No, it just means that some generic terrain features like building and trees, lightposts, electrical towers, trees and bushes are automatically placed on the corresponding texture details when flying low, so that you don’t feel like you’re flying over paper when you’re close. It’s extremely expensive to the cpu in FSX… currently, only the trees in aerofly are autogen, unless currently they are hard -written into the geography, don’t know. But also currently, all buildings in Aerofly2 are manually built and placed explicitly.
Wow. If you invested in DTG Flight School (I picked it up super-cheap on sale at some point just because I have to try every flight sim; still have never loaded it), you’ll get Flight Sim World for free. Nice move, DTG.
That is a good move. Flight school seemed a bit half-baked, so it’s nice to reward the early adopters.
I’m having a hard time getting enthused about any further derivations of the Microsoft Flight Sim engine though. I get the feeling that–even after moving to DX11 and 64-bit–the performance improvements are going to be nothing to write home about. We’ll see. Aerofly 2 and VR have spoiled me. I’ve got zero interest in going back to flight sims on the desktop.
Speaking of Aerofly 2, anyone else using it on a vive? What is your scale setting at? The default (0) makes the cockpits feel tiny.
I have Aerofly on the Vive. I was wondering why my head was occasionally clipping through the ceiling. I assumed that aircraft we’re just small in real life. I’ll play around with it a little bit tonight and see what feels comfortable.
I started with .50 and it felt like I was a child. I eventually settled on .20, though I’m sure anywhere in the .15 to .25 range would have been fine for me.
Dovetail Flight Sim World is now available in Early Access on Steam.
If you bought Dovetail Flight School, it will be in your Steam library already.
That $7.99 I spent on Christmas eve just to check out DFS was well-spent, turns out!
Seem to be some unhappy reviews already :)
Of course. How often do you see flight sim fans post anything positive? :-/
I had the MoMedia stream running on my Xbox while I was working today and given that it’s early access, what I saw looked promising. Definite incremental improvement in the visuals, and the streamer (who’s also a pilot, not just a sim geek) said the flight models felt better than FSX/P3D.
I’ll give it shot myself tomorrow.
I will probably pick it up at some point. Definitely a decent price at $25
So Dovetail Flight Sim World seemed like it had potential. Then LM released Prepar3D V4.0 and I haven’t looked back. Looks so good, performance is dramatically better than FSX/older P3D, and compatible with a reasonable amount of FSX stuff. Plus crappy VR support to hold me off until FlyInside supports it.
Meanwhile, the FlyInside guy is doing a sim too. I wasn’t interested – figured it’ll be years before most of these new sims get rich, full systems and traffic simulation – until I saw that it’s planned to be compatible with FSX planes. Now I’m intrigued. http://www.flyinside-flightsim.com/
What’s a good civ flight sim for someone who wants to play casually (a few hours on the weekends), is a graphics whore, and doesn’t want to spend a lot of money?
I have FSX and the graphics are pretty outdated by today’s standards. I tried the Xplane 11 demo and wasn’t impressed with the graphics there, either. Also, the cockpit kept shaking and I couldn’t figure out why.
Should I grab Flight Sim World while it’s on sale? Guess I could request a refund if I’m not happy with it.
I think Aerofly 2 is the prettiest flight sim right now, and the most approachable. The graphics aren’t amazing – the ground textures are a bit muddy – but the lighting is nice and performance (unlike FSX/P3D/XP11) is amazing. The developers are fully engaged and supporting the product with updates, and third parties (such as Orbx) are jumping into the fray.
Also, if you have a VR rig, definitely hands down Aerofly 2. It’s awesome.
Haven’t tried it myself, but it looks to be a mildly upgraded FSX in terms of visuals, but without any compatibility with FSX add-ons. Maybe OK for knocking about, and relatively cheap.
Hmmm … that is unexpected. Holiday 2017? How are they managing that? Will be interested to see what comes of it. I’ve got a strong preference for Aerofly 2 right now, but would love to get my FSX/P3D planes out of mothballs.
Color me highly skeptical, though.
What @BiggerBoat said. AeroFly FS 2 is by far the most modern engine, and for the kind of casual play you’re talking about, it fits the bill. It’s still in early access so some stuff is still to come in the sim, but there’s a baseline there for some real fun. And a great assortment of included planes. It’s a blast to fly on a monitor (runs smooth at 3840x1440 on my admittedly high-end GTX 1080 system) and is absolutely amazing in VR.
If you’re looking for an FSX-based sim, Prepar3D v4.0 is a much better option than Flight Sim World at this point. FSW has potential, but right now it’s a better-looking FSX with a lot of added quirks and the need to hack it to use existing assets.
And yeah, @BiggerBoat, I’m not buying Holiday 2017 for this mysterious new FlyInside sim, given we haven’t seen anything beyond a few forum screen shots. But I’m definitely intrigued. Wish he’d get Flyinside up on P3D v4.0 before focusing on it, though!
DennyA
It sounds to me like AeroFly FS 2 is similar to the old Flight Unlimited series. Would that be an accurate assessment?
Somewhat, @Granath, yeah. Photoreal visuals and overall good flight dynamics (some planes better than others – like Flight Unlimited, the Extra’s a lot of fun). But I think their eventual goal is greater depth and scenery coverage than the FU series ever got.
Is this when I chime in to ask if they moving water in Aerofly yet? ;)
Nope. I think they plan on getting to it eventually. Hopefully they will.
To be honest, it’s not that bad for now. It’s nice to get some of the detail of the beautiful transitions from shore to water via the satellite imagery (instead of abrupt edges), so hopefully we don’t lose that if/when they animate the water.
It was quite off-putting for me, the one thing that stuck out and spoiled the immersion. Not just lack of motion, but that the material properties were not water-like at all, but identical to surrounding ground.
I can’t imagine it’s a small job. Atm it seems just a photo on a mesh with a single material, they’d need to be converting the underlying mesh based on the texture so they could apply different material to it. Possibly automatically but it’d need by-hand cleanup.
Or if it’s really modern engine I guess they could use pbr with an ‘uber shader’ and define water properies purely with texture on the one material.
Appreciate the recommendations for AeroFly FS 2. I’ll give it a whirl. Kind of strange an early access game already has paid DLC. Why are the ones labelled “Orbx” so expensive? What do they add to the sim that isn’t already there?
The OrbX airports are super-hi-res, animated airports originally created for FSX/P3D and updated for use in AeroFly FS 2. I haven’t picked them up yet, but I probably will next time OrbX has a sale. (Which is usually only once a year.) The Switzerland/Northeastern USA packs add the same level of details in those regions you find in the base game areas, and are nice to get some more variety in where you can fly, But the OrbX packs are more if you want to pick a certain area as a base for a LOT of VFR flying.
Check out the screens: LOWI Innsbruck Airport - Aerofly FS 2 - Orbx
Note also that there’s low-res photoscenery outside of the covered areas. So you can fly over Seattle at 40,000 feet and it looks okay, just turns into a muddy mess if you descend. And there are no airports to land at. :)