Good to see another review with comparative FPS figures quoted. This one is particularly interesting, because the Leonardo SH Maddog 2008 Professional has an almost direct competitor in the F1/Coolsky MD80 Professional.The Petraeus Index for the F1/Coolsky is 80, whereas that for the Leonardo, based on your measurements, is only 39. In other words the Leonardo airplane, although similar in function, actually runs at less than half the speed of the F1/Coolsky airplane. Quite possibly this because the latter was redeveloped for FSX, whereas, as you say, the former is ported from FS9.

Good to see another review with comparative FPS figures quoted. This one is particularly interesting, because the Leonardo SH Maddog 2008 Professional has an almost direct competitor in the F1/Coolsky MD80 Professional.The Petraeus Index for the F1/Coolsky is 80, whereas that for the Leonardo, based on your measurements, is only 39. In other words the Leonardo airplane, although similar in function, actually runs at less than half the speed of the F1/Coolsky airplane. Quite possibly this because the latter was redeveloped for FSX, whereas, as you say, the former is ported from FS9.

Hi Petraeus,Although your index indeed does give a nice direct comparison in terms of fps, your statement "the Leonardo airplane, although similar in function, actually runs at less than half the speed of the F1/Coolsky airplane" takes me a bit by surprise.Even though i do not own the F1/Coolsky MD80 (i have the Leonardo Maddog, so have no reason to), i have read the review some time ago and in my opinion (based on that review) comparing the F1/Coolsky MD80 with the Maddog2008 is kind of like making a comparison between, for example(!!), a Wilco A320 and the PMDG MD-11 where system integration and -simulation are concerned. If you want an airplane that is nice to fly around a little bit, looks the deal but further lacks too much 'difficult things', get the Wilco machine. If all you are looking for is top-notch system simulation, for sure get the MD-11 (and in my personal opinion: if you want even more realism, get the Leonardo Maddog because even in the 2006 version they already had included things which PMDG still haven't touched in their MD-11).Considering that there is soo much to discover in the Leonardo MD2008 where simulated systems are concerned (example?? Just for fun start pulling fuses on the upper-overhead panel (or have someone else do it via the mentioned Control Panel so you don't know what is gonna hit you next! Even better! :( ). Angelique van Kampen did not mention this in her good review, but they do work and you can disable the entire plane part by part in doing so! Not even PMDG offer this kind of in-depth system modulation!) it is no wonder the Leonardo MD2008 is so much heavier on resources. Don't forget, almost every single system on the panel is modelled and works and reacts exactly as the real aircraft does.Bottom-line: the Leonardo MD2008 surely is much more resource hungry then the F1/Coolsky MD80 apparently is, but this also has it's obvious reasons.Don't get me wrong and surely the F1/Coolsky is a good product which a lot of people surely will be very happy with having it in their hangar, but my personal opinion (based on review of the F1/Coolsky machine and being a long time owner of the Leonardo Maddog) is that (when the two are compared) if you want to 'play' airplane, the F1/Coolsky may be your thing. If however you want to truly 'simulate' aircraft, get the Leonardo Maddog.My 2 cents in this.Cheerio,Stef

Personally I believe that Angelique and Proflig8tor's review is one of the best I have ever seen. I own neither MD80, but learnt a lot from this review - which isn't always the case.Well done guys!

Great review! I would have been interested in the reviewer's system specifications though. Isn't it a standard to include them?

Great review! I would have been interested in the reviewer's system specifications though. Isn't it a standard to include them?

Hey JET1,See the review itself for the "system specification block", but to make it easy for you find below our PC specs:Angelique

Hey Gavin,Sorry, but Angelique is a female's first name :( !AngeliqueIn modern English usage the word 'guys' is used in a casual and friendly form when addressed to groups including men and women. Especially so in US English. I have even seen American women using it to address groups consisting solely of women. My usage of this word was casual friendly and in this context was entirely correct.An extract from a random online dictionary: "2. Usually, guys. Informal. persons of either sex; people: Could one of you guys help me with this? " Source www.dictionary.com link: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/guysMy post was only intended to compliment, not offend. I am fully aware that Angelique is a female name, having a Belgian female friend named Angelique.

Hey JET1,See the review itself for the "system specification block", but to make it easy for you find below our PC specs:

I was looking for it but for some strange reason didn't see it :( Thanks!

Hi Petraeus,Although your index indeed does give a nice direct comparison in terms of fps, your statement "the Leonardo airplane, although similar in function, actually runs at less than half the speed of the F1/Coolsky airplane" takes me a bit by surprise.

Hi StefI take your point, although I still think we are talking about similar levels of functionality. Equally, I regard the Wilco A320 and the PMDG MD-11 as being similar, although clearly not identical. What I believe makes them similar is that they all have functioning FMC's and glass cockpits, which we might expect to be a bit of a drain on FPS. By comparison, the Microsoft default planes, or the Overland range of airliners, do not, so we would expect (and do indeed find) that they run with higher FPS.So allowing for the variations even within the glass cockpit / FMC planes, I would expect them to perform relatively similarly, and the lower value for the Leonardo does seem atypical. However the Flight 1 / Coolsky MD80 Pro is atypical in the other direction, and the non-Pro version runs almost as well as the low-function default airplanes!

The MD-80 by Leonardo has a much more complex systems modeling and VC than the Coolsky product - in fact, when Davide first came out with the initial version of the VC, my system was doing PowerPoint presentations for a bit it seems :) The Leonardo MD-80 2008/Pro is one of my most complex, if not the most complex/complete simulation of a cockpit I have experienced, that includes top flight PMDG and LevelD excellent products, and most definitely raises the bar by which other products are judged. I also need to say that the MD-80 is an older bird, and by definition will probably lend itself more for depth, having more "steam" than "glass", read, less computer assisted items and more separate systems than an integrated modern glass office.Angelique and Prolifig8tor did a wonderful job in this review, and captured exactly how the product left me - discovering new things every flight. And usually, if something doesn't work, it's not a bug in the product, it's something I missed :)Cheers,Etienne MartinAVSIM Staff Reviewer

The other reason I think the FPS got cut down was because of that the Leonardo maddog judging from screenshots (I don't have the actual plane itself, yet) the switches and knobs are all modeled in 3d, where in the super80 pro the VC is pretty much painted on, with only the biggest objects in 3d.While this wouldn't really affect someone with a powerful enough graphics card, it should be noted that FSX tends to render autogen more using the CPU than the GPU, which is a key flaw as to why FSX is so laggy even on modern systems.

Wow all of you guys fail to see the REAL reason why the maddog2008 performs so poorly? (well... beyond a guess anyways) I'm surprised- yet not at the same time.It is a FS9 portover. It is not a true fsx model. It is well known that portovers do not perform anywhere near as well as native FSX models. It has nothing to do with 3D switches and little to do with systems complexity. 90% of the performance difference is due to the fact it is not a real FSX model. It is also the reason I do not own the maddog 2008.You don't need some "petraeus index" to figure this out. It is common sense...