I've had a fair bit published in the past, including fictional writing, but the joke I really like about all that goes like this:Two copywriters meet up in a shopping mall.'What are you up to these days?' says one.'I'm writing a novel' says the other.'Yup, neither am I' comes the reply.Al

Okay, back to my Ariane 737, to whom I feel strangely attracted, despite the occasional abuse and duplicity. The HUD is just so cool. I get that you keep the birdie on the circle, but what is the vertical bar beneath the birdie?The engine sound gives me 7 seconds of roar and 4 seconds of whoosh over and over. Is this right? There was something about downloading an alternate sound set, but, as usual, I don't get it.I'm going to try a more familiar flight: KSFO - KLAX. Part of my problem was trying to repeat the tutorial on an approach I wasn't completely comfortable with, and in bad weather.One thing I found very interesting was how to determine runway assignments by going to departure and destination airports and setting the wind direction. This is a trick I'll be using quite a bit. The tutorial did have some general FSX tips that are useful.Al, I hope you don't feel I'm pre-dumping on your review, especially after you have been so kind in connection with mine. While I have probably squeezed as much humor out of their website prose as I can (and then some) I have not by any means written off the airplane. In fact, it is one of those that has me thinking about it when I'm not anywhere near a computer, and I like that. A couple of months of cheap dog food for Buster and I may pick up a livery set. Right now I would chose it over my Wilco 737 if I felt like flying a chubby little Boeing, and there's no reason it could not become a line favorite if I can confidently complete flights to my somewhat relaxed standards of realism, which it shows every indication of being able to provide.I honestly felt bad about giving them a hard time before without buying their product, and, when I did, thought to pass along some impressions / questions on a new product. At least ammo stocks will be depleted and gun barrels overheated when your review does come out.

I'm not entirely sure which bit you are on about on the HGS Tim, but I think you might be talking about the rollout guidance line, which is so you can maintain the centreline of the runway after landing in zero visibility. Check out the links below, which should clarify what things on the HGS can do (aka the HUD). There actually two different types of HGS that can be specced for the 737, but I think the one in the Ariane is meant to be the Rockwell Collins version.Some pics of it on approach:http://www.b737.org.uk/flightinsts.htm#Head-Up_DisplayThe company that makes the real thing (check out the 'brochure' link at the top right of the page):http://www.rockwellcollins.com/products/cs...lays/index.htmlNote that the HGS is the Ariane is not perfect, it is not collimated for one thing, but it comes pretty close to the real thing in most, if not all respects and is certainly a useful toy when hand flying an approach in poor visability.Don't mothball your Wilco 737, that's a great FS add-on and very underrated by people. It might not have the best visual model ever, but it flies really well and at least it has cabin pressure modeled on the overhead.Al

Automated flight from KSFO to KLAX went fine, more or less. I need to do some autoland practice. VNAV pretty much brought me down on schedule, but I was high and fast, typical for not being on top of things in a new airplane. Night lighting was quite nice, with different lights tightly tied to switches. There are flight attendant announcements available from the galley, and, apparently, music, although I couldn't get that to work.Used PORTE 3 and SADDE 6, which share the AVE transition, making it a pretty easy flight. No problem at all with procedures as far as I took them.I like all my Wilco products, and the 737PIC in particular has the very nice mission package, which there should be more of. But new is new :-)I still have too much stuff in this airplane that I don't even recognize LOL. The website helps. I think the better practice is to intuitively work through familiarization because the manual runs me into one dead end after another.I was getting terrible frame rates tonight for some reason. I had been messing with my setup and I still have UTX enhanced intersection traffic which likes its groceries. There were some beautiful sights with the full moon reflecting off water on the way, though. I think this is just going to be one of those airplanes -- kind of like the 757 -- that makes you earn your enjoyment.End of flight at KLAX.

Nice pic. And congrats on making a successful flight with it. Personally I thought the documentation for the Ariane was pretty good myself, although I think the writing style which treats you like you are a real crew on a real aircraft might not be to everyone's tastes. Certainly the well-labeled pictures of all the switches and controls is better than most PDF manuals tend to come up with.I think you might be experiencing the reverse side of what I experienced when I got the CS 757 - being so used to the 737 and not at all used to the 757 it was weird and slightly confusing to find stuff that was 'the same but different'. Clearly the 757 to 767 is a much easier transition and traditionally, the transition to the 757 would be from the 737, rather than the other way around, since the 757 is higher up the food chain, at least in airline pilot job terms.I guess going your own way on a flight and route with which you are familiar is a useful approach in comparison to slavishly following the tutorials, and is probably something most people do to a greater or lesser degree. I must admit that I tend to do that myself in favour of following tutorial flights, unless there is something I am 'not getting'. For me, the test flight I typically use is EGCC-LEAM (Manchester UK, to Almeria southern Spain), since it gives me a potentially tricky descent where one needs to be wary of terrain clearance over the Sierra Nevada mountains, leading to the need to lose speed fairly late in the proceedings whilst on the descent. If I can manage that one without any screws ups, it means I'm 'getting it' with that particular aeroplane.Of course it doesn't help that the 737 is an odd aeroplane in some respects; unlike most airliners of a similar vintage, the 737 was designed from the outset to be flown by two rather than three pilots, so it tended to suit its old steam gauges. But when Boeing made it grow up by sticking in all the NG stuff in that had been developed for the 757 and 767, it was a bit like putting a street urchin in a king's robes. Yet it is worth remembering that underneath all that electronic finery, it is still an honest and basic aeroplane that can be flown like the Classic 737s, and even the Original ones.Al

I learned from my Iron Knuckles DC9 that you had to have air, fuel and ignition to get your engines running, and once you understand what you are simulating, it becomes less a sequence of ritual gestures than figuring out how a particular airplane implements it. Same with programming the FMC or anything else. I used to be like those cargo cult kids in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome that repeated aviation terms long after the crew had died and the original meaning was long forgotten.It seems to me -- and granted it could be because it is different -- that this is a just more complicated airplane than the 757 / 767. There are things I still can't identify in the cockpit (which I'm sure I will be able to once I get around to looking the nice diagrames that cover everything in the documentation).

I had read somewhere before that it had a very poor guage refresh rate. Does that still apply? I am considering the -900 for fs9 and my system is about 2 years old so I'm not sure if I should dive in....Greg

The gauge refresh rate performance issues relate to the FS9 version, and personally I don't think they are too bad on the FS9 version although others disagree, but in any case, the problem does not occur with the FSX version, which is fine as far as gauge refresh rates go, in fact, one of the strong points of the FSX Ariane 737 is the all-round performance it gets in every department; it is certainly one of the better-performing flashy add-ons for FSX, including FPS in the VC, which makes it very usable in complex add-on airports.Don't expect it to rival something like the PMDG 747 or the LDS 767 in terms of having absolutely every system modeled, because it doesn't, but there is more than enough modeled systems-wise to make it a worthy addition to your hangar, as part of the fact that it doesn't have every whistle and bell is where you get those rapid frame rates. It's a compromise, but an intelligent one for all that.Justifying the price is another thing though, although generally speaking you do get what you pay for.Al

Frame rates are decent. Al and I have a different view of documentation, but that's probably because he's smarter than I am. I don't have warm fuzzies for the company, and after this long, don't even want to be admitted to their forum, so there! :( So all my silly support questions I'll just toss out here and some nice person will help me. Because that's just the way AVSIM people are.The airplane I like, however. It will not be without a grumble when I eventually shell out for some liveries. But I like the complexity and thoughtfulness of the design. Al keeps saying the HUD doesn't come with a collander, which is fine, because I'm not a-cookin' da spaghetti upa here anyway.There's nothing else like it. The cost is a personal decision. It cost more than my PMDG MD-11. Is it better? Well, it's a better 737-800 LOL. Feature for feature, no, it is not better. But comparing airplane add-ons has always been an unsatisfactory exercise for me. Everybody brings his or her own take. I happen to like stuff like start carts and ladders and HUDs (HGSs) and am willing to pay a premium. The price is what it is, and if the market will bear it and your budget will not miss it too much, then it is works out. And not having to worry too much about frame rates is nice.Speaking of setting cost, I know a little about that. If you have something no one else has, you can charge what motivated people can actually afford (as opposed to be glad to pay).I remember another thread where someone got the airplane and there was a lot of interest in activation, and what it was like, etc. from the whole buy experience. (I think that was on the temp forum.) So I thought I'd toss this out while everyone is waiting for The Review. I'm looking forward to it as much as anyone. (Am I the only person that likes to read reviews of stuff he's already bought? Why do I do that? Am I going to suddenly say, "Wow, he's right! This is a piece of trash!" and erase it from my hard drive? Or, of course, vice versa.)

What is the status of fliTunes, which got a passing reference in marketing and metion on a picture... is that implemented yet? Have some new liveries now, and am readying for a Qantas flight from Melbourne to Alice Springs. (They have an "Airline Upgrade Pack" that gives a small assortment; beyond that it looks like you are buying regional specific collections.)

Fly-Tunes (or possibly Fli-tunes, depending on how they spell it) does work. If you hit shift+A a few times to go to the various cockpit views, you will get to the cabin crew's control station, which is actually a fair representation of the one on the real NG. You operate it from there.You've probably discovered that you can control the cabin lighting, doors, airstairs etc from there, but you can also make cabin announcements and you will find an option to play the cabin music on that panel too (you have to switch the system on). There is a file in the Ariane folder with the 'fly tunes' music there. I actually tried renaming a different music file to the same name, to see if it would play that via the panel (I thought maybe the Black Angel's Death song might make a change for my passengers), but I could only get it to play the default tune. Nevertheless, I'll admit I didn't spend ages trying to get it to work and I think it would probably be possible to switch the tunes around for your own stuff if the file had the same name and was in the same format.The different repaints feature more than the external textures as you know, they also tweak the config files so that the various customer options are matched to the aircraft paint job, most of that is cosmetic, such as different upholstery on the cockpit seats and that sort of thing, but the engines are tweaked to the correct power rating for the specific CFM 56 variant fitted on the aircraft's real world counterpart and I think Fly Tunes was supposed to change too. I do know the engine changes are implemented, but I don't know if that happened with the tunes since I haven't bought any of the liveries myself.I quite like the idea of playing one of those 'tragedy' pop ballads from the early 1960s as we taxi out to the runway, such as 'crying in the chapel', 'ebony eyes' or 'tell Laura I love her', in order to prepare my passengers for the possibility of a crash. Obviously this would be combined with showing 'Airport 77' as the in flight movie, both I and the co-pilot would don George Kennedy and Charlton Heston masks, to complete the ensemble.Al

Would just like to say thanks for the contributions made in this thread so far, its about time this addon was reviewed from an impartial standpoint, if you don't mind me asking, is it a matter of days or weeks the review will be posted? I'm very much considering this addon as I would like a good medium range airliner for fsx. Also, the FliTunes feature, is that some sort of feature that allows you to play music whilst using the addon (i.e. in cruise). I believe the flight1 mustang has a similar feature.

Yup, Fly Tunes is a simulation of the music airlines play in some phases of their flights, such as landing or whatever. There is a control panel in the galley which allows you to play various crew announcements and the very last button on the keypad will kick the music in. The tune itself is a kind of relaxing 'new age' track (quite nice if you like 'chill out' music).Below is a pic of the cabin crew control panel for the doors, airstairs, cabin lights and audio stuff. This is in the forward galley just near the main door. The top bit is for the audio, the bottom bit is for the airstairs, doors and cabin lighting. It is actually what the real one looks like on an NG and it works in pretty much the same way, so if you have an overwhelming urge to put a nice outfit and a wig on, and call yourself Mandy, then it will be right up your street:Unfortunately, I have no idea when my review is going to get listed on AVSIM. That's up to the Reviews Editor.Al

Unfortunately, I have no idea when my review is going to get listed on AVSIM. That's up to the Reviews Editor.Al

Out of curiosity, why do these reviews take so long to appear after submission? Not malice - it's a straight question. Is it 'cos the editors have to check the checkers so to speak?

How is the sound for you guys on the 900ER. I went through their installation documentation and adjusted the sound sliders as they required, but the engine sounds like you are in a can and doesn't even come close to what PMDG has done on their aircraft. Am I missing something?