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Eagle County Colorado: The Heart of the Rockies Comes to Aerofly FS2!


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G'day everyone,

 

Following hot on the heals of Monterey, I am very pleased to announce our fourth airport for IPACS Aerofly FS2: Eagle County Regional Airport!

 

Whilst many of you were expecting Jackson Hole after Wednesday's announcement (don't worry, this will be my next release!), I've been adding some final spit and polish to this well-known Colorado airport. A highly popular ORBX destination that was originally released for FSX and P3Dv4 in 2015, Eagle-Vail has been brought to life for the new simulator. With an enormous 1500km2 coverage area, this scenery not only encompasses KEGE, but also two additional "lite" airstrips; Gypsum Creek Ranch (CO47) and Avon STOLPort (WHR), the latter depicted in it's mid-1980s configuration. Explore the ski resort townships of Vail, Eagle, Gypsum, Beaver Creak and Walcott, as well as large chunks of the imposing Sawatch Mountain Range. As can be expected from any ORBX destination, colour-matched and edited ground textures, detailed hand-placed buildings, vegetation, landmarks and 3D lighting can be found across the coverage area. These features are coupled with Aerofly's trademark crisp terrain engine, effortlessly smooth performance and curved runway models. 

 

Situated deep in the heart of the Colorado Rockies, Eagle County is as famous for it's challenging approaches as it is for it's dramatic scenery. Surrounded by difficult terrain and prone to bad weather, KEGE is a high-altitude airport that will test even seasoned pilots. The airfield itself is a regional airport located several miles east of Gypsum, Colorado, and hosts five airlines serving destinations across the US and Canada. As much of the airline traffic caters to ski-season tourist, Eagle County is Colorado's second busiest airport during the winter months. In addition to the airline terminal, KEGE lays claim to one of the largest FBOs in the country - Vail Valley Jet Center, which caters to an enormous amount of corporate charter and GA traffic. For the military aficionados amongst you, explore the Army National Guard High Altitude Aviation Training Site, located on the north side of the field. 

 

Whilst the high altitude and terrain prove challenging at all times of year, the airport is designed to handle aircraft up to Boeing 757 in size. Located a short flight to many of the best-designed default Aerofly Airports seen to date; take your Q400 or A320 to Denver, Salt Lake City or ( the upcoming ORBX) Jackson Hole, or jump in something smaller and pop over to Aspen, Telluride or Monument Valley, all short flights away. 

 

Eagle County has been designed to best blend with the freeware Colorado DLC from IPACS, if you haven't downloaded your copy yet from Steam, you're missing out!

 

As mentioned in various posts over recent weeks, there is a flurry of activity going into Aerofly development as I speak; Eagle County is the perfect destination to explore some of the most dramatic scenery in the United States and sets the tone of what is to come. 

 

FTX EAGLE COUNTY REGIONAL AIRPORT for AEROFLY FS2 FEATURES:

 

•   Highly-detailed rendition of KEGE airport
•   Massive 1500sqkm coverage area 
•   Incredible ground textures at 30cm/1m
•   2x bonus lite airfields
•   Gypsum Creek Ranch & Avon STOLPort
•   Amazing sloped runway 
•   Detailed ground poly with complete spec/bump mapping
•   Extreme high-density vegetation cultivation
•   Accurate hand-placed buildings for the entire coverage area
•   Animated PeopleFlow2 technology
•   3D night lighting for the entire city
•   New generic building textures to better suit Colorado environment (not currently depicted)
•   Detailed grass and vegetation at airport
•   Animated airport ground vehicles
•   Many landmarks and POI
•   New soft-blend terrain to surrounding ASF2
•   Dozens of custom aircraft, vehicles and GSE created specifically for Eagle County 
•   Runway and taxiway lighting
•   100% compatible with IPACS Colorado DLC

•   Amazing performance on even mid-range machines!

 

COVERAGE AREA & SLOPED RUNWAY

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More details and screenshots to come after the holidays, in the mean time, please have a great Christmas break, and enjoy the previews!

Jarrad

 

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Great choice to port this airport to AFS2! (one of my favorite areas to fly on AFS2) And really happy for the two additional "lite" airstrips, good to not have only regional airport. Thanks for your great work and merry christmas too.

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Jarrad

Very nice highly detailed set of shots.

Creates a bit of a conundrum as regards which Flight Sim to follow in the future:)

Being currently heavily invested in P3D, (particularly in your work),  I am curious about a couple of things.

 -  Are we likely to see any new P3D airports from you in 2018, or will your time mainly be devoted to AFS2 conversions? 

 - From a developer's viewpoint, what does AFS2 give visually that is currently better than in P3D?

Thanks

TTM

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Very nice and detailed Jarrad, however, I have one question.  Is there a difference in detail between this and the one for P3D 4.1?

 

It's just a matter of a couple months and I'll have a new PC and this will be sitting alongside P3D.  And of course, I'll be buying even more Orbx stuff for it! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks very much guys, apologies for the late reply, just coming back on deck after a break over the holidays. 

 

On 12/23/2017 at 7:56 PM, TigerTigerM said:

Being currently heavily invested in P3D, (particularly in your work),  I am curious about a couple of things.

 -  Are we likely to see any new P3D airports from you in 2018, or will your time mainly be devoted to AFS2 conversions? 

 - From a developer's viewpoint, what does AFS2 give visually that is currently better than in P3D?

 

G'day TTM, P3D is still my core simulator; my new projects (including the airport I'm currently working on) will be designed for P3D/FSX first and foremost. 

In terms of visuals, whilst there are the well-discussed tradeoffs with AFS2, there are a couple of big advantages for me as a developer: 

- The terrain engine is much sharper. Ground textures and autogen (cultivation in AFS2 parlance) render more clearly in the middle and far distances. This is particularly great for mountain sceneries; the definition in distant peaks is much better than P3D. 

- Performance is through the roof. Contrary to popular belief, this is not solely due to lack of systems (AI, complex weather etc), but because the IPACS team make it their core mission to make an extremely lean core engine for us to work with. Throwing the kitchen sink at the sim and still getting 200fps (even with VR) does wonders for increasing the sense of immersion. 

- Sloped runways, sharper shadow rendering (compared to P3Dv4), and a few other small improvements all add a little bit of incentive for us P3D developers to try it out. 

 

On 12/23/2017 at 9:55 PM, Jack Sawyer said:

Very nice and detailed Jarrad, however, I have one question.  Is there a difference in detail between this and the one for P3D 4.1?

 

G'day Jack, much as I did with Monterey, I've tried to keep KEGE as similar to it's P3D counterpart as possible. There will be small differences you may notice - the density of the vegetation is higher, the ground poly "noise" textures are at a higher resolution, and some minor substitutions have been made. And of course the runway is curved in AFS2. Conversely, some secondary components have been removed due to limitations; the biggest of which would be the small helipad at Vail (which is redundant at the moment anyway, due to lack of helos in AFS2). But all in all, you will get a very fair crossover between the two platforms. 

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

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27 minutes ago, Jarrad Marshall said:

G'day Jack, much as I did with Monterey, I've tried to keep KEGE as similar to it's P3D counterpart as possible. There will be small differences you may notice - the density of the vegetation is higher, the ground poly "noise" textures are at a higher resolution, and some minor substitutions have been made. And of course the runway is curved in AFS2. Conversely, some secondary components have been removed due to limitations; the biggest of which would be the small helipad at Vail (which is redundant at the moment anyway, due to lack of helos in AFS2). But all in all, you will get a very fair crossover between the two platforms. 

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

Wow!  Thanks Jarrad.  Looks like as soon as I am able I'll be buying this and the Orbx stuff to install into it.  I'd like to see the huge FPS increase and the difference in smoothness.  I think Lockheed did a pretty good job on 4.1 and despite it being 64 bit, isn't it still basically Microsoft's FSX in different clothes?  Maybe it's too long in the tooth?  I don't know.  But it's still my main sim and I have everything Orbx makes so there's no way I want to drop it.  It will be nice to have two sims side by side both with Orbx stuff in them however.  Thanks for your brilliant explanation!

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  • 3 weeks later...
6 hours ago, vikartindur said:

I don't know if i'm at the correct forum to ask: will eagle county be available on steam as well, like the previous orbx releases? or will it be available only from orbx direct?

 

G'day there, KEGE will be available for Steam alongside our other releases in about a week or so.

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

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