Ugh, another post about global…
Have been meaning to post about this for a long time. Many people are like ‘When is global coming out’ and ‘Surely it’s not that hard, I mean we already have the airports’, but many don’t think about some of the limitations:
1) Storage Space
I have all regions and aircraft downloaded, which takes up 1.3GB of my iPad. Obviously some of this goes to Aircraft and the Core game, but a considerable amount of this goes to the regions. So what takes up all the space? Well, it could be the airports, but currently the Editing repo with all the global airports is a grand total of 250MB. Hardly gigantic. It could be the textures? Currently we have a very limited landclass system with a couple unique tiles per region. Obviously exact size depends on the size of these textures and the format, but these again can hardly take that much room. So the culprit (at least, in my eyes): Mesh. In case you are wondering a mesh is what defines the height of the map at each point. Detailed mesh can take up a lot of space, and currently on high settings IF has a detailed one, as you can see the mountains are quite well defined compared to say, FSX. I cannot imagine what the mesh size of the world would be at the moment, but it won’t be small, and way too big for Mobile devices.
Still here? Great. The next ones won’t be so grueling.
2) The Floating point bug
So this is a really big one for global flight, even if you own a snazzy 256GB iPad Pro, this will still be a big limitation. At the moment, after a 1 hour flight in a jet, on the ground you are twitching around a bit. So think what this will be like after a 8hr long LHR-JFK trip. This is a big issue holding back global.
3) Region Payments
IF has never made anything paid free again, and I can tell they would not ever do this. So how will this work with global? What happens when you go into a region you have not paid for? What happens with the non-region areas? FDS may already have a solution for this, but if they ever bring out global they will need one.
4) Other bugs
You know that bug that makes gaps in the terrain effecting some people? And the numerous ATC bugs at the moment? Global will just make more issues, and I’m sure FDS will want to find a solution to the current ones.
5) Pilots and IFATC
The highest amount of pilots I have ever seen on playground is 140. 140 people all around the world isn’t very many, and things will get quite lonely, which in one way defeats the point of IF live. FDS are a business, and so they will want to encourage people to live, but will the people still want to buy it? Also the same goes for IFATC; it is rare for more than 10-12 to be online, so ATC will turn back into the rarity it once was. And no one wants that.
Still here? You deserve a cookie. Go and get one now.
As we can see, FDS have a long way to go towards global. So, be realistic, and don’t expect it (if it every does come) anytime soon. Think you know a solution to any of these? Post below :)
DISCLAIMER: Global is not confirmed to be coming anytime soon. Matt has said they are working on a solution, but no one has any idea if it is anywhere near close.