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Latest News

A new release (Beta 1.21) of the Freeflight Experience is available. Please review the release notes for a summary of changes. If you are getting started with the program, be sure to check out the Quick Start Guide for step by step instructions and tips.

What's new

January 13, 2023 Release 1.21 Open Beta

The elimination of 3d grass models in the LZ’s of some sites made it harder to correctly judge altitude on landing, so I have added a detail grass texture to help provide a better sense of groundspeed and altitude.

I have also added a hands-off (optional) feature, so that you may let go of the bar in flight to see if you are flying at trim. This can be activated in the options menu, by checking the “Require Pilot to Grip Control Bar” option. If you want to try this option, it may require an adjustment of your fore-aft viewpoint (using up and down arrows on keyboard) to get proper real and virtual hand alignment when grasping. The glider will trim to just above min sink speed (21 mph) hands off.

The left controller side (grip) trigger is used for this function, and this mapping has been added to the table showing key bindings. When feature is enabled in the options, you must keep the left grip trigger squeezed in flight.

December 27, 2022 Release 1.20 Open Beta

This release brings a few enhancements to make cross country and contest flying more realistic. In earlier releases, when the AI pilots were not circling in lift, they would head towards the LZ. When you left the mountain on an XC flight, you would leave your AI buddies behind. Now, when they are not climbing, they will chase you, often catching up to you when you stop for your next climb. Remember, at many sites, you can launch more AI pilots by clicking the left joystick. Unless there is a thermal nearby, thy will fly towards you. If they crash, they will disappear in 30 seconds.

To make closed task racing more fun, I have added a turn point marker aide, which will be visible when other aids, like thermals and LZ markers are enabled. The turn point aid will display the distance between you and the marker.

In site tour mode, there is a third, faster slew speed available when the joystick is deflected nearly all the way.

In the environment widget, there are now three options for selecting how sounding data is used:

Use Clouds from Sounding: If checked, the sounding is used to determine cloud base and cloud cover, provided 24-hour thermal cycle is selected in the options. Unchecked, the sliders are used.
Use Winds from Sounding: If checked, the wind profile data is used as the environmental wind. Unchecked, the slider value is used for all altitudes.
Use Advanced Heating Model: If checked, the thermal birth temperature is determined realistically using a physics based model. Unchecked, it is set to the value from the sliders. If 24-hour thermal cycle is selected in the options menu, the sliders set the value at solar noon, and they will be scaled down based on sun elevation for other times.

For users using a cell phone to measure hang loop angle, I have added a new method of adjusting scale and offsets through keyboard entry. These values will be saved and loaded each subsequent us

December 7, 2022 Release 1.19 Open Beta

This release brings a new site to the game, Morningside in New Hampshire. It also adds an option to support those with fixed control bar set-ups, that will force the visual first-person perspective to move with the movement of the VR headset. When this option is selected, the visual perspective is no longer forced to match the position of the virtual pilot’s head. Lateral movement of the HMD will still cause virtual pilot yaw, and going upright will cause the virtual pilot to stand, but the view will now match the movement of the HMD, rather than the movement of the virtual pilot head. It can be selected in the Options menu from the Café.

November 28, 2022 Release 1.18 open Beta

Removed test site from the “custom button” on the laptop, and modified the Ed Levin 300’ launch to launch you from that level, rather than already airborne.

The animated pilot hands now move up and down the downtubes when you are upright for landing, based on where your real hands are. We also moved the pilot perspective forward somewhat when standing, and lower when prone to better match the real-world perspective.

I removed the sliders used for positioning the pilot relative to the basetube in the Cell-phone input screen, as these were redundant with the arrow and page-up/page down keys and caused a serious bug.

A new thermal visualization has been added that fills your thermal with “cotton balls”, showing you where the lift is strongest, and to help new pilots visualize bubble type thermals. This is rendered only when you are near or in the thermal. Use the red wireframe spheres to locate thermals at a further distance. The preferred visualization technique can be set in the options menu in a persistent way. At any time during flight, you can hide or show either the spheres or particles with “S” to show spheres, “s” to hide them, “P” to show particles, and “p” to hide them. The A and B controller buttons still show and hide all enabled visual aids during flight.

There is now an option to select DLSS mode, if you have an Nvidia 2000, 3000, or 4000 series card. This will be ignored if you do not have a card capable of the mode. Do not select Ultra Quality at this time, as it is not yet supported.

In an effort to improve framerate performance in the Lookout Mountain towing experience, I have removed the grass models from the LZ. I have noticed that framerates are initially low (16 fps on my 2080 ti) but if I briefly go into site tour mode, the framerates improve dramatically, and remain acceptable even after returning to the glider. I have found that 30 fps provides a good experience provided there are no studders. I achieve this on my HP Reverb G2 using the OpenXR Toolkit, and activating forward projection at 30 Hz. Lowering the rendered resolution to 50% using OpenXR Tools for Windows Mixed Reality has a dramatic impact on fps, at the cost of image sharpness.

If you are using a Quest2, I suggest using Oculus Tray Tool to set the default ASW mode to 30 Hz or Adaptive. Here you can also increase the super sampling to get a crisper image if you have sufficient excess performance.

To make the simulator more accessible to the large potential audience who have adopted standalone VR, like the Quest2, but don't own a powerful gaming PC, we are working on a lightweight version that can run on the headset. This will require some compromises on graphical complexity, but our initial tests have show we can retain both the ultrarealistic flight model and the unlimited streamed terrain on a standalone device. The beautiful 3d clouds, blades of grass, and other eye candy will need to go, and the terrain detail will be lower, but the most important elements of the sim can be retained. We are planning to release a alpha test version by mid September. If you have a Quest2 and are interested in early access, please let me know.

Thank you all for your patience while waiting for the Open Beta release of the "Freeflight Experience". The wait is finally over, and you can buy a license and download the software today!

Just go to the the menu at the top left corner of the start page, and select "Shop".

SHOP

The game is continuously being improved with more flying sites, hang glider models, and launch methods.