ON MY SOAPBOX

[Guest christianholmes]

Hi, First I want to say this in not an in-depth review- It's a perspective from someone who's oft been let down. I'm trying to make some points are rarely discussed as well. I also wanted to let everyone know that in 20+ years of flight simming, I've bought under 20 addons, and this is my first PMDG. I am not a real life pilot (I am however a student pilot- with an expired medical- and with under 20 hours).The addons I've purchased in the past ALWAYS led to the same feeling- kind of sinking pit in the stomach when typing in the credit card number, but the risk/reward is relatively low, and there is always that hope of "Maybe this will be the LAST addon I ever need!". My wife just shakes her head as she knows it's really some kind of incurable disease. "Addonitis". Sometimes you install your new addon and go "Wow, great scenery" and fly around for 30 minutes exploring, and then move on. The aircraft are just usually more disappointing. I have high standards and expectations. Every thing I download I want fully functioning VCs and FMCs, high framerates, and virtual cabins. Realistically, I don't except freeware planes to have these, so I generally just check out the payware. I have been ultimately disappointed with all but A320 PIC. I love the immersiveness of the plane.However, I've always found there are just too many workarounds required to make any addon aircraft function correctly (or, at least as "I" wanted them too). I mean poor frame rates on a 3 gHz P4 with a Radeon 9800 Pro card? COME ON!!! I am a Microsoft Instructor who can teach you how to set up Certificate Services for Enterprise based L2TP/IPSEC VPN Authentication, but I can't get a game to look like it does on the box.What I ultimately desire is this- good frame rates with the VC and cabin on. Sharp textures. Good models. Detailed, interactive systems. And with FS2004, a fully interactive VC. This is the only way I want to play. I have no interest (zero, zilch, none) in staring at a bitmap representation of an airliner cockpit. I want to be able to spin my head around flipping buttons and switches and unlimately be able to fool myself in thinking, even just for a moment, that I'm the pilot in command of a 20 ton airliner flying high over New York City with my precious cargo bound for exotic destinations. I want to be removed from the current world I reside in (which at the moment is chilly North Conway New Hampshire) and pretend my life took a different path.That being said, I hesitantly purchased both the base package and the 800/900 for a not cheap $63 dollars.I immediately fired up the cold and dark scenerio in the 900 with the VC and Cabin, and moved to KDEN to try and follow the tutorial I downloaded off PMDGs website.I'll skip being too in depth since this is already lengthy and get right to it.Gorgeous graphics. Excellent framerates. ATI cards have generally not worked well with FS9- If I move my mouse in and out of focus, I notice and fairly significant change in framerates. I have my framerates locked at 25 by the way. I get 24.8 with my scenery on extremely high. One key point is that I have virtual cockpit quality set to high- which has killed me with most other addons. Not here. Everything looks as professional as it can get. I don't know how to describe it, but this plane just "fits" within this make believe world. It just looks like it belongs sitting at that gate.I was quite happy spinning my head around, and wandering back into the cabin, sitting in the seats and staring out the virtual windows.Now I had to find out how well the VC actually functioned. Again, absolutely spot-on with every thing I wanted. Completely, 100% functional. Absolutely no staring at 2D panels ever again for me. The "response" times of the VC are outstanding. Nothing ruins the fun more than clicking a switch only for it to take 1 second to respond to the click. In other planes, I can enter a full fix name in the FMC with the mouse, and have my mouse over the appropriate LSK waiting to click before the information finally catches up with my actions. Not here- practically instant response. It acts like the optimized default aircraft. And the virtual gauge quality is "ridiculous"- that being a good thing. It could not be any better, period.And the systems modeling is obviously every nerd's dream come true. I feel the only deeper sim is PS1, although I could be wrong. I will be spending significant time on this forum asking for help on this topic.Do I have gripes? No, but I noticed a compatibility issue between Active Camera and this plane. The plane will use the mouse wheel to increment/decrement knobs such as heading. This is useful so you don't have to click the + and - hotspots. However, Active Camera uses the mouse wheel to zoom. So, zooming in and out and looking around ultimately resulted in me flipping a few switches unintentionally. I simply disabled mouse zoom in active camera, and used the + and - keys like normal.I have to say, this is the best plane I have ever seen for Flight Simulator, or any simulator, hands down. I have never been a a really excited user of anything, but I think I may be now. My poor wife.

[Guest georg]

Hello!Nice to hear such a positive story here. About the activecamera - go to the Activecamera 2004 menu and you can disable there the wheel zoom option, then you will be just fine.

[Guest amerton]

Christian,Many thanks ! Hope you enjoy your time with the birdie as much as you expect it.anthonyAnthony MertonPrecision Manuals Developmenthttp://www.precisionmanuals.com

[Guest ha5mvo]

Yes I fully agree!!True, I had some initial hiccups with unstable frames but after a bit of tweaking all is in its place, as smooth as a babies ar*.... :)chapeau to you gentlemen!!Unbelievable performance for such a degree of complexity!!Truely well done!//Michael