Frontier Pilot Simulator

[askavir]

Frontier Pilot Simulator

This is one of the games I've been looking forward to the most. A ship flying game, set in another planet, in which the gameplay emphasis in on the actual flying itself.

It's still in early access but it's very playable already.

You have detailed flight models, several ships, various (and extreme) weather conditions, natural hazards, huge geysers, volcanos, alien landscape, ship customisation, multiple flight modes, etc etc.

Everything affects your flight quite noticeable, cargo weight, wind, weather, etc, which translates into a variety of flying experiences.

Don't usually buy things in early-access, but I was very looking forward to this as I love flying games where the core gameplay focus is the actual flying. Money well spent so far, and the devs are still adding content.

If you're not used to some any kind of flight sims, expect to crash a lot at first!

Anyone else gave it a spin?

Save 40% on Frontier Pilot Simulator on Steam

FPS is a Sci-Fi cargo pilot sim, with an engaging emergent mission-driven storyline, with a real-time economy with free flight and trading, on an alien world to explore. All in customizable upgradeable, well-simulated VTOL craft with real weather, and flight dynamics.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Kitfox]

I bought this game shortly after it appeared. I tend to look on early access games as 'is what's there right now worth the asking price?' Anything that gets added after that is a bonus.
Haven't played it for several months though, prior to the Ballena being added so don't know current state of play.

VTOL flight is good and fun. Being able to scuff around at low level through canyons while a storm rages overhead is enjoyable.
I like the ability to assign controls to traditional Harrier-style pitch and roll as well as engine gimballing for hover translation.
Lots of configuration options for the aircraft so you can pick and mix depending on personal style. I go for light weight wings and wheels on the Ox with Evo engines. It could go from the starport island to Hardmining in a single flight.
Music is quite nice. A bit of chill ambience while cruising at altitude.

However, the fixed wing flight model is utter rubbish. It was like the wings have no bite on the air at all. The flight computer slams the elevators up and down between their end-stops in a manner that would rip a real aircraft apart. You can't bank and yank or even carry out a rate-one turn as the thing just slides and falls out the air. Turns have to be gently skidded into using yaw on the engines.
Altitude changes are like controlling a single engined rocket in a vacuum - change heading with pitch and wait for the direction of travel vector to slowly shift round to match. It seems like similar Unity aerodynamics as in KSP only not as good.
However watching that video they may have fixed these issues.

One weird thing was the engine power. Say the thing generates 22 tonnes of thrust in vertical flight; fully loaded it struggles gradually into the air. Now I lean on the controls to translate forwards, suddenly the engine power ramps up to 40+ tonnes of thrust.
What? If the engine could generate that much thrust why isn't it available all the time? Or if it can only do 22 tonnes then that's all you get; moving into forward flight fully loaded becomes a bit more of a challenge as you can only trade off a tiny bit of the vertical component of lift for forward thrust until the wings start working.
I think I can see why it was done - a bit of fakery to cover the fact there was next to none aerodynamic lift.

Kinda fancy going back and having another go now. For its flaws the game was good for the odd hour of just gentle meandering about, but the weak regular aircraft flight mode did spoil it somewhat.

 

[Northpin]

So they have the precursors of Alliance Crusaders, eh?

 

[askavir]

A major update came out last friday, lots of stuff including the much requested cockpit view and better trading tools, hangar work is also quicker now. According to the devs, most of the game engine was rewritten to support expanding the map size even further.

Steam :: Frontier Pilot Simulator :: Big Update Vol.14 - Cockpit, New cameras, Trading system, Hangar, Optimization and etc.

Hello Pilots, It happened the new HUGE update released. Now we officially a cockpit simulator. Thank you all for the support, ideas and help with development. You are the best community we can imagine. So, descriptions of the update below. + New trailer which showcases the new features. Cockpit...

steamcommunity.com

The only major annoyance I have is that steering the ship on the ground for base manoeuvers still feels a bit "stiff".

 

[askavir]

I bought this game shortly after it appeared. I tend to look on early access games as 'is what's there right now worth the asking price?' Anything that gets added after that is a bonus.
Haven't played it for several months though, prior to the Ballena being added so don't know current state of play.

VTOL flight is good and fun. Being able to scuff around at low level through canyons while a storm rages overhead is enjoyable.
I like the ability to assign controls to traditional Harrier-style pitch and roll as well as engine gimballing for hover translation.
Lots of configuration options for the aircraft so you can pick and mix depending on personal style. I go for light weight wings and wheels on the Ox with Evo engines. It could go from the starport island to Hardmining in a single flight.
Music is quite nice. A bit of chill ambience while cruising at altitude.

However, the fixed wing flight model is utter rubbish. It was like the wings have no bite on the air at all. The flight computer slams the elevators up and down between their end-stops in a manner that would rip a real aircraft apart. You can't bank and yank or even carry out a rate-one turn as the thing just slides and falls out the air. Turns have to be gently skidded into using yaw on the engines.
Altitude changes are like controlling a single engined rocket in a vacuum - change heading with pitch and wait for the direction of travel vector to slowly shift round to match. It seems like similar Unity aerodynamics as in KSP only not as good.
However watching that video they may have fixed these issues.

One weird thing was the engine power. Say the thing generates 22 tonnes of thrust in vertical flight; fully loaded it struggles gradually into the air. Now I lean on the controls to translate forwards, suddenly the engine power ramps up to 40+ tonnes of thrust.
What? If the engine could generate that much thrust why isn't it available all the time? Or if it can only do 22 tonnes then that's all you get; moving into forward flight fully loaded becomes a bit more of a challenge as you can only trade off a tiny bit of the vertical component of lift for forward thrust until the wings start working.
I think I can see why it was done - a bit of fakery to cover the fact there was next to none aerodynamic lift.

Kinda fancy going back and having another go now. For its flaws the game was good for the odd hour of just gentle meandering about, but the weak regular aircraft flight mode did spoil it somewhat.

I only bought it a couple of months ago, so I haven't been through the growing pains you mention in your post. What I cay say is that I haven't experienced the turning issues in forward-thrust mode you mention, maybe it was something in the beginning that was fixed since?

Anyway, now is a good time to take another look, lots of nice things in the last major update.

The new cockpit views do wonders for immersion, but it makes it very hard to land as you're most of the time manouvering in very tight spaces.

 

[Jenner]

Interesting. The graphics look a bit underwhelming, though, and the cockpit view leaves a lot to be desired. I'd be more interested in this if looked a bit nicer and if the actual environment were a bit more alien. I've only watched a few minutes of video of it, so maybe I'm missing it.

 

[Kitfox]

Had another go. I see a lot of extra scenery and alien life has been added. New play through so I haven't got to chasing the alien ship yet (if that's still a thing) and seeing if the story has been extended beyond that.
HUD has been changed yet again. Bit difficult to figure out what's going on. I honestly preferred the very first one the game had - it was big and chunky, easy to read and had the thrust indicator right next to the altimeter with VSI bar, so matching thrust to vertical speed in the hover was very easy.
I notice the engines don't seem to ramp up the thrust when gimballing them around in the hover any more, so that's a plus.
Fixed wing mode still seems as it was. Perhaps has a slightly better rate of turn for gradual 10 degree angle of bank turns. Still has that wing levelling mechanism that really fights you hard when trying to turn. Aircraft still skids all over the place. Put the craft into a steep climb then nosed over and it still continued to climb with the wings now at some insane negative angle of attack.

Sadly the performance is a lot worse now. Used to be really smooth for me, now there are constant micro pauses. Noted that during these pauses the wind gradient arrows would blank out and redraw slightly differently. Turned the graphics down and still getting it, so likely CPU rather than graphics card.

Hope they fix that though. Would like to go tooling about to see what new things are hiding in the game world. Plus there's some big payouts now for shipping goods long distances. But the constant stutters just make it tedious at the moment.

 

[Vasea Azure]

Looks like this game improved A LOT from the last time I checked it. I does not look like "asset flip" anymore, good for the devs!

 

[dm06]

single-player... Internet connection required... This sounds strange.
Purchased. Going to check later. I hope ED will get some results of this development for atmospheric planets.

 

[mdsilva]

Conceptually I liked it. In the future I must try it again. But I asked for a refund. It does not support ultrawide and I found the performance horrible.

 

[Jake Savage]

An you play this in VR?

 

[Skizomeuh]

I was keeping an eye on this one for many months and last Obsidian Ant video made me buy it and I must admit it's even better than I expected.

 

[Fishy]

I have too much stuff to play already so won't go there any time soon, but I like the premise. Having a focus on the flying and a cargo ferrying perspective on events intead of pew pewing your way to victory is refreshing. It looks very 3rd person oriented though, which is a bit of a bummer.

 

[askavir]

I bought it when it first went on early access, it has grown a lot since then. Nice little gem.

 

[Skizomeuh]

I have too much stuff to play already so won't go there any time soon, but I like the premise. Having a focus on the flying and a cargo ferrying perspective on events intead of pew pewing your way to victory is refreshing. It looks very 3rd person oriented though, which is a bit of a bummer.

It actually features cockpit view since somewhere in 2019. But given the need to really grasp your surrouding it may be another layer of challenge I wouldn't want to struggle with.

 

[Skizomeuh]

The more I play FPS, the more I really do hope FDEV have these kind of things in mind for atmospherics later in Odyssey. Not that I want them to get rid of the current flight model, but that weather/physics systems will take an important role like they are in this indie project.

I also love how different bases are layed out, blended in the environment, and feel detailed by logic and functionality.

 

[varonica]

One weird thing was the engine power. Say the thing generates 22 tonnes of thrust in vertical flight; fully loaded it struggles gradually into the air. Now I lean on the controls to translate forwards, suddenly the engine power ramps up to 40+ tonnes of thrust.
What? If the engine could generate that much thrust why isn't it available all the time? Or if it can only do 22 tonnes then that's all you get; moving into forward flight fully loaded becomes a bit more of a challenge as you can only trade off a tiny bit of the vertical component of lift for forward thrust until the wings start working.
I think I can see why it was done - a bit of fakery to cover the fact there was next to none aerodynamic lift.

It's more likely they are modeling stress accurately and engine supports like they have on those ships will only take the max stress of the thrusters in one direction. Put max thrust on while lifting vertically and the wings would just fold up like cardboard, the delta design is made to spread the stress across a wider area when traveling forward.

 

[askavir]

It actually features cockpit view since somewhere in 2019. But given the need to really grasp your surrouding it may be another layer of challenge I wouldn't want to struggle with.

Yes the cockpit view was added because it was very requested by ther community, however the maps and scenerey are too "vertical" for it to be practical, especially when landing as things tend to be quite cramped around the landing pads. It's very cool though!