By John Walker on October 18th, 2012 at 4:00 pm.
After the disappointing flop of Microsoft Flight, you may well be asking how you should be taking to the skies. Well, if you follow the advice of our Senior Flying Things correspondent, Tim Stone, you’ll know Aerofly FS is a good option. Tim wrote about it back in February, where he was gosh-darned surprised by how good it was. And now it’s out on Steam.
I’m not going to pretend to understand flight sims, and I’m even too tired today to make up plane types to annoy buffs. But I really do recommend you go read Tim’s piece linked above, as he discusses the various aspects with his flare.
Buying the game through publishers Ikarus is bloody confusing. I eventually reached their store page, and then couldn’t find Aerofly FS on it, instead discovering that I could buy Aerofly5 for £250. But that might be a model. Despite linking from the game’s page. Go to the international store page and there’s a link for Aerofly FS, but this takes you to another information page, that then links you back to the page where I started. Humph.
However, the version on Steam has no number, just Aerofly FS, and obviously comes with no controller at all. So overall, I’m plain (plane?) confused. It does seem that this is the one you should go for, unless you’ve some extraordinary insight into what on Earth Ikarus are doing. It’s currently £25, going up to £30 by the end of next week.
Obviously there’s no official trailer or in-game footage, because to provide that wouldn’t be massively obtuse. So instead here’s a fan-made video that gives you an idea:
18/10/2012 at 16:03 MistyMike says:
Ha ha, he wrote ‘lands’ on a game about planes! That’s a funny joke!
18/10/2012 at 16:07 mrmalodor says:
You seem a little angry. You should get some AIR.
18/10/2012 at 16:39 atticus says:
Yeah, stop trying to throttle headlines with puns in them.
18/10/2012 at 16:40 .backslash says:
Thank you for pointing that out, guess it just flew over my head.
18/10/2012 at 17:13 Vagrant says:
His future as a Joystiq writer could really take off!
18/10/2012 at 17:57 Mr.Bats says:
Yeah… Vagrant… that’s not gonna fly
18/10/2012 at 18:12 MiniMatt says:
YAWFACE
18/10/2012 at 18:44 SuperNashwanPower says:
You mean “thats a funny yoke”
18/10/2012 at 20:17 The Random One says:
I hope I never see any of those jokes again. They undermine the site’s credibility and hinder serious discussion.
I hope you don’t find me rudder for airing my grievances like this, but I’d hate for this to spiral out of control.
18/10/2012 at 20:42 Lanfranc says:
I agree, we definitely need to forestall this.
18/10/2012 at 16:07 mrmalodor says:
This is very uplifting news.
18/10/2012 at 16:12 monsterZERO says:
This game looks just plane great…
18/10/2012 at 16:42 Lanfranc says:
I wonder if they have anything else on the slats?
18/10/2012 at 16:53 Om says:
Good pun. Was pitched just right
18/10/2012 at 17:14 Brun says:
I’m rolling on the floor laughing.
18/10/2012 at 17:19 mrmalodor says:
I disagree, it made me yawn.
18/10/2012 at 18:47 SuperNashwanPower says:
Too long. It needed a little trim.
18/10/2012 at 16:08 Zeewolf says:
JW: You were in the wrong category in the shop, those are model plane sims, while FS is simulating real planes.
The Steam edition is cheaper and comes with achievements, so that’s the version I’d go for.
(also you forgot the link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/214130/ )
18/10/2012 at 16:21 diebroken says:
That first image screams “Flight Unlimited!” XD
18/10/2012 at 16:42 asshibbitty says:
Their website is like a Möbius strip where one side is the English shop and the other German, and I don’t think you can buy the digital version from them anyway. Glad I waited, it’s cheaper on Steam too.
18/10/2012 at 20:04 The Random One says:
But… a Möbius strip only has one side.
18/10/2012 at 17:26 xcession says:
I’ll remain only semi-interested till the 2d ground projection thing is addressed. Rendering towns and villages as a flattened image that only looks decent from >1000ft is just really odd, given the power of modern computers. Cities or buildings near airports tend to get 3d rendered these days, but as soon as you leave the arbitrary area in which the developer thinks caring about visuals is appropriate, everything just gets flattened.
I appreciate that I’m totally missing the point to focus on the look of the *ground* in a *flight* sim, but i feel it’s falling short of simulating the visuals of flying, even if it matches the behaviour perfectly. Laughing derisively at the blurry “buildings” you pass by at 200ft has a tendency to reduce your appreciation of the flight.
18/10/2012 at 17:46 Zenicetus says:
X-Plane 10 is getting there, and in some respects is there already. The lead developer always hated 2D orthophoto overlays. They made a big push into procedurally-generated 3D buildings in the move from version 9 to version 10, so you can now get a mix of customized (and more accurate) scenery around the major airports and big cities where people have developed that scenery by hand, and also procedural 3D generation on top of landclass textures in all the other areas. That’s over the entire world, which does currently involve some issues — like not enough regional variety (i.e. US-style houses in Europe and tropical countries). But it’s a start.
The other new thing in X-Plane 10 is support for importing Open Street Map data, which is very promising and people have already started doing neat things with it. Although as usual for state-of-the-art flight simming, you’ll need a beast of a computer and graphics card to see the full effect. Try the X-Plane demo and you can see what they’re aiming for. Here’s a sample with some highly-tweaked scenery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ZC94HCtcg&feature=related
18/10/2012 at 18:21 Mattressi says:
WOW! That is absolutely amazing! I’ve stuck with FSX until now, simply because the payware scenery has been better, but that just blows any FSX scenery out of the water (air?)! It looks so beautiful! I worry that I’d never have a rig which could run those mods smoothly, though. Still, if that’s what is to come of X-Plane, I’m abandoning the FSX ship. Seriously, I’m completely stunned by that video.
The only fault I can find is simply that the colour of the greens in the scenery textures are the typical ‘satelite green’ – more of a light blue-green. But I could easily put up with that to have every building 3D and seemingly every tree 3D. And to have amazingly high-rez ground textures.
Also, it was really hard to not compose this post purely using upper case “wow”s, with exclamation marks randomly thrown in.
18/10/2012 at 18:48 MrLebanon says:
a flight sim that actually looks good graphically!? i may have to give this a go
18/10/2012 at 22:11 Zeewolf says:
Kind of interested in X-Plane. Please tell me they’ve made the earth round, though. The “flat” earth of earlier versions was a major turn-off.
18/10/2012 at 22:35 soldant says:
X-Plane 10′s scenery isn’t perfect though for the majority of the world. Cities consist predominately of low-set housing, even in downtown areas. The streets are great, I can fly over my neighbourhood and recognise it, and follow the highways into the airport or whatever. But flying over the city and the suburbs looks identical – there’s maybe a few tall buildings put around randomly, but otherwise it’s all housing. Also they’ve never had airport buildings by default except for a handful of sites. XP10′s method of scenery is the future, but without tailored packages like ORBX or the incorporation of other data to properly generate cities, it still looks fairly ridiculous.
18/10/2012 at 18:01 Mr-Link says:
Despite their gorgeousness the planes in Aerofly FS seem to have very limited functionality. Someone like me who became quite the button whore after DCS Blackshark cannot survive without a clickable cockpit.
18/10/2012 at 18:33 Mattressi says:
Yeah, I’ve heard that’s the case. Apparently the flight model is very good, but the aircraft model isn’t – lacking things like mixture settings.
Also, what’s up with the mirrors in that video in the article? The whole way through the show a view that seems to be a camera placed at the airport at the start, which only rotates about it’s centre point and never actually moves.
18/10/2012 at 22:39 soldant says:
Amusingly, Microsoft Flight (for all the derision it received) actually has more in the way of avionics than Aerofly FS. It’s been a while since I’ve played Aerofly FS, but the cockpit has no buttons to click, and I can’t even remember if you can do VOR navigation (or even NDB or anything really).
18/10/2012 at 18:07 bad guy says:
This game is perfect if you want to just hop in and have a quick round of relaxing flying.
Uncomplicated, no procedures, just puristic, realistic flying.
I didn’t know I liked gliders, they are my personal highlight in this game. Especially because of the featured wind, thermals and ridge-lift.
18/10/2012 at 18:09 bad guy says:
My fav AeroflyFS vid is this1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbs0myDheaM&hd=1
18/10/2012 at 18:37 Mattressi says:
That’s beautiful! I’m really considering getting this game, now – simply because of the great scenery. The main reason I keep playing flight simulators is for the scenery, so I guess I don’t mind too much that the controls/aircraft aren’t fully modelled.
18/10/2012 at 18:48 SuperNashwanPower says:
There’s no demo.
SHIRLEY YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS?
18/10/2012 at 22:49 tomek says:
Screenshot reminds me of the Flightsim Looking Glass did back in he day. Forgot the name but i quite enjoyed it.
19/10/2012 at 11:09 G-Lord says:
Flight Unlimited?
19/10/2012 at 12:21 tomek says:
Aye, Flight Unlimited :D Tyvm.
19/10/2012 at 06:11 kodx says:
You should try war thunder (http://warthunder.com/) it’s MMO with realistic flying model under the hood. For now it’s in closed beta. This game from creators of IL2-Shturmovik. This is example from youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsGzVZ-cn-Q
There is a lot of videostream records on youtube, but mostly in Russian. Just give it a try!
19/10/2012 at 11:08 G-Lord says:
Might have to get this eventually just to fly over the place where I used to live.