Well, that's true about the 'serious' thing, but to be fair, a 'lite' treatment of a simulated aircraft in FS doesn't necessarily mean one has to take a light approach to how one flies it. I certainly have just as much respect for the developers of 'lite' sim stuff as I have for those who do the complex treatments.There is a perception among some simmers that only fully realistic simulations of FS aircraft are suitable for serious simmers, but there is in fact nothing that could be more unlike the real world of airliner operation, than one person doing both the job of the co-pilot and the pilot at the same time, unless simulating one of the pilots having died en-route like you were in some dodgy action movie. So I take the view that an aircraft which allows us to simulate having deferred functions that the other pilot would be handling can actually make a lite treatment more of a realistic P1 experience, providing what is left out is selected carefully, which is exactly what Quality wings have done with their 757.In view of that, it will be interesting to see how this MD and indeed Just flight's new 'lite' Airbus A320 fair in terms of sales.Al

Well, that's true about the 'serious' thing, but to be fair, a 'lite' treatment of a simulated aircraft in FS doesn't necessarily mean one has to take a light approach to how one flies it. I certainly have just as much respect for the developers of 'lite' sim stuff as I have for those who do the complex treatments.There is a perception among some simmers that only fully realistic simulations of FS aircraft are suitable for serious simmers, but there is in fact nothing that could be more unlike the real world of airliner operation, than one person doing both the job of the co-pilot and the pilot at the same time, unless simulating one of the pilots having died en-route like you were in some dodgy action movie. So I take the view that an aircraft which allows us to simulate having deferred functions that the other pilot would be handling can actually make a lite treatment more of a realistic P1 experience, providing what is left out is selected carefully, which is exactly what Quality wings have done with their 757.In view of that, it will be interesting to see how this MD and indeed Just flight's new 'lite' Airbus A320 fair in terms of sales.Al

I agree.I like the aircraft a lot. No, it doesn't have a functional FMC but it is not as light as their other aircraft. I think this is their best product to date.One thing that really impressed me was that a number of my suggestions from the beta made it in to the final version. I really feel like they listened. Almost none of my suggestions were actual bugs; there were suggestions on how to make the product more user friendly - particularly when flying in the VC.

Haven't had time too fly her. but Ill tell you this at least to me this is hands down the best model of the md-80 very detailed for that alone I would buy it but then again I love the md-80. :(

If you are attempting to justify buying it when you already have other MD's, that's not hard to do; although it is intended to be a simpler affair than some of the other MDs that are available, that's enough of a justification for buying it, since you may not always want to spend a long time doing pre-flights and such every time you fancy driving an aircraft of that type.There are plenty of simmers out there (me included) who will happily buy several versions of an identical aircraft for just that reason, for example, I have the PMDG 747, the CLS 747 and the AeroSim 747, two of those being completely identical 400 series variants, and to be honest, I fly the simpler ones more often than the complex ones, even though there is no doubt that the more complex one is the most accomplished simulated version.There is also the fact that the new CLS one is a dedicated FSX model too, so if you wanted to run other stuff such as Radar Contact and MCE etc at the same time, then the new CLS one will probably get you better frame rates than a ported-over version whilst doing so.Al

Very true...and I spend too much money as you do having several different payware aircraft of the same type. It's funny how many of us ask these questions just so that we can justify buying another addon! Fortunately, my wife doesn't give me a hard time for spending money on this stuff since I don't fly the real airplanes as much anymore. At $120 per hour in the Cherokee that gets me maybe three new planes; what a deal. Of course, I still need to fly enough to stay current, but I probably fly about a third of what I used to, and I can sim with a beer in hand, which is hard to beat. Thanks to all for your input.Cheers, Pete