Gathering ideas for development of a realism focused bush flying operation service career software

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Hello flightsim crowd. I am a software engineer with 10 years of professional experience, a hobby pilot with single engine PPL license, aviation enthusiast with affinity for bush flying and flight simulator fan based in Germany.

I have tested the available popular career mode software ranging from NeoFly over FSEconomy to AirHauler 2. None of these really satisfied me, for many reasons. So i started maturing the idea of developing an own solution with a different approach.

I am now planning to start on developing a new career mode application that is supposed to focus on running a bush flying operation service with ultra realism in mind. Therefore I am now gathering design ideas from the community and invite everyone who is interested in contributing and sharing their ideas. Feel free to discuss particular topics in this thread.

Technology decisions

First of all - I didn’t write any code yet, the project is now in a very early design state, so we are mostly in “green field” environment (in fact I don’t even have a name for the app yet, feel free to provide suggestions). To this time I have only met decisions on choosing the technologies and testing the connectivity and interaction with the flightsim using SimConnect API. The GUI is going to be a desktop application based on JavaFX, integrating leafletjs as interactive map solution and jsimconnect as SimConnect client.

My Vision

The application I have in mind is supposed to allow the user to start, run and grow bush flying operations business from small self employment company with limited budget to a matured bush flying service with large fleet and many employees (not only AI pilots) covering certain area of operations from multiple base locations. The user is to be challenged with competition and decisions that a real typical bush flying service is facing in deep detail. Starting from offering charter (cargo/passengers) services to clients (individuals, companies, organizations, government etc…) with which the company is going to build up relations, to managing particular bases, employees, finance, marketing, technical maintenance etc… The career simulation is supposed to be offline experience (no shared markets like in FSEconomy) and is going to have its own time line, decoupled from real time (in contrast to FSEconomy or AirHauler 2). All activities are supposed to require certain time (such as time required for loading/unloading cargo or time required for technical maintenance has to be considered). All activities need to be planned in advance in a special operations and service planer tool. The user can advance in time, forwarding to next planned or unplanned events. The date/time inside the sim (when performing a task) is going to be matched with the career date/time. Meaning that tasks need to be performed at certain date/time matching with the date/time in career which may advance into future.

Each employee (including the player himself) and each aircraft is supposed to be location bound. Meaning that landing on remote airstrip will require a return trip (or a trip to a different location). Staying over night or even several days may raise accommodation costs (such as costs for the aircraft parking at destination, costs for hotel / camping etc…).

In contrast to all other available career mode apps, the workflow will be very different. The user is not supposed to choose jobs from a list of available jobs. This is not how bush flying operations work in reality. Instead he will be able to provide air operation services (such as charter flights) to potential clients. The user is supposed to set up pricing policies for each different type of aircraft (mostly based on flight hours with additional fees depending on conditions) and waiting for potential clients to “bite” ordering and providing tasks to the company. The user can accept or deny tasks and build up relations with particular clients/customers.

A typical offer you may set up could be chartering a flight to remote locations, with a certain aircraft and under certain conditions with certain pricing policy. In example certain base price per hour, plus additional pricing based on weight carried out and additional pricing such as landing fees, waiting time fees, date/time fees, accommodation fees etc…

Typical workflows for collecting and completing tasks may look as following examples:

  1. A potential customer, say a group of anglers calls your company and is interested in booking a charter flight to a remote lake in the wildness and picking them up at certain time next day for bringing them back.

  2. A group of scientists is interested in booking an observation flight over certain area or even booking your service to support them in their expedition to remote locations. This may provide a number of transport / air taxi tasks.

  3. A missionary organization is interested in booking your service for chartering cargo / passenger flights to certain locations at certain days.

  4. A local company is interested in booking your service on regular basis for bringing supplies/post/equipment/personal to some remote village/company site/farm etc… every week or every few days.

  5. A local government is interested booking your service in case of emergency, such as search and rescue operations, wood fire observation etc…

Many different options are possible, but the main idea is to reverse the process. Its not you who is picking up jobs from available jobs list, but its customers who are booking your service which you have to define with certain pricing policy, considering local competition. Charging too much for your service may make it difficult to find potential customers and cast interest in booking your service. Low level pricing may interest more customers, however you should at least make sure to cover the costs. Investing in activities such as marketing and advertising campaigns may increase the interest and the number of potential customers. Certain pricing and discount policies may help binding customers which in consequence may produce more tasks for your company in future. In example offering a discount for regular chartering or booking in advance could be attractive to particular customers.

I have much more ideas in mind, but I think that should be enough to start a discussion. You are all welcome to share ideas for more features to discuss. The main goal is to make it as close to realistic experience of running a bush flying service as possible. So a deep level of detail is very welcome. This is not supposed to be simple or arcade. This is supposed to provide as complete bush flying experience as possible.

discuss!

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As I have already mentioned I am seeking a different approach in contrast to available career apps. In this context I am sharing a little more on the main topic. Unlike in other career apps, I am planning not simply randomly generating a list of available jobs for the user to pick from, instead I want to make the user to set up an air service, which potential customers may book. So let me share my ideas on typical service definition case.

Lets assume you have purchased (or leased) your bush aircraft and established your first base and your office in some remote area. You are ready to provide air services. Now you have to define your service offer that interested customers can book.

You would have to define service type and capacity, which largely depends on the type of the aircraft that are selected to provide that particular service. For instance when you own something small like a freedom fox, you can only provide air taxi service that is limited to carrying one passenger and his backpack and observation or search & rescue tasks as well. But you can’t provide cargo service with a fox. Your potential customers would be limited to solo adventurers (hikers, hunters, anglers, survivalist’s etc…) with limited equipment, or maybe solo park rangers with their specific tasks like observation or searching, or maybe village doctors/veterinars taxi, or maybe providing search & rescue or emergency observation to local authority. However with a small plane such a fox you can literally land anywhere, not only at any airstrip but also at a lake shore, forest glade, river side etc… which along with cheap chartering of small aircraft may make this kind of service interesting to certain customers.

With a bigger aircraft that can also be used as a cargo hauler, such as kodiak, pilatus pc-6, twin-otter etc… you can cover different range of operations. Your potential customers may be groups of adventurers or scientists with their demand on carrying people and equipment. But also local companies that want to carry cargo or personal to or from remote areas. Passengers and supplies from or to remote villages. Farmers etc… However with a larger aircraft you may not be able to land anywhere in the wildness (depends on the area, it may well be possible in some areas in Australias outback for instance) and you would be mostly limited to airstrips and would need to consider the length and condition of their runways.

So as you see I am planning to allow the user to serve not only flights between airports, but also to support operations involving landings in the wildness. It would be challenging though to identify areas of interest where landing is actually possible. I am thinking of implementing a feature of performing recon flights, trying out landings at particular spots and then offer these landing areas to the potential customers.

Defining a service would also require to define service range, contained by a list of selected airstrips and potential landing spots in the wildness, that you intend to provide service for. In contrast to other career apps, the destinations would not be simply randomly selected by the app, but instead the user would have options to define where he is willing to fly to and where not. In example the user could make a white-list of selected airports/landing spots and select each destination manually by hand. Or he could define a certain area where he offers services to any destination in that area. Or he could combine these options and additionally have a black-list of destinations he would not serve (maybe because its too risky, or because the location is bugged or simply the user doesn’t like it).

Each destination or particular areas could be associated with certain seasons or weather conditions. So in example a landing spot at a forest glade in the mountains may available only during summer and may be auto-blacklisted under certain severe weather conditions. The user would have to define these boundaries per each location or whole areas.

Then the user would need to define a general pricing policy for each of his aircraft type based on flight hours and weight (number of persons, weight of baggage/cargo) and associate with a pricing policy for particular services. You may demand different prices for air taxi service between well paved airports under clear sky and more difficult challenges such as landing in the wildness under difficult weather conditions. You may charge certain additional fees, such as risk charge, landing fees, waiting times, parking and accommodation cost etc…

Once you have defined your service, a background simulation would generate potential potential customers (hidden from the user) which may or may not seek booking your service according to conditions you have defined, and potential competitors (partly hidden). For instance if you charge too much, nobody may call you, if you charge less then competitors, you may get more bookings but it would be more difficult to gain profit of course. You would build up reputation with particular customers. So in example serving a customer well, increases the chance he would book your service next time too, even despite higher price then competitors offer. Competitors would also generate reputation with potential customers. The chance of receiving a booking request would also depend on the amount of renown (partly shadowed from user, it can be roughly estimated or partly uncloaked by investing into market research). The customers would need to know about your company and being informed about your services and pricing. A customer that is not aware of your business may just book another competitor that he knows, despite you may offer better and/or cheaper service. The user would have different options to increase his renown and reputation with customers aside from main business, such as running advertisement or marketing campaigns. Of course, this is something for advanced companies.

Thoughts and additional ideas welcome.

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I know I’m very late but… I’d love to have a bush flying missions in the game. I used to play Neofly quite a bit but I’d prefer more “bushy” missions.
Might I suggest illegal missions? Never exceed certain altitude. You’d have to go around and stay in the valleys (neofly had this but it was just a never exceed AGL altitude so it wasn’t really hard)
Also: Fishing! Landing and picking up/dropping off passengers in the lakes.
SAR missions are cool to.
I really like your idea of having more stats than mere money and qualifications for planes. Comfort, speed, karma?, reliability, … Should all factor the missions available.
I wist Deadstick - bush flight simulator wasn’t abandoned :confused: But I’m very intrigued by your idea!

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Have you made any progress with your 0concepts? They sound very interesting. I particularly approve of the idea that offered contracts should be driven by the service you offer. But that in itself should be reflective of the region where you operate: ie what is the local market?

A decision to make it off-line as well is a good one too. I use OnAir which is online and where you nominally compete or collaborate with other businesses. But the reality is that despite some real effort by the Devs to make this aspect work, there really is very little interaction to make the drawbacks that come with an online MMO worth it. Part of the problem is, I suspect, that the flight sim is too niche and the lack of direct communication in-game/flight with other players. But offline shouldn’t mean isolated - a competitive element is always good.

The keys to any successful game is that fine balance between risk and reward. The snakes and the ladders. This is where the economic model used needs very careful design and balance.

Conceptually though I suspect what most flightsimmers want isn’t a business simulator it’s a mission generator. I may be projecting my own views here, but what I’m looking for is something that gives me credible missions/tasks that I then have to undertake realistic flight planning and management of operational assets to complete, with benefits and rewards for doing so. In short, something that gives real purpose to flying.

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And then fhey announced MSFS 2024…