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AVSIM
Online
Commercial Software Review
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Rating Guide
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Publisher:
Eaglesoft Development
Group
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Description:
Aircraft Addon
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Download Size:
26 MB
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Format: Software Download
Zip File
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Simulation Type:
FS2004
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Reviewed
by:
Peter Faase – Staff Reviewer
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The AVSIM
Commercial Rating System: 1-Star to 5 Stars in one-half star increments. As a
general rule, a 3-Star rating indicates the product matches the best
technology currently available in that genre. A 4-Star rating requires the
product be good enough to reset that current notion of what is "best" and
the rare
5-Star rating reserved for those exceptional products which mark a quantum
leap in the thinking and technology of the genre.
Complete details of the rating system may be found here.
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Introduction
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! My first review for AVSIM Online, it made
me a bit nervous. When you meet someone new, you always want to show your
best, so consider the stress when you are getting a complete new family called
Avsim. I’m glad my new family lent me a helping hand to complete this review.
I had a problem: I normally wrote a review ‘on the fly’ and used a checklist
only when sitting on the left seat of the plane. Things have changed now. I
even used a checklist writing this review. But enough of me for now, we have a
review to complete.
Beechjet 400A in flight.
Eaglesoft 400A Sports Excellent VC
Installation and Documentation
The installation is a 26 MB downloadable file.
To download that file we go to the website of Eaglesoft (http://www.eaglesoftdg1.com).
Choose Aircraft on the left side menu and there you see a link to the
Eaglesoft Raytheon Beechjet 400A/Premier1 Package. When you click this
link you find yourself on the actual product page. This is the place to
download the aircraft package. There is also a link to the Premier 1 package
which is free of charge when you buy the Beechjet 400A. And here I found my
first disappointment, the installer is a ZIP file and there is no clear note
somewhere how to handle with this package. After opening the ZIP file and
executing the EXE file within we find the Flight 1 installer wrapper. Simply
fill in your name, address and credit card data and within a few minutes you
will receive your key to install the package. All files will be unpacked on
your local hard drive so you can re-install them later if you want. Now it is
time to review the documentation. This is my second disappointment! There is
no documentation at all within the package only a readme file in text or HTML.
And the links provided in this file don’t work. On the site from Eaglesoft
there is a link in the menu called Downloads. Go there and almost at
the end of this page you will find three documents. Two of the documents
(flightdeck and checklist) are in PDF format and the Flightdeck help in Word
Document format. What I missed was a good explanation on how to read PDF files
and a link to the free Acrobat Reader. As for the
documentation itself: The checklist is a very good one! Nice layout and very
handy to use. I can’t say that from the flightdeck manual. The layout looks
like a traffic jam in New York at 5 PM. They used several fonts, type
mismatches and it is absolutely unsuitable for ‘not so experienced pilots’.
This is really a missed chance because the plane is awesome!
The Visual Aircraft
The Raytheon Beechjet 400A
comes in just one livery (you can find a paint kit for this aircraft on the
same page as the manual). When we do an outside check of this plane we see
several nice things. We start with a nice GMAX model of the plane. This model
comes with a animated flaps, spoilers, reverse thrust, landing gear, landing
lights and passenger door. Walking around this model is walking around the
real plane. Do I need to say more!
Check the reflections!
What a realistic look.
Ready for boarding
Retractable landing lights.
Climbing out from airport.
Cruising along.
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Test System
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Pentium4 3.02 GHz
1024MB SDRAM
ATI 9100 Pro 128MB
242GB Hard Drive
19" Acer TFT Monitor
Windows
XP-Pro
C-Media Onboard
Sound
MS
Sidewinder Precision
2
Testing Time:
12 Flight Hours
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Panels
After the outside inspection it is time to
start with a Pre-Start Checklist on a very beautiful and realistic 2D panel.
All the instruments you’ll need to fly are there and very detailed. On the
PFD (Primary Flight Display), there’s even an option to switch to the
electronic version of the checklists. You will also find a host of buttons
and switches allowing you to customize the displays to suit you current
needs and overall preferences for in-flight data.
Just a bit of what you will
find include: A
nice Map View option. Detailed VOR Information with the ability to set
range. A nice rendition of the overhead panel with well over 90% of the
buttons functional. You have to remember to turn the landing lights on and
off when extending and retracting them, as the functions have their own
operational switches. Moving down to the throttle quadrant you will find
another carefully designed and realistic representation of the real thing.
And as with the overhead panel, the overwhelming majority of the switches,
buttons and knobs are functional. It is an amazing experience, with
everything there and working smoothly.
Basically, what you see is the real Beechjet
400A! As or the Virtual Cockpit, it picked up right where the 2D panel
stopped and took things to an even higher level of realism. I actually felt
as if I have been in this aircraft before.
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In VC you often ask is this real or ...
Keep an eye on those fuses in VC.
The 2D panel meets all your needs.
Check the cabin over your shoulder.
The functional 2D Overhead panel.
Time to disembark as we are here.
The Airfile
I know I have said it
before, but this aircraft does give me a very enjoyable and quite complete
flashback. I was lucky enough to get the chance to fly this bird for real a
few years ago. Testing the behavior of this aircraft gives me the feeling that
the developers went far beyond the goal of getting it ‘as close as we can’
instead choosing to raise the target to ‘how do we let people get a completely
realistic experience’. And beyond a doubt the team at Eaglesoft got it right.
I can’t say much more than that to fly this bird is to fly her real life
brother.
Summary
As I mentioned above, the development team at
Eaglesoft did a wonderful job on this aircraft. They have created a very good
plane that gives you an ‘almost’ perfect look and feel when compared to the
real life version of the aircraft. The flight behavior of this plane is real,
the details are real, and even the comments from your virtual copilot just
feel real.
The AVSIM Commercial Review Rating System gives
me the possibility to rate this plane up to 5-Stars. But to earn that ultimate
rating a product must meet two absolute requirements: It must be flawless and
it must represent a "quantum leap" in the genre of the product. Very high
standards but not insurmountable. Then there is the 3-Star rating, which is
itself an outstanding achievement, since it requires the product to be every
much as good as the best similar product at the time of release.
In my mind, the Eaglesoft
Beechjet 400A falls right in the middle. While it does not represent that
perfectly executed quantum leap required for 5-Stars, it does raise the bar
above the best in this genre. Thus I give it a rating of 4-Stars and again
congratulate the team at Eaglesoft for an excellent rendition of this
wonderful aircraft. |
