A legend continues with it's fourth incarnation

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

It would be nice if you wrote what product you are referring to, so everyone can decide if its interesting for them or not

That's my mean evil character, wanting to trap you and make you being surprised by just wathcing the video - which looks lovely, I think, no matter what plane it is.

Avsim has several in depth reviews of the various incarnations of the SF260. they too are full of praise for it.

[FIREWALL]

Thany you Chock and Skybird

You both gave me great info with alot of detail. I will be able to make a wise decision now.

I probably go with FS9 and get some addons.

I have IL2 1946 and Janes WWII Fighters. Also play Aces High III once in a while.

I guess I just want something new I can expand on.

I guess ebay is the place to go. If it's okay I'll check back with both of you before I make a purchase so I don't get the wrong stuff.

Thx again Guys Firewall

[Chock]

Hang on to your wallet! here's a bunch of useful FS add on stuff websites:

www.avsim.com (lots of free stuff in the file library, and home of many useful forums plus my reviews and a few things by me in the file library too! Before you buy anything at all, see if there is a review of it on here and check the forums here for any negative comments on potential purchases. Avsim is THE biggest flight simulator website and if there isn't info on something here, then it's probably not out there. It does have a small online shop, but the shop is pretty limited in scope.)

www.flight1.com (lots of add-ons, generally airliners and private planes, mostly compatible with FS9 and FSX. This company also makes simulation software for real-world pilot training, so as you can imagine, their FS stuff is usually pretty astonishing, check out their Beech King Air B200 if you want total realism, if you are looking for something less taxing but still realistic, check out their Cessna 441 Conquest II [you can find a review of this, by me, on avsim's site])

www.precisionmanuals.com (home of the legendary PMDG Boeing 747 and 737 among others, soon to be home to a fully-featured Airbus too. If you can fly one of these, you could probably get the real thing off the ground too. Their support is appallingly bad for download stuff, so avoid buying downloads from them if you anticipate problems and go for the boxed stuff instead, as authorising their online purchases is a right pain in the ass.)

www.alphasim.co.uk (home to lots of inexpensive add-on classic military aircraft. Not big on interactive cockpits, i.e. if you want every switch to work, these often don't feature that, but they are very cheap and great fun)

www.shockwaveproductions.com (home to obsessively detailed WW2 add-on aircraft such as the B17, Mustang, Spitfire and bf109, P40 Warhawk [which yours truly is currently reviewing for Avsim]. If you want every switch working in the cockpit, these are for you)

www.justflight.com (home to add-ons of all kinds, from helicopters, fighters, bombers, Cessnas etc etc to scenery, plus many utilities to make flying more fun, there's lots of FS9 stuff here, and they often have sales on Thursdays if you buy online, so you can save even more cash! Their support isn't as good as other places [not appalling, but not as good as others])

www.flightsim.com (Rival to avsim which claims to be the world's number one flight sim website [it isn't, however it's probably better for news announcements than avsim] and also home to lots of free stuff, however, access to their file library is not as good as avsim's and isn't laid out very well, still well worth a look.)

www.simmarket.com (good place to browse products, they sell allsorts here, everything from books on how to fly an airliner properly to add on utilities. Well worth a look)

www.flyawaysimulation.com (another online shop worth a look at)

www.aeroplaneheaven.com (another online shop, but with the odd freebie add-on aircraft available for download, worth checking out)

www.fsdownload.com (another freeboie download site)

www.abacuspub.com (This site may look terrible, but it has some nice stuff for FS on it and is also home to FS Design Studio, so if you fancy designing your own aeroplanes and you can't be bothered learning GMax or 3DSMax, then this is worth a look.)

www.saitek.com (the good old joystick manufacturer is currently going into overdrive where flight simulator add-ons are concerned, with lots of interesting products in the pipeline, such as throttle quadrants, etc)


Chock

[AFRIKAKORPS]

Hey Chock, how is the P-40? It looks amazing.
Do you think you could give me your thoughts on it?

[FIREWALL]

Thx again. I'm going to start with FS9 and later go from there with addons.

So far all I've found is FSX but I just need to look a little harder. If I find it used is it supposed to come with a manuel or any extras ?

Will wait for answers to that before I buy. And thx for the links.

[Chock]

Hey Chock, how is the P-40? It looks amazing.
Do you think you could give me your thoughts on it?

I only took it for a quick fly around when it arrived, because I'm waiting for the official pilot's manual of the thing to arrive (which I re-ordered the other day, after having ordered it from somewhere else and them waiting two weeks to tell me it was out of stock - mmm thanks for that). It does come with some excerpts from the real manual (as do all Shockwave's aircraft as far as I'm aware), but I wanted to check it all for authenticity so that I could give it a fair review. Nevertheless, my initial impression was that it flew very well and I couldn't resist buzzing the tower a few times in it, it's that kind of fun aircraft. It's certainly very well done as far as looks and sounds go, with an animated pilot based on the owner of the real aircraft which was used for the reference and sounds etc, stuff like the engine getting louder if you slide the canopy open - that kind of attention to detail. So I think Shockwave may have outdone even themselves on this one, but I cannot say for sure how accurately it flies in comparison to the real thing until I get hold of that manual. It's much easier to fly than their bf109, that's for sure, and it does drop like a rock if you let the speed get too slack on approach, which I know the real thing also did. So, initial impressions are pretty good. This all bodes well for Shockwave's forthcoming Flying Tigers flight simulator of course, which sounds like it could be fun.

So far all I've found is FSX but I just need to look a little harder. If I find it used is it supposed to come with a manual or any extras ?

You can find FS9 (i.e. Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight) on sell-through at most computer shops (or at least you could last time I looked). It does come with a small paper manual, but like most recent versions of Flight Simulator, there is a massively comprehensive manual built into the software not unlike the sort of help stuff you get with DTP applications. It has a search facility and index and can teach you pretty much everything you want to know about flying an aeroplane, and all recent versions of Flight Simulator come with tutorial flights where you are accompanied by a virtual instructor, so it's easy to figure it all out even if you don't know one end of an aeroplane from the other! so even if the paper manual was missing, it would not be a really big deal.

One big difference between FS9 and FSX however, is that FSX has much more capabilities where adventures and missions are concerned, and this means that FSX does offer more potential for learning stuff to do with real aviation. Developers are starting to catch on to this, for example, two people can be in the same aircraft online in FSX, and you can run a server as an air traffic controller - stuff like that. Also note that there are actually two versions of FSX - a standard one and a DeLuxe version, the fancy version has more default planes a few more detailed airports around the world and it includes some developer tools to allow you to customise it and create missions, so if you think you might want to get into that, make sure you get the DeLuxe version if it's FSX you go for. There's only one version of FS9 as far as I'm aware, so it's not a problem if you go for that. With regard to extras, I'm fairly certain that FS9 comes with GMax on one of the disks (the 3D design package), so you can build your own aeroplanes and scenery, that has built in tutorials too. Even so, I think GMax can be downloaded for free anyway, so it's not exactly a major freebie!

Chock

[Skybird]

FS9 related recommended addons:

To vastly increase the displaying of weather and water surfaces:
Flight Environment

To massively raise the precision of ground related textures like railroads and highways, layout of forests, cities, villages, and to make these kind of things more representative for what you would find when using a map:
Ultimate Terrain (Canada/Alaska, USA, Europe). It also adds dramatic improvements to night lights of cities.

To replace the default textures:
Ground Enviornment (there are alternatives, but I like this one best). There are also freeware sceneries for example for Australia. Search-Button! I had a thread on it).

Gloval Mesh replacement:
Pilot's FS Global 200x

A flight planning software. I personally use FlightSim commander, but there are several others as well. A question of taste, handling and features.

Huge airliner modules:
Level-D: Boeing 767
PMDG: Boeing 747
http://www.aerosoft2.de/videos/PMDG747-w.wmv
These two rule the pack and are way above the competition. They are very complex, they also are technically extremely stable and bug-free.

Medium-sized airliners/commuters:
Flight 1 ATR 72 (ask Chock, I am still working myself into it, he knows it much better than I do).

Smaller aircrafts:
Piper cheyenne by Aerosoft (a true benchmark in this segment, I love it)
http://www.aerosoft2.de/videos/Cheyenne-w.wmv
Realair SF 260
(video see at top of this thread, it is FSX version)

Classics: There are many oldtimers available, some even are free. I personally use the DC-3 by Roy Chaffin and the Spitfire by Realair. there are three of for competing packages for the Spitfire though. But I would say the Realair is a good bet.

Addons:
You can find so very many regional sceneries, nation-wide sceneries, airport sceneries, that it does not make much sense to even try to list them. Much has gone commercial, but you still can find good free stuff.

Maybe we should have a sticky thread where each posting represents one item and where links to hompage, pictures, reviews, videos are given. Later posters wanting to add info to the product in that given single posting may contact the author of that posting to keep additional information that arrives later close to that product, and not scattered around various postings. the mod also can reserve the right to copy later info into a previous posting. Headlines in BOLD should identify the product in the given posting.

Hunter, let me know, and I'm willing to start it with a couple of postings.