The State of Global Flight

#1

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.

37 Likes
#2

Wow! I never thought global flight was coming soon, but still didn’t realize some of these things! You deserve multiple cookies.

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#3

Woah woah woah, global is not confirmed to be coming anytime soon. Matt has said they are working on a solution, bu tit is likely to be a long way off.

But thanks :)

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#4

What? I said I didn’t think global flight was coming soon. Are you sure you read my post correctly?

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#5

I don’t deserve cookie; I deserve school to improve my reading. Sorry.

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#6

Is global flight coming any time soon ? Lol

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#7

I will flag you for spam if you’re not careful :)

#8

You can eat a cookie (the healthy kind😂) while at school!😂😂

No such thing as a “healthy” cookie😂

#9

We clearly don’t go to the same schools lol…

#10

You can’t eat cookies at school?! Don’t tell Cookie Monster that!
image
That picture😂😂 (not my picture)

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#11

Here’s my thought about region payments: I think that all individual regions could be removed and be replaced with combined sections of the current infinite flight regions

Examples:

  • Eastern USA (New York, Charlotte, and down to SoFlo)
  • Midwest USA (Oshkosh, Chicago + larger extension to Denver
  • South Pacific region (Singapore + Australia combo)
  • West Coast USA (Seattle, San Fran, down to SoCal + extension to Hawaii
  • West Europe (England, France, Amsterdam combo)

If you purchased all the current regions within the new combined regions then you would get the combo for free. Let’s say I bought New York and SoFlo but not Charlotte, I wouldn’t be able to get the combined region for free, I would need to pay a small payment of $5. When you have the one combined region, you would not be able to fly outside to other regions that you have not purchased (throttle will cut off). When all combined regions at purchased, then you could fly outside of each region normally to another, however, the ‘in between’ areas would have default/blank scenery with no airports

For global flight, you can purchase a worldwide scenery package that contains every part of the world in one package. It would be pretty pricey about $20-30 and those who have Live+ subscriptions could pay $10-15. This scenery package will allow you to fly throughout the world with no problems.

Sorry for the huge essay I wrote on this.

(This post may not be the right topic to discuss it in, but I will post this in the proper Global Flight topic as well as this one). ;)

1 Like
#12

No this is definitely the right topic.

The trouble with that is that people who have say, bought SoFlo, but do not want to buy the rest of the region will lose access to it, which means they lose out.

It’s a difficult one though and this is a good idea :)

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#13

My idea is a little all over the place, but if you have a single region that’s a part of the combined region, you would still be able to fly in that region you just wouldn’t be able to fly outside of it. If I have SoFlo, but not Charlotte or New York, then my throttle will cut off if I exit that region, like usual

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#14

Good explanation @IceBlue

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#15

I now see the difficulties of what the FDS may have when trying to Implement global flight.

#16

This is why I would be a much bigger proponent of larger regions instead of Global Flight

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#17

You make some good points :). IMO opinion global should be last on the devs to-do list. I would rather see things like the b787 or the a350 ;)

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#18

Yes, but I’m sure there are some creative solutions. Maybe it means we don’t get such good terrain resolution or 3d buildings everywhere. This is probably the most limiting factor though.

This can and should be fixed soon. It is a well known problem with solutions documented all over the web.

Some customers might lose, some might win. Hopefully some sort of option to ‘grandfather in’ past purchases can be worked out.

Only one way to find out. :)

People will still congregate to the same locations. If someone logs in as ATC in Russia and no planes exist within 5000nm, they will probably move to wherever the traffic is. Some people will fly off on long routes or explore remote areas, but the majority will still end up in the same ‘region’.

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#19

its easy to say “it won’t happen heres why” lets be more constructive. Extreme landings managed to get global flight. I don’t want to pressure the developers either but saying “its too difficult right now” won’t make it easier. maybe if the developers were totally transparent we as a community could help them with their issue. by saying this is the system we have these are the limitations.
i know that there must be some programmers out there that might be able to come up with a solution.

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#20

I feel like if the floating point bug was as easy to fix as you make it seem it would have been fixed by now

1 Like