Orbx and Ipacs Announce Partnership to Co-Publish Content for Aerofly

[HyFlyer]

Now we get a glimpse of the first fruits of "Project A" and the depth of cooperation that has been reached.

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/134015-orbx-and-ipacs-form-partnership-to-co-publish-hd-content-for-aerofly-fs-2/

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/134014-welcome-to-a-new-era-presenting-ftx-innsbruck-for-aerofly-fs2-flight-simulator/

[ryapad]

It will be interesting to see where this goes. Aerofly was definitely on people guess lists for ORBX's "Projects."

[XYflight]

Now we get a glimpse of the first fruits of "Project A" and the depth of cooperation that has been reached.

 

The add-on scenery sure looks good, but will it come with AI aircraft, airport activity, road traffic and 'moving' water? If not it'll be the same old sterile world of AFS-1 & 2 - with nothing moving but the clouds and one single solitary aircraft in a lonely world.

[HyFlyer]

"Mighty oaks from little acorns grow."

 

But it takes a while.

 

For me, it's a simple question: Does the community intend to go on pretty much forever with old technology, grumbling daily about OOM's, CTDs and the latest tweak to end all tweaks, or will it rise to the task of supporting modern alternatives that might grow to something great with a bit of support?

 

Fortunately, Orbx is a forwards thinking company and apparently thinks it sees a worthy partner in Aerofly. As the months go by and other events occur (and they absolutely will!) I expect the tide to turn until just like the initial resistance to FSX itself, few will own up to having been so skeptical at first, and their "beloved" Aerofly will have to be pried from their hands with a crowbar.

 

Humans are funny, like that! :D

[XYflight]

"Mighty oaks from little acorns grow."

 

But it takes a while.

 

It sure does. It must have been at least five years ago when I dabbled in AFS-1. It had beautiful scenery but no AI aircraft or road traffic anywhere. It was quite a creepy flying experience for me, and not one I'd like to repeat any time soon by purchasing AFS2 and add-on scenery at 35 bucks per hit.

But hopefully when AI and road traffic etc do become the norm in Aerofly (perhaps in another five years or so?) then maybe I'll jump in again.

[HyFlyer]

Waiting 5 years is also a valid choice. For me, that would be quite a long while to sit on any fence though.

 

I'm glad Orbx sees the approaching vacuum and is moving so proactively to get out in front of inevitable changes to come. By the time that 5 years is over, I think we will look back and see that doing so worked out very well, for them.

[evm]

Just for the record: ORBX was also involved in DTG FlightSchool.

All that they do is good business, they bet on every horse that they can support with a reasonble effort.

 

The interesting times start when things show up in the simulator that are not directly related to the flight itself - and developers and customers start to realize that additional content doesn't come for free, performance wise.

 

I kind of like Aerofly2. But I mostly prefer to use one of the simluators today that have all the bells and whistles already, instead of waiting faithfully that another one will catch up.

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?304551-A-Texan-in-(above)-Corsica&highlight=texan+corsica

[HyFlyer]

The interesting times start when things show up in the simulator that are not directly related to the flight itself - and developers and customers start to realize that additional content doesn't come for free, performance wise.

 

Of course it doesn't, but if you want to start adding straws to a camel's back, would you rather do that to a decade old Camel who on its best days does 100FPs if you pretty much turn everything off, Or a Camel that does 600FPS and more when you turn things down? :)

 

Or as JV at Orbx said:

 

Having that much fps overhead allows for the introduction of new systems and tech and much more detailed and sophisticated regions and airports, which is where Orbx comes in.

 

So yes, adding additional systems and etc will slow Aerofly down a bit, but considering that it's a fully modern built-from-the-ground-up 64bit sim taking advantage of today's powerful graphics cards in a way that nothing else that we have does, I would rather load down that camel until it runs at 200fps (I actually average 280fps over New York at max settings unless I turn on insane shadows) than continue exclusively riding Camels that are more and more showing their age and the strain of carrying all the weight we've put on them.

 

I think Aerofly can and will carry that weight as well if not far better than what we have now. Time will tell.

 

Breaking 600fps (lower left corner)

http://imageshack.com/a/img921/3083/5wjAzJ.jpg

[evm]

Take away the landclass system, the vector information, the weather depiction, moving water, moving traffic, the AI logic and the autogen, then make FPS comparisons (oh, and use a default aircraft, not a payware masterpiece that costs more than the sim itself). If you absolutely have to. I still can't see the point though. I want software to do what I require it to do. If it doesn't meet my requirements, then I don't care how fast it doesn't do it.

 

Not knowing the age, architecture or technology involved in the Aerofly codebase, any assumptions are just that. Ipacs have been around for quite a while too, and the "2" suggests that this is actually an update to an existing package, not something built from the "ground up". And why not, that is just good practice to re-use your code.

 

Why does everything have to be hyped to extremes before it even exists?

 

 

 

[HyFlyer]

I could easily post pictures of Aerofly doing double or triple those FPS over much denser scenery at 4K, but I don't think that or any other technical measure is really the issue here.

 

Nor do I suspect things will alter much for some, at least at first, even as objections are addressed by the progress of The Aerofly engine.

 

I'm beginning to believe that the real issue is change.

 

New York, 2K 300+ FPS (lower left corner)

http://imageshack.com/a/img923/6493/iA8J0p.jpg

[evm]

but I don't think that or any other technical measure is really the issue here.

 

Correct. The point of my screenshots was to show what FPS look like with the old camel that is already carrying all the straws.

 

I'm beginning to believe that the real issue is change.

But I bought Aerofly2 months ago, and its DLCs too. Just downloaded Utah yesterday. I still don't like it - what am I doing wrong?

 

On the other hand I did two very nice flights today, one in the A2A Texan, which again blew me away, while using a new logbook technique that visualizes my flightpath in 3D in Google Earth. The other one was a short hop from LIEO to LIRF in the default Beech Baron in shared cockpit on two computers, testing how the sharing of AI traffic works out. It was eerily strange to taxi on Rome Fiumicino airport with the same AI going about their business synced on two different flightsim machines (one P3D V3, the other FSX:SE).

Those are the things that I really enjoy.

[HyFlyer]

But I bought Aerofly2 months ago, and its DLCs too. Just downloaded Utah yesterday. I still don't like it - what am I doing wrong?

 

Obviously not all sims are for all people, so you not liking Aerofly, or me not being able to quite get into X-Plane (Even though I purchased the last three versions) isn't the real point.

 

I think the point is patience. FSX in the form that so many people love at this point, isn't really nearly 10 years old, is more like 30, if you count all the previous versions. X-plane is younger, but still, due to backwards compatibility, is basically a fairly old sim at its core (Still extremely cpu bound)

 

Now we have Aerofly in the mix, but it's barely a year old and I think many of the objections I've heard generally amount to "Well it doesn't have all the things FSX has, yet."

 

Nope. Not at all. There's no giant mega corporation funding it with a huge development team, and it hasn't been around forever, but it does have a great technological edge and the potential to move us beyond the the plateau we reached with FSX/ESP and on into the future If we have the patience and foresight to give it the time to grow and don't cut it off at the knees for not being soup yet.

 

It also has a small, dedicated team that's trying its best, and I think Orbx kind of sees itself as a young company when they look at Ipacs. The cultures mesh.

 

Thats a good thing.

 

Systems depth already exceeds FSX default and will only increase, and new free planes are coming to showcase that. Autogen was just mentioned as a first by JV over at Orbx, and is on the way, so there's part of your answer to your concerns about the world feeling empty.

ATC is the current highest priority, and should arrive shortly if all goes well, and AI is also on the table.

 

The fact is, almost any concern people have mentioned is on the table, but we, as a community, might have to tuck some of that..... whatever you want to call it away for a bit, and take a deep, slow breath to reach the point we want.

 

 

DTG Sim is not going to be FSX either, when it first arrives, and it's not fair to have ever expected that it would be. What both these new sims will be are potential new beginnings, and they're going to need our patience and our support, and very importantly, time to grow.

 

Not ten years, like FSX, but time.

 

That's only fair.

[evm]

No offense, but that kind of patience is for lovers. Whatever the platform may turn out to be doesn't invalidate the fact that it is not there today. Seasoned simmers may dabble in it for a few hours, as we do with every other sim out there. Newbies may be attracted to the looks, but when they realize that this is not the kind of simming that is propagated on YouTube, they seem to opt for the refund (if I am reading SteamSpy correctly).

 

Code doesn't age. It either does the job or it doesn't. It will not get slower or deprecate all by itself. Anyway, saying that Aerofly is "a year old" is not correct. Areofly 1 was released in 2012.

 

In software we measure the "size" of an application in the effort that was necessary to make it. This is an indication for how long it will take us to do the same thing and how many people we will need.

 

Assuming an average team size of 15 FS coders at Microsoft, starting in 1982 and closing end of 2008 that makes 26 years times 15 = 390 man-years. 15 is a low number actually, in the most successful years the ACES team had 50 people on board. To replicate what they did would take a single developer 390 years.

 

XPlane: lets say that it has been running for 20 years with an average team size of 5, that makes 100 man-years of effort. Which explains in one simple number why it cannot have the same wealth of features as the other platform.

 

Now add to that countless thousands of years of effort for the payware and freeware addons that have been made and are still being produced.

 

A small team can never hope to replicate this, unless they open up their platform for third party development. But most applications simply can't do that, because they weren't designed with that option in mind. Creating a fully featured API is almost as much effort as a full app version - which is probably the reason why even today there is no such API in X-Plane (only the very limited beginnings of an API exist).

 

Not "everything goes" in software, that is a myth. Dedication and talent are all fine traits, and sure, development cycles have been speeding up considerably in the past 20 years. But the patience that you are trying to instill may have to last for at least 5 to 10 years.

 

A final piece about the forward thinking ORBX: you are aware that they publicly evaluate supporting every single simulator platform currently in existence and in planning? With the exception of X-Plane, because, as far as I know, their CEOs don't like each other. Apart from that very unprofessional bit, all that they do is good business - bet on every horse that you can.

[Johan_Dees]

The strength of MSFS was that everybody could make addons.

Thats why it lives so long.

 

If AF2 wants to succeed, they need to open it up. More then MSFS does.

ATC ? Make it so (text based rule files ?) that everybody can improve it as we all tried with

the partially open MSFS.

 

The more you close it, the quicker it dies.

[HyFlyer]

No offense, but that kind of patience is for lovers.

 

No, that kind of patience is for realists/pragmatists and enthusiasts. DTG Sim, is not going to be an FSX killer when it arrives either. No new sim will be, because no huge player is going to toss away zillions to accomplish the perfect sim for a relatively small and demonstrably hard to please market.

 

Code doesn't age. It either does the job or it doesn't. It will not get slower or deprecate all by itself. Anyway, saying that Aerofly is "a year old" is not correct. Aerofly 1 was released in 2012.

 

Of course code ages. New programming techniques arrive, hardware changes, and eventually the code reaches the point that without being almost completely rewritten, it doesn't make good use of the new machinery that has come into being since it was first created. Would you write a sim in BASIC? 10 Years is an eternity in computer time. Also, while the name is Aerofly2 very much has changed, The coordinate system, the lighting system, the the navigation system, the addition of clickable cockpits and the underlying electrical and engine simulation...

 

A small team can never hope to replicate this, unless they open up their platform for third party development. But most applications simply can't do that, because they weren't designed with that option in mind. Creating a fully featured API is almost as much effort as a full app version - which is probably the reason why even today there is no such API in X-Plane (only the very limited beginnings of an API exist).

 

This whole argument shows a lack of understanding of what's happening with Aerofly, IE homework not done, for whatever reason. The Aerofly SDK was a high priority, and is already out there, completely available, and the first and most obvious third party, Orbx is already producing product while AF is still in early access. Two Aircraft developers have shown WIP planes for the platform, and users have already created test scenery which will become even easier with the upcoming changes to the scenery tools......

 

How would you do this faster?

 

http://www.ipacs.de/forum/showthread.php/7725-Getting-the-Aerofly-FS-2-SDK-(-Software-Development-Kit-)

https://www.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_2/dokuwiki/doku.php/start

 

Dedication and talent are all fine traits, and sure, development cycles have been speeding up considerably in the past 20 years. But the patience that you are trying to instill may have to last for at least 5 to 10 years.

 

Which goes back to the word in my previous post: Patience. Are we going somewhere? Are we in some massive hurry? We've waited 10 years for a true FSX alternative. We've waited several years and through many iterations of P3D for it to evolve to the precipice of 64bit, and we will almost certainly wait a few years after that for the whole 64 bit changeover to sort itself out. Likewise, we will undoubtedly wait for years for DTG Sim to get up to speed as a full fledged challenge to 30 years of FSX iterations.

 

So why the sudden impatience? Sometimes I wonder: "Is there a fire, somewhere?" :)

 

A final piece about the forward thinking ORBX: you are aware that they publicly evaluate supporting every single simulator platform currently in existence and in planning? With the exception of X-Plane, because, as far as I know, their CEOs don't like each other. Apart from that very unprofessional bit, all that they do is good business - bet on every horse that you can.

 

I think most successful businesses bet on horses they believe in, after taking a careful look at the potential.

[HyFlyer]

The strength of MSFS was that everybody could make addons.

Thats why it lives so long.

 

If AF2 wants to succeed, they need to open it up. More then MSFS does.

ATC ? Make it so (text based rule files ?) that everybody can improve it as we all tried with

the partially open MSFS.

 

The more you close it, the quicker it dies.

 

See the SDK posted above. And the users already digging in:

http://www.ipacs.de/forum/forumdisplay.php/46-Aerofly-FS-2-User-created-content

 

By the way to show the level of interest, others have gone ahead and tried their own experiments with ATC. This may not show a level of practicality, but it certainly shows a level of enthusiasm.

 

[evm]

This whole argument shows a lack of understanding of what's happening with Aerofly, IE homework not done, for whatever reason. The Aerofly SDK was a high priority,

 

Re: Homework: How about reading? I wasn't talking about an SDK. I was talking about a programmatic API that lets you do things seriously outside of the box. There is only one platform that offers an API worthy of its name. And the reason for that is, that it was made by a company with limitless resources, who didn't mind throwing an additional bunch of engineers into the mix to write that API.

 

And thanks for the rest too - I have been writing code for 35 years now. I usually like to think that I know what I am talking about.

 

Hurry? No, there is no hurry. But there is competition, and that works both ways. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer - would you take kindly to a word like "patience" if that may very well involve years?

 

And please don't disregard P3D; these sims serve very different purposes. P3D is the premiere platform for simming today with all the sophistication included to allow deep system airliners, AI, ATC, a myriad of weather and texture options, thousands of addons, aircraft and much more. AFS2 is the smooth, fluid 'quick fix' sim which is suited to VFR flying and having a briefer session versus P3D.

 

This qoute is taken directly from a post of J.V. himself in the thread that you linked above. I couldn't agree more. I am planning to build a VR system around Aerofly too, see how that works out.

[evm]

[HyFlyer]

I wasn't talking about an SDK. I was talking about a programmatic API that lets you do things seriously outside of the box. There is only one platform that offers an API worthy of its name. And the reason for that is, that it was made by a company with limitless resources, who didn't mind throwing an additional bunch of engineers into the mix to write that API.

 

And so, (since no companies with limitless resources come to mind willing to use those resources in the entertainment Flight Simulation market) Is FSX/ESP the end of history?

 

Hurry? No, there is no hurry. But there is competition, and that works both ways. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer - would you take kindly to a word like "patience" if that may very well involve years?

 

Well, actually I responded the same way that I responded to FSX when it turned out that no system at the time it was released could run it well. I patiently continued with what I had, but also stayed with FSX because eventually it was a given that systems that would allow it to show its true potential would eventually arrive.

 

Same as I am patiently sticking with X-plane now, even though many promises of things that were to be implemented in version 10 never arrived, and even though I waited (patiently again) for years. (How are those seasons doing?)

 

Same as I purchased P3D, and am waiting patiently (for years) for it to be (in my eyes) more than a slightly faster FSX with a new coat of paint.

 

Same as I will wait for a few years if necessary for Aerofly or even DTG SIM to reach their full potential. Unless there are obvious unfixed and unfixable problems, they won't deserve a single iota less of a chance than I have already given just about every other sim to grow and improve over time.

 

And why purchase those sims (Like X-plane) at all if I don't particularly like them at a given time? Simple, a commitment to the growth of the community and to the the hobby, and the willingness to support pretty much anything with the potential to move us forward.

 

Its why I went to purchase the Orbx global base pack and a few other things yesterday, First, because of the sale, and second because I still offer my support, even though I barely touch FSX/P3D any more. (possibly an hour a week)

 

In my eyes, it's not just about me, Its also the future of the hobby.

 

 

This quote is taken directly from a post of J.V. himself in the thread that you linked above. I couldn't agree more. I am planning to build a VR system around Aerofly too, see how that works out.

 

I read the statement very carefully, as I have read all of his statements regarding this subject. What I note is he said that:

 

P3D is the premiere platform for simming today

 

But today is not forever, and nothing is certain but change. He also said Aerofly does not have water yet but I always note the qualifiers in his statements acknowledging the fluidity of the situation and that everything is subject to change. If it were not, Orbx would be smartest to stand pat and not even bother hedging its bets.

 

And certainly DTG would be foolish to compete in a game that could not be won.....

 

By the way, I was the one that posted that cartoon first in a thread over at Avsim. The trick, I guess, is knowing the difference between a conversation and a fight.

[XYflight]

And certainly DTG would be foolish to compete in a game that could not be won.....

 

By the way, I was the one that posted that cartoon first in a thread over at Avsim. The trick, I guess, is knowing the difference between a conversation and a fight.

 

'You sure you don't just need a hug or something?'

;)

[HyFlyer]

'You sure you don't just need a hug or something?'

;)

 

http://imageshack.com/a/img922/8938/LONClc.jpg