Here's another one anxiously waiting for Al's review. I'm quite glad to hear more people are sort of liking Ariane. In all fairness, I think Ariane's planes aren't half s bad as people make them appear, and using the tutorial, I already managed to get my plane up and running and I did a tiny flight. All I can say is I love it, but I wish there were a way to save the panel state and reload it later, like the PMDG 737 NG 2.0 will have. By the way, I've got the FS9 version of the 737-700 and the livery pack, and although the texuring isn't as sharp as I'd like it to have, I'm already very seriously considering to buy the 737-800 too. When I do that, I'll get the livery pack accompanying it too.Yeah, I really like the Ariane planes. It is a pity so many people make them look bad. What's even worse, is that most of these people don't even own an Ariane plane, it's just hear-say. I suppose it's just popular to bash Ariane...

I call it the forum echo-chamber effect. On the other hand, a reputation is something takes years to build and can be tossed away in an instant.Well, I've called it a day with mine. No matter what I put in for a Gross Weight in the FMC, it says invalid entry. I have read it off the Fuel / Payload page exactly as instructed. And entered every possible variation thereof. Challenges are nice; gotchas suck.Guess I'll check out the support for-- oh, yeah.

To be fair and show the other side of the coin, I don't think Ariane Design exactly go out of their way to make themselves loved...Some people's comments about them which are less than favourable are not entirely without justification. Ariane's activation process is certainly a pain in the &@($* from a time point of view, and since the Ariane FS9 737 is known to have been pirated and torrented, it's debatable whether it is justified in terms of success. 48 hours is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things (although my own FSX 737 took a lot longer than that to activate actually), but there's no denying it could be better.I'm no fan of their payware repaint policy either. Of course it is their choice to go that way, but for the best part of a ton in cash, I think a more usable plain white paint job thrown in might be nice, or maybe even a paint kit. I suspect that might make them more money, as opposed to less. I repainted the thing myself in the way I wanted it, but not everyone is inclined to do that, so I really do think more widespread paint jobs would garner them better sales and more revenue than selling paint jobs to the few who are not put off by that policy.Their somewhat secretive nature doesn't help either, and there are other things I could mention which I won't go into here that have soured Ariane for some people, although in fairness I do think that is mostly ancient history nowadays, but given that a reputation can be hard to build, they could certainly do more to kick things off. Part of where I ended up coming from in the review I wrote was geared toward bridging that divide when I found out more about where Ariane are coming from, as I'm not one for opening old wounds. Despite my dislike of their repaint stance, it is a consumer choice to go with it, so my only real gripe with them is their activation times and the delay with their Nav Data Manager.My experience with Ariane has been mostly positive despite the things I'm less than keen on, although by no stretch of the imagination could the purchase and activation of the two Ariane 737s I own be described as trouble free. Nevertheless, the above minus points are more in the vein of taking the 'everyman' point of view one has to adopt when reviewing stuff, which is certainly what I did when examining the thing. But for all that, when I got the things up and running, it was worth the wait.They are certainly not perfect, but right now I think for both FS9 and FSX, they are the ones I would choose to drive in favour of anything else with 737 painted on the side of it in FS. Whether that will still be the case when PMDG's NG finally arrives is anyone's guess, but I don't think it is as clear cut a case as some might imagine, especially in light of what I was told Ariane had up their sleeve on the QT.Al

I call it the forum echo-chamber effect. On the other hand, a reputation is something takes years to build and can be tossed away in an instant.Well, I've called it a day with mine. No matter what I put in for a Gross Weight in the FMC, it says invalid entry. I have read it off the Fuel / Payload page exactly as instructed. And entered every possible variation thereof.

HelloIt is a long time since I flew my Ariane BBj but here is what I was told to to do back then by ArianePause the sim.Go to the FSX fuel and payload page and take a note of the Gross weight.Enter that into the FMC.unpause the simThat should work, If not try it with nothing running I.E engines or APU, The reason I was given was that the engines or APU was still using fuel even when you went to and from the FS fuel and payload page, therefore by the time it checked if your input into the FMC was correct your gross weight will have changed on account of the weight of fuel used.

I call it the forum echo-chamber effect. On the other hand, a reputation is something takes years to build and can be tossed away in an instant.Well, I've called it a day with mine. No matter what I put in for a Gross Weight in the FMC, it says invalid entry. I have read it off the Fuel / Payload page exactly as instructed. And entered every possible variation thereof. Challenges are nice; gotchas suck.Guess I'll check out the support for-- oh, yeah.

Probably an overloaded passenger row, you need to check for that as well as the fuel weight, I normally go through the seat rows and make sure they are all below a certain weight (just type in 999 for all passenger rows if you want to do that quickly). If you check the exterior is might be showing a remove before flight tag on the forward cargo hold with an overload warning on it, which is there to indicate that it is not loaded safely, is out of trim or is over MTOW. The Ariane 737 can be very picky about being loaded up properly, but then again, that's one of the plus points if you like realism.I'd suggest firing an email to: [email protected] if your forum activation is not enabled, although the forum itself is not strictly a support forum and is actually more in the nature of a 'semi official' fan site, Ariane tend to do support via email, which would be to that same email address.Incidentally, I've not found that 'your aircraft is using fuel and so the value you need to put in the FMC changes' malarkey to be the case whenever I've set the thing up, its always been some kind of incorrect loading that's been behind it. In fact, I've often put in a completely different and 'incorrect' fuel weight valiue into the FMC to fool the aircraft into doing what I wanted it to in terms of take off thrust, which is a useful trick when doing those dodgy high altitude take off with tons of cargo in Air Hauler LOLAl

HelloI would not hold your breath waiting for that Navdata Editor.Back in 2007 I was helping to test a tool to configure the ariane MCP panel with external hardware.The Navdata tool was "nearly ready" back then.The Goflight/external hardware config tool actually worked but was never released as far as I know.The same functionality is now available in Fsuipc so it's no loss.

HelloIt is a long time since I flew my Ariane BBj but here is what I was told to to do back then by ArianePause the sim.Go to the FSX fuel and payload page and take a note of the Gross weight.Enter that into the FMC.unpause the simThat should work, If not try it with nothing running I.E engines or APU, The reason I was given was that the engines or APU was still using fuel even when you went to and from the FS fuel and payload page, therefore by the time it checked if your input into the FMC was correct your gross weight will have changed on account of the weight of fuel used.

You know, I thought of that very thing, because I noticed with the APU going the weight was a moving target. But even with everything off, and a static weight, it didn't work. I also thought about the load, but the tutorial just said if flying with MAX fuel (nowhere close) make sure everything is less than 1200 per box. So I'll check out that issue. Perhaps it comes down to a tutorial that could be more accurate.Getting back to the point about them not seeming like another add-on company, their tutorial spends a lot of time on basic flight sim stuff like setting up views, etc. Actually, I learned a couple of things.

Yeah, I know they keep saying that, and I've heard various versions of it's been in development of two/four years (delete date depending on which version you hear LOL). But, I did also hear that it was actually in beta fairly recently, however, they are supposed to be getting Navigraph support anyway. I hope that it doesn't get shelved in light of that, as I think the NDM has a lot of promise if what they say about its capabilities is true. It would be great to make your own SID/STAR database with a GUI.Al

Yeah, I know they keep saying that, and I've heard various versions of it's been in development of two/four years (delete date depending on which version you hear LOL). But, I did also hear that it was actually in beta fairly recently, however, they are supposed to be getting Navigraph support anyway. I hope that it doesn't get shelved in light of that, as I think the NDM has a lot of promise if what they say about its capabilities is true. It would be great to make your own SID/STAR database with a GUI.Al

Al, it was in beta in 07 I have just had a look back through my email exchanges with Ariane.I actually like my BBJ and still fly it when I fire up FS9 and I always had terrific support from Arianeespecially ED.I really think that if they lowered their pricing and cut all the smoke and mirrors stuff that they would sell a lot more product.They could also engage their customers more in the flight simulation forums, and if something is not working or 100% accurate just hold their hands up, tell the users that they are working on it and just generally stop bullshitting their way around issues.I am really looking forward to your review, I might even get the new FSX version if it is much improved from my BBJ.I also hope you review a certain DC-9 that is getting most of my flying time lately :-)

In case it is too hard to read, the gross weight is 157.688. I have 10,000 lbs in each cargo hold, and no more than 999 lbs in each row. No flags, warnings, whatever. I am typing in 157.688 into LSK 1L, and getting Invalid Entry every time. I sent an email to Ariane. I'm going to put this aside for awhile and come back to it when I get a reply. Thanks for your suggestions.

In case it is too hard to read, the gross weight is 157.688. I have 10,000 lbs in each cargo hold, and no more than 999 lbs in each row. No flags, warnings, whatever. I am typing in 157.688 into LSK 1L, and getting Invalid Entry every time.

Hello TimTry just the figure 157 or round it up to 158I will fire up FS9 and see if I can jog my memory on this issue.

Thanks, but no dice. I have tried every round up, round down, eliminate various positions after the decimal point, in short everything close to 157.688. I have tried putting the ZFW derived from adding empty weight and payload in as a substitute.Maybe I'll try one more thing: a fresh flight from scratch other than their tutorial setup.

Thanks, but no dice. I have tried every round up, round down, eliminate various positions after the decimal point, in short everything close to 157.688. I have tried putting the ZFW derived from adding empty weight and payload in as a substitute.Maybe I'll try one more thing: a fresh flight from scratch other than their tutorial setup.

Here, I only can make this work by typing +/- 6,000 less than the displayed value in the payload window.

Here, I only can make this work by typing +/- 6,000 less than the displayed value in the payload window.

I subtracted 6000 lbs from my listed gross weight and it accepted it.Nice. My "flying day" is pretty much spent. Oh well, there were squirrels and birds outside my window next to my computer, so it isn't like the afternoon was entirely without entertainment for the price of a handful of birdseed.Well, thank you. I'd like to know the logic behind this and the implications. How did you figure this out, I'm curious? There was an FAQ mention of this issue, but talked about the fuel flow and also suggested eliminating the decimal point (neither of which worked).

Okay, -6000 inexplicable pounds aside, I got everything programmed in and took off from Seattle for San Francisco. Once airborne, things went smoothly. The HUD is a very interesting and unusual addition. This is a complicated airplane! Does anyone have the extra printed material? I was curious as to what it added, and whether it was well-written and organized.We had our spat today and weren't on speaking terms for awhile. Things are tenatively better. This is certainly unlike anything else I have. I suppose I'll find out what they mean about VNAV PATH not being fully implemented on the way down?