to run like glass on my rig without coughing, like it does when I have photo scenery in FSX/P3D. RAM starts dissipating, etc. Parts start turning black... Not with this.

Its ultra lean in coding. Thats why it can use these planes with probably 1/2 (plus) million polygons.

Interesting...

So they must have taken the AF1 code and redid it for Android / iOS. Or, they wrote fresh code, but that would have taken ages, I would think, unless they have a way to refurbish existing code into a bare bones platform.

hmmm...

Reading in their Discussions forum today at Steam, they talk about how they are busy compiling the scenery tiles (graphics) for the entire areas they have. Rendering their tiles... Nice...! I can hardly wait. So nice to fly around in high rez photo scenery... (smoothly).

Back on previous topics brought up. This is the 'PC' version. I'll bet it has things in it that the tablet version does not have. I'll bet it will have quite a few better things. It had to be designed ultra lean for those tablets. It could only be so big or the HD's would be filled up on the tablets. Now they can go all out with this version on a big PC.

Its already running like a Lambo... Very interesting.

 

[=rk=]

Bjoern, I think someone is pulling your plunker.. He is set on making it look bad. I wouldnt worry.

It does not appear Bjoern was in the least bit worried as he'd made the one offhanded comment. If by "he" you mean me, how could you possibly know what I am set on? The question is rhetorical but it implies you are not so concerned with truthful interaction. I see you making flattering posts about what appears to be yet another sim eager to cash in on the Steam/FSX connection. I think it is my prerogative to raise such a point, it is reasonable and if there is anything that does set it aside, that is the moment to say it because when people do Google searches for things like "Aerofly," they don't necessarily read through pages and pages of threads to find the gold. The last thing I want to do is teach people how to market. The obvious solution is to answer the question. Who cares that it is just another sim, make it a glorious other sim. "Why I'm so glad you asked, gives me a chance to blow my own horn, Aerofly has condensed 20 years of simulation refinement into a crystal jewel of turn key flight. Through our vast network of real world pilots, a network no other sim has access to, we are able to focus on exactly what provides our pilots the most rewarding simulation experience" and so on.

I feel that instead of doing that, HiFlyer adopted a defensive stance as if I were a representative of the competition and it goes on from there until you come back and put a label on it. I'm already done trying to show him my perspective, I wished him good luck and your suggestion to not worry is spot on.

In closing I will comment on your observation:

Its ultra lean in coding. Thats why it can use these planes with probably 1/2 (plus) million polygons.

By that same extension a model browser similar to MCX or FSPaint would have the same result and I don't find that to be the case, a 500k polygon model likely would not load in MCX, perhaps I am mistaken. Then of course there is the fact that MCX is not burdened to provide weather, ATC, sun flares...It seems like it is not so direct a correlation "lean coding allows 500k polygons" as you imply.

 

[Heretic]

No plunkers pulled, Bill, don't worry.

Its ultra lean in coding. Thats why it can use these planes with probably 1/2 (plus) million polygons.

No, it's not. Or at least not exclusivcely. There's little autogen, no AI, no ATC, simplistic weather...if you take all this away from MSFS and the likes, you'll get similar performance.
And modern tablets do have a bit of power under the hood, probably akin to what we had eight or ten years ago on desktops, so that's another factor.

So they must have taken the AF1 code and redid it for Android / iOS. Or, they wrote fresh code, but that would have taken ages, I would think, unless they have a way to refurbish existing code into a bare bones platform.

hmmm...

It's most likely expanded AF1 code. No one one-man team could start over in so little time.

 

[HiFlyer]

On comparisons to other sims:

We have learnt over the years that publishing a new flight simulator in the PC market is a difficult thing, to say the least

We have those people that are happy with our approach and think its a fresh start in the flight simulator business, on the other hand there are existing FSX and X-Plane users that are rather skeptical. The main problem is that our potential customers are ranging from casual users that just want to make a quick flight up to demanding users that want to simulate every aspect of flying.

Comparison to other simulators is something we cannot stop, but FSX is in the market for many many years and has grown especially due to the huge amount of 3rd party AddOns. This is something a new simulator can never achieve right from the start. But it is our long term intention to offer an open Flight Simulator as well where other users can add content to it.

Developing a Flight Simulator takes time and the internals of Aerofly evolved over many years, but we now have a solid base that we can built on. That's why we think is the best time to enter the Early Access program. We will listen to your Feedback and we will try to implement as many wishes as possible, but it takes time, so please be patient with us.

Regarding an SDK:

An SDK is our top priority. Attracting external developers will help us getting more attention from the hard core flight simmer enthusiasts.

For all the rest, wait for our posting next week, where we will publish our roadmap.

Regarding ATC:

Thank you for your feedback. Next week we will publish our roadmap for the upcoming features.

We will have a high priority for add-on developers and we are also in contact with PilotEdge.

We will also add more functionality to our airplanes.

Where is the A380?

The A380 requires some more work before we can release it. We will not sell it as a DLC.

Regarding better ground textures: We plan to offer a special download option where users with lots of space can download additional data, but we have to check this first with Steam.

All your other requests are also on our todo list. Its too early yet to publish more details.

Is this program worth the Money?

It seems like people don't seem to understand Early Access. We want and need the feedback of users to add new features and to fix bugs. This first version was never ment to be our final version with respect to what it has.

Is this a simulator or a game?

What people do not understand today is, that there is not that much difference between a fast mobile devices compared to a desktop computer. The main difference is that desktop computer typically have better 3D graphics, but the actual computing power for performing the flight physics runs at its full precision on both platforms, so Aerofly FS 2 is running the same engine on mobile devices and on the PC version just with slightly adjusted parameters.

Our flight physics engine runs at the highest precision even on powerful mobile devices.

The big difference in the mobile and PC version is the fact that we use higher resolution textures as well as a lot more complex vertex and pixel shader. Lighting does look much better on the PC version.

Also the PC version features airplanes will a lot more functionality, e.g. some parts of the cockpit are operational.

Autopilot/FMC/MCDU modes

The current version of Aerofly FS 2 allows full IFR flights. You can tune in the navaids from the worldwide VOR/DME/ILS database and set the courses according to your enroute and approach charts. Also all autopilot functionality should be directly usable by operating them inside the cockpit.

At the moment, there is no ATC guidance whatsoever. This is one of the major topics we would like to get feedback on and see how much demand there is compared to other topics.

User generated content:

It is our explicit intention to allow user created content, like airports and airplanes.

The user requires a 3D modelling tool that we support ( e.g. 3D Studio Max ). We will then deliver tools to convert from those 3D tools to our internal format.

Setting up an airplane however requires manual editing of a text file which requires quite some work. Once Aerofly is available you can see that all airplanes and airports have text files that you can look into.