Suddenly, "vintage" aircraft are popular?

[turner112 52]

This is certainly not to knock the buffs of the genre - -but-Where were you? According to the "other" (long) series of posts discussing the pros and cons of the age of the newly included aircraft, lots of folks can't wait for, at least, the DC-3.However, I'm compelled to wonder, then, with what me might see as a latent but large community of fans of vintage aircraft, why we haven't seen our library fill up with this type of craft.Certainly it's not for lack of talented designers and modelers. Certainly it's not for lack of information and drawings and historical performance figures.What then?I am pleased with what seem like significant upgrades to the flight environment - and I realize that not everyone wants to fly general aviation aircraft - but there have been many more significant "flagships" in aviation history, or, at least, many more well-known and well-regarded ones which are not 50+ years old and should have been included. V-tails? Cessna 152? New ones - Glasair, or what have you - modern, single-engine, glass-cockpit aircraft, as well as the Wright which will only be flown as a novelty.(And will the Wright monument finally make an appearance?)I also realize that we obviously have a large community of people already creating "new" aircraft - but, like I suggested earlier, if the interest in the vintage aircraft models is so sweeping, why are there so few people (if any?) building them?I think the idea that far fewer people are interested in actually >flying< most of the historic aircraft than actually looking at them.I'll certainly try them out for the novelty, but to simulate anything other than pretending I'm ferrying airshow material, or flying them from simple curiosity, I'll be flying the more modern stuff.

[Guest]

>This is certainly not to knock the buffs of the genre - >yes it is...>>Where were you? According to the "other" (long) series of>posts discussing the pros and cons of the age of the newly>included aircraft, lots of folks can't wait for, at least, the>DC-3.>yup.>However, I'm compelled to wonder, then, with what me might see>as a latent but large community of fans of vintage aircraft,>why we haven't seen our library fill up with this type of>craft.>there's a constant stream of them, but they're flooded by the gazillion repaints of POSKY and Meljet (and now FFX) jetliners, sometimes 3 or 4 versions of the same livery on a single day (one day I noticed someone uploading repaints of every single aircraft of a certain type of one airline at once, only difference being the registration...).>Certainly it's not for lack of talented designers and>modelers. >It is, actually. There's not many people with the talents to create those aircraft and most of them do the same few models over and over again.>Certainly it's not for lack of information and drawings and>historical performance figures.>Actually, it is... For the older aircraft no detailed data is readily available, and no highres drawings either.>I am pleased with what seem like significant upgrades to the>flight environment - and I realize that not everyone wants to>fly general aviation aircraft - but there have been many more>significant "flagships" in aviation history, or, at least,>many more well-known and well-regarded ones which are not 50+>years old and should have been included. V-tails? Cessna 152?>New ones - Glasair, or what have you - modern, single-engine,>glass-cockpit aircraft, as well as the Wright which will only>be flown as a novelty.>They had to make a choice, and this was the choice that was made.Given the theme of the sim, the Wright Flyer was a must.>I'll certainly try them out for the novelty, but to simulate>anything other than pretending I'm ferrying airshow material,>or flying them from simple curiosity, I'll be flying the more>modern stuff.And you want to force everyone else to do the same by stopping the creation of old aircraft because "there's noone flying them BECAUSE there's not as many as jetliners".

[LAdamson 240]

850,000+ migrate to Oshkosh Wis. every year for the EAA Air Adventure in which approx. 12,000 aircraft fly in. Many of these are "vintage", re-builds, and re-creations. There must be some real interest out there in real aviation land.Besides............ I could care less about Cessna 152's :)L.Adamson

[Brian_Gladden 0]

I build nothing but Small GA planes... The biggest I've built to date is my PC-12. I've also built a few vintage birds like the Cessna 140 and Piper Tripacer. I also make homebuilts like the Zenith and RV-6. And by the download counts of theses files, plenty of people like vintage/GA/homebuilt planes. Now add in Steve Grant's stuff, Carendo, Dreamfleet, FSD, Dave Eckert, Tim Conrad, Mikko Malenimi and countless others (well ones I can pull off the top of my head anyway) and you will see that there is quit a bit of intrest in Small planes. I leave the big iron to Posky/Mel Jet, CSI and others.And I think everyone is missing the point of COF it's the century of flight. the planes included in the "vintage" group are all planes that set major avation milestones. The Wright Flyer is pretty obvious of course. The Jenny taught most of the pilots in the 20's how to fly, The Vimy was the first plane to cross the Atlantic non stop, Lindbergh did it solo in the Spirit from NY to Paris (and learned to fly in a Jenny) The DH Comet won the race from london to Sydney in record time on the route pionered by the Vimy. without the DC-3 comercial avation wouldn't be what it is today, not to mention all the work it did in WWII. Wiley Post flew the Vega around the world and set many a record in his vega and developed the first pressure suit for altitude flights in the Vega. And Amelia flew a Vega across the pond too. Since this is a civilian sim, they left out alot of the WWII inovations but those are covered pretty well in CFS 2. The 50's are not well represented but the lack of a Beech may be a result of Raytheon not liscencing the Bonanza to MS like their crosstown rival Cessna. So we get a Mooney thats rebuilt. Fair trade for me and I fly the Carendo V-35 all the time. The 60's to date are covered well by the 737, 747, 777 and the Cessnas. other than avionics and HP the 182 hasn't changed much in 30 years and if a 1973 182 and a 2003 182 were parked next to each other and had the same paint job you would have trouble telling them apart at 20 feet. The Lear 45 was one of the first Biz jets designed wholly by CAD and was an innovation in that industry.On the whole I think they have covered the "Century of Flight" quite well. not to mention the muchly improved envirorment to fly them in to boot. And like in other threads people have been bashing MS for making more planes instead of making something else in the sim better, well even for MS a plane is easy to make compared to getting the autogen to work. soo adding a bunch of plane sisn't all that much to detract from the team making the new weather.My $0.02Brian

[Guest Lizardo]

There are quite a few already. Fleets, Cessnas..just about all of them and a 195 is on the way), Monocoupes, trimotors, at least one V tail (and a pay one too), Beech, Grumman, Curtiss, Wright...

[jcboliveira 1]

There are some people that truly love them; personally I see vintage aircrafts directly linked to vintage flights. It could take several months to prepare the flight. I don

[Guest cw1011]

It may also be that it is simply difficult to get specs for desigining and building these planes. MAAM certainly has an advantage there. They can measure to their heart's content and build wonderful cockpits with thousands of digital images. Not a lot of folks have access to the planes or the numbers. Colin

[turner112 52]

>And you want to force everyone else to do the same by stopping>the creation of old aircraft because "there's noone flying>them BECAUSE there's not as many as jetliners".I never suggested anything remotely similar to this!Silly.Andrew

[turner112 52]

Hi Brian - >...you will>see that there is quit a bit of intrest in Small planes.Oh, and I have quite a bit of interest in "small" planes - I fly them more than the "big" ones ;) but I think there was some room for a few more up-to-date ones.Andrew

[tgibson 11]

Hi,I actually agree with you - the majority of FS flyers do prefer the new stuff (modern GA or the jets). I would estimate that the ratio is something like:Vintage GA: 10%Vintage Airliners: 10%Military: 15%Modern GA: 25%Modern Airliners: 40%However, keep in mind that from FS5 to FS2002 MS has added ONLY modern aircraft - our vintage minority has gotten nothing. So I look upon this as MS just playing catch up - all at once!That said, there is a nice group of people who are interested in vintage flying - my small part of that group (propliners from the DC-4/L-049 to the DC-7C/L-1649A) give me an average of almost 800 visits per day to my site - that's quite a few!!As for no vintage aircraft being released, they may be overshadowed by the jets but Greg Pepper alone has released the Beech 18, the CV-580, the CV-240/340/440, the DC-6/DC-6B, and lots of others. Mike Stone has released the Britannia, the CL-44, the F-27, and the Boeing Stratocruiser. Vintage Aircraft Works has released the Boeing Stratoliner (with a Connie on the way). Historic Jets Group has released the L-10 Electra, and another Connie is on the way from them. Allied Flight Group has released the YS-11. Rick Piper has released the Viscount, the Vanguard, and the Herald. And there are others I haven't mentioned (sorry!). Vintage airliners have never been so popular and so prolific!I'm sure that the next version will concentrate on something else, so there may be more for you next time. In the meantime, I'm just glad that MS chose to honor the History of Flight this time, and provided some great aircraft to fly.Take care,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

[Guest]

Interesting thoughts, turner112. I'm not a pilot, but I was around when the DC-3 was standard equippment, though at the tail end of that era. Also, I was lucky enough to enjoy free stand by flight privileges on PBAs DC-3s. That was 20 years ago now! Where were you 20 years ago? There aren't as many as I'd like to see, but there's enough older A/C to make it fun and diverse, from a little Comper Swift to a majestic DC-6. After having done it, I can say that it's quite a challenge to put an open cockpit biplane with an exposed radial engine together for FS. No harder than building a modern jet liner, maybe, except that there certainly is not, in my opinion a wealth of readily available reference material. I'm using stuff my father gave me 50 years ago. Glad I'm a pack rat or I'd be lost. But if you're starting now, you may have problems aquiring reference material. The WWII aircraft are well documented, but not as many from buisness and personal aviation. To build the Fleet, I used plans from a 1967 AAHS article. I do have an A&E ticket and have spent 50years + /- studying the subject, to the point where my intuition serves me pretty well. On another issue, an aircraft may be well known to you because you may be part of it's time frame. To me, "well known" means Stearman, Waco, Cub, DC-3, Connie, OTW and so on. After the 1950s my interest falls off, therefore those aircraft built after that are not well known to me. Personally, I couldn't care less about Cessna 152s or Lear jets or Garmin GPSs'. I practically flew the fabric off Manny Medels J-3, but I've NEVER flown the default aircraft of FS2k2. To me, simple planes and panels, under 5k feet, grass strips, that's flying. And that's the beauty of FS. It appeals to all aviation interests, pretty much. I have 3 vintage aircraft under developement, myself, and thankfully MS has chosen to focus a little on our past (at last) instead of the present. Because of that, it may be easier for us vintage flyers to enjoy FS. Now, some vintage is "built in" instead of always "added on".telephile

[barryward12345 0]

> Greg Pepper alone has released>the Beech 18, I went for a joyflight in one of these a couple of weeks ago - and let me say that it was far more interesting and exciting than going for a flight in a B737!! :)Barry

[bob.bernstein 0]

Isn't this post and many others of similar message attempting to show Microsoft that they've made a mistake?It has very little actually to do with user polls over which airplane they like, or which genre is best represented or anything else. The decision to market the product against the century of flight theme was a Microsoft decision, made probably a year or more ago, its not a topic that's up for debate, So what could be the point of debating it? Especially when you are debating with people that don't work for microsoft?Bob Bernstein

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"Where were you?"I think building the vintage aircraft is a far more complex undertaking than building some of the newer aircraft. I'm a huge fan of Bill Lyon's Jenny, as an example. It's not an aircraft I would choose as my next project--I just don't have that patience. And some builders struggle with minor issues, like getting the shape of the flap canoes right on their releases. A Jenny, or a Wright flyer, is a 5000 piece puzzle vs. a 500 piece puzzle--at least, that's the way I see it. I fly it often, and I received more attention in the screenshots forum over posts of the Jenny, than I did in my recent posts of the ES Beechjet.But I'm with you on some of the other aircraft that may have made the classic mix more potent.... In 1977, Flying Magazine put out a 75 years of flight issue....and among the fine features of that issue, included a listing of what it considered classic aircraft. Newer aircraft were included along with the old. I wish a Lancair IV-P could have been thrown into the FS2004 release, or even something like a Jabiru Microlight--with the coming Sport Pilot class, I am sure some Microlight's will reach classic status... Or even the Cartercopter--which is flying today (that is, when it's not in pieces)....

[Guest]

I dont see how you can look at the posts in these forums, and feel that Microsoft has made a mistake. This forum although a pretty large sample of the flight sim community is quite small compared to the Number of people who actually buy flight simulator. People keep Complaining about the aircraft that are included, but how many actually fly the aircraft included in fs2002 without some improvement (Being FM updates, or whatever)? I like historic aircraft, and frankly get bored trying to find a good 737 since their are 63000000 of them. This doesn't mean that I am going to complain because MS updated the 737... I didn't complain when they added the 777 even though I might have liked to see another plane. Why didnt I complain? Because the sim in a whole had improved. I would buy this sim for the weather enhancements alone, as I am sure many would. The debate over the included A/C is getting quite old, and I doubt when it comes to it that Folks here will put off buying it because it doesn't include an accurate FMC...Just my thoughtsAl