2000 Bravo Zulu Awards Special Feature

 


AVSIM Online is pleased to continue our annual "Bravo Zulu" awards tradition begun in 1998. As previous year's readers will recall, this is a time-honored maritime signal meaning "Well Done." We thought this a fitting designation for the truly outstanding contributions of aircraft, panel, scenery, and add-on utilities we've seen during 2000. This year we list finalists and select winners in each of these categories for freeware; and select the best of this year's commercial products (including shareware). All entrants are those reviewed by AVSIM Online that earned 5 or at least 4½ Stars.

FS2000 really hit its stride this past year as more and more enthusiasts managed to upgrade or acquire systems capable of running it smoothly and displaying it convincingly. Not that there weren't problems and a few disappointments, but as they say, "The best is yet to come." We've seen a glimpse of the next generation flight simulator from Microsoft with their amazing Combat Flight Simulator 2, not the least of which is its single-layer scenery and planes rendered with amazing fidelity to their real-world counterparts. The frame rates are good, and the ocean shorelines are convincing. We can expect a geometry engine that more fully supports contemporary graphics cards. And soon we'll have Fly! 2; you'll hear a lot about its features and included tools over the coming weeks.

But what truly separates the flight simulation hobbyists' expectations from the casual off-the-shelf "box" buyer is their demand for greater realism than is economically feasible from main-stream companies—well, that's been the case to date, but we'll bet that what's here by this time next year might make me eat these words!

Speaking of expectations, it's hard to understand why FS2000 is so crash-prone. I think we should step back and ask ourselves if our system configuration and its underlying operating system perhaps has more to do with this than the sim program itself? Yes, other applications—even the more demanding games—run (for most) without these problems. But then, I submit that simulators are perhaps the most complex software around, hence these challenge your computer more than any of your other programs ever will. So beyond buying or upgrading to the most powerful systems we can afford, we can look forward to Microsoft for their more stable consumer O/S, now in Beta 1. Already there's Windows 2000 Pro (which I use and I can attest has cured all my reliability problems with FS2000). "Your mileage may vary," but I suspect that (for now) some graphics cards – and their drivers – are more stable with FS2000 than are others.

There's much that this year's stable of freeware and commercial add-ons have contributed to realism—suspension of disbelief as it were. For FS2000 users this is particularly true of Ralph Tofflemire's 747-200 and Phoenix Simulation Software's PSS 747-400. (Though they didn't quite make it in time for this year's review, Eric Ernst's '767 Pilot in Command' from Wilco, and Chris Brett's forthcoming FMS and Navigation Display Product are other great examples.) Why? Not only are the planes gorgeous beyond belief, but their panels take instruments and their underlying systems management to a heretofore unimagined level. In fact, if I had to single out this year's one specific change in how we experience simulation, it is that an increasing number of air transport add-ons—together with the new ATC packages—offer serious simmers real opportunities to learn and enjoy ever more realistic procedures. But this cuts both ways—you really do have to read the manuals <G>.

Consider this:

Picking up where Eric's classic B-757/767 (for FS98) left off, this year's standout PSS 747 takes you from a "cold and dark" cockpit to being ready for flight—using an array of overhead panel controls such as electrical, pneumatics, fuel configuration, and more to start the engines and to configure the main panel settings—with companion EICAS readouts, warnings and messages together with corresponding graphics display modes. Developed with a completely new Autopilot (the default FS A/P isn't used), there's a choice of thrust settings and flight modes all set up and controlled by the most comprehensive Flight Management Computer (FMC) in existence, whether you're hand-flying with the Flight Director or completely automatically with the A/P's HNAV and VNAV modes in command. With all this power driving them, the PFD and ND value and condition displays (and the fully-functional MCP switches and knobs) are detailed to a level previously seen only in the stand-alone "Project Magenta" suite and in the considerably more expensive Aerowinx Precision Simulator (another of this year's Commercial selections). Best of all, settings and displays such as VR, V1, V2 and the associated flap setting speed indicators all change automatically as a function of the plane's current flight configuration and weight. Used with the new AETI ProFlight 2000 or Radar Contact V2.1 (or online with SquawkBox) your flights reach a level of realism thought impossible with FS2000—down to a perfect CATIII autoland, if you like. All this takes a 46 page "Advanced Panel Manual" to describe—and then you'll be greatly helped by either of the two tutorials contributed by John Helsby and Jon Skiffington.

The big news in scenery, of course, is the high resolution terrain mesh add-ons available for both FS2000 and Fly!. Commercial scenery products really came into their own this past year—there's been plenty of detailed airport sceneries, notably in the UK and Europe (Aerosoft's German Airports series for FS2000 come to mind, and Aerosoft's Rhein-Ruhr for Fly! by Marc Störing and Jürgen Kloos are standouts. For the U.S. we'll be continuing to look to Justin Tyme's FS Genesis project for highly detailed general scenery for FS2000 now that his massive Pennsylvania/New Jersey 2000 and Delaware 2000 products are available (though our reviews will have to await next year).

Turning to Flight and Navigation Utilities, we've seen amazing technological progress this year, particularly in offline Airline Traffic Control with ProFlight 2000 and Radar Contact. I'll have more to say about these in the Commercial Products – Special Interest section; suffice it to say here that either product adds immeasurably to the FS2000 sim experience. And we've been blessed with some amazing utilities such as FS Meteo, FSAssist, FSTraffic and many others. Though we've not reviewed Flight Planners this year, there's a variety of excellent ones from which to choose: Ted Wright's NAV3 and Alessandro Antonini's Super Flight Planner are outstanding examples. All in all, its been an amazing year!

We at AVSIM Online again single out what we believe are the "best of the best" Freeware add-ons as judged by our reviewers and editors; three in fact earned the AVSIM Gold Medal for Excellence in Flightsim Design (AOE) this year. Because the Commercial Product category is so diverse, we've opted to single out those candidates we've reviewed this year that we judge to offer outstanding quality and value. And commercial add-ons just keep getting better and better—eight of these have indeed earned AVSIM Online's Award of Excellence. We felt that a number of others merit consideration for a "Well Done" as well. Of course we also tell you why we believe the products we've selected are especially deserving.

Receiving this award—and even "honorable mention" as finalists—is no small feat. We've revisited all the year's AVSIM Online reviews for their realism, attention to detail, innovative functionality and overall design excellence. We believe these are the elite of the year's products and add-ons. Yes, these all are worthy of our signal, Bravo Zulu!

A note about navigating through this special feature is in order. We've organized this feature article into sections on separate web pages so you won't have to scroll to find each category. The five sections are:

[Please click on the desired topic if you'd like to proceed directly to that section]

  1. Best Aircraft (Award winner and finalists)
     
  2. Best Panels (Award winner and finalists)
     
  3. Best Scenery (Award winner and finalists)
     
  4. Best Flight & Navigation Utilities (Award winner and finalists)
     
  5. Best Commercial Products (Finalists)

Each Bravo Zulu Award, and all the finalists' contributions are described in their respective category pages.

 
 

1999 Finalists

Freeware

Aircraft

Air Canada L-1011 - Project Freeware Group (AOE)
Cessna 120 - Bill Lyons (PFG)
Douglas DC-3/R4D-6/C-47 - Jan Visser (AOE)
Douglas C-47 MATS - Flight Sim Developers
Douglas DC-861-72 - The DC-8 Project Team
Lockheed SR-71A "Black Bird" - Phoenix Simulation Software
Pilatus Porter Pc6 B2-H2 - Flightsim Developers
Vought F4U Corsair - Roger "Airbuddha" Dial

Special Mention: HC-130H Hercules - Barry Blaisdell and Jens Borgstroem (Premier Aircraft Design)

Panels

Cessna 172 - Lou Betti (DreamFleet)
Douglas NATS R4D-6 V4 - Bill Rambow and Roy Chaffin (shared AOE with Jan Visser - see above)
McDonnell-Douglas MD-80 - Paul Golding (Project Freeware Group)

Scenery

Luckey's Landing scenery - Tom Constantine

Flight & Navigation Utilities

FSUIPC V2 - Peter Dowson
InfoMETAR V1 for Fly! - David Sandberg
TerraScene for Fly - Todd Klaus (How In the World?) (AOE)

Commercial Products

FLIGHT SIMULATORS

Precision Simulator 744 (PS1 V1.3) - Aerowinx

COMBAT SIMS

Combat Flight Simulator 2 - Microsoft (AOE)

AIRCRAFT & PANELS

Beech Bonanza Series - Phoenix Simulation Software
Boeing 747-200 - Ralph Tofflemire (AETI)
Boeing 747-400 - Phoenix Simulation Software (AOE)
Boeing 757/767 for Fly! V1.1 and V1.2 - Precision Manuals Development Group (AOE)
Boeing 777 - Phoenix Simulation Software (AOE)

SCENERY

Amsterdam Schiphol 2000 - LAGO (AOE)
Fly! Germany Rhein-Ruhr - Marc Stöering and Jürgen Kloos (AeroSoft GmbH) (AOE)
German Airports 2 Edition 2000 - AeroSoft GmbH
Scenery USA! For Fly! - Peter McLean
VFR England and Wales - Scenery Limited
Virgin Islands Scenery 2000 - Chris Wilkes

SPECIAL INTEREST

Airport & Scenery Designer V2.1 - Peter Jacobson assisted by Tim Dickens (ABACUS) (AOE)
FSClouds 2000 - Flight1 Software
FS Meteo V4.791 - Marc Philibert
ProFlight 2000 - Robert MacKay and Tom Main (AETI)
Radar Contact V2.1 - John Dekker and Doug Thompson (JDT LLC) (AOE)
SIMCharts V1.5 - Jeppesen
SimPlates 2000 - Dauntless Software
Ultimate Airlines - Flight1 Software

HARDWARE

CH USB Yoke/Pedals - CH Products
GF-45 "Buzzbox" AVIONICS - GoFlight
Saitek X36 USB Control System - Saitek Industires
VooDoo 5/5500 - 3Dfx

Here's our Winners in the Freeware category for 2000! Click on each link to see why they won, followed by a synopsis of each finalist's contribution to the flight simulation community this past year:

Click on this link to read a synopsis of each Commercial Product finalist's contribution to the flight simulation community this past year:


 

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