Aerofly 2 Released; Beta; Steam Games

[Gliderfan]

I do note that Ipacs has apparently gone into great detail creating their planes to match reality, and I find that encouraging.

That's the only 'flight sim video I've ever watched where there was no actual flying and the plane remained firmly rooted on the same spot on the runway.
Riveting stuff!

Here he is again in flight...
Great for insomniacs btw ....
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[HiFlyer]

Looks fantastic, the only thing that is preventing me to buy this is the lack of the rest of the world to fly...

I was actually thinking about that earlier, but it occurred to me that if I ever have the urge to fly over Kazakhstan or something, well then there's always FS9, FSX, X-plane, etc.

Those are like the comfy old sweaters a family member might have given you for Christmas a few years ago; worn, broken in, familiar.

But you kinda like that new one you caught on sale recently a lot, too.

 

[lionheart]

It surprises me, because @lionheart says the Extra 330 doesn't slip that well. And almost any (sure the Extra too) aerobatic aircraft can slip very well.
@lionheart do the rudder inputs have much effect?

(Yeah, I'm into this kind of flying, sorry if it bothers you)

Hey AerobaticsFS,

I need to test it with slipping some more. I think my joystick may be too sensitive as its very difficult to take off with this plane. 30% of the time, I spin out when I am accellerating from a stop. Same for stopping after a landing. When I tried slipping it in (several times) I found it getting into an argument, flipping this way, flopping that way, unable to get it stable in a slip angle.

No worries on how you fly. My nephews really get into landing jet liners in the forest and trying to take off again, rather then just fly, lol.. When they were younger, all they wanted to do is crash them into the ground... That was stressful. sigh...

 

[lionheart]

When scenery builds up, I think airliner sim pilots are going to love this. I tested out high altitude tonight in the Beach King Air. One photo at 16K ALT, and another at 30K ALT. And a third that shows the scenery near Yuma airport in Arizona.

This King Air is a jewel. I love flying it.

16K feet. Low resolution zones (world areas in the featured states, presently) are rough under you, but appear like full rez on the horizon. I have visibility set at perhaps 90% clear. I do not like to put it at full clear, as that doesnt look natural to me. At least in Arizona as the dust kicks up into the sky, making it a hazy looking appearance.

30K Altitude. Low rez scenery zones now look absolutely fabulous from way up near space.

Yuma Arizona. Textures are extreme resolution by the airports. Note the houses. I am running with a 4K 55 inch monitor and have settings in the sim set at 4K, fully screen mode, all settings maxed. I do get ripples now and then and a sound blip, telling me the graphics card is running at its optimum. I have SpeedFan running. 8 Core MS chips, 2 Gig nVidia GTX660 and 16 Gigs of RAM. Main OS is on an SSD, the sim is on a laptop style HHD, old style, not SSD.

 

[AerobaticsFS]

Hey AerobaticsFS,

I need to test it with slipping some more. I think my joystick may be too sensitive as its very difficult to take off with this plane. 30% of the time, I spin out when I am accellerating from a stop. Same for stopping after a landing. When I tried slipping it in (several times) I found it getting into an argument, flipping this way, flopping that way, unable to get it stable in a slip angle.

No worries on how you fly. My nephews really get into landing jet liners in the forest and trying to take off again, rather then just fly, lol.. When they were younger, all they wanted to do is crash them into the ground... That was stressful. sigh...

Okay, thanks for your reply. I stay tuned to this thread and see how AeroflyFS will develop Maybe it becomes a decent alternative for FSX

 

[Gerli]

I think tomorrow start the Steam Summer Sale... maybe we can get a nice discount on this.

 

[HiFlyer]

As you fly around, you see more and more that this program could really be a goldmine for developers. Right away the first thing that smacks you in the face is the beauty and the smoothness and the sheer, open cleanliness of the graphics. But then you see quickly where 3rd parties could enhance things greatly.

Night lighting for the airports and countryside. (think X-plane at night) OSM. Sound packs. ATC (even if just sounds for ambiance at first). Weather (especially enhanced clouds)

AI

New planes of course, with greater depth. Other high-res coverage areas. (seems the most obvious thing in the world for Megascenery to be talking to these people. Is that happening?)

Airports!

Going by the positive reviews, AFS2 will probably gather quite a following. It should be interesting to see the path the sim takes over time, and which of the obvious needs gets filled first and how quickly.

 

[HiFlyer]

Also:

ipacs aerofly [developer] 10 hours ago

We might be able to publish the texture pack DLC tomorrow if nothing unforeseen comes into our way. This DLC basically extends the region of high quality aerial images around every airport.

 

[HiFlyer]

ipacs aerofly [developer] 3 hours ago

We just published the DLC. The download is big, but we hope you enjoy the new level of detail.

 

[lionheart]

AWESOME....! Its going to be a busy weekend of flying...


They also launched a SDK as well. Max 10 and 16 work with it, and something called Cinema. I only have 2014, so I'll have to wait till I can rent 2016.

 

[lionheart]

Ok, here's the spiel.

You will see an 'Install' on your panel in Steam/Library/Games/Aerofly 2. When you click that, you will get a 10 Gig system update. Pretty massive. You will also then be out of the Beta and into the full version. I do not know what that means, except that that is what IPACS are saying in a post about the updates and release of the DLC. You need to update your Aerofly 2 to get the new DLC.

The DLC (free upgrade of high resolution regions around airports, bigger then it was before), is about 60 Gigs approximately. On my computer, its 85.4 for everything. I am at 34 Gigs now of the entire download.

Big updates... This should be really interesting.

Its too bad you cant have the entire world in high rez. Just three states being 85 Gigs is quite a bit, and I imagine the full package (full download) is now up to 95 Gigs, roughly and approximately. Thats only 3 states in the USA. I wonder if they are doing a slightly better resolution world wide, like they talked about? That would be nice.

We shall see..

 

[HiFlyer]

Ok, here's the spiel.

You will see an 'Install' on your panel in Steam/Library/Games/Aerofly 2. When you click that, you will get a 10 Gig system update. Pretty massive. You will also then be out of the Beta and into the full version. I do not know what that means, except that that is what IPACS are saying in a post about the updates and release of the DLC. You need to update your Aerofly 2 to get the new DLC.

The DLC (free upgrade of high resolution regions around airports, bigger then it was before), is about 60 Gigs approximately. On my computer, its 85.4 for everything. I am at 34 Gigs now of the entire download.

Big updates... This should be really interesting.

Its too bad you cant have the entire world in high rez. Just three states being 85 Gigs is quite a bit, and I imagine the full package (full download) is now up to 95 Gigs, roughly and approximately. Thats only 3 states in the USA. I wonder if they are doing a slightly better resolution world wide, like they talked about? That would be nice.

We shall see..

I'm quite happy to devote a large drive to this if necessary............

 

[HiFlyer]

IPACS Support

Aerofly FS 2 Scenery SDK for evaluation
We have finished an initial version of our scenery SDK for Aerofly FS 2.

Anybody seriously interested in creating \airports or new scenery objects for Aerofly FS 2 and who has access to either 3D Studio Max 2010, 2012 or 2016 or Cinema 4D R17 may contact us for an evaluation of the SDK. Drop us an Email at mail (at) ipacs.de along with some information on why you intend to develop sceneries for Aerofly FS 2.

 

[bdf369]

Don't all the modeling tools supported in the AF2 SDK cost thousands of dollars? If true that's really a shame, no joy for the hobbyist and/or freeware developer.

 

[lionheart]

Don't all the modeling tools supported in the AF2 SDK cost thousands of dollars? If true that's really a shame, no joy for the hobbyist and/or freeware developer.

....and FSX ......and P3D

You have to rent Max now, by the way. You cant pay thousands off the bat. $120 to $185 a month now. Probably better that way, as it wont take as long to save up like I did to get mine.

 

[HiFlyer]

Actually, I don't think it might be all that big an investment to some of the existing scenery players. For instance, much of Orbx's best stuff is essentially photoscenery with hand placed custom buildings. Practically cut and paste into Aerofly.

I just took a look at Aerofly FS2's twenty-nine palms and a YouTube vid of the one from Orbx, and it seems essentially drag n Drop.

I can think of an awful lot of X-plane and FSX photoscenerys that could fit into Aerofly just fine........

 

[bdf369]

....and FSX ......and P3D

With those sims you can use SketchUp or Blender along with ModelConverterX. Maybe there's some way to take the exported models from those tools and get them into AF2's exporter.

 

[bdf369]

Actually, I don't think it might be all that big an investment to some of the existing scenery players. For instance, much of Orbx's best stuff is essentially photoscenery with hand placed custom buildings. Practically cut and paste into Aerofly.

I'm not concerned about professional payware devs, they can justify the cost of 3dsMax or Cinema4D. It would be nice if freeware/hobbyist folks can play too.

 

[HiFlyer]

I'm not concerned about professional payware devs, they can justify the cost of 3dsMax or Cinema4D. It would be nice if freeware/hobbyist folks can play too.

Hmmmmmmm........ Can cheaper programs output in the needed formats, or has it all become proprietary?

 

[HiFlyer]

Barry, I took your concern to Ipacs and here is the reply.

IPACS Support

We might consider Blender or Sketchup, but writing an exporter for those programs requires time.

If you do know some people that know how to write plugins for these 3D programs and are willing to share source code, we could speed up the whole process.

What we really need is a sample plugin in c++ source form, where we can see how to export vertex data, normal, texture coordinates and materials.