Aerofly Fs 2 Continues to Validate
Aerofly FS2Publisher: IPACS | Review Author: |  |
How I Learned To Like Aerofly FS2
It's not particularly common to start a review with the verdict, nor with a personal statement before the actual review starts. However, shortly before I sent my text to FlightSim.Com's Dominic Smith (who kindly asked me to review Aerofly FS2 in December 2017), I wanted to make sure that he would be happy with my reviewing approach. As such, I asked him if I could include some comparative remarks regarding the other big simulators we have all come to know - MSFS and X-Plane. Well, after using Aerofly FS2 extensively over the past few months, I can honestly say that the number of simulators I now use, has jumped from two, to three - such has been my enjoyment (that is my verdict)!
In my early days of flight simulation, I used FS2004 and FSX, then my focus shifted to X-Plane 9 and then more recently to X-Plane 11 and Prepar3D. Prior to starting this review, I had assumed I'd simply remove Aerofly FS2 from my hard disk once the article was finished. However, to my surprise I didn't. I still fly with Aerofly FS2, and this review is the story of that surprise.
Flight & Prejudice
I did not know much about Aerofly FS2 before I started this review, but like most people with limited information, I came to an uninformed opinion and simply said, "I won't use that". You see, I had judged Aerofly FS2 way back when it was initially released as early access, and my ill informed decision was based solely on some screen shots of the user interface, weather settings (simpler even than X-Plane), and aircraft without (it seemed) any system depth. Positive things I read about, like very good frame rates (FPS), I rejected when I saw screen shots of the scenery: "Well, that's just static photo scenery", I said, "autogen only in very few areas, everywhere else is flat, no animations of car traffic or water - no surprise really that FPS are good!" That was it, for quite some time, until Dominic emailed me with ideas of a possible review.
To be honest, my first impressions were still rather negative when I first installed Aerofly FS2. For a start, the user interface appeared really large on my 1920x1080 screen (as if it was made for a much smaller touch screen), plus several options I was used to seeing in simulators were missing, especially regarding weather, starting position, and flight planning. Overall, it felt like a simple flying game, and while I'm totally fine with flying games (and even think they are needed to get younger people into this hobby), I was still wondering what Aerofly FS2 could offer me over X-Plane 11 and Prepar3D. So I took a deep breath, pushed my expectations aside and set out to discover new lands (for myself anyway).
These lands, by default, consist of the Southwestern USA, Utah, and Colorado; these regions are available either in the base download or as free DLC. In addition, Aerofly FS2 developer IPACS sell add-ons for Switzerland (which I have purchased) and Northeastern USA. ORBX have also converted their scenery for Innsbruck, Chicago Meigs, Monterey and Eagle County (from which I have purchased two, and I'll come back to those later in the article). Our friends at Aerosoft offer the German island of Helgoland. This is, so far, everything available for Aerofly FS2 in terms of scenery (at time of writing). Unfortunately other areas of the world only exist as low-res photo textures without any definition. You can fly there if you position your plane on the moving map, but it's not much fun without airports.
Source: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?18264-Review-Aerofly-FS2
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