While this is not exactly breaking news (I found out the project has been announced back in January) this is a rather new project that is well worth mentioning.
A team of an undisclosed size is working on the island of Oahu in the Hawaii and the images and information they have been sharing on the Aerofly FS2 official forums are quite impressive.
The team has been hard at work on many levels, with people developing different stages and layers of the scenery. Here’s a resume (which you can find of that thread) of what the team has been working on:
- We have one member of the group re-doing some of the ortho, even removing burned in images of ships, cars, and parked aircraft.
- We have another team member pushing the envelope on city building designs, with textures such as you've never seen in AFS2 before.
- We have parking lots being constructed with crazy levels of detail.
- We have buildings with solar panels on them.
- We have bridges being built.
- New airport terminals are being worked on.
- There are more animated ships, animated aircraft, animated paratroopers, and possibly some animated vehicles on some of the roads.
The list goes on and on.
Apart from the obvious construction of the island, buildings and points of interest, something that I was really excited to read about were the “animated ships, animated aircraft, animated paratroopers, and possibly some animated vehicles on some of the roads”.
The team is not letting these on the hands of IPACS and they seem to be pushing the boundaries of what we can find so far in the world as depicted by Aerofly FS2. It’s a shame that third-party developers have to spend time doing something that, in my opinion, should be easy to implement by just indicating the water beds or the roads so that the sim itself would place traffic accordingly, but I am very, very happy that this team is doing it. I am very curious to see the result.
One of the screenshots they have made available shows a C-130 flying around, which immediately adds up nicely and increases the realism and immersion.
The scenery also has some ships and even an aircraft carrier we can land on.
If you are wondering whether the team is considering doing the rest of Hawaii, here’s what they are saying right now: “We are discussing the possibility of adding another island, but if it happens it will be very simple and basic in comparison.”
Hopefully, they may consider going commercial and doing the whole island set. I wouldn’t mind paying to get some good-quality Hawaii in the sim.
There’s no established date of release yet so, meanwhile, enjoy the screenshots and follow the thread here.
Oh! And… Does it have helipads? Check below!
