Over the last year and a half, along with our many updates, we completely revamped core elements of Infinite Flight in order to break free of “regions” and allow pilots to fly all over the world.

Infinite Flight will finally allow you to fly from Los Angeles to Sydney, explore the French Alps or simply do an around the world excursion: the sky is literally the limit.

A lot of work went (and still is going) into this release. As some of you noticed in the few “teaser” screenshots we posted in the past, the two major elements we revamped are the terrain (scenery) and atmopshere/sky rendering. Continue reading for more details and pretty pictures.

Full planetary scale terrain

We completely rebuilt our terrain system to support full planet rendering. This means that our terrain is actually a full scale Earth that you can explore.

We acquired and compiled data from multiple sources in order to cover most of it with accurate topography and imagery:

Topography

~90m resolution (resampled to ~76m) for land between -60deg and 60deg latitude

~500m resolution for everything else.

Imagery ~15m resolution for ~70 countries (most of north america, western europe, northern africa, middle east, south east asia and australia), allowing for gorgeous scenery at cruise altitude. ~500m resolution for everything else.



Since this represents GBs of data, we decided to use streaming as a way to deliver our scenery. Terrain (topography + imagery) is downloaded automatically as you fly and cached on your device: no need for bulky downloads. We do plan on adding a way to preload a zone for offline use, but this will most likely come later.

As with all other aspects of Infinite Flight, we do plan on improving our data in the future with more accurate topography and more coverage for 15m imagery. We are also looking into higher resolution imagery for select regions.

Worldwide airport database

Infinite Flight will include thousands of airports from all over the world thanks to the hard work of our community. We are also making it easier to update our airport database so we can deliver updated airport layouts more quickly in the future.

Unprecedented sky and atmosphere rendering

Along with our new terrain, the new atmosphere and sky rendering technology contribute to the most realistic visual experience for a flight simulator on a mobile platform:

Realtime day/night cycle. You can sync time with the current UTC time or use our preset according to your preferences.

Accurate atmosphere model: as you gain altitude, the sky darkens due to thinner atmosphere layer.

Low altitude fog: start your flight in low visibility and rise above the fog layer.

And more

Since longer flights will become a reality, we added a few necessary features:

Fuel consumption

Engine start/stop

Autopilot NAV mode

ATC will remain unchanged for now, with just a couple of additions for things that make sense in the context of longer flights.

FAQ

How much will it cost?

While it will be an update to Infinite Flight, it was a massive effort requiring a lot of research, development and investments (satellite imagery is not cheap).

We are not set on a pricing model just yet but it will most likely be part of our Live subscription at a higher price point. Without a subscription, you will still get access to updated terrain and imagery, but limited to similar regions (probably a bit bigger in certain cases) as you currently have access to.

When will it be available?

There is still a lot of work to be done so the best answer is “when it’s done”. With such big releases comes a lot of challenges and many of them are hard to predict in advance. We are currently at a stage where it’s running on device (both iOS and Android), but still has many bugs and a few features to iron out before we start beta testing.

When it comes out, this is going to be a great update that will shape the future of Infinite Flight.

Happy landings!