Saturday, May 28, 2016

Website relocated

As many of you might have noticed, this blog hasn't been updated since last year when we launched our new community forum. Since then our forum audience grew considerably and it quickly became our main outlet for all things Infinite Flight, including news and announcements.

The url (infinite-flight.com) that use to be pointed to this blog is now redirected to our new website that let you to login and manage your Infinite Flight Live account.

Happy landings!

Saturday, April 25, 2015

New Live ATC Tutorials for Pilots

TL;DR: Live ATC needs dedication and skills; we created tutorials to help pilots get the best experience out of it. Go read them on our new help site.



While iOS users are waiting for the new update to be approved by Apple (anytime this coming week if all goes well), we wanted to give a bit more information about the new Live ATC feature.

With this new update, a group of hand picked users can act as air traffic controllers in order to add another level of realism to Infinite Flight Live. The role of air traffic controller is not easy and requires quite a bit of training to ensure a good experience for everyone. If you want to become an air traffic controller, we recommend that you get involved with the Infinite Flight community: there is no streamlined on-boarding process yet and we only want people who are truly dedicated for such an important role in Infinite Flight Live.

Having experienced ATC personnel is only one part of a great Live ATC experience; we also need to have pilots who know how to properly communicate when flying to and from a towered airport. For this, we took a few steps to hopefully guarantee that everyone will have a good time with this new feature:
  • Live ATC is only enabled on the Advanced Servers. Those servers require pilots to have a minimum amount of XP and standing. Those minimums are usually not hard to reach if you spend a little bit of time flying in the Free Flight servers.
  • An air traffic controller has the power to ghost pilots if they are not properly communicating or following instructions. Being ghosted is not a punishment, it is not personal, it usually only means that you need to go learn a bit more about proper ATC communication.
  • For that, we created a set of simple, focused articles on a new help page to help pilots with ATC communication. Please go read it and don't hesitate to ask questions in the various Infinite Flight community pages.
As always, this is a feature that we will continue improving down the road. Don't hesitate to send us feedback; we are especially interested in getting feedback from real life pilots and air traffic controllers.

Happy landings!

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Update is in the pattern

In the next few weeks, we will start rolling out our new update for which you have all being waiting very patiently. This one is taking a bit longer due to a perfect storm of issues that we finally got (mostly) under control. Without further ado, here is the list of features and fixes that will be included:

  • Improved sounds for each aircraft class. The new sounds are a lot more realistic and take the simulation to a whole new level
  • Added 2 new sceneries: Hawaii and Singapore / Kuala Lumpur
  • Reworked many airports with better taxiway layouts and accurate markings
  • Added new liveries for the 737-BBJ, 737-700, 777-200ER, A380
  • Reworked ERJ 170/175/190/195 flight model. They are now much more stable and most autopilot issues have been fixed
  • Improved in-game UI. We made a few tweaks to improve readability and you can now customize the instruments you want to see at the bottom of the screen (long press on the dock instrument to change it)
  • [Live] Added new Live ATC mode. You can now fly with other users acting as Air Traffic Controller. Given the complexity of being ATC, we are currently hand picking candidates that can act as air traffic controllers and will add more in the future.
  • [Live] Improved server performance allowing for more pilots to fly together
  • [Live] Added an extra server with no rules (no violations) for those of you who just want to have fun and fly without the complexity of procedures, airspaces and ATC; sometimes there is nothing more satisfying than going supersonic in an F22 at 500 feet AGL :)

With a few people from our beta test program, we created a quick video showcasing some of the new sounds that will be in this update, hope you like it:



Before you start asking for things like buildings, better scenery and landing smoke (and all the other requests we get every single day), rest assured that we are working (very hard) to bring all of it sooner or later. For us, a flight simulator is more than eye candy cockpits and fancy sceneries; for us, it is about bringing a community of flight simulation enthusiasts together and share our passion with friends... and strangers.

Clear skies!

Friday, March 27, 2015

Issues with Android 5.0 Lollipop update on Samsung Devices

If you have a Samsung device (Galaxy S4, S5, Note 3, 4...) you might receive the Android 5.0 (Lollipop) update soon.
We have received reports of crashes in Infinite Flight after users have installed the update on their devices. We strongly advise against updating to this new version of Android until we push an update that fixes this issue.
We apologize for the inconvenience and are working hard to find a solution as soon as possible.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

2014 Retrospective & What's Coming Next...

2014 was great for Infinite Flight, let's look back on what happened this year and see what's coming in 2015!

Live

Infinite Flight Live, our new Massively Multiplayer Experience was by far the biggest thing we have shipped since Infinite Flight was first released almost 4 years ago. The response from the community has been tremendous and we'd like to thank all of you who sent us your feedback about it.

This release was only the beginning of something much bigger. We're hard at work on a new mode that will create more order and add an entirely new fun dimension to the sim. The ability for certain users to act at Air Traffic Controllers in Infinite Flight!

Below are two preview screenshots of what it might look like. Bear in mind, those are from an alpha version of the controller mode, things will most likely change between now and the time we release this new feature. Note that this is something that will not be accessible to all users. As we've seen in our early tests, controlling a group of airplanes requires an entirely different set of skills. We'll talk about this in more details soon, so stay tuned!

Controller Mode at KSFO

Controller Mode - Tower Messages

Airplanes

We've added 1 business jet this year, the Citation X which featured our new aircraft rendering model with reflections, shiny parts, lighted cockpit, and reworked 2 widely popular airliners: the 747 and 737 with high definition cockpits. We hope you enjoy flying those as much as we do!
For next year, we're working on further improving the rendering quality of our models. It's too early to show anything right now, but let's just say that you won't be disappointed, you can trust us on this one.

Scenery

The two big improvements to the scenery in 2014 were the addition of the taxiway lines and new water rendering. We're working on improving the layout of many airports with the help of our community.

New Layout for Sydney Airport

New Layout for LAX with Tom Bradley International Terminal



We also did a lot of internal improvements to the scenery loading and rendering systems to support further development of bigger regions as well as other great features.

Community:

We're amazed everyday at what the community around Infinite Flight is building. One of the biggest groups, Infinite Flight Fan Group on Facebook has grown to over 8000 members. They organize events on Infinite Flight Live daily, we encourage you to check it out.
We're also organizing events every Friday, check out our Twitter feed and Facebook pages for more details. Our next event is scheduled for this Friday, we'll post details shortly.




Once again, thanks to the entire community of Infinite Flight users for making the app what it is today, your continued support and feedback is one of the main driving forces!

Best wishes for 2015 from the entire team at Flying Development Studio!

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Infinite Flight Live Events

As most of you have heard, we've been organizing weekly events on Infinite Flight Live. The success of those events has been tremendous! Yesterday's fly-in was by far the most attended and we would like to thank all of you who joined us, our package delivery mission has been accomplished!

Traffic in Southern California on Dec 19th
Now that it's over, we'd love to know what you guys thought about the event. Did you enjoy it? Was it too crowded? What could we do to make those events even more awesome? Do you have other event ideas?



Quick note on performance, some of you might have experienced lags and crashes. Our recommendation for the next one is to adjust your settings to the minimum, and restart your device before you join Live to make sure it's fresh and all its memory is available for Infinite Flight to use.



On other news, the Infinite Flight Fan Group is organizing a Delta Fly-In today, you can find out more details about it by heading over to their Facebook page.


We love seeing those community events pop up in Live. We've seen C-17 Group Flights, A-10 Formations, A380 Formation Flights, Airline Gatherings, Escort Missions, and more!
We encourage you guys to take ownership of this virtual world, make it your own, organize events, patrols, fly-ins, formation flights and anything you can think of. Post reminders on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to make sure you get as many attendees as possible.
Remember also to send us your feedback about what what you'd like to see next in Live. We want to make this big, and we're planning things that will make it so.

Here are some pictures of those events, courtesy of the members of our community:








Make sure you follow us on Facebook and Twitter more news about what's coming next. You've already heard the sounds, and we've got many awesome things in the development pipeline. Things we'll be able to show you guys very soon. Stay tuned, and thank you for your continued support!



Monday, November 24, 2014

Latest Infinite Flight update is now available on Android (iOS coming soon)

We are pleased to announce the release of a fresh new update for your favorite mobile flight simulator!

This new release brings a lot of new content (new 747s + improved airport layouts) as well as many smaller features and various improvement:

• Added 747-400 (FREE), 747-8i/f (Paid) 747-200 (Paid), Air Force One (Paid), NASA Shuttle Carrier (Paid), SOFIA Telescope (FREE with 20+ purchases)
• New airport layout at KSFO, KHAF, KNUQ, KSCK
• Added Anti Aliasing support for more devices (NVIDIA Tegra based devices)
• Fixed Android 5.0 crash
• Performance optimizations

We also significantly improved the experience in Infinite Flight Live:

• Added user reporting. Those with too many reports will be ghosted (temporarily rendered invisible)
• Active/Inactive runway helpers (Virtual fences, runway ID coloring, etc...)
• Bug fixes and performance improvements

As always, don't forget to update your reviews and ratings in your App Store and feel free to contact us if you encounter any issues.


Happy Landings!

Friday, November 14, 2014

POTUS has landed!

Don't forget our Friday Flight Night event today! If you missed the 8:30PM GMT event (for European pilots) you can still join for the 8:30PM PST edition. More details here.

Below are a few shots of yet another version of the 747 we will release as part of our next update. Enjoy :)


Friday, November 7, 2014

Queen of the Skies, Part 3 & Upcoming Infinite Flight Live Improvements

We have a lot to talk about today!

First of all, we wanted to remind you that David from our team will host another official "Fly In" event today. The event will have 2 times to accomodate our fans that are on different timezone. More details here. Also don't forget to subscribe to our reddit community to post event pics, share your flying experience or manage your virtual airlines.

The second thing we wanted to mention, is the upcoming improvements that are coming to Infinite Flight Live.
Since launch, there have been issues with pilots not following the rules (not waiting for their turn to takeoff, taking off from the wrong side of the runway, not using ATC properly, etc). We believe that part of those issues are due to the lack of clear instructions and proper signage to help novice pilots follow the correct procedures (if you are a novice pilot, we strongly suggest that you take a look at the Infinite Flight Live Introduction video on our YouTube channel).

Below are a few tweaks that we have been working on to improve runway condition visibility:

Runways are now colored according to their current usage restrictions. Also added METAR information at the top.
Added "virtual fence" at runway entrances that shouldn't be used for takeoff 

Another source of frustration comes from pilots who will disregard the rules no matter the consequences. We could ban those users but it means that pilots who just want to have fun can't enjoy Infinite Flight Live. We spent a lot of time reading all of the ideas that we received to improve the situation, and we believe we have found a good solution that should please the most dedicated pilots as well as the ones who want to be free to fly the way they want.

In a future release, we will introduce a way to report a specific user; if that user is being reported by enough people during a short amount of time (TBD), the reported user will be temporarily "ghosted". Instead of being banned from connecting to Infinite Flight Live, a "ghosted" user will simply be invisible to all other pilots. This also means that any ATC communication from that user will be ignored. "Ghosted" users won't be able to see each other, they can only see (and learn from) the pilots who follow procedures. "Ghosting" will also be applied to pilots receiving many violations during a short period of time.
The specifics of this new feature are not yet final and we might only activate this new functionality on advanced servers, but we believe this should dramatically improve the experience for all.

Lastly, as we mentioned last week, we have much more of the 747 to show. We decided to add many variant for you to enjoy and today we are showing 1 more... hope you are as excited as we are to fly this one:


Happy Landings!

Friday, October 31, 2014

Queen of the Skies, Part 2

First of all, if you haven't already, go subscribe to our reddit community, there is a bunch of Infinite Flight Live events happening there. Feel free to post your best shots as well as tutorials and stories from your experience with Infinite Flight.

Speaking of events, David from our team is hosting a recurring Infinite Flight Live fly-in on fridays (same as last week). There are now 2 times for this event: 12:30PM PST (for european pilots) and 6:30PM PST (for US pilots). Regardless of where you are from, you are welcome to join both :) Check out the official event post for full details.

For those of you who want to learn more about Infinite Flight Live, we created a tutorial video on our YouTube channel that should help you get started and learn about how to properly interact with others. We also have a couple other tutorials to improve your takeoff and landing skills.

As you saw last week, we are revamping the 747 available in Infinite Flight. We are actually doing a lot more and adding many new models of the 747; one of them is ready for a test flight: