Contest! "IFLYING: Who knows each other"

[Contest Participant Jose]. The golden ages of air simulation have passed, at least we don’t know we’re they are. Years ago we were able to recognize each other in our sim world. We Knew who was Microsoft, we knew who was Laminar, and we really knew who were Maddox Games and Eagle Dynamics.

 

One day, Microsoft told us they were leaving the ship. In a strange maneuver, they told us that Microsoft Flight Simulator was the last chapter. FSX was a genuine Microsoft project; ambitious, but full of bugs and the constantly needed of a powerful machine to go on. It seemed that a FS11 could had been everything that FSX couldn’t: a powerful tool but very efficient in terms of use of our PC, we were hoping the succes of Office 2007 on our FSX. Microsoft in an incredible short minded decision, decided to stop working on Flight Simulador.

 

 

Later, they created Flight. A new beginning, a searching of flying pleasure by the flying in a easy way, why not? But they shut soon their new project, and it was only a baby one... Again the company showed us that they had lost their passion, they had become only a company worried by the incomes, incapable of seeing the potencial of a project like Flight.

 

And what about Xplane? They seemed to be the solution to the Microsoft disaster. It was Xplane chance, they we’re even in the way of making a new version of their Xplane, the Xplane10. The reality has been just another; that Xplane10 has been more than a year in a painful beta, that has bounded the simmers to update not only the sim but also their planes and sceneries. The 64 bits, which surely will bring us new opportunities, has been a headache for all those who have created addons to Xplane10, and it still goes on... if it wasn’t enough, not many developers are moving to Xplane. They created a new plausible world... but has it been plausible enough?

 

And what about our addon creators? They seem to be as lost as we are. Some of them creates to FSX, anothers to Xplane. Some to both FSX and P3D, anothers to FSX but not to P3D -Real Air-. Some likes P3D to be their default platform -ORBX-, but not others -PMDG-. Others create to FSX, and P3D, and Xplane, and we need to pay... two times! (don’t get angry, I love Carenado planes)... not clear, really. Something new is needed.

 

What about Il2-Sturmovik? They went into an ambitious project named “IL2: Cliff of Dover”. They were the creators of Il2 saga, so it has to be good (IL2 was (and is) really good). It wasn’t. I still don’t know why, but the sim was plenty of bugs, nobody was happy and there was a life promise of resolving its issues and bring us an eye candy but efficient sim. Nowadays Cliff of Dover has been forgotten.
 

 

What about DCS? The slowness is the best feature of this great group, because they are one of the bests. They gave us excel·lent products such as Ka-50, A10C... so they are almost our favorite sim platform, almost. Why an A10C instead of a F18? Where is the promised F18? Why are they reselling Flaming Cliffs, instead of giving us a A10C leveled of quality SU-27. And where is the promised Nevada new scenery? Why a P51 instead of a PC-21 for instance? Yes, DCS are the resources but not the success. I don’t know the reason but they seem to mistake the plane to create. The A10C is a wonderful product but, we are here to fly, to fly like a bird, the A10C is a bit “heavy” for us. Despite, they bring us the main idea of this post: Iflying.

 

DCS are in their way of creating something that would bring us to another level of flight simulation: a solid platform, updates and modules. This is more or less the idea that Iracing has created before with great success. Not only in benefits but in the opinion of their users: the quality of the simming. Iracing creates a solid platform updated constantly, it searches realism first, and it grows every day with new cars and tracks.
 

Flight simmers need a new type of platform, we need a IFlight sim. We need a strong company which goal must be create a realistic and rich sim. We need our planes to fly realistically, not only to seemed to. We need a terrain as good as Outerra, a solid one. And we really need a powerful challenging atmosphere, and clouds, temperatures, and humidity. We need an alive admosphere or what are we talking about? And what about our engines, how they react at different altitudes? How different feel an airplane to another, truly. And we need everyone to create addons to enrich that world with the confidence that our investment will be saved in future.
 

We need the people to meet each other in the airports, to start their machines and and talk and learn from each other, to feel what is all this about. We need learning missions, learning meetings... we need competivie meetings, airshows. We really need to create a world for flight simming from here to the future... seriosly, to enjoy, to learn, to share... to really feel that their time and money are invested in something great. We also need to recreate the world in a quality mode, surely downloading the data we need from a server. We have not enough space to get a rich sim world in our HD. Is Outerra part of the answer? Will it be P3D? I don’t think so. I only know that we need IFlying, the next step in flight simulation.

 

At least we have AirDailyX...

Best wishes,

[Jose]

PD: Excuses for my english, I'm spanish but I tried my best.