Payware aircraft frustrations .... I give up (long rant...

[Jimmy Angel 19]

Please forgive this rant, but I am at my wits end.Based on some good reviews and word-of-mouth, I purchased the Carenado Centurion today. I've been flying it for the past couple of hours.At first, I was really happy. It looks great, and I loved some of the touches on the virtual cockpit (such as the subtle glass reflections). Then, I noticed the gauge movement was as stuttery as I've ever seen. It was nearly impossible for me to attain level flight without bouncing around because the VSI was so far behind the plane movements. I played with the various detail settings to open up some fps headroom, but even when running at a locked and solid 25fps the gauge movement did not improve. Also, in banked turns there was a severe sort of stutter effect that was very noticable even though the fps did not drop at all. I have tried a million tweaks all without effect.This is the third payware GA plane I have tried, and the third one that will be going to waste. The Dreamfleet Cardinal is great, but I have spent the last two weeks trying to get it to fly without an ocassional pause in the sim that was very irritating. I'll be flying along straight and level and get a chunk-chunk-chunk as the fps drops to 1 or 2 for a moment. This only happens with this plane.I also have the FSD Commander. This is probably the best of the lot in terms of performance, but it isn't as smooth as I would like, and--to be honest--FSD support has always sort of put me off. I wrote them a while ago about a disappearing gauge, and I got the usual "this is your system. No one else has reported it." Then, I happened to look on the site yesterday and I see this long thread where someone is asking about the same problem, and he gets the "no one else has reported it" response, followed by several posts where people say "I've got the same problem and I've reported it." In my limited dealings with FSD, they have this way of automatically assuming the worst about their customers.I have a fairly robust system, and it is tweaked so that the default planes all give me a constant, smooth fps in weather, urban areas, whatever ... I fully expect that I will take a performance hit with a detailed payware aircraft, but the problem isn't so much in fps as it is in just smooth flight without hiccups. It totally ruins the immersion to have things start chugging along, if even only for a second.I fully realize that there are plenty of people who will tell me that these planes work great for them, and I believe it. I don't know what the issue with my system is. I don't have any problems with the defaults and things like scenery add-ons, and I've tweaked and tweaked and tweaked some more but I am done doing that.So, I'm giving up, and sticking with the default planes. With the flight model from the good people at Realair, the C172 is fun to fly, though I sure wish Microsoft had plugged all of the holes in the virtual cockpit that leaves you looking through gaps if you happen to adjust your viewpoint.Does anyone know of any improved FS2004 flight models for any other default planes? I'm particularly interested in something that offers proper rudder control, since the defaults all have this habit of flying coordinated whether you like it or not.I wish I could give away these downloaded planes to someone, since they aren't doing me any good. I also wish that some of the payware folks would perhaps look into offering a "try before you buy" option, and it would be great if there was someone producing payware planes that offered accurate flight dynamics but perhaps without all of the eye candy. Give us some cool planes for $12 or $15 that have a great flight model but perhaps don't have photo-realistic VC textures or completely sharp gauges--planes that offer the same level of performance as the defaults. I'd buy a bunch of those if anyone made them. I've looked at a lot of freeware, but haven't found anything that is up to at least the visual quality of the defaults in the VC.Am I alone in this frustration?

[Guest Bigshot]

I hear you. That's probably the number one reason I seldom buy anything. When something new comes out, if I take an interest, I always wait till the reports come in. Almost always, there's some kind of performance complaints even with high end machines. If someone would make a good looking aircraft with a bunch of liveries, with a very nice 2d panel that I can swap out to another aircraft if I wanted too, with or without a VC, great flightmodel, with no bells and whistles, with good performance, I'd buy it. So far, as far as I can tell, that hasn't happened. If you find one, let me know?I did buy the Beech 400 and got the Premier for free; but it was a painful transition to FS9. Both the Beech and Premier now work fine in FS9 with good performance after having to convert the interior bmps to DXT1 textures myself and reworking the FMs so they felt right with a FFB stick.

[Guest SoarPics]

Hi Jimmy,Yep, it's all getting a bit frustrating. Alot of this falls to MicroSoft... I believe the third party developers (both payware and freeware) would have a much easier time if they had the SDK's.I use to buy any new GA aircraft that came out. But I'm not buying presently. I can recommend the Lancair Legacy, though it's author readily admits that the VC gauge update was compromised to keep framerates up. It's a wonderful airplane... I fly it alot.Also, the new Super Decathlon is very nice. Great flight dynamics, nice VC... just a great effort.Of course, all these are free. The Vinka works great in FS9. The Aero Commanders and Viper. Bill and Lynn Lyons great aircraft and scenery. There are numerous freeware aircraft that work so well in FS9. And I can tweak them to my hearts content without worrying about screwing up some licensing strategy.

[Guest Josve]

There got to be something wrong with your system!! I have a huge amount of payware aircraft both for 2002 and 2004 and never experienced any of your problems.My sim runs flawlessly on my XP1800cpu.I do have 256mb more Ram than you and a GF3 ti500 64mb videocard,and I don't have any trobles at all.Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/zone.jpg ][/div

[Jimmy Angel 19]

>>Of course, all these are free.Thanks for the recommendations. I'll give these a look. I also found a twotter (dhc-6_requin.zip) in the library that actually has a fairly nice VC (one of the better I've seen on freeware).I'd really love to have a decent airfile for the default Caravan amphibian. It's a fun plane, but the default rudder control seems pretty whacked-out.

[Guest sbdwag]

For Ninty dollars you could buy 512 megs more of ram and many problems you are having will probably smooth out. In my opinion 512 megs is not enough for Flight Simulator anymoreKind RegardsDennis Waggoner

[RobdeVries 28]

On improved default airfiles, you might wanna take a look here:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Lizardo/

[Guest Bigshot]

Dennis; Unless you have a lot of stuff running in the background, 512mb of ram is plenty for FSim. The sim will only use at most 260mb. Windows XP uses about 160mb max. That's 420mb being used leaving 92mb idle. So anything over 512mb is a waste of money. Unless you're running a whole lot of unnecessary things in the background. If that's the case, turn em' off.

[Guest JeanLuc_]

I would certainly be not called an expert and all the following could be wrong, but if on 512MB you are eating up to 420MB, I would suspect some problems with your AGP Aperture size setting and you may experience performance problem while the sim is trying to load/unload textures (and FS2004 uses more than FS2002). I actually would greatly appreciate some insight from the experienced technical people?!

[Guest cwra6]

I'm not so sure. I have had my Windows XP system monitor running for the past month now every time I fly. I have never, I repeat, never seen it use more than half a gig of RAM, even with a small page file. If you have then I'd like to know your secret. I have 764 megs of RAMBUS in my old Dell 8100. Colin Ware

[Guest allcott]

>I'd really love to have a decent airfile for the default Caravan >amphibian. It's a fun plane, but the default rudder control seems >pretty whacked-out.Why? To save others asking you for your expertise in this area I'll ask first - how many hours do you have in Caravans?Allcott

[Jimmy Angel 19]

>>Why? To save others asking you for your expertise in this area>I'll ask first - how many hours do you have in Caravans? I have exactly zero hours in any sort of plane, and I do not profess to be an expert or even someone with more than a rudimentary understanding of this stuff. You will notice my use of the term "Seems".Nevertheless, I would assume that it is necessary to use rudder control in this plane to execute a coordinated turn, and the rudder control seems very resistant to this. I am comparing the general behavior of the rudder in all of the defaults to the behavior of the rudder in planes such as the Dreamfleet Cardinal and the RealAir C172SP, both of which respond very nicely to rudder input within a turn. For example, In the default C172, the ball always bounces back to the center irrespective of rudder input, while in RealAir's updated airfile for this plane a bit of rudder input is necessary to hold a coordinated turn. I can't quite put my finger on what is happening with the 208, but I do know that I have a very tough time determining how much rudder to put into a turn, because the black ball seems to act of its own accord.If I'm wrong, please educate me, rather than simply demanding the number of hours I've got in the real thing.

[qnh 70]

I can understand your frustration. A lot of payware developers do not understand the amount of support that is required of "paid" software writers and as a result they end up providing rather poor support for what may be, to them, a good product. Lago used to offer a try before you buy but they stopped it with the Twin Otter (1st release). I now no longer buy from Lago as the twotter mk 1 was rather poor.I believe that the onus is on the developer to wait for the SDK rather than try to be the first on the block to release a product for a new version. No I don't want to hear about how Microsoft should have released the SDK with the sim so don't start! :)I am currently waiting on a developer to "fix" the product that I purchased and I have been waiting for over a month now. That's ok, I am patient, to a point.The freeware to payware developers need to look beyond the attraction of cash to the ongoing business and what is required to generate that ongoing business.just my thoughts.--qnh

[Guest sbdwag]

Unless you have a lot of stuff running in the backgroundRight!Tell that to PMDG or Captian Sim or Simflyers.Dennis