Welcome to a new Meigs: Aerofly FS2

[John Venema]

Return to where it all began! But at 120FPS in glorious photoreal and VR bliss!

 

Flight simulation has been intertwined with the legendary Meigs Field for decades. Few airports hold as much nostalgia, familiarity, and emotion for aviation enthusiasts. Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, Meigs Field operated as the gateway to corporate Chicago for over half a century. Now, twelve years after its closure, Merrill C. Meigs Field (KCGX) has been recreated by Orbx and IPACS with the utmost attention to detail and accuracy. Depicted as it was in its final years, virtual pilots are welcomed to return to what was once the busiest single strip airport in the United States and enjoy it in high definition. Featuring a fully modelled terminal, highly detailed static aircraft, and other historically accurate elements, the airport has been brought back to life. In addition to the airfield itself, the city of Chicago waterfront and parks district have been included as well. This special release for Aerofly by Orbx includes 12,000km2 of photoreal coverage, animated people and ferris wheel plus many other details to discover.

 

 

 

• An astonishing 12,000km2 of photoreal imagery!
• Faithful port of the ultra detailed rendition of KCGX Meigs Field circa late 90's and early 2000's by Alex Goff and Tim Harris
• Extraordinarily detailed interior model of the terminal including glass, transparencies, fully faithful to FSX/P3D versions
• Many highly detailed Chicago landmarks, including Soldier Field, Cloudgate, Adler Planetarium, Navy Pier and The Shedd
• Custom CBD for Chicago skyline including Sears Tower, Aeon Center, Trump Tower, Hancock Center
• Hundreds of thousands of autogen buildings accurately placed
• Advanced rendering, ambient occlusion and night-lighting
• Airport imagery at 30cm per pixel
• Beautifully modelled static aircraft
• Animated people and ferris wheel
• Unbelievable performance, very high FPS
• Incredible VR experience
• A collaboration between Orbx and IPACS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have many more screenshots to come, and for those attending FlightSimCon 2017 in Hartford Connecticut this weekend -  live demos including VR demos!

 

 

And coming soon after release in a service pack, the most sprawling cityscape autogen you've ever seen!

 

[Kilstorm]

A lot to be excited about! I bet Tim and Alex are very happy to see their work in such VR, high frame, amazing lighting bliss!

[Jack Sawyer]

I.....think I may be looking into buying this,  Wow!

[BaronKen]

Thanks for the preview JV; very much looking forward to this next week!

[sightseer]

looks great.  Ill have to reinstall AFS2.  Its good to see some night lighting.

 

I wonder what they have planned for sky, clouds and weather.

[olderndirt]

I bought FS2 and now I see why .

[edpatino]

Excellent news!. Is it confirmed for June 15th. together with LOWI?. Ready to buy!.

Cheers, Ed

[walterg74]

Will this, like LOWI, have a discount for ppl whi have purchased it before for the other sims?

[yanlaoge]

I have lived in Chicago for 6 months and I am all tears. I will buy every Orbx scenery for Aerofly FS 2 from now on.

Compared with other major titles in the flight simulation areas, Aerofly FS 2 is a new comer, a small, constraint, and reticent player, with much less recognition.

But Orbx will change the situation.

[John Venema]

4 hours ago, walterg74 said:

Will this, like LOWI, have a discount for ppl whi have purchased it before for the other sims?

 

Yes, you'll get 40% off Meigs - but only if you purchase from OrbxDirect.com and have already purchased it for FSX/P3D.

[Matthijs]

I love it, except the ugly water images/textures .

Hopefully this will change in the future.

[Bassman]

Hi John, thank for the screenies. Looks amazing!

One query is probably like many others I can only afford one simulator and it's related Orbx scenery so it's going to be a most difficult choice. Perhaps if there was a P3D V4 Meigs to compare? If there is and I have missed it then I apologise for wasting forum space.

Cheers  Dan

[John Venema]

Yes there is a version for FSX/P3D - https://orbxdirect.com/product/kcgx

[John Hargreaves]

It's really pleasing to see the potential of AFS2 starting to be realised. It's also great to be able to see OrbX's work at its best in a modern graphics engine. With the size of the OrbX back catalogue and the scenery libraries they have at their disposal, I think it will give their work a whole new lease of life.

[Bassman]

Thanks John,  my bad  The screenies for P3D appear to be consistent with those in AF2.

[pmb]

3 hours ago, yanlaoge said:

Aerofly FS 2 is a new comer

 

This does not quite apply. They published AeroflyFS1 in 2012, still on my shelf, where they missed the point by neither making it extensible nor getting addon makers on board. They obviously learned from that with AeroflyFS2 beeing indeed a jump into the first league.

 

The core engine is based on their long-running successful series of RC simulators (AeroflyRC7 now) actually.

 

Kind regards, Michael

 

[Sebastian Hampf]

how can this run with 120 fps ? and we´re still stuck at 30 ish on xplane and p3d 
I dont get it, what´s the tech behind this  ?

[FILOU]

1 hour ago, Sebastian Hampf said:

how can this run with 120 fps ? and we´re still stuck at 30 ish on xplane and p3d 
I dont get it, what´s the tech behind this  ?

Because no Air traffic,no road traffic,no autogen and all the rest...
 

[Phil Hulme]

36 minutes ago, FILOU said:

Because no Air traffic,no road traffic,no autogen and all the rest...
 

 

"Whilst not quite ready for release day next week, we have 500,000+ buildings up and running in AFS2 at Chicago at 100+FPS *before* any optimisation. That's not a typo. We will patch that in seamlessly via FTXC once we finesse it. We can scale that to a million, 2 million or more. This engine can handle stuff others can only dream about. "

 

 

[Benny]

45 minutes ago, FILOU said:

Because no Air traffic,no road traffic,no autogen and all the rest...
 

 

I have no traffic (air and ground) in V4, and I'm far from 100 FPS, more like I was before with FSX.

 

And I'm a casual simmer so it suite me perfectly.

Ben

[Oldar]

Many people have dismissed Aerofly FS 2 without actually having given it a chance. If what you like to do is push buttons, throw switches, monitor hydraulics systems, etc., then it isn't for you right now. If you want to have the feeling of actually FLYING an airplane and not the experience of operating a complex computerized machine, Aerofly FS 2 plus VR is for you. 

 

The engine is totally unlike the FSX derivatives. That is why they can get 120fps and deliver an unreal VR experience. 

[Benny]

10 minutes ago, Oldar said:

Many people have dismissed Aerofly FS 2 without actually having given it a chance. If what you like to do is push buttons, throw switches, monitor hydraulics systems, etc., then it isn't for you right now. If you want to have the feeling of actually FLYING an airplane and not the experience of operating a complex computerized machine, Aerofly FS 2 plus VR is for you. 

 

The engine is totally unlike the FSX derivatives. That is why they can get 120fps and deliver an unreal VR experience. 

 

So well said.... AF2 is about flying...

[FILOU]

1 hour ago, Spit40 said:

 

« Bien que pas tout à fait prêt pour le jour de la sortie la semaine prochaine, nous avons  500.000+ bâtiments  opérationnels en AFS2 à Chicago à 100 + FPS * avant * toute optimisation.  Ce n'est pas une faute de frappe . Nous patcher que de façon transparente via FTXC une fois que nous Finesse il . Nous pouvons échelle que pour un million, 2 millions de plus. Ce moteur peut gérer d' autres trucs ne peuvent que rêver. "

 

 

I understand very well but In my personal case I would like to see a whole country With life On earth and in the sky!!!

Anyway I'm not closed on new developments And I would necessarily follow the evolution AFS2 with ORBX.

[NoLonger]

9 hours ago, pmb said:

This does not quite apply. They published AeroflyFS1 in 2012, still on my shelf, where they missed the point by neither making it extensible nor getting addon makers on board. They obviously learned from that with AeroflyFS2 beeing indeed a jump into the first league.

 

The core engine is based on their long-running successful series of RC simulators (AeroflyRC7 now) actually.

 

 

Is it...? Afaik the RC sims don't use scenery like in Aerofly: from what I have seen you are standing in a fixed position and you can only look around from that spot while flying your RC planes around you and looking at it from a distance. The scenery usually are photo's. I doubt if Aerofly uses much, if anything, from the RC sims. But apart from that, IPACS almost started from scratch when they created AFS2: I doubt if you can even say AFS2 uses the core engine of AFS1.

[alcliff]

 

5 hours ago, Sebastian Hampf said:

how can this run with 120 fps ? and we´re still stuck at 30 ish on xplane and p3d 
I dont get it, what´s the tech behind this  ?

 

3 hours ago, FILOU said:

Because no Air traffic,no road traffic,no autogen and all the rest...
 

 

From the developer at IPACS:

 

" "Concerns about the performance with more systems?" No, I don't think so...
From my point of view more systems won't affect the performance that much if at all. If you are using the CPU to its full potential it can do a lot of things very quickly (3.400.000.000 things second! per core...). And Aerofly has an engine that is very powerful, using multicore, 64bit... I've been adding thousands of small systems in the past year now, I've not had an issue with CPU performance even once. The frame rate stayed at 60FPS since the graphics is running on another thread and mainly on the graphics card anyway - so rendering will still be very smooth even if theoretically we would somehow managed to bring the physics engine to its limits. Then the phyics would probably just get less acurate if we had to slow it down... That shouldn't affect the frame rate at all though, it does in other simulators but it shouldn't. But I doubt we will ever get to the limits of the physics engine, even if we add study level system depth."

[pmb]

37 minutes ago, J van E said:

 

Is it...? Afaik the RC sims don't use scenery like in Aerofly: from what I have seen you are standing in a fixed position and you can only look around from that spot while flying your RC planes around you and looking at it from a distance. The scenery usually are photo's. I doubt if Aerofly uses much, if anything, from the RC sims. But apart from that, IPACS almost started from scratch when they created AFS2: I doubt if you can even say AFS2 uses the core engine of AFS1.

I wouldn't speculate how much code they took from AeroflyFS1 and how much this one took from the RC series which probably only the developers know. In any case they are not new comers as it was stated above.

 

https://www.ipacs.de/about-us.html

 

https://www.helisimmer.com/interview/interview-aerofly-fs2-developer-tosten-hans/

 

Besides, I don't find there is much difference in the look of the Switzerland scenery from version 1 to 2. The main work they did to the core engine (besides making it 64 bit) was adding worldwide coverage and making it addon extensible, which where the crucial points having been critizesed in AeroflyFS1 from the beginning and perventing its breakthrough at that time.

 

Kind regards, Michael

 

 

[walterg74]

11 hours ago, John Venema said:

 

Yes, you'll get 40% off Meigs - but only if you purchase from OrbxDirect.com and have already purchased it for FSX/P3D.

 

Hmm.. While I have already made 2 decent purchases at OrbsDirect.com, my Meigs was purchased before the store was even up...

 

Does that mean I will not qualify? Or did you mean as long as I buy the new Meigs through there?  (Which I first though "how could I possibly buy it elsewhere?" but then though it could also be on steam...)

 

So I'm gonna take a shot here and say as long as orbxdirect has me registered as an FSX/P3D owner, and I buy AF2 Meigs through there, I will receive the discount...?

[HiFlyer]

29 minutes ago, pmb said:

Besides, I don't find there is much difference in the look of the Switzerland scenery from version 1 to 2. The main work they did to the core engine (besides making it 64 bit) was adding worldwide coverage and making it addon extensible, which where the crucial points having been critizesed in AeroflyFS1 from the beginning and perventing its breakthrough at that time

 

Well, they also went from Direct X to OpenGL, changed from a flat to a round earth, added navigation, added electrical, hydraulic and other systems, plus clickable cockpits, redid the lighting system, added more planes and scenery, created an SDK.... etc. 

[wolfko]

2 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

 

Well, they also went from Direct X to OpenGL,

 

I think this was a very smart move! OpenGL is probably the reason, why Aerofly FS2 is so super smooth incl. its gauges and hud. I was a little bit into gauge design during the FS9 era and I sometimes was a bit annoyed not being able to achieve the smoothness of OpenGL with having to use Direct3D.

 

 

[John Venema]

Please do not post screenshots from other simulators into this topic.

Please do not begin 'sim wars' - if AFS2 is not for you, that is perfectly fine by us, just don't feel the need to bash it to justify your choice.

Please understand that AFS2 is an emerging sim and still in its infancy. We support it for its potential in the future, not its feature list today.

Please don't feel threatened by AFS2, it's not evil and won't distract Orbx from its core platform P3D.

[Bassman]

Well said ( and may I say restrained) JV.

[Bermuda425]

Breathtaking!

[yanlaoge]

1 hour ago, John Venema said:

Please do not post screenshots from other simulators into this topic.

Please do not begin 'sim wars' - if AFS2 is not for you, that is perfectly fine by us, just don't feel the need to bash it to justify your choice.

Please understand that AFS2 is an emerging sim and still in its infancy. We support it for its potential in the future, not its feature list today.

Please don't feel threatened by AFS2, it's not evil and won't distract Orbx from its core platform P3D.

 

Good saying. The biggest problem of flight simulation is not too many products, but too few of them! We have so limited choices. The relatively smaller user base is no argument for no more than 5 major titles, 3 of which are actually from the same family. Flight simmers have different needs which cannot be satisfied by a single product. For me photoreal scenery is the must. Of course others can prefer generic ground texture. So why can't we just co-exist. 

[StefVR]

Just registered here and want to say hello from a new customer. I love VR, FS2 and cant wait for this stunning looking addon.

[rockliffe]

I moved across to P3D v3.4 a few months ago, but to be honest, I'm still rather sick and tired of the slow texture loading, which I thought would have been a memory of the past having left FSX behind. So I am looking very carefully, with an open mind, at Aerofly. All the nay sayers need to get a grip on what this is, It's an early release platform which has immense potential. IMO the autogen in XP absolutely sucks, in particular the trees. Compare it to Aerofly and see the difference.I have a suspicion that many third party devs will take a leap of faith far sooner than otherwise now JV and the gang have got on board. I'd like to wager a bet that by this time next year, it is a true competitor to P3D and XP.

[rockliffe]

52 minutes ago, StefVR said:

Just registered here and want to say hello from a new customer. I love VR, FS2 and cant wait for this stunning looking addon.

Welcome Stef

 

[GlennH]

5 minutes ago, rockliffe said:

I moved across to P3D v3.4 a few months ago, but to be honest, I'm still rather sick and tired of the slow texture loading, which I thought would have been a memory of the past having left FSX behind. So I am looking very carefully, with an open mind, at Aerofly. All the nay sayers need to get a grip on what this is, It's an early release platform which has immense potential. IMO the autogen in XP absolutely sucks, in particular the trees. Compare it to Aerofly and see the difference.I have a suspicion that many third party devs will take a leap of faith far sooner than otherwise now JV and the gang have got on board. I'd like to wager a bet that by this time next year, it is a true competitor to P3D and XP.

 

V4 fixes this for the most part

[rockliffe]

2 hours ago, GlennH said:

 

V4 fixes this for the most part

Ah well, I was hoping that would be the case Glenn. Interesting, you have exactly the same spec rig as me! Do you have any issues with worse performance/ fps/stutters?

[Hervef2]

Like you I'm tired of OOM , and "cartoonish" sim...tired of optimising, tweaking, trying, all these .cfg and so on,.. since more than 20 years since fs95, fs2k,fs2002, fs9, fsx, p3d...here all is sooooo wonderful, beautiful, and easy... i'm confident that in less than 2 years, we will have all functionnalities, like atc, traffic, multiplayer, sailplanes towing, animated air, sea and ground traffic... Aerofly fs2 is really the most biggest step since 20 years. Just a little patience is needed. But i'm sure that soon, major actors, following the steps of Orbx, like Carenado/Alabeo, A2A, Aerosoft and so on will propose stuff for this fantastic all new sim ! IPACS, we are behind you!

[NoLonger]

30 minutes ago, Hervef2 said:

...tired of optimising, tweaking, trying, all these .cfg and so on,.. since more than 20 years since fs95, fs2k,fs2002, fs9, fsx, p3d...here all is sooooo wonderful, beautiful, and easy... 

 

Agreed. What I love about AFS2 is that it simply works. I have been following the release of other sims the last few weeks and in no time I was reading again about tweaks, cfg's, edits, addons to make colors better... it's all so complicated and time consuming and still there are people who can't get things to work well. And when they do get it running well, it still doesn't run as well as Aerofly FS 2.

 

Obviously some other sims offer a lot more content right now so right now Aerofly FS 2 may not be the right sim for everyone but it sure is the right sim for me.

 

Did you already try Aerofly FS 2, rockliffe? I have been reading a lot about your problems to get various sims running well: you might be surprised how easy it is to get Aerofly working well. Install it, pull all sliders right and fly within seconds.  You can try if for 2 hours (within 2 weeks) and ask for a refund without any questions asked if you don't like it. Obviously you could also wait for the first reviews of LOWI and Meigs and the upcoming Dash from IPACS (and everything else that's coming up) but if you would like to enjoy a smooth flight without any fooling around for once you might as well try it now.