Flight Sim World Coming to Steam

[ex-railwayman]

I'm still waiting for the free demo from Steam of ''being kicked off your flight'' Simulator.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

[buzz456]

I'm still waiting for the free demo from Steam of ''being kicked off your flight'' Simulator.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

Good one.

[trev123]

Preview from Flightsim.com https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content. ... at-We-Know

[Griphos]

Good news on the downloading front. After spending all of yesterday evening, all last night, and all today downloading the base game, I realized I have fast internet at work in town. I downloaded the whole shebang in two hours at work. I brought it home on an external hard drive, copied it over to the proper folder and started Steam. It wanted to download the scenery and found all the files waiting for it. Took about 10 or so minutes to validate and then happily reported the whole game and scenery installed!

I'll take her up for a good spin (as it were) tomorrow and write up a report.

[trev123]

Aerofly FS 2 looks pretty good. http://store.steampowered.com/app/43403 ... Simulator/ I see it is a early access version too.

[ex-railwayman]

It does look fantastic, Trev, however, it's early access, so, if it doesn't appeal to you I don't think there is a refund button unlike other Steam games, there are no helicopters to fly in this early release either and looking at the New York City screenshots, there isn't a ripple on the water in the Hudson River and I know for a fact that it isn't that calm, so, it looks like a good start, but, they have a long way to go yet, and if they want £30 for the base game and then another £11 for each individual DLC add-on it can get mighty expensive, all at once. I see they have given away a free module of the SouthEastern States including California, Nevada and Arizona, so, they are dangling the proverbial carrot to draw some interest from potential customers, which is a good sign.
My problem is that if you obtain everything today, it works out at 155GBs to store on your hard drive/SDD, which I personally don't have available at the moment, so, I will probably need to purchase a dedicated storage device to hold everything on, and any future content, more expense!!!!

Cheerz. ex-railwayman, or, as we are on the Aviation Channel, Transport Steve.

[Griphos]

Early thoughts:

I didn't buy Swirzerland or New York, and don't plan to. Total on HDD for base game and both free scenery DLC, including Utah, is 103gb.

They say they are waiting to do helicopters until they get the flight model right. Chopper flight models suck in FSX and P3D unless you have the Dodo.

Scenery:

As mentioned, the water is just the ortho photography, and doesn't look very good. The ripples and wakes, etc, look painted on (because, in a sense, they are). The scenery around Truckee CA and Page AZ, the only two places I've flown so far, is simply amazing. The closest I've seen in a sim to what I see when flying. It's the real world. There are autogen trees and houses and the resolution is very high. It's stunning. But it's lifeless. Nothing moves, That might bother some. Because it's so real, the planes seem a bit cartoonish, although they are incredibly real looking as well. It's sort of like a picture of a plane has been transposed on a picture of the world.

Still, did I say the scenery is amazing?! Soaring over Truckee and flying the 172 over the canyons of Arizona was incredible, visually. They have figured out how to map the ortho on steep mesh like no other sim. I didn't see any of the typical runny chocolate that steep canyons or mountains appear in other photo scenery in other sims. Even at a few hundred feet, the terrain was convincing and the detail sharp. Sometimes disbelief was completely suspended and I was just there.

Lighting and shadows are fantastic. As real as it gets and adds immensely to the immersion. But I haven't had a chance to test anything other than daytime and pretty fair weather.

Clouds are okay. Wispy and translucent, as they should be, when near or in the edges, but a bit cartoonish at a bit of distance. Still, volumetric, so that's good.

It is smooth, really smooth, but there is screen tearing. I was getting FPS in the 100s everywhere. But if you turn on vsync to prevent tearing, there are stutters when moving your view or turning. That's a trade off I'm not happy about.

Flight dynamics:

So far, pretty good. Feels about right overall, particularly in the low end of the flight envelope. Gone is the feeling of flying an enlarged RC airplane I had in the orig Aerofly.

I did some power on and off stalls and a number of landings. All felt good to very good. The power off stalls aren't right. They feel right until departure and then recovery happens when nosing down even if full deflection is maintained, so you get a weird kind of porpoising with strange lateral sliding mixed in. Power on stalls correctly model both departure and spin and proper recovery is required, although releasing pressure will tend to halt rotation even without proper rudder input. This is the best simulation of a stall/spin I've experienced n a sim, and speaks well of their flight model.

Landings feel good. I'm wanting to experiment with more wind, turbulence and X-wind components. More to come here. But the smoothness of the sim really aids in the feel of flight when landing. Planes respond more sluggishly as they should at landing speeds, Proper technique is rewarded with proper behavior. You can flare and hold off and lose lift as you should.

Overall, I like the feel of a moving wing in air. That's what makes the difference between a flight sim and a sim that gives a cockpit and a moving image of the world through its windows. They model the fluid dynamic that is air pretty well, and it feels like I'm flying the wings, not moving the screen around, with my control inputs. Soaring over Truckee felt good, with currents and small variations in density and air mass movement. I caught a couple of thermals, but had trouble centering in them. Still, they felt more real than any other sim I've flown. I have about 100 hours in gliders. I'm looking forward to trying ridge lift, but, so far, this looks like my go to soaring sim.

Which brings me to plane selection. It's heavy toward twins and jets. I'm more of a light GA fan. I've just tried the 172 so far, so I'll try some others and see, but I'm hoping plane DLC aren't too far off in the future, and that there will be some classic options, like a Cub, or older Cherokee. Something that models the kind of planes I've mostly flown and not just modern, low hour, fully equipped GA.

Depth:

The biggest down side is lack of system depth. There is no ATC. There are no other planes in the sky. Airports are well done, with lots of static aircraft, but no life. Much of the cockpit environment is static. You can adjust the altimeter of the 172, but you have no way of finding the correct pressure. You can adjust flaps and trim, of course. I suspect there are plans to add more and more interaction and system depth, since some planes have more of this than others. You can adjust the com frequencies in the 172. You just can't talk to anyone once you do....yet.

There isn't much that you would do in a real airplane, in terms of preflight, run-up, shut down, or even normal flying, that you can do in these planes. I hope that will change. Right now, it's just a hop in, forget procedures, and just VFR fly sim. That's perhaps fine, particularly for those with no real flight experience. But it's a lonely world. Beautiful, but lifeless.

Those are my early thoughts. I'll give her more of a workout today (on my first day free for the summer).

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Thanks again, Griphos, for your very detailed analysis.

I am only an armchair pilot, but your early reviews of Aerofly FS2 have me convinced to buy it.

Please tell me if any Saitek/Logitech small panels work. I only have the Thrustmaster HOTAS and BKR pedals for controllers, I suppose their axles and buttons can be custom mapped to FS2?

[Griphos]

Right. I didn't get the day off after all, nor was I off today, but I have squeezed in a bit more flight time with a few other planes and areas. I downloaded the SDK to get access to the Robin 400, which is a delight to fly. And I downloaded and installed a cold and dark mod for the 172 that I'm not sure I'm using fully correctly, but it does add some nice features, like more clickable cockpit controls and opening doors, etc.

Did I mention that mixture does not seem to be modeled on any planes. This is a shame. It's sort of like FSX automixture, I guess. Not at all realistic, and removes an important aspect of real flying.

I do like the flight model. Much better than X-plane, and I think better than P3D/FSX, at least when not flying A2A's stuff.

As for controls, yes, you can map all axes and buttons however you like. You can calibrate in sim, which is a nice feature and ensures you're getting full movement of axes and clean reporting.

I can't say for sure about the small panels. The sim detected everything connected to my computer and allows me to ignore or calibrate/assign any assignable task to any of them. I wish I could be more definitive for you, but not having them myself, I'd just have to guess. I suspect there's some info about this out on the interwebs somewhere, though.

If it tells you anything, I'm about ready to buy Switzerland and New York already. I can tell I'm going to like and use this sim, even if only for casual flying, as it's just so nice to look at, and the actual flight behavior, if not the systems depth, is convincing.