Battle of the Boeings: Milviz 737-00 vs. Captain Sim 737-200

[Tim_Capps 474]

What You Get

 

I am comparing the 737-200s with the Sperry 77 (old school) autopilot. The Milviz has the Sperry 177 and the "Universal" FMS, too. I don't use it (or haven't yet) so just be aware that the Milviz has options for retrofitting your 737 with more modern avionics, while the Captain Sim 737 is strictly old school. (I should mention that the Milviz FMS is not like ones you might be familiar with, e.g. there is no moving map display or the like.)

 

Milviz provides a 737-200 (only) in different configurations, such as the straight-up passenger version, and versions that can be changed out for either passenger or cargo, or even both together. You can add a gravel kit, too, if you want. It's all managed through an interface that lets you set up your version, add payload and fuel (although you'll still be checking inside FSX), and select start-up state. There is a livery pack that is offered for free. (There are relatively few repaints, by the way.) You can choose between the old school Sperry 77 autopilot, or the "Universal" FMC with the 77 or 177. It's neither Boeing nor Airbus, so you're going to have to go to school on it. In summary, you get a lot for the price of admission, and can ferry passengers from Lisbon to Funchal or cargo in the wilds of western Canada. (There seems to be a Canadocentric vibe to the whole project.)

 

Manuals include a lot of real-world material. The Universal FMC gets some detailed treatment (you'll need it). There is a nice, short, "let's get started" document.

 

Captain sim sells the basic -200. The -100 (of which only a few were manufactured), the 200 Advanced, and cargo version are sold separately. No gravel kit or pax/cargo combos. You get the Sperry 77, with no retrofitted FMC. You do get smoking-light-is-on-stewardesses-in-miniskirts technology: the PDCS. (Not that you'll want to use it. More about that in a bit.) As is typical for Captain Sim, you get lots of luscious liveries and plenty available for download. There is the standard Captain Sim ACE utility that lets you load your airplane (for real) and manage your repaints (sometimes). That's all it does, but it works, as far as it goes.

 

The forums for both are responsive and friendly. You'll likely get answers from devs on the Milviz forum, and, on the Captain Sim forum, from dedicated, knowledgable and semi-official "fans." I know Captain Sim support will always be a point of contention, but for the time being, at least, they have a good setup. Captain Sim's "official" support is a knowledge base and trouble ticket system.

 

In summary, you get a lot of operational variety with Milviz' product, while Captain Sim offers basic variants for sale as separate add-ons, and many more high-quality, free liveries.

 

The Beauty Contest

 

As you might expect, Captain Sim is much better looking. Outside, there is simply no contest. Captain Sim makes the best looking airplanes around, in my opinion. Milviz's effort is... more basic. Where Captain Sim creates subtle little ripples and details in the metal, Milviz looks quite plain and smooth. You probably won't be lured outside the flightdeck to admire the cosmetics on the Milviz model.

 

On the inside it is a bit closer. For once, the "distressed" flightdeck is not on the Captain Sim airplane. It is gorgeous, with suble trompe d'oei'l dull metallic shading. It is the best work on a flightdeck I've ever seen. It is not particularly distressed (nothing like their 727) but isn't brand new, either.

 

Milviz does much better inside than it did outside. However, they made the choice to provide a flight deck that looks like it might have been submerged in seawater for a few months. (Perhaps a short landing at San Francisco's runway 28L?) Their -200 is a real beater. It is literally rusted, and -- I'm not kidding -- a green film of what appears to be algae is on the console and first officer's seat. And the captain has spilled his latte -- let's hope, anyway -- on the bottom of the panel. Personally, I liked it. It took guts to publish that, and maybe that's what their model looked like. To repeat: I'm not panning the flightdeck -- it's well done -- I'm just describing what it looks like. (That's the best latte spill I've ever seen.) The instruments look good, and the animations of switches and the like struck me as particularly nice, if on the slow side. The panel lighting is really nice. You can actually dial it from "off," through "dim," to "bright."

 

I notice that some of the sounds seem to be a bit overdone. Changes the nav frequency are punctuated by loud thunks. If that's the way real 737s sound, then my apologies.

 

Speaking of animations, I have to complain about Captain Sim's panel. Both products have a neat weight gauge that lets you set what flaps you're landing with, and the needle will show your vref speed. Cool, old school technology that works. On the Milviz 737, it works, anyway. On the Captain Sim 737, it is forever frozen at flaps 30, although you can still click it through your landing flaps settings and the needle will move. In other words, the knob's animation is broken in the Captain Sim 737 rendering the device unusable. And, after all this time, they haven't fixed it. It is little annoyances like that that bring the Captain Sim product down. No, you don't absolutely have to have it, but it is welcome on the Milviz 737.

 

Captain Sim's flightdeck is easily better, but Milviz's isn't bad, and your reaction to it is probably going to depend on whether you like a nice, clean airplane, or one held together by chewing gum and rust flakes. Note: there is a "clean" version of the Milviz panel available as a free download. However, t is unsupported and we are warned that some things (particularly the very nice interior lighting) won't work right if you use it.

 

In summary, Captain Sim outshines the Milviz 737, but if you want a beater of an airplane for cargo routes in the Northwest, you might like the latter.

 

Let's Go Flying

 

The Milviz 737 flies fine (for all I know) without any tweaking. I will say that it seems to slide through the air like a greased eel on teflon ball bearings. It is hard for me to believe that you can bring the throttles to idle and a 737-200 will glide merrily along in level flight. I enjoy flying big circuits at KSEA, and this is the only airplane I have noticed this with. So be prepared to make liberal use of your speed brake. Otherwise, I feel the Milviz fles better.

 

The Captain Sim 737 gets modded before I'll fly it. On their forums you can easily find mods to bring performance down to more realistic levels, and another to fix the "explosive" start-up indications. These are not hard to apply, and, and they're great to use. You can easily calculate your EPR for a given cruise alititude, set your throttles, and forget about them. Now, there is nothing arduous or complicated about this, but it's just the way things are. You're either willing to do it, or would rather take a stand on principle.

 

I should mention that the Captain Sim 737 is not unflyable without the mods; perhaps a bit too powerful, but okay. I just vastly prefer the modded version, Paul Tally (search in the library) has V1 gauges with lots of goodies for BOTH products you might want to take a look at.

 

In summary, with the exception of the apparent lack of drag on the Milviz airplane, I think it flies a tad better. This is not to say the Captain Sim 737 is bad (when modded) but, after all, we are comparing the two, right?

 

The Sperry 77 autopilot works fine in both products. You'll be introduced to the pleasures of Control Wheel Steering. You pull back the yoke to the desired pitch and it will stay! Mostly. Actually, perhaps becuase of a limitation in FSX, I wouldn't say either work perfectly. There seems to be some hitches and hiccups, but most of the time they're good enough. There is also altitude hold, and heading hold, but no autothrottle. The Milviz has the Sperry 177 with more features, along with the FMC. To be honest, I haven't spent much time with the more modern autopilots on the Milviz, because that's now what I want a 737 for.

 

The Sperry 77 will fly a nice ILS approach for you, in both products, but it wants you to land the airplane itself.

 

The PDCS is modeled in the Captain Sim version, but not in the Milviz. It consists of an old CRT with green letters and a keypad. You type in a bit of data, and your EPR settings and the like are calculated. That's about all I can say about it since every time I try to use it it crashes FSX. This seems to be the universal experience. The product has been out a long time now, and still things like the PDCS and aforementioned vref gauge are just flat broken. They don't get in the way of flying, but it's irritating.

 

By contrast, the Milviz is on Service Pack 5! Not to imply that it is flawless, but I noticed fewer things to be irritated about!

 

The Verdict

 

Hung Jury.

 

This is one of those situations where if you could combine the best features of both, you would have a super airplane. By themselves, they're both lacking in different ways. Howver, they are different enough products that the decision might be easy for some.

 

Visually, the Captain Sim airplane is enough better to matter to me, especially on the outside, to matter. But it is satsifying to have Milviz's panel where everything pretty much works.

 

If you don't mind some non-critical bloopers in the flightdeck and are willing to apply a few simple mods, the Captain Sim might be attractive, especially if you like to collect a lot of different, high-quality free liveries.

 

The Milviz offers more models of the -200 for the Great White North, a more functional panel, and the option for retrofitted avionics. But it is brought down by comparatively poor exterior graphics, a more limited selection of repaints, and not everyone is going to like the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea panel.

 

So I ended up with two old-school 737s. Either one is a decent enough airplane, and together... well, when I get too frustrated with one, the other applies just the right medicine.

[~Craig~ 10]

Interesting and well written assessment.   I agree with the 'hung jury' verdict on this one.   Normally, I'd say Milviz blow Captain Sim out of the water, but in the case, I have a few niggles with the MV 732, and the CS 732 (once tweaked to reduce the silly climb power) has a bit more ambience and immersion to it IMHO.

I've personally found the Captain Sim CWS modelling to work perfectly;  use the yoke to set pitch, and I then hear the trimming occuring and the pitch is held.   The Milviz SP77 has never worked well for me.  The CWS doesn't seem to work and the AP seems a little too tied in to the default FSX AP logic.    So Captain Sim definitely win in the SP77 simulation for me.   As a result, when I fly the MV version, I always use the SP177 version, which works pretty well.

I think CS have the 'seat' / 'view' position spot on as well (even better than PMDG NGX I would say).   When you sit in a real 737 captains seat, the window ahead of you appears fairly slim and 'letterbox-like'.   Both the Milviz and the PMDG NGX fail to give this appearance IMHO, but the CS does.   It's the best 737 flying viewpoint and cockpit proportions seen in FS to date, IMHO.

 

Just a shame the FDE is so bad.  I would not be as forgiving as you in this regard.   The CS732 FDE is just abysmal.  They may as well have used a SR71 blackbird set of figures - they'd be just as unrealistic!    With the tweaks it's still not perfect IMHO, but it's just about usable.

[Domini99 0]

The milviz one feels like a Cessna when it comes to the rudder in my opinion.

At cruise speed, push the rudder fully and it will spin inverted and go in an awkward stall and start frisbeeing. I don't think that's how a real 737 handles.

[ryanbatc 12,853]

MV uses navigraph (or default) navdata - huge plus for online flyers like me.

 

MV night lighting is better IMHO

 

Really nice write up though

[CoolP 283]

Tim's writing style. Excellent and enjoyable. :smile:

 

I agree with Craig though since I feel like the FDE shortcomings of the CS 737 shouldn't be underestimated. You might not reach the ISS orbit but you will be close.

 

Seriously, the user mods (V speeds, FDE in general) currently make that plane and the basis indeed looks great. One should add that the Christmas sales might be coming up, so you can be an owner for just 10 bucks as opposed to.. more.

 

I totally trust the Milviz guys to offer the better FDE and also applaud to the FMC option which lead me to hover over that buy button more than once. Then I always thought that CS surely comes along with the service pack to fix their nice PDCS gauge (which doesn't help with planning but is cool nonetheless) and other things. Well, that service pack didn't happen so far, so it's back to the user mods I guess. :Worried:

[BrianG 12]

Thanks Tim. I'm in complete agreement with you, Craig and CoolP. I don't have the Milvis 737 but I do have the CS version. Graphically, the CS, IMO is the most beautifully done VC in all of Flight Sim. Both textures and proportions are hard to beat.  The Milvis offering just looks a bit "cartoonish" and dis-proportioned. That has stopped me from hitting the "buy button". But it appears to have many other things going for it that CS 732 does not. Things like a accurate FDE,  a ton of equipment options, and much better night lighting.

With Paul's V-one gauge, Bud's tweaks and a few others,the CS 732 seems to match RW docs to an acceptable level. Yes, still the usual broken stuff that was talked about but doesn't stop me from flying it on occasion.

For me, the biggest problem is rudder deflection responsiveness. Sometimes it works as should, other times when applying rudder there's very little to no affect on the A/C. I applied some changes to the CFG file to try and solve this, only to have the same results. Anyone else notice this or is it just me? Anyway, a fun comparison and well written.

 

Cheers,

Brian

[Bjoern 1,157]

Might want to mention that there are a bunch of repaints for the CS737 here in the library and at Flightsim (at least that's where I usually see them pop up).

 

The clean VC textures for the MV model are here:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/415420-clean-vc-textures/

 

 

 

And not to let any other alternatives go unmentioned:

 

 

1) JustFlight: For those who prefer model variety at lower price than the CS version

http://www.justflight.com/product/737-pro-and-expansion-packs-bundle

 

2) TinFork - the poor man's rendition

http://www.aviationcafe.co.uk/Index/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=2351

[xplanery 250]

The milviz one feels like a Cessna when it comes to the rudder in my opinion.

At cruise speed, push the rudder fully and it will spin inverted and go in an awkward stall and start frisbeeing. I don't think that's how a real 737 handles.

 

Well, in the 90's two Boeing 737's spun out of control and crashed when their rudders jammed into full extreme position due to a design fault... Also aggressive rudder use was enough to rip off the tail of AA587.

 

I think most FSX aircraft don't model effects of rudder use realistically at all,  with many models you can just do whatever you want with it and have little to no effect on aircraft's flight path. Milviz is probably more realistic here than the default 737. 

[Domini99 0]

Well, in the 90's two Boeing 737's spun out of control and crashed when their rudders jammed into full extreme position due to a design fault... Also aggressive rudder use was enough to rip off the tail of AA587.

 

I think most FSX aircraft don't model effects of rudder use realistically at all,  with many models you can just do whatever you want with it and have little to no effect on aircraft's flight path. Milviz is probably more realistic here than the default 737. 

As far as i know even on this old jets the rudder is limited to certain movements, on the boeings that spun the rudder got jammed in full deflection, something a 737 under normal operation wouldn't allow.

 

I'm not really convinced about the flight model. 

I mean simulating a v2 engine failure causes the airplane to start flying 90 degrees sideways, and there's no way to correct for that.

[CoolP 283]

I mean simulating a v2 engine failure causes the airplane to start flying 90 degrees sideways, and there's no way to correct for that.

Just from that description, this indeed sounds like the rudder authority and/or effectiveness is limited. Maybe that yaw damper system (from the sim or custom coding) interferes negatively? Guessing.

 

Anyway, I would assume that the Milviz support can help with getting this right or at least into the correct context. The thing on the context could be that they aim for normal ops and I would assume that e.g. climb rates and the fuel burn are more in line than the default CS model.

 

Comparing those two again because that's the goal of the thread.

 

Forgot to add. Thumbs up again for Bjoern offering some additional tips and even a freeware 737 with decent systems.

[Domini99 0]

Just from that description, this indeed sounds like the rudder authority and/or effectiveness is limited. Maybe that yaw damper system (from the sim or custom coding) interferes negatively? Guessing.

 

Anyway, I would assume that the Milviz support can help with getting this right or at least into the correct context. The thing on the context could be that they aim for normal ops and I would assume that e.g. climb rates and the fuel burn are more in line than the default CS model.

 

Comparing those two again because that's the goal of the thread.

 

Forgot to add. Thumbs up again for Bjoern offering some additional tips and even a freeware 737 with decent systems.

Give me a couple of minutes, i'll record a video with a v2 engine failure.

[Domini99 0]

Here, look at this.
Full rudder input after i shut the left engine, plane keeps yawing further and further to the left untill it it transforms into a frisbee, stalls and plummets to the ground.
I'm not quite sure that's how planes work.

 

Sorry if i don't look professionally, but i literally started the plane from cold and dark in half a minute.

[CoolP 283]

I have to apologise, Domini, I should have been clearer.

 

I think that such issues and the reports belong to the Milviz support forum since only they will be able to tell what is wrong and how their FDE is meant to be used. :smile:

[Domini99 0]

I have to apologise, Domini, I should have been clearer.

 

I think that such issues and the reports belong to the Milviz support forum since only they will be able to tell what is wrong and how their FDE is meant to be used. :smile:

Lol no need to apologise, i'll hit a search on their forums and watch what they got.

 

Don't take me wrong: apart from the weird yaw-behaviour the aircraft is really nice.

[Tim_Capps 474]

Could it be I am using the CWS improperly with the CS bird? There's no doubt it is sweet to hold climb after takeoff. The trick is, now I want to get out of the climb. I push forward... forward... full forward... nothing happens. Maybe I jiggle it a bit and WHAM it plunges into a dive, scaring the passengers.

 

Am I SUPPOSED TO use the trim button with the thing? As I understand the real one, it would stop in a detent, then you would take it out of the detent with some pressure. That's not the experience I am having at all. I have checked at Captain Sim's forum and I'm told by others that they're just not having the problem. I have no idea why my airplane would perform any differently.

 

The duplicate review got posted because when I posted this one I got a 503 error, and after putting all that work into it, I just got disgusted and quit without checking to see whether it got posted. I just assumed it didn't so now I'm cheerfully looking stupid for posting the same legnthy review twice.