Microsoft Flight Simulator Aerosoft Offshore Landmarks: Gulf of Mexico preview

[Mathijs Kok]

When you start a project for fun, and it becomes one of the best-selling projects we have, it is logical to make a follow-up project. So here it is. After the North Sea, we will now cover the Gulf of Mexico!

 

Honestly, the North Sea project was a wild idea. I had one fine evening watching extremely stupid television. The next morning I spent some hours seeing if I could find the database and models we would need, and the idea became a plan. We had to buy models and databases and compile them into an MSFS project. Of course, it was not that easy and cheap, but as I said, it sold (sells) like hotcakes, so I think we did something good.  And everybody involved loved working on it.

 

For me, flight simulation is about entertainment. We are all simulating flying aircraft. Some do it as real as possible, and some do it less realistic. Find me any sim pilot who has not flown under a bridge, and I will buy him a beer. Some spend thousands on a cockpit, and some sit on their couch with an Xbox controller and enjoy the sim.

 

But in 22 years of doing sim add-ons, I never had a project where people had that much fun. Simply unadulterated fun. Sailing the included ships among the ships and rigs, flying over the area with a Twin Otter, and landing helicopters on the hundreds of new landing spots. And I understand that. Like many simmers love the less structured world of small VFR aircraft where you actually explore the fantastic world of MS Flight Simulator, we gave them a new part to explore.

 

So here we go. Gulf of Mexico. While this might seem like the North Sea, there are some remarkable differences. First, compared to the North Sea, this project will focus less on ships (not nearly as many) and more on oil (and some gas) rigs. The North Sea oil and gas industry is super-regulated. Only the big companies are involved. In the Gulf, where the oil fields are often on the coastlines, you might find 10 companies next to each other having oil wells on the land, the beach and on simple structures a few hundred yards off the coast. I mean really small, like 10 by ten meters. Wild west. Thousands of structures.

Do click. Oh please do click on the image.

 

Other differences are in the kind of ships. Of course, there are tankers and cargo vessels, but there are way more pleasure craft and cruise ships. Way more shrimp fishing vessels. Way more multi-million dollar yachts.

 

Aerosoft Offshore Landmarks: North Sea was used by us to see how far we could push the simulator. It has objects containing 5.000.000 polygons. That is a way (and I mean way) more than anything you have seen. And the sim had no problems (we still need to see how the Xbox and Cloud versions can handle that). This time we will push the sim again and try to include objects with 20 million polygons. Ask me nicely, and I’ll show an image that might never happen in the sim. No promises, but it might.

 

I had a super group of advisors and testers for the North Sea project. People who work on rigs, people who work on ships and people who know the industry. They shaped the project, and all of them will assist in this project. But we could really use input from locals. People who fish there, people who drive boats, helicopter pilots. Heck, even people who have done a load of cruises there.

 

If you want to be part of this project, drop me a mail at mathijs.kok@aerosoft.com.

 

 

[Mathijs Kok]

One of the biggest differences between our North Sea project and the Gulf project is that we need to shift way more towards structures and less to ships.  There are simply a lot (a lot) less ships in the Guld of Mexico compared to the Norths Sea. But there are a heck of a lot more platforms. Some of the most advanced and biggest oil production facilities are to be found here. For example, the floating 'Spar' class of rigs. These are not standing on legs as almost all in the North Sea but float and are held in place by massive anchors. These can be used in waters up to 2,500 meters deep and costs around $3.000.000.000. 

 

 

 

 

 

750.000 polygons in the sim. 

[Herman]

Quite the model! And it caused me a double glance when looking at the first shot.

 

BTW, your spell checker (?) is spelling "Gulf" as "Guld" in the post above 😉. I know it's not your native Dutch.

[Black2306]

This is amazing! Very detailed work.

[Mathijs Kok]

15 minutes ago, Herman said:

BTW, your spell checker (?) is spelling "Gulf" as "Guld" in the post above 😉. I know it's not your native Dutch.

 

Well we'll blame that on a shitty spelling checker, correct and thanks!

[Mathijs Kok]

9 minutes ago, Black2306 said:

This is amazing! Very detailed work.

 

You seen nothing yet. That's a 750.000 polygon object. I just bought a 3d model with 20.000.000 polygons. 
Probably need to buy Anne (who is doing the conversions) a new and way faster machine to compile it fast.

[Mathijs Kok]

Btw.... While we are sad that Christian Bahr is not able to do the work for this project (he is still very much assisting), I am happy to say that Sascha Normann will be the core developer.  The somewhat older customers will recognize that name as being behind many of our projects, and the dev behind the Belin airport that is being updated right now. Sascha is a wizard making FS DLC from databases and that is what this project is about.  I could not wish for a better replacement. As you know I always like to tell you who is working on our projects. Aerosoft is not an 'entity' but a load of people working together. You can find their email addresses and we have a telephone number you can call. 

 

So I am in charge of the databases and manuals, Anne is getting the models we buy ready for the sim and Sascha will get it all into the sim. And we got a load of people helping us. 

 

But what we still need is people who have experience in these waters. Even if you have a small boat and go out fishing, we can still use your input.  -> Mathijs.Kok@Aerosoft.com

 

 

[JasonmCork]

Amazing work!

 

You did tell me in the previous project that you would include the 2 platforms for Kinsale Gas(Cork) if i provided the locations even tho they were just outside of the north sea but then ye excluded it

[Mathijs Kok]

Keep in mind we are still very much looking for people who know the Gulf of Mexico. Does not matter if you work on rigs, fish from your small craft or anything else. If you want to assist: mathijs.kok@aerosoft.com.

[amahran]

Hell yeah! I remember asking for this in the Requests thread a few months ago, and man I'm so glad you guys came through!!!

 

(I presume you were working on this already prior to me asking about it, I'd be surprised if you guys took my request and turned it around in a matter of 1-2 months...)

 

Any chance this will be sold on the Marketplace as well? I really appreciate how the Marketplace allows me to update everything from a single location, though I don't recall seeing the north sea on there, so I presume there's a reason behind that.

[mikkel]

On 2/1/2023 at 7:18 PM, Mathijs Kok said:

One of the biggest differences between our North Sea project and the Gulf project is that we need to shift way more towards structures and less to ships

 

Mathijs, just thinking here. I'm one who never bought the first Northsea product, but for two reasons, firstly it did not cover much of the areas north around Norway, But more importantly, static ships are a very controversial approach. Many seems to shy away from the product due to this. Have you considered making a version/option without static ships, but maybe donate some ships to the 'Global AI Ship Traffic MSFS GAIST Ultra V3'-group and help them getting them moving, either by providing data or dialog with ASOBO/MSFS for improvements in the system. They have 172 000 downloads and are on a mission to improving ship traffic all around the globe. Being a partner/sponsor could probably help gain sales for your ocean products now and in the future from fans of GAIST?

[Mathijs Kok]

10 hours ago, mikkel said:

 

Mathijs, just thinking here. I'm one who never bought the first Northsea product, but for two reasons, firstly it did not cover much of the areas north around Norway, But more importantly, static ships are a very controversial approach. Many seems to shy away from the product due to this. Have you considered making a version/option without static ships, but maybe donate some ships to the 'Global AI Ship Traffic MSFS GAIST Ultra V3'-group and help them getting them moving, either by providing data or dialog with ASOBO/MSFS for improvements in the system. They have 172 000 downloads and are on a mission to improving ship traffic all around the globe. Being a partner/sponsor could probably help gain sales for your ocean products now and in the future from fans of GAIST?

 

We have worked with them all the time And highly respect them. If I am not flying the North Sea I for sure have it activated!

And removing our ships is at easy as removing a folder, all explained in the manual. BUT, there are several rather distinct disadvantages.

• The placement is semi random, so you will see ships drive through rigs, more obvious the massive wind parks etc.
• You will also not be able to see correct shipping lanes where they cross etc.
• You will see ships where they are not allowed to be.
• You will miss the correct geolocation such as shrimp boats where the shrimps are, fishing vessels on the fishing grounds or headed to and from them
• Heavy loaded tankers coming into the North Sea, empty tankers going out
• You will miss the 2500 ships that are at anchor (1/4 of ships on the North Sea are not moving at any given moment). Fly over the channel and the fist thing you see are the large anchorages where hundreds of ships at waiting!
• You will miss all the construction vessels being at work, all the other industrial vessels like dredgers doing maintenance or sucking up sand
• You will see only 1/3 of the ships that are actually there.

Simply put, without what we put there, the North Sea shipping is just not as it should be. It is not realistic. 

 

Now we have explained many times why we choose static shipping and we let customers decide from video footage if they would be able to see a ship being static or animated. They simply could not. Just as all the people who assist us (pilots and mostly helicopter pilots who fly to the rigs) said that is is very hard to actually see and none considered out choice to be an issue.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mathijs Kok]

17 hours ago, amahran said:

Hell yeah! I remember asking for this in the Requests thread a few months ago, and man I'm so glad you guys came through!!!

 

(I presume you were working on this already prior to me asking about it, I'd be surprised if you guys took my request and turned it around in a matter of 1-2 months...)

 

Any chance this will be sold on the Marketplace as well? I really appreciate how the Marketplace allows me to update everything from a single location, though I don't recall seeing the north sea on there, so I presume there's a reason behind that.

 

 

Well comments like your did not really stop the idea, lol. But it was always on the list if the North Sea did well. We considered other areas as well (like the Gulf of Arabia) but this is just more interesting. From a focus on wind energy we are now heavy on oil. Over 1850 (!) structures. Over 1200 new helicopter pads. A whole slew of new kinds of structures that you don't see in the North Sea where building close to shore is not allowed. In the Gulf there are hundreds of oil production 'systems'  in water as shallow at 5 feet.  So things like will be all along the coast. 

 

But there are also way more military vessels and we intend to cover a good deal of them (note it might these will not be in a Marketplace version due to regulation).

 

And yes, all our products are intended for the Marketplace and always send to MS the moment we release it. Unfortunately they have a massive backlog and some products have already been on the waiting list for months. We have no control over that.

[Mathijs Kok]

Look what Anne is experimenting with:

 

 

Before our North Sea project anything over 300.000 polygons was considered impossible. But the North Sea project has objects with 5.000.000 polygons. This is 4 times as much.  

[amahran]

That’s great; I’ve been itching to use the H145 Offshore Transport modes, especially considering the FAA accepted procedures for operating in the gulf makes life a bit more interesting. 

[Mathijs Kok]

Always nice to show the first few images of a new product.

 

 

Here you see a well head protector (that is a unmanned simple structure on top of a well head) and a barge with a pile driver crane on it. These are used a lot because so much of this product will be in very shallow water, very close to the beach. It is remarkable how different the oil industry here is compared to the North Sea where it is all far out at sea.

[Gstove]

On 2/3/2023 at 11:04 AM, Mathijs Kok said:

 

But there are also way more military vessels and we intend to cover a good deal of them (note it might these will not be in a Marketplace version due to regulation).
 

And yes, all our products are intended for the Marketplace and always send to MS the moment we release it. Unfortunately they have a massive backlog and some products have already been on the waiting list for months. We have no control over that.

There are definitely military ships/aircraft etc in the marketplace the devs like seafront sims that do these dlc have lots but they remove the guns on the marketplace version. It works well. 

[Mathijs Kok]

1 hour ago, Gstove said:

There are definitely military ships/aircraft etc in the marketplace the devs like seafront sims that do these dlc have lots but they remove the guns on the marketplace version. It works well. 

 

Yeah.... no. I am not going to do a destroyer without visible canons, That's a degradation in realism I think is not correct.  A good part of this project is about how the US protects its borders and ships like this, if you like it or not are part of that:

 

Doing that one without the deck gun and the Phalanx CIWS just makes it a very different ship.  We also like this vessel as it adds one more place to land you helicopter on!

 

I do understand and accept the rules of Microsoft. The marketplace version will not have this ship and it will not have the carrier we have bought and hope to use. So the version we sell and the verioin the marketplace sells will differ, something I really hate as it is confusing to customers.

 

Btw that is the 19.000.000 polygon model I was talking about. There are whole countries in MSFS that have less polygons. Please note this is NOT a carrier DLC and the carrier will just be an object you can land on. 
I am however seriously considering spinning this one off a a special project. The fact it will never be sold on the Marketplace/Xbox/Cloud makes that hard though.

 

[Mathijs Kok]

We need to place 200 of these on barges that are located in water up to 15 meters deep.  Can you imagine they have some issues with spillage etc?

 

[Mathijs Kok]

Where the North Sea was really about wind energy, the Gulf of Mexico is about oil. While there are many big rigs, there is a massive (hundreds) amount of small production platforms like this one.

 

 

 

 

 

Much more basic platforms in shallow (25 to 50 meter) water.  The density of these is impressive. We will add over 10.000 objects. 

[Mathijs Kok]

The harvest of one week.

 

 

 

Next step is to all add 6 levels of LOD (do ask other devs why they don't do that), then you understand why we can handle objects with millions of polygons.

[Black2306]

Excellent work! A lot of details 

[Smokey Behr]

looking forward to this one, Mathijs. 

 

Do we have a guesstimate of a release date? or at least folks can participate in Beta testing.  I beta test for pretty much all the current Helicopter Devs save a couple.  

 

Thanks :)

[Mathijs Kok]

Release will be summer(ish). Contact me at mathijs.kok@aerosoft.com and I'll add you to the team. You do need Discord though.

[Mathijs Kok]

Fist test exports to the sim....