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This thread is getting pretty long. Looks like it's time to start a separate one for January!

I've been away from this discussion for some months as I have been so busy playing with FS11. Joking of course. But with some of the recent offerings from various developers it certainly is starting to look like a whole new simulator. And with what they are promising for this year I wonder what a new simulator could possibly offer. Especially if the add-on community continues on this trend, by 2012 much of the wish list on these threads could be addressed. Even now I think a lot of the wish list has been addressed to some extent if people were fully aware of what is available. You want a more complex ATC interface - there's an add-on for that. You want a better weather engine - there's an upgrade for that. Better flight models that accurately simulate spins - though a limited selection to date there are a few choice models. You want better gauges there is an add-on for that.

As others have highlighted, there are several different sub-categories of customers with a wide variety of skill level. There are those primarily interested in heavies, those only interested in GA, war birds, bush flying, etc. Each of these categories has different requirements. I'm primarily in the camp that is interested in real world training, bush flying and VA cargo routes. So as a representative of these sub-categories what would get me to invest in a new simulator?

As someone who is working on their real world pilot's license and is looking to transport my young kids around, safety is a big interest. I religiously read NTSB reports and the I Learned About Flying From That section of Flying magazine. So one thing would be better environmental modeling that included turbulence from storms, downdrafts, icing, wake turbulence, low visibility, etc. that continuously come up as causes of crashes when pilots, whether as a result of poor judgment or inadvertently, get caught in these situations. A more dynamic damage model would be helpful here too where it wasn't just an all or nothing proposition.

As a virtual bush pilot the issues of properly assessing and managing weather are very much a critical skill as well as landing in unconventional places. Therefore auto-gen obstacles would be nice, such as rocks, which would force you to fly over an area low and slow before landing to assess the quality.

From my interest in cargo routes I would buy a new simulator if it included a maintenance cycle so that how I fly the plane has repercussions. Again weather is critical here as well. Some challenging routes I would like to fly would tend to be challenging due to persistently poor weather conditions such as Adak airport in the Aleutian Islands or Narsaruaq in Greenland which consistently have high winds and poor visibility. I would like to fly with a VA or use VATSIM but I don't have the free time to sit down for a couple hours to fly a route so having a career mode would be interesting.

Despite all of the recent breakthroughs from the add-on community some things seem to be un-modifiable such as making more dynamic precipitation. Rain and snow seems to be either on or off with little variation and it has no correlation with cloud cover, i.e. you can break through the cloud layer and it's still raining. Also it would be nice if the water was improved to the extent that waterfalls looked a little more realistic, larger bodies of water have waves and rivers have currents. Finally it is never really dark at night in FSX. So to make more recent advances in avionics such as enhanced vision systems more relevant there should be an improvement were visibility rather than being an independent variable is dependent on environmental factors like cloud cover, haze, fog, precipitation and available light.

My last point, taking together Aerosoft's Catalina, A2A's Accu-sim modelling and Lotus Simulation's Albatros, these are all examples of some of the cutting edge in airplane development for FSX but each has advances that the other two do not. It would be nice if you were able to take the best of all three and combine them so that there was say 4 or 5 default airplanes that would all have this level of quality.

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This thread is getting pretty long. Looks like it's time to start a separate one for January!

I've been away from this discussion for some months as I have been so busy playing with FS11. Joking of course. But with some of the recent offerings from various developers it certainly is starting to look like a whole new simulator. And with what they are promising for this year I wonder what a new simulator could possibly offer. Especially if the add-on community continues on this trend, by 2012 much of the wish list on these threads could be addressed. Even now I think a lot of the wish list has been addressed to some extent if people were fully aware of what is available. You want a more complex ATC interface - there's an add-on for that. You want a better weather engine - there's an upgrade for that. Better flight models that accurately simulate spins - though a limited selection to date there are a few choice models. You want better gauges there is an add-on for that.

As others have highlighted, there are several different sub-categories of customers with a wide variety of skill level. There are those primarily interested in heavies, those only interested in GA, war birds, bush flying, etc. Each of these categories has different requirements. I'm primarily in the camp that is interested in real world training, bush flying and VA cargo routes. So as a representative of these sub-categories what would get me to invest in a new simulator?

As someone who is working on their real world pilot's license and is looking to transport my young kids around, safety is a big interest. I religiously read NTSB reports and the I Learned About Flying From That section of Flying magazine. So one thing would be better environmental modeling that included turbulence from storms, downdrafts, icing, wake turbulence, low visibility, etc. that continuously come up as causes of crashes when pilots, whether as a result of poor judgment or inadvertently, get caught in these situations. A more dynamic damage model would be helpful here too where it wasn't just an all or nothing proposition.

As a virtual bush pilot the issues of properly assessing and managing weather are very much a critical skill as well as landing in unconventional places. Therefore auto-gen obstacles would be nice, such as rocks, which would force you to fly over an area low and slow before landing to assess the quality.

From my interest in cargo routes I would buy a new simulator if it included a maintenance cycle so that how I fly the plane has repercussions. Again weather is critical here as well. Some challenging routes I would like to fly would tend to be challenging due to persistently poor weather conditions such as Adak airport in the Aleutian Islands or Narsaruaq in Greenland which consistently have high winds and poor visibility. I would like to fly with a VA or use VATSIM but I don't have the free time to sit down for a couple hours to fly a route so having a career mode would be interesting.

Despite all of the recent breakthroughs from the add-on community some things seem to be un-modifiable such as making more dynamic precipitation. Rain and snow seems to be either on or off with little variation and it has no correlation with cloud cover, i.e. you can break through the cloud layer and it's still raining. Also it would be nice if the water was improved to the extent that waterfalls looked a little more realistic, larger bodies of water have waves and rivers have currents. Finally it is never really dark at night in FSX. So to make more recent advances in avionics such as enhanced vision systems more relevant there should be an improvement were visibility rather than being an independent variable is dependent on environmental factors like cloud cover, haze, fog, precipitation and available light.

My last point, taking together Aerosoft's Catalina, A2A's Accu-sim modelling and Lotus Simulation's Albatros, these are all examples of some of the cutting edge in airplane development for FSX but each has advances that the other two do not. It would be nice if you were able to take the best of all three and combine them so that there was say 4 or 5 default airplanes that would all have this level of quality.

Excellent points. Good to have you back in the discussion.:) I like your points about weather. That's a major weak point of FSX. It would be nice if the weather were to change more smoothly, and be much more realistic. I'd like to be able to fly from one place to another and have more change in the weather, without having to painstakingly set it. I'd like to have the option of random weather. A real pilot can't set up the weather however he likes, and he can't be certain what the weather will be like at his destination. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I'm too lazy to set up complex weather.;) I usually fly in clear skies and calm winds, because it's just easier to set. I don't have much free time, so when I get on FS, I don't feel like setting up weather; I'm ready to fly. I've tried real-world weather, but it doesn't seem to work very well.

I also like your points about add-on aircraft. I don't know much about this, but maybe Aerosoft could concentrate on the base part of the sim and get add-on companies to develop some high-end default aircraft. That way, the workload would be divided, creating a better sim with better default aircraft.

Good points about bush flying too. I enjoy bush flying, but the bush airstrips in FSX are pretty bad. My biggest peeve with FSX is that the developers basically ignored small airports. I fly only GA aircraft at small airports, but I'm extremely disappointed with the small airports in FSX. They look very little like the real-world airports they represent. This poses a challenge for developers, because there are so many small airports. I understand how difficult it must be to accurately represent thousands of small airports, but it really disappoints the GA pilots when their favorite country airstrip looks like a lonely concrete sidewalk surrounded by a huge field.

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One thing I would like to see is a more detailed and various landclass. I don't know what the landclass in FSX is based on, but I would expect it is vector data like they are used for car gps systems etc.

Probably this is a stupid idea, but I was wondering if it was possible to create a kind of "micro landclass" based on landsat images. The resolution of these images (15m?) is much too low to be used for a photoscenery. But the colouration (I think the images are also available as single channels) contains a lot of information about vegetation types, building areas etc.

The images could be cropped for certain colour ranges (using a batch processing tool of a graphic program) and converted to a pre-defined palette in which certain colours are allocated to a type of landclass in the sim. The result would be landclass tiles. I am not sure if this is at all useable format. Probably these tiles would take take too much space on the hard drive to be used for a greater area.

I once tried something like this to create a forest map for the condor soaring sim and it worked okay but not perfectly well (I would say because of my lack of expertise with graphic programs).

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will ASF2012 have the similar keys to FSX ?

and where can i suggest some ideas that might help you out to improve ASF2012 from fsx

eliran

You may post your ideas under any of the topics in this AFS2012 Discussions section of the forum.

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Good to have you back in the discussion.

Thanks.

I like your points about weather. That's a major weak point of FSX. It would be nice if the weather were to change more smoothly, and be much more realistic. I'd like to be able to fly from one place to another and have more change in the weather, without having to painstakingly set it. I'd like to have the option of random weather. A real pilot can't set up the weather however he likes, and he can't be certain what the weather will be like at his destination. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I'm too lazy to set up complex weather. I usually fly in clear skies and calm winds, because it's just easier to set. I don't have much free time, so when I get on FS, I don't feel like setting up weather; I'm ready to fly. I've tried real-world weather, but it doesn't seem to work very well.

I highly recommend you look into one of the two main weather addons like REX or ASA. Solves many of these problems though not entirely. The weather still is not completely smooth. Seems like at this time it is a structural limit to FSX.

Good points about bush flying too. I enjoy bush flying, but the bush airstrips in FSX are pretty bad. My biggest peeve with FSX is that the developers basically ignored small airports. I fly only GA aircraft at small airports, but I'm extremely disappointed with the small airports in FSX. They look very little like the real-world airports they represent. This poses a challenge for developers, because there are so many small airports. I understand how difficult it must be to accurately represent thousands of small airports, but it really disappoints the GA pilots when their favorite country airstrip looks like a lonely concrete sidewalk surrounded by a huge field.

Until AFS2012 comes out I also highly recommend you look into some of the regional scenery offerings. Tongass Fjords X especially offers some very fine bush flying into unmarked strips around some mining camps.

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One thing I would like to see is a more detailed and various landclass. I don't know what the landclass in FSX is based on, but I would expect it is vector data like they are used for car gps systems etc.

Probably this is a stupid idea, but I was wondering if it was possible to create a kind of "micro landclass" based on landsat images. The resolution of these images (15m?) is much too low to be used for a photoscenery. But the colouration (I think the images are also available as single channels) contains a lot of information about vegetation types, building areas etc.

The images could be cropped for certain colour ranges (using a batch processing tool of a graphic program) and converted to a pre-defined palette in which certain colours are allocated to a type of landclass in the sim. The result would be landclass tiles. I am not sure if this is at all useable format. Probably these tiles would take take too much space on the hard drive to be used for a greater area.

I once tried something like this to create a forest map for the condor soaring sim and it worked okay but not perfectly well (I would say because of my lack of expertise with graphic programs).

Landsat seems a good idea. They have a resolution of 30x30 meters but I think they also a panchromatic image with 15 meters which you probably were thinking of. There could be some good classifying done with them and one image also is about 180x160km? large.

Another idea I just got in my head is using the CORINE landuse coverage in Europe. It´s a quite detailled land use classification but I´m not sure if it is free but I do think it is. It is used as a scientific base for a lot of research projects so it must have a good quality.

Regards

Dominik

edit: so that was fast :) CORINE is actually free but perhaps not for commercial use? Anyhow it would seem a pretty good solution for Europe

CORINE

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With new video cards coming out featuring the ability to game on up to 6 monitors, I am hoping that this - hopefully- new flight sim will allow us to take advantage of this.

I know things are probably in the very early stages, but any updates, however small, would be appreciated.

Thanks.

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hi there,

I see it beeing discussed the landclass-formats/issues

Please if do decide on a "new landclass-system", make sure that you the use right/correct orrientation regarding to the "realworld placements" of roads and texture-alignments..

That way we can sort of have a detailed photo-landclass system, which will be correct to the real-world.. if you do this, every default scenery and addons, will be put perfectly on top of the excisting scenery. Even the "photo-real addons" should have no problem fiftting on top of that I think??

Actually if this thing could be done right, I see no need for "photo-real" textures. If the the "textures used as default" in the landclass and buildings, and airports is detailed and has a system which can be regional and diverse enough to get "that unique look" for all places, it will be as good as photo-real in my opinion.

But only "IF" you can get the "right alignment" of textures and roads and buildings realative to "the realworld"smile.gif

The roads should go where they go in realife, "not cutting into" the autogen buildings and textures, thy should also not stand out as a "sore-thumb" as they do in fsx in realtive to the textures.

Maybe autogen should also be faded-out when you are "above it" around a height of 15000 feet?? you will see nothing except: clouds, textures, water rivers, mesh and landclass/waterclass, and perhaps a high-detail "silhuette-cityscapes"

And Please do get scales for trees,buildings and roads right, "do not do" what aces did "blow something out of scale" make "everything the right-scale(1:1)"

The trees are just "out of whack" scale-wise, it's a bit anoying been hit by a 200-feet tree on final to a city-airport!! LOL laugh.gif

BTW, Here's new idea I think, I may have read something similar in one of the "bigger" home-cocpit forums..

Also regardin the weather graphics performance, how about a "solid 3d model" which you can't see trough, below you when it calls for overcast condition, then the scenery-engine can cut everything out and only concentrate on whats "above that solid deck", and you will get get a superdetailed atmospherics lighting environment and weather because you now have "spare resources" to use..

This solid 3d model should ofcourse use the "newest graphics tricks" to make it look super-realand sort of evolve reagarding the weather at the area, an gradually fade in the real scenery when it clear or you decend trough it..

ok, hope that give you some ideas..

thanks

regards

Rune S.

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This solid 3d model should ofcourse use the "newest graphics tricks" to make it look super-realand sort of evolve reagarding the weather at the area, an gradually fade in the real scenery when it clear or you decend trough it..

Shure... ^^

A litte Story - today i visit Mathijs in is Office to drink one or two Beer with him and he show me a Pic. He says, its a Study for the upcoming Aerosoft Simulator. But he make a big mistake... He put it on his Desk. :lol:

Actually - its on my Scanner in order to show it you exclusively. :ph34r:

Edit: Here it comes!

aerosoftsim2012.jpg

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Big L.,

LOL. We can only dream! :-) Not in my generation, but I bet in the next generation, there will be a flight sims that we, today, can't even imagine. Just thinking back to my youth playing "Atari" games compared to what's out there today, it's amazing. And I have high aspirations that Aerosoft will contine this advancement in games/sims when they develop their FS.

Again, I hope they focus on some new "immersion" features.

FSX seems too bright at times. Too colorful(?). I like the vibrations FSX has, just don't make it so overdone

Again, multi-monitor set-up to allow more than a 90 degree field of view.

I would like an "end of flight" report that can be printed out. Similair to FSXpassinger, but no penalties, just details/info on flight.

If we crash, please allow the game to restart 1, 5, 10, 15 minutes before crash. I hate how FSX makes you restart the whole flight.

If ATC is included, voice recognition would be a nice feature. Instead of pressing "1" or "3", we can reply in voice. makes it more realistic feeling, imho.

Oh, one more thing, maybe include "real physics" features.

I don't know if this is appropriate, but there's another fs out there that updates their software little by little on a constant basis which hampers plane developers from building upon it, I hope Aerosoft allows 3rd party to build upon their FS. To my uneducated thinking: maybe if there are a lot of small updates (due to the newest this product wil be), maybe focus on updating scenery, atc, etc, but not the flight model which might discourage the "excellent" plane developers out there.

Sorry for the long post, but is there any talk about trying to recruit some of the plane makers to build some aircrafts or scenery makers now so when your product rolls out there will be some nice 3rd party products for sale?

In closing, thanks for exploring the idea of developing another FS - especially for the PC. I hope things are moving forward and well! goodluck_s.gif

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If ATC is included, voice recognition would be a nice feature. Instead of pressing "1" or "3", we can reply in voice. makes it more realistic feeling, imho.

I definitely agree with this. I'm not sure if it would be feasible for Aerosoft to develop something like this within AFS, but the capability to develop an add on for voice recognition would be great. I never fly online, so I hope that offline ATC will be included. The ATC in FSX is quite disappointing. First of all, the non-towered airport radio communications need to be improved. It would be nice to hear the name of the non-towered airport instead of the identifier. ("Burlington Traffic..." not "Kilo Bravo Uniform Yankee Traffic...") UNICOM would also be great to have. One thing that annoys me about the FSX ATC is that the transmissions are too clear; some static would make it sound more realistic. You could go the same route that MS did and record actual peoples' voices for the ATC. Maybe some of your customers would volunteer to do that; I might.

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Hmmmmm, given the thousands of words written, I wonder if this thing will really happen.

There certainly is a demand for something new, but given the strides made by folks like A2A and Orbx, as well as some brilliant stuff by Austin and his group of X-Plane third party developers, the bar has been raised pretty high. I sure hope that everyone here is keeping a lid on their expectations less they become terribly disappointed.

I have seen that happen a few times before, anyone remember Pro Pilot II and Fly 2?

Cheers,

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I definitely agree with this. I'm not sure if it would be feasible for Aerosoft to develop something like this within AFS, but the capability to develop an add on for voice recognition would be great. I never fly online, so I hope that offline ATC will be included. The ATC in FSX is quite disappointing. First of all, the non-towered airport radio communications need to be improved. It would be nice to hear the name of the non-towered airport instead of the identifier. ("Burlington Traffic..." not "Kilo Bravo Uniform Yankee Traffic...") UNICOM would also be great to have. One thing that annoys me about the FSX ATC is that the transmissions are too clear; some static would make it sound more realistic. You could go the same route that MS did and record actual peoples' voices for the ATC. Maybe some of your customers would volunteer to do that; I might.

I think much of what you are looking for here is already available between these two products. Never tried either one but I have not seen any bad reviews on them. All very positive. I have been concidering giving them a go.

http://www.voxatc.com/

http://www.jdtllc.com/

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I think much of what you are looking for here is already available between these two products. Never tried either one but I have not seen any bad reviews on them. All very positive. I have been concidering giving them a go.

http://www.voxatc.com/

http://www.jdtllc.com/

I tried the demo for VoxATC once, but I think it was buggy. I remember that I uninstalled it because it caused some problems, but I don't remember what they were.

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I think much of what you are looking for here is already available between these two products. Never tried either one but I have not seen any bad reviews on them. All very positive. I have been concidering giving them a go.

http://www.voxatc.com/

http://www.jdtllc.com/

I can definitely recommend them both and you can hear my voice on Radar Contact!

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I can definitely recommend them both and you can hear my voice on Radar Contact!

I see that JDT has it's own version of voice recognition called SuperATC. Do you know anything about it - pros and cons vs. VoxATC?

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I see that JDT has it's own version of voice recognition called SuperATC. Do you know anything about it - pros and cons vs. VoxATC?

I must confess that I didn't know about superATC, I'll give it a try and let you know.

Dale

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I think much of what you are looking for here is already available between these two products. Never tried either one but I have not seen any bad reviews on them. All very positive. I have been concidering giving them a go.

http://www.voxatc.com/

http://www.jdtllc.com/

I read a review of Radar Contact and found out that it doesn't have VFR procedures. That leaves me out. I fly only VFR. I used to fly IFR all the time, but then I realized that VFR was much more fun. I'd rather fly a Cub at 500' AGL and 70 MPH, following landmarks and enjoying the scenery, than fly a 747 on autopilot at 30,000'. The latter isn't flying; it's telling the airplane how to fly.;)

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A good example of motion blur you can add to the simulator can be found in the Ferrari Virtual Race Simulator. I feel that they have done a very nice job with it.

Does motion blur require extra CPU or GPU resources?

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Does motion blur require extra CPU or GPU resources?

Truthfully I'm not the person to ask, but I'm pretty sure it might take a little bit more GPU resources (although it didn't make much of a difference when I turned it on or off in the game) , becuase after all it still does have to render the motion blur, but I was hoping it would be an option along with ground shadows, etc. so the people who have a good system can have that option.

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Does motion blur require extra CPU or GPU resources?

What has this got to do with a Real Flight Simulator

I think it is about time this Post was shut down and Mathijs

lets us know one way or the other if he has the Finance to go

ahead with this project.

I want to move on, and from a lot of the posts here there are

plenty of options now to make M$FX into a flawed

but reasonable Simulation

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What has this got to do with a Real Flight Simulator

I think it is about time this Post was shut down and Mathijs

lets us know one way or the other if he has the Finance to go

ahead with this project.

I want to move on, and from a lot of the posts here there are

plenty of options now to make M$FX into a flawed

but reasonable Simulation

First of All: Look Here http://www.forum.aer...c=27250&st=1060

Here's what Mr. Kok says: "I am idling on AFS2012 at this moment as we are waiting on a decision from a third party."

Your not the only one who cant wait :D, but be patient, give them time to work their magic, after all, it is AFS2012, there is still time.

I do agree with you on one thing though, FSX has started become a more viable platform for many people as all these new add-ons come out, and the prices to build a good computer that can play FSX are dropping.

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