2011 has been an exciting year for us with the release of our first product, Infinite Flight last April. The response from the community has been tremendous, we couldn't be happier about it!
Who would have thought that a niche game like a Flight Simulator could maintain itself in the top spots of paid indie games on Windows Phone 7?
During those 8 months, we've had thousands of people try the game on their Windows Phone 7 devices. We've made the totals today, more than 10'500 hours of flight and close to 150'000 landings have been logged on our servers!
Our top users have reached levels we didn't think anyone would come up to before years...
Here's the top 5 for Flight Time:
Kenneth: 382.0h
Welltool: 172.7h
Hardwoodcrawler: 113.8h
Garza: 110.3h
Rico: 108.8h
And the top 5 for Landing Count:
Hardwoodcrawler: 2014
Matt: 1827 <- that's one of us ;)
Garza: 1319
Roodi: 1197
Misterjaz: 1170
Now, what's coming next...
We're going to be moving our flight database to a new server and will use this occasion to clean up the entries. We will only be transferring the users that have logged more than 3 flights, and those who aren't named "anonymous". The reason behind clearing the anonymous users is that we think those who care about their ranking want to see their actual name on the leaderboards. So if you are still using this name, note that your flights won't be transferred to the new database unless you update your username to something else.
We won't be transferring the database in a single shot, we'll perform daily transfers as some users will still be using the old system for a little while.
This will be part of our upcoming 2.2 update coming in the next few weeks. It will also bring a login/pass system to make sure users who fly on multiple platforms can retrieve and update their personal data (flights, etc...)
iOS
We're still heads down on the port from Windows Phone 7 to iOS. Since the video we posted at the beginning of this month, more progress has been done with the rendering and performance. We don't have a firm release date to announce at this time as there is still some work to be done and bugs to fix but we're still on track for an early 2012 release.
One of the things that we really pay attention to in this port is the performance. We've made a significant amount of tweaks and optimizations to reach a playable frame rate on iOS, and since the code is shared with Windows Phone 7, those optimizations impacted this platform as well. Users can expect smoother frame rate on 1st generation Windows Phones when 2.2 comes out.
Android
We've had numerous requests for an Android port. This is something we're actively considering. All the work we did to port to iOS will certainly make the transition much easier.
Sceneries
We're aware that there is a lack of new sceneries in Infinite Flight. We're confident that we'll be able to bring new sceneries in 2012. The iOS port is taking a lot of our energy at this point, but once it will be available, we'll have more cycles to work on the scenery.
Aircrafts
We have more aircrafts on the way, as some of our Facebook fans have seen, the next one will be an Airbus A321 in US Airways livery. We've been flying it for while internally and it's a joy to fly. The 3D model is one of the best we've had to far.
Stay tuned for an exciting year 2012 and thanks for your support!
The Infinite Flight Team!
