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Mathijs,

I am very excited & hopeful regarding your initial steps towards a new simulator. If the quality objectives you are aiming for match those of you & your partner developer’s current product range then we will all benefit from something great.

Lots of people have been sending in a never ending wish list of specific functionality they'd like. I have just one wish although it is all encompassing and is more of a ground up design philosophy rather than specifics. Aside from the 'of the shelf / out of the box' sales of MSFS that people buy for their kids/husbands I think one of the elements that made MSFS so successful over the long haul was the fact that it was a relatively open platform allowing further enhancement & add-ons by other commercial developers and more importantly the enormous community of freeware developers who have spent countless hours contributing to our hobby.

By all means break loose of any backward compatibility, go for a design that takes advantage of current day technologies, but please try and design with an open architecture in mind. You can employ the best team of developers to create this product but its true longevity & success lies with the army of thousands of developers, tinkerers & tweakers who can build upon it. Let’s face it, it is this dedicated enthusiast market upon which Aersosoft owes its success.

All the best.

Regards,

Rod

a.k.a CaptVirtual

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well it sounds grate that aerosoft is 1 step closer to the goal of creating a new flightsim. 1 thing i mean you shoul include in your sim is runway lights and approch light insted of microsofts small lights that is inthe air. if you understand i know it dosent looks realistic by default lights in all airports. but whit new add ons they can chages it as some add-onn compays do to day. and create a better system as the project i was working on at the start of 2009. i was not abel to get the glasse to the runway light glow i neaded to use the standart light from the microsoft flight sim. as the effect only works in night donw and dusk.

best Regards,

Lars N

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Please do not misunderstand my comments, I am not a fan of Microsoft nor their FSX disaster - even with well over 10 years of very expensive and comprehensive development experience they proved that even they can get it very wrong and it cost them quiet a few millions of dollars for that lesson.

Regards

I dont wonna start an urgument here but calling FSX a disaster is a exaggerated and unrealistic statement. It is not perfect and yes there probably many things that each of us consider take improving , (and since each of has its own opinion that could be thousants of things ) but if you do own a rather stable platform it is an enjoyable simulator that does give a few more tools to developers over its previous versions.

If you do consider FSX a disaster , then by this definition the only excellent simulator that can exist , is reality it self . You make these kind of statements , you are raising the bar skyhigh ...you intimitate developers into avoid producing something that cannot match your expectations.

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No. MS messed up the scene a lot with all it's versions. We'll do two. One for you and one for professional users.

It needs to be clean and open. Not messed up by PR and Marketing. They come second. (you can note those as famous last words).

Ok fair enough, that might be be the best choise no hard feelings on that subjecthappy.gif

But what about my suggestion about "distributed computing" as Steve Lacey(former ACES Graphics artist)

once called it??? unsure.gif I have tried and posted about this a few times now, and I feel this would really benefit

those of us with leftover hardware-parts. Then they can build a new computer to share the load

between more computers instead of only 1 computer doing it all??rolleyes.gif

Thanks in advance

Regards

Rune_ENHD

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IMHO No! The new sim should not be hobbled by the restraints of backwards compatibility with fs9/fsx. Break completely from the past and build something better!

I also agree strongly. Why should we be hindered by backwards compatibility with archaic programs?

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Gentlemen, I will make this a short and sweet post.

Mathijs,

this is a happy day. Great news. Hope you can close the 20% gap and make this happen. Followed the discussions since weeks and now finally felt that I need to register here (Yeez, took me at least 15 attempts to read and type this fancy picture code!).

One comment what I'd like to see amongst all the other suggestions. I'd appreciate if there is a online/multiplayer module. I use(d) VATSIM myself but quit when FSX showed network problems and the quality of online players started to, well, decrease. Quality is very subjective dependent on what you are up to when loggin in to multiplayer and/or e.g. VATSIM. But say I want to take my big iron from PMDG for a flight then I surely appreciate to see GA aircraft but not necessarily some people who just want to have some fun and speed with the fighter jets or spitfire across the airfield when I am in an approach with the 744. Of course they shall have fun as well - and even I like(d) to take my aerobatic plane for a speed ride every once in a while - but there should be also something like predefined online sessions for those who want to use them. E.g. Airliners, Bushflying, Racing which are restricted to some specific aircraft (no A380 in bushflying e.g.).

Also (and maybe instead of the above approach) a rating system for online players might be nice. Like the clickable stars (then maybe planes) from 1 to 5 you see nowadays everywhere. Pilot and ATC can rate other pilots and vice versa. Judging to what extent they follow the flight rules, paths and ATC communication in order to allow a most realistic and immersive experience. If you then offered different sessions based on the rating people can exercise and work their way up the ladder and then in return access the higher and more professional sessions, keeping those out which just want to have fun and speed around.

A rating of other co-players might be not mandatory but at least requested (maybe you can just receive a rating if you gave a rating yourself, to prevent that people are selfish and forget to rate others) as soon as you log off a session and stayed in a session at least x mins (to avoid that people logon and give bad ratings after 1 min just for the fun of it). Also, to avoid 'malicious' bad ratings from other pilots it may help to record a rating only if at least 4 other players provided the same rating or record the average rating of x people. For ATC the internal VATSIM/IVAO ratings may be used, guess I once was a senior controller at VATSIM some years ago after I took a series of 'exams'.

EDIT: Thinking even further now, best would be of course if the software rated the flying skills (like FSPassengers to some extent). Crashes, overspeed, wrong altitudes / flight levels, fuel planning etc etc etc prevent you from gaining 'points' which you'd get based on flight time (the longer the flight the bigger the factor). This would take the human factor out of the discussion; or - since also sofware can make mistakes - both approaches can be used together with a 50/50 weight or whatever.

Again, this would not only provide a challenge to gain access higher 'levels' and finally to the professional class league by collecting good ratings but pilots and ATC alike can fly with other of the same not only experience but professionalism. And those who do not care about this can still fly in the other sessions. Let alone that free and private sessions would - I assume - still be available anyway.

This would bring me back to online flying.

Best

Phil

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I also agree with no backwards addon-compatibility with FSX or FS2004, except FSUIPC network-based addons like Project-Magenta, Widewiew and similar

This is our chance to get our NEW NEXTGEN SIM with truely nextgen-technology which would scale with hardware technology when it gets avaliable to use in our games/sims.

So please let us not not spoil our chance to start from scratch, and do right this time.

I am quite a MS-sim buff myself and I have many addons.. But it is not fun to be stuck in the past with regards to graphics, physics, and realism.

By buying an expensive up-todate PC or upgrading your PC with the latest hardware-parts, you would expect the sim to take advantage of it, but as FS series have showed us it is allways CPU-limited

and we need to have 5Ghz computer to run it like the devlopers intended.

Also graphics is using an outdated engine and relies on 1-core GPU , when we have gone completely over to using multi-core GPU's and muliti-core CPU's and Network-based addons

In my opinion there is a couple of things that severly buggs me with FS-series, and that is the:

* the perfomance of the sim is just too low and low FPS, stuttering when you turn your ac on the ground

* Glued to the runway feel

* Feeling like the aircraft is running on rails in the sky

* We should get the feeling that "we will" fall out of the sky if we are not obeying the laws of physics and weather, hehewink.gif espesially when difficulty in the sim is set on "Realistic" do not make it harder than

in the Real World, but atleast make it "way more" real than on "beginner settings" Pilots in the real world know about theese dangers, and so should we if decide to not play by the AFS2012- physics-ruleslaugh.gif

* Sudden wind shifts is a big problem right now

* Sudden visibility issues, and the "sharp horizon line" is not nice it should fade away lightly, strange looking clouds sometimes with rotating billboards and too transparrant, and no overcast-deck to fly over

* The severly limited regions for landclasses and things like that for textures is severly limiting developers possibility to make the world like it should be..

Just check out ORBX and GEX series because of limited options theese developers have gone seperate-ways to acheive their result, I really like how Nick Needham and Anthony from GEX

make the best out of the limited options and regions. Imagine what the result would have been if the world would have much more texture-regions and and landclasses It would not look like MARS anymore.

Also it would be nice if the oceans can have the same system as the onshore-landclass. Then we could see great barrier reef as it should, and it would not resemble other places around it with diffrent

colered waters and stuff. Please what ever you do, DO NOT limit the developers ability to use textures creatively

* Trimming the aircraft and auto-throttle use which do not work as it should, it is not reading the position where you put the levers before you engaged autothrottle or disengages it

* SOUND Engine-imersion and quality

* all the ATC-trouble

* No sloping runways

* And just the lame attempt to show landing lights which do not help at all, and looks like it is a FS98-implementation of polygons instead of a light-source

* And the computed voices of fs is just too repetitive and not diverse to all the accents and language of the world

* There should be much more danger associated with flying in the atmosphere in this FS, all weather effects must be included and modelled, hopefully all weather-fenomens also.

* Winter flying should have icing-conditions like in RW and proper procedures for carburator heat, and de-icing of fuslage, iceing should build up visually also just as fast as it does in RW

* Slippery runways when wet and iced over runways

* Proper fog should be shown when it is foggy conditions

* Also please give us the right rain effects, hail and snow effects, drifting-snow in winter-conditions would be cool , frozen lakes where applicable wich would be landable with skis or tundra-tires

* And I would really like to fly like a pilot in the real-world, using the same tools and navigation methods,

But we should have Learing-area in the sim wich would show us:

How to do it the sim, with a instructor with a bit of humor and sarkasm more in the line of Flight Unlimited series.cool.gif

With videoes in the sim with overlays and stuff, instead of reading dry teory(though some teory if you would want to read up on it or recap), showing you how to do it, and how NOT to do it and stuff like that. Tutorials showing you how to perform ILS-procedures.

But if it could be possible to learn all this, with the right tutorials or without reading anything in front, it would boost the learning-eagerness in people.

This should of course have instructions how start turbine-engines, muliti-engines or helicopters & shutdown procedures the right way explaining about hot-starts, flameouts, and similar stuff the pilots of the real world know, but we casual simmers do not know about.

We should be shown how to plan our IFR or VFR route/plan and how to read the weather-situation and with lots of examples in in the sim, as it will be quite qrucial to flight now with improved weather-physics

Lots of tutorials about all aspects of flying is my request here.

P.S. I do not expect Aerosoft to do all this work on their own, but the work should be spread out to all your sim-partners (both freeware and payware partners)

Just my two cents(ok maybe a bit more LOL) someone else may have a different opinion than me laugh.gif

I will seriously check out "Rise of flight" to see what could be possible in a comming sim.wink.gif

I am a bit sorry about the longwinded-post but, I really feel it sums up the short falls of FS series, and that you should not get yourself stuck in the same pitfalls as ACES/MS did blush.gif

Regards

Rune_ENHD

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Also (and maybe instead of the above approach) a rating system for online players might be nice. Like the clickable stars (then maybe planes) from 1 to 5 you see nowadays everywhere. Pilot and ATC can rate other pilots and vice versa. Judging to what extent they follow the flight rules, paths and ATC communication in order to allow a most realistic and immersive experience. If you then offered different sessions based on the rating people can exercise and work their way up the ladder and then in return access the higher and more professional sessions, keeping those out which just want to have fun and speed around.

Sounds like a good idea.

Maybe it is even possible that add a function that allows you to configure, what other players you want to see/hear. For example by selecting that you only want to see other players which are rated from three stars upwards, you could avoid getting distracted by lower rated players just cruising around.

If that was possible, no separate sessions would be necessary.

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Sounds like a good idea.

Maybe it is even possible that add a function that allows you to configure, what other players you want to see/hear. For example by selecting that you only want to see other players which are rated from three stars upwards, you could avoid getting distracted by lower rated players just cruising around.

If that was possible, no separate sessions would be necessary.

Also a interesting idea though it may not work from the ATC perspective. If I am TWR controller and want only see three stars and above then all other pilots below that will have no ATC. Unless you staff the same ATC position multiple times but as soon as there is again 1 APP position the APP controller would suddenly receive handovers from <3star and >3star TWR controller. Maybe a bit too complex. From ATC perspective. Hence the 'session' approach so everybody knows what to expect and get.

Phil

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Also a interesting idea though it may not work from the ATC perspective. If I am TWR controller and want only see three stars and above then all other pilots below that will have no ATC. Unless you staff the same ATC position multiple times but as soon as there is again 1 APP position the APP controller would suddenly receive handovers from <3star and >3star TWR controller. Maybe a bit too complex. From ATC perspective. Hence the 'session' approach so everybody knows what to expect and get.

Phil

What if ATC transmissions to players who have a lower rating than the one you have selected as the minimum wouldn't be audible to higher rated players?

In that case, a higher rated player would need some sort of visual indication that for the moment there is a transmission on the frequency and he can not transmit as well.

pepe

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What if ATC transmissions to players who have a lower rating than the one you have selected as the minimum wouldn't be audible to higher rated players?

In that case, a higher rated player would need some sort of visual indication that for the moment there is a transmission on the frequency and he can not transmit as well.

pepe

That would work possibly though this means several layers in 1 session, one layer per expert group. From bandwidth perspective it might be better to seperate the sessions straight away from the beginning instead of heaving a big master session which then needs to be 'translated' and broken down to your selected experience level, e.g. 3 star (rather stripes) and your PC receives more data than it actually needs.

Phil

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That would work possibly though this means several layers in 1 session, one layer per expert group. From bandwidth perspective it might be better to seperate the sessions straight away from the beginning instead of heaving a big master session which then needs to be 'translated' and broken down to your selected experience level, e.g. 3 star (rather stripes) and your PC receives more data it needs.

Phil

Hm, okay. Back to the lab then. :rolleyes:

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Well I'm not going to suggest anything else since a lot of others suggestions have been made by other fellows except that this new SIM (Which I believe will come true hopefully)Knows how to utilize CPU for much better kicking Butt..... PERFORMANCE. If it happens, then it's going to be remarkable!

Leo

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  • Aerosoft

I started with a short comment and making a short comment right now, lol. Up to this moment we have been actively inviting customer comments and input for this project. And those comments have been incredible in content and amount, they literally have shaped the development of the parts we have done so far. However, we are now at the stage where I need to withdraw a bit and start working more on informing our internal organization about progress and ideas before proceeding. Call it what you want but I have been moving faster then Aerosoft as a whole did.

Don't read this the wrong way, nothing changed, we are still at the same point as yesterday, I just got to spend more time internally before inviting more of the great comments we had. So give me a few days before I can open new topics and discussions about different aspects of the potential new sim, okay? We seem to exhausted the topic about the nav database anyway so it is good timing.

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I started with a short comment and making a short comment right now, lol. Up to this moment we have been actively inviting customer comments and input for this project. And those comments have been incredible in content and amount, they literally have shaped the development of the parts we have done so far. However, we are now at the stage where I need to withdraw a bit and start working more on informing our internal organization about progress and ideas before proceeding. Call it what you want but I have been moving faster then Aerosoft as a whole did.

Don't read this the wrong way, nothing changed, we are still at the same point as yesterday, I just got to spend more time internally before inviting more of the great comments we had. So give me a few days before I can open new topics and discussions about different aspects of the potential new sim, okay? We seem to exhausted the topic about the nav database anyway so it is good timing.

hopefully you will make it a 64bit programme.

Released in 2012 that is 3 years from now.. So I think 64bit will have come a long way by then.. And the 4gb in RAM is gone

Henrik

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You know what i like so much about X-plane? I've had it on my external HD for a long time now, and recently i've had a total system crash.. so instead of trying to repair things and reinstalling windows and whatnot on my old PC, i decided to go all the way and buy a new PC. After my installation of Vista was finally complete, i could just hook up my old external HD and start flying X-Plane again! No need to reinstall it, or a gazillion add-ons, planes or scenery.. it just works!

Wouldn't it be wonderful if AFS2012 would be like that too? No messing in the registry and all that nonsense, just something that's friendly and accessible.

To prevent piracy there's the CD-check system. X-plane is being upgraded all the time, so if you want to keep up to date (which any serious simmer wants) you're gonna need the DVD.

So i hope AFS is going to be somewhat like that as well. :)

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Hi!.

I want to say my ideas.

1). Professional and Standard edition, What does it mean?

For me, a Standard edition is for "playing" , and the PRO edition is for "flying".

So...

In Standard Version:

a). Common Aircraft's like FSX.

B). Normal scenery

c). Normal flight system

d). Normal Interface

In PRO Version:

a). NO Aircrafts! only just one or two good designed.

B). A professional weather engine. Not like FSX or FS9. Real Turbulence, predictable forecast (like where is going to rain, or accurate wind-shear simulation). METAR interpretation and random weather generation . Easy-to-develop system so other 3th party companies can make their own weather system (like REX), or making accurate and realist weather radars.

c). A professional flight dynamics. So the aircraft responds like in the real world.

d). FSUIPC compatibility.

e). Real airport environment.

f). It's not needed a complex scenery database, because anyway we are going to buy other better scenery's.

g). An updated NavDatabase.

h). Professional development tools.

i). A good Flight Planner.

j). Your own VATSIM and IVAO connection system.

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Well, I think the Pro version is more intended for the - well - pros. I.e. those who would use the sim in a professional environment. Those who would run the sim on professional hardware, like 6 DOF motion platforms for example, that is so expensive they don't mind the couple of thousand bucks the Pro version might cost. The standard version, on the other hand, is for us hobbyist. At least that's how I understood it. That's also how it works with X-Plane: Want the standard version? Pay 40 bucks. Want almost exactly the same software, but FAA-certifiable? Sure, costs 500 bucks. Want to drive a real Garmin G1000? No problem, give them 500 more. And that's for each PC in your set-up, of which you usually need at least 4 in a professional sim (three for the visual system plus one for the cockpit).

Judith

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Hi!.

I want to say my ideas.

d). FSUIPC compatibility.

If Aerosoft FS2012 has it's own API (kind of like Simconnect was supposed to be and probably would have been ) why do we need FSUIPC? With the proper interface add-ons can get all the informaton they need from the sim so I'd like to see a good,well defined API (or SDK) if you will.

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What I would like to see;

ATC better than FSX, by this I mean more voices and in different accents depending on where you fly.

Full cockpit display, not just what the pilot uses (as has been suggested): I think it would rob the virtual aviator of the experience of 'being there', instead making him/her feel a bit boxed in. I think anything less would so greatly affect the simulation that it would not be a raging success, commercial or otherwise. I believe it is not just about flying aeroplanes but also about what you see inside and outside the plane - the immersion factor.

Thanks,

John Gibson

(Virtual flyer since 1993)

Gentlemen, I will make this a short and sweet post.

Last weekend we had a lot of meetings regarding the new possible simulator to be done by Aerosoft. Now first of all I got to state that we are NOT yet ready to say that there will be one. But I can say that the probability is a lot larger now. From 50% last week to 80% now. We are currently investing officially money in this project. We are currently using the unofficial name Aerosoft Flight Simulator 2012. A brilliant name if I say so myself, we got our name (Aerosoft) in it, we got what we intend to do (Flight Simulator) in the name and we even got the release year in it. I do not expect this name to be used for the release btw, but for now lets call it AFS2012, okay?

Following up from the less structured discussions we had we are now focusing into clearly defined topics. We hope you will be helping us shape the new sim with your comments. But please note that we will remove comments that are not structurally important to the process. You will see a new topic appear about every week.

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Great news about this new Aerosoft Simulator!

I just hope the development won't be focused to much on porting things (addons) over from current flightsims.

A Whole New Sim we need!

I have been busy creating some custom scenery for FSX lately. What took me a week could have been done in a day if MS would have made the whole process a little more user friendly.

My no.1 wish would be a Sim that makes it easy for everyone (even dummy's like me) to add custom scenery or autogen. In the current situation you need to be almost an engineer to add something.

My idea's:

Make it possible to add custom/library objects in realtime in the Sim. Moving, positioning, scaling and rotating them with simple mouseclicks. Also with Autogen: One simple mouseclick to position a tree or a building from a ingame library. For houses next to roads: Just draw a line on the road and voila, houses or buildings on both sides (or one side) with adjustable spaces between them. The same for traffic: All ingame simple clicking and line drawing. Etc etc :rolleyes:

Good luck with the development,

Gerrit

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Great news about this new Aerosoft Simulator!

I just hope the development won't be focused to much on porting things (addons) over from current flightsims.

A Whole New Sim we need!

I have been busy creating some custom scenery for FSX lately. What took me a week could have been done in a day if MS would have made the whole process a little more user friendly.

My no.1 wish would be a Sim that makes it easy for everyone (even dummy's like me) to add custom scenery or autogen. In the current situation you need to be almost an engineer to add something.

My idea's:

Make it possible to add custom/library objects in realtime in the Sim. Moving, positioning, scaling and rotating them with simple mouseclicks. Also with Autogen: One simple mouseclick to position a tree or a building from a ingame library. For houses next to roads: Just draw a line on the road and voila, houses or buildings on both sides (or one side) with adjustable spaces between them. The same for traffic: All ingame simple clicking and line drawing. Etc etc :rolleyes:

Good luck with the development,

Gerrit

I fully agree with all of this.

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ATC better than FSX, by this I mean more voices and in different accents depending on where you fly.

I've been wondering about this. I think this would be a great feature. But since my knowledge of software development is pretty much zero, I don't know if it would be possible or not. Does anyone know how hard it would be to implement this? I'm very curious. I'd love to be able to take off from my hometown airport and hear pilots speaking with the accent of the Southern USA, and hear a German accent in Germany, etc.

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