The introduction of the Development Timeline reminds us that the IF team is listening. That being said, a majority of what they are hearing pertains to commercial aircraft and that’s fine. Flying is flying.
But looking at the various discussions and feature requests pertaining to GA, it’s clear that we need to establish and maintain a more active presence in the community and in sim, as well as unite our voices behind a few select features that would most benefit the overall GA experience.
I am of the opinion that IF would be well-served with few more corporate/private aircraft along the lines of the King Air, Pilatus, Citation, Gulfstream, Falcon, Challenger and Embraer families. I find the most enjoyment from IF by flying the Citation X (even though the IF’s visual model version is really the X+) because I can match it up to a Netjets or XOJet operating schedule and mimic some real-world routes into airports you’d never get on commercial routes.
These aircraft types also allow the user to take advantage of long haul, global routes in the same way you can with the commercial jets but again put you into realistic flights off the beaten path.
I think the best way to do this is to make use of what we have, and look to the devs to build off of that.
We have a pretty wide range of general aviation aircraft in terms of both quality and ability (look at the difference between the Super Decathlon and the TBM930!). This opens the door to a massive about of flying that’s largely ignored by the community. Flights ranging from pattern work at a grass strip to 5 hour IFR flights between small airports are possible.
I’d recommend getting involved (and getting your friends interested) in VFR flights. Subscribe to channels like FlightChops or MzeroA, and look at the flights they do and skills they talk about. There’s a whole world out there to explore, far beyond taking off, hitting the nav button and landing.
I’d looove to see a terrain map, but many planes don’t have these in real life. If you have a window and an aeronautical chart (available at skyvector.com), you can navigate in reference to ground markings. Give it a try!
Welcome to the community and thanks for commenting on this thread! There are feature requests for all those aircraft brands, but each one has just a handful of votes. Which one make/model do you think would best benefit the community?
I agree. Infinite Tracker is a great third party app that fills this void, but I realize that not everybody has the ability or desire to use multiple devices simultaneously. It also thinks I am Grade 5 due to my landing stats, so ❤
I would post this every day if I could, but I’m not here to convince people to change their habits. There are already many people here who enjoy at least the occasional GA/VFR/small aircraft flight, and I created this thread to give all of us a place to discuss things without getting lost in the sea of A350 requests and other commercial airliner discussions.
For example, I think a rework of the 172 with moving gauges and additional liveries is essential. Getting all of the runways to their proper location and orientation is essential as well. More GA events, group flights, attendance and support to these gatherings, screenshots, videos, and discussion of real-world GA should help to give us a voice here.
Our time will come, the recent blog post hinted at it and I’m excited.
I travelled to Toronto to hang out with YouTube content creator, Steve Thorne from FlightChops. As I stood in Steve’s kitchen and gave him a quick tutorial of Infinite Flight and how it can work in conjunction with ForeFlight, something became very clear to me. Steve, a real-world pilot, had no interest in learning how to land an airliner. His main focus was how to effectively set up tomorrow’s flight from Burlington to Kitchener so he could practice his approach.
Steve was focused on maximizing use of this mobile simulator that he could take wherever he wanted so he could save time in his workflow. To me, it affirmed the trajectory we’ve been on. While appealing to our current user base, we must also continue to make strides toward expanding our reach into the aviation community.
Huge fan of GA but we shouldn’t just go requesting everything we want on this thread. We should create more topics discussing how we can make General Aviation a bigger and better part of the sim beyond simply just requesting planes. I think this is how we’ll really drive the interest up.
Have you looked into the IF General Aviation Club? Right now they’re the only GA virtual organization, I’m not a member but you can read more here: https://ga-club.weebly.com/
