Played the Demo heres my honest opinion.

[Eagle]

So It was very tegious controls using an Xbox 360 Controller. I liked the demo missions but I thought this game was made when MoonBase Alpha was made due to the graphics.

I have to be honest here its not very visually Appealing. The Ship looks like they took one of the most basic ship models they could find there isnt much detail to the ship beyond its hull the skin is pretty rough to look at. The Planet surfaces look very undetailed as well the menu interface reminds me of games I played back in the 90s and Moon base alpha.

The game could really do with some serious texture updates to improve the look of the game. But the flight seems alright to me. The RCS seems cool and having to match the rotation of the station is pretty cool. The Re Enty is neat too but again the game looks like its from a decade ago or more. Im not sold enough with the Demo at this point to pay 30$ for this when I have Elite Dangerous that was made WAY Before this game and looks a lot better on ship and surface details.

Same thing with Space Engineers. More detailed ships and more detailed planet surfaces and its also not 30$ But I do I understand that this early access and you need the money to develope the game more

The added bonus of using Track IR and stuff is neat I dont have it so I cant say but the flight mechanics seem pretty cool from use of an Xbox Controller. Ill have to try to Saitek 290 Pro with it and see what I think. If it looked more detailed I would probably be sold on it but as it stands it looks pretty old school in the games realm which is fine but not for that price point in my opinion with Elite is less money made way before this and looks alot better has alot more ships and missions and numerous other things like basically entire galaxies and realistic naming. Warping and a number of other features.

The clouds in this game look cool and the wind on the ship the G effects are cool.
I just was really turned off by the Blotchy textures especially of the ship and I did check there isnt a place to turn up my Graphics in the demo. Demo "looks" really rough but does play really nicely, hopefully the game has improved since its release.

Its Early Access so hopefully its improved upon in the Cosmetics. Not lying and being brutally honest it looks pretty old I dont know if this was in development for over a decade and is only just now in the testing phases of early access or what but its alright not the worst graphics Ive ever seen I just would expect more at the price point and with the bells and whistles of being able to use other things with the game.

[zaphat]

The main advantage of this title is the correct orbital physics that is basically missing from eg. Space Engineers altogether and is very weird in Elite too.
If the lack of a correct station approach and reentry simulation never bothered you in those other titles, chances are high you won't like FlightOfNova.
However, if you want a correctly spinning ball under you, the bland looking surface tech is quickly forgotten while you are trying to intercept a station on 3000km orbit...

[Lisias]

Well, I did bought the thing and:

1) I agree with you about the controls on a XBox like controller - I'm playing on Steam Deck, and the controls on it is emulating a XBox (with some addendum, as I'm mapping the back buttons to some keys to help me out), In special, long atmospheric flights is not only boring on the Deck's sticks, but also a bit painful as I start to get some cramps after about 45 minutes of playing. Something to trim the attitude controls are needed, and I think we need a better way to handle the T-Lock (sometimes I want it to be locked at 0, because it's damn easy to hit the thruster while doing yawing). Hovering is another pain.

2) I disagree about the planet's surface. It's pretty realistic - if we ever colonize Mars, it will not be too different (essentially, we would not have blue skies and everything will be redish).

3) I agree with the Station and Bases texturing, I think they need a bit of polishing - but not too much, as increasing the GPU's memory footprint may screw up some rigs where FoN is perfectly playable right now.

About the point 3, I think that perhaps would be nice to provide a way to reduce the quality of the textures to keep the game playable on weaker GPUs as the time goes by?

[Eagle]

If the game goes down in price I would be apt to purchase and stick along for the ride of the development but in its current state at least the DEMOS current state I think 30 is a bit too much money. Alot of small game companies sell their games at cheaper prices and still develop them just fine and if the price was lower more people would buy and they would in the short term have more money due to more buyers.

Besides the price though all things aside I saw some posts talking about the several instruments and information that are not displayed in the current cockpit. This also should be adressed since some are absolutely necessary information. I think people with VR would definltely buy this my friend has VR and he enjoys playing Elite with it.

I have an old Saitek 290 Pro Im going to try the demo with and see it does in comparison to the XBOX 360 Controller. I have no real complaints with how it handles on the 360 Controller its pretty cool to fly with it but if you dont know about that T lock your finger on the trigger definitely does a lot of the work for landings.

Thats cool too. I think the landing gear being automated should be optional because there are situations in which you may be lower to the surface and not want the gear down it prevents you zooming along at low Altitude for the fun of it as well.

If there have been greater improvements to the game and its textures an updated Demo would really go along way towards the game selling. As far as the surfaces go they are large and vast yes.. It may take more CPU yes... However we all upgrade our Computers to play newer games at some point and so I think thats a small thing. Most with better CPUs would pay for the game at this price point if it looked better for certain.

If you only simply look at other games with large planet surfaces and other things to render its done so successfully with much greater detail beyond just the surface and mountain shapes being there. Some companies along the development will move to a new Direct X which is a major Game changer or will move to another engine also a major game changer and the after effects is great... DAYZ was a dead game till it moved to the new Direct X. Green Hell suffered with performance issues till they went to another Engine.

Sure it takes time but it pays in the long run in both the Companies income and the player base since prettier graphics draw alot more players even mediocre graphics and rendering draw more players larger player base more income more advertisement larger community more updates and overall much better game and gamer experience.

[Eagle]

I played it today with my Saitek 290 pro thats a game changer for flying the ship.
You dont need to use constant pressure on the throttle like with the XBox360 Controller.
The throttle is Sticky meaning it stays where you leave it. You have to operate the throttle manually quite a lot though just as on an a Normal Aircraft but so much more flyable.

My Docking at the mining station went from 10 mins with XBox Controller to 4 mins.
Reentry took 20 with Zero damage to the craft.

I had both the controller plugged in and the flight stick and just toggled X on the XBox controller to swap flight modes. I could have just assigned a key on the stick but didnt.
Definitely more control with a flight stick. If youre a flight simmer and have time behind the stick and understand how to actually fly an aircraft I recommend using a flight stick if you havent bought the game and are checking out the Demo.

Youll enjoy the Demo more and get a better feel for the Flight Mechanics.

[Qox]

Originally posted by zaphat:

The main advantage of this title is the correct orbital physics that is basically missing from eg. Space Engineers altogether and is very weird in Elite too.
If the lack of a correct station approach and reentry simulation never bothered you in those other titles, chances are high you won't like FlightOfNova.
However, if you want a correctly spinning ball under you, the bland looking surface tech is quickly forgotten while you are trying to intercept a station on 3000km orbit...

I can agree to everything. Only KSP and some others come close in terms of correct orbital physics and newtonian flight model. Not so for Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen and countless others where the developers did sleep in physics classes.

[konsumkind]

Yeah, the visuals are what keep me from buying, too. I hope they will work on some highres pbr textures and materials soon :)