Pro Flight Emulator thoughts

[psolk 3,040]

I was a Proflight 2000 user from FS98 and would really like use it again as PFE. However, I have read about some issues in various forums and it would be nice if a current user give me some insight on it. Some of the posts are old, so I don't know if these issues are still there after the latest patch or not. 1. You can't request a runway change on take off or landing? False2. When in cruise sometimes you don't hear center instructing you to start descending, so unless you have auto reply you will miss it? never experienced that in years of using PFE3. Kaspersky reports that there is a virus when you start the flight from PFE? Don't use kaspersky but big deal, it is false positive so ignore it4. Uninstalling PFE would delete some .dll files from windows system folder? Again, never experienced that at all I really want to buy it but the price isn't cheap especially with the sound enhancement.

[nam1394 10]

Thanks for the reply. I finally had the courage and bought it. By the way while I was surfing the before your reply I found this thread in the official forums which one of the users talk about issues 2 and 4. http://www.ocs-support.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=732

[psolk 3,040]

No worries Nam, refer to the quickie tutorial above and post back if you have any questions, more than happy to try and help,-P

[nam1394 10]

Thank you psolk. Cheers

[kiwiflyer45 123]

Thanks for the reply. I finally had the courage and bought it.By the way while I was surfing the before your reply I found this thread in the official forums which one of the users talk about issues 2 and 4. http://www.ocs-suppo...c.php?f=4&t=732

I will look forward to hearing what you, as a new user, have to say about it. I am very close to pulling out the old credit card but still hesitating just a little

[nam1394 10]

I will look forward to hearing what you, as a new user, have to say about it. I am very close to pulling out the old credit card but still hesitating just a little

Sure thing. Just give me a couple of days testing it and I will give you a full report.

[BenW 0]

Well chaps, I've been testing PFE pretty exhaustively over the weekend. I've got my head around it a bit more now and feel suitably qualified to give an informed opinion on it thus far. My initial thoughts on the immersion side still stand. I've only flown in the UK with it so far (apart from two flights to Dublin and Cork) so can't comment on foreign controllers but I am a big fan of the audio engine in PFE and the sounds are superbly done. Controller transmissions even contain hiss and squelch noise and the delivery is fluid and lifelike. I like the fact that each airline's pilot voices are the right nationality (it was nice to have a Pakistan Airways flight on the frequency, sounding exactly like they do in real life!) and some aircraft transmissions are faint and scratchy, simulating the flight being almost out of radio range for your aircraft despite the controller himself being loud and clear. Certainly from creating a realistic ATC environment around you point of view, there's nothing better. Users hopping over to this from RC, however, will find some aspects of PFE rather frustrating and clunky. First off with a single monitor you can't have the PFE display utility which shows you the various ATC selections available to you. Of course the selections change depending on whether you're tuned to tower, clearance, approach, centre etc so pressing '2' on one frequency won't help you on the next and of course you're trying to remember who you're tuned to - am I still on ground, or tower, or in the air approach, or centre, or tower? I know in real life you need to remember these things but It REALLY needs an interface within the sim to show these options. Secondly RC gives you manual control over getting the ATIS, clearance, push back clearance, taxi clearance and then departure clearance, via the numeric keys and selections available in the display window and once you're underway you can have the copilot look after everything and auto reply. PFE in its wisdom does a bit of both and it's a tad confusing to figure out when it does what where. For example you need to tune the ATIS yourself. Okay no problem. But then if you want to get your clearance and then push back clearance separately this involves changing your virtual co pilot mode to 'off' or when you tune for initial contact he rattles all the way through both, getting clearance and then calling for push and start whilst you've still got the jetway attached and the passengers are still trying to squeeze their luggage in the overhead bins. Changing the mode is apparently as simple as pressing control+shift+V, although (through lack of display showing it) I'm concerned that I won't know which mode he's in to get him back to the radios so I simply get everything ready for departure and AES hooked up before calling for the clearance and the push back. It's an annoyance, to be honest. In the real world your clearance comes some time before the actual push back. Anyhow once started up and pushed back you then have to tune yourself (what's the lazy assed copilot up to?) for taxi clearance (hope you remembered the frequency they gave you during the clearance!) and when it comes it's fast, so be on the ball for it. Thirdly, PFE does some weird stuff to your flight plan. It drops waypoints that are close together which is fine but I did a Bristol to Teesside flight and it dropped all the waypoints apart from BADIM, which is barely 10 miles to the north of Bristol. This meant that after BADIM I was given vectors all the way to Teesside, 150 miles to the north! Thankfully Teesside has an NDB that I could drop into the legs page to give me some situational awareness on the ND but it hardly made for a realistic flight. I also had to plug it manually into the FMC as the PFE route was different from the route originally given to me by Vroute. The beauty of RC is that you can drop in your flight plan from vRoute or FSBuild and away you go, the route you've plugged into it is the one you've got on your FMC. Another challenge came at Birmingham where PFE gave me the weirdest ever taxi instructions to runway 15. I've drawn a little picture so you can see it. Across the runway, past the cargo hub, up to the active, along the active and then left back along alpha to the runway! After this marathon I needed some more fuel! And PFE won't give you take off clearance until you've completed this little rally although googling the forum tells me that you can turn off the taxi guidance and then tune straight to the tower at the holding point and request take off. Although turning off taxi guidance involves....knowing which keys to press (which is dependent on who you're tuned to, of course) and there's no display to tell you, so you're trying to taxi and figure this out at the same time. Annoying. I must add though that a second flight from here using runway 33 gave me perfect taxi instructions! Once you're in the air it generally goes well. I flew the TNT4E SID all the way up to the SID height of 6000, before PFE came in to climb me to 7000. After TNT (the end of the SID) I was climbed to FL120 and then brought back down to 10,000 for the arrival into Teesside. There are no STARS at Teesside of course, so I was vectored for the final. The vectoring was nicely done and quite challenging to fly as you're asked to descend and slow down at the same time, initially to 240 knots, then 210, then 180 and 160. This adds a nice level of realism that RC doesn't do. I was turned onto base at about 15DME on the ILS and intercepted the LOC and GS at around 12DME, which worked out pretty well. The unpredictability of the speeds and vectors adds a bit of tension to the proceedings and that I liked. I'd already changed the settings so as not to be slowed down by PFE below 160 knots as out of the box it'll ask you to slow to 140 knots around 10 miles out, which is unrealistic and a tad dangerous in a heavy 737-800! Once on the ground your VCP will contact ground once you're clear of the active. You invariably are asked to hold position, so that gives you a few moments to clean up the aircraft whilst stopped. So PFE has a pretty steep learning curve and I'm still a novice with it, but on balance it's a huge step forward in creating a realistic ATC environment for FS and I must admit that on one particular flight from Bristol to Cork where I used AES, PFE, FDC for my own customised announcements and FS2Crew it all just came together in that way that FS sometimes does. Hearing Irish accented Aer Lingus pilots on frequency for Shannon control along with my own announcements in the back and the FS2Crew PNF doing his things with the checklist in the descent along with a lovely sunrise outside it all just felt wonderfully immersive and all the farting about that we do with this little game of ours seemed worth it. However, there are strange quirks about PFE and it's one of those annoying add ons whereby it seems the only way to get into it is to get it all wrong and swear at it a lot until you figure it all out, which is a bit of shame really. In an ideal world, we'd have something with RC's ease of use along with PFE's audio fidelity and features. That would get my credit card burning!

[kiwiflyer45 123]

Well chaps, I've been testing PFE pretty exhaustively over the weekend. I've got my head around it a bit more now and feel suitably qualified to give an informed opinion on it thus far. My initial thoughts on the immersion side still stand. I've only flown in the UK with it so far (apart from two flights to Dublin and Cork) so can't comment on foreign controllers but I am a big fan of the audio engine in PFE and the sounds are superbly done. Controller transmissions even contain hiss and squelch noise and the delivery is fluid and lifelike. I like the fact that each airline's pilot voices are the right nationality (it was nice to have a Pakistan Airways flight on the frequency, sounding exactly like they do in real life!) and some aircraft transmissions are faint and scratchy, simulating the flight being almost out of radio range for your aircraft despite the controller himself being loud and clear. Certainly from creating a realistic ATC environment around you point of view, there's nothing better. Users hopping over to this from RC, however, will find some aspects of PFE rather frustrating and clunky. First off with a single monitor you can't have the PFE display utility which shows you the various ATC selections available to you. Of course the selections change depending on whether you're tuned to tower, clearance, approach, centre etc so pressing '2' on one frequency won't help you on the next and of course you're trying to remember who you're tuned to - am I still on ground, or tower, or in the air approach, or centre, or tower? I know in real life you need to remember these things but It REALLY needs an interface within the sim to show these options. Secondly RC gives you manual control over getting the ATIS, clearance, push back clearance, taxi clearance and then departure clearance, via the numeric keys and selections available in the display window and once you're underway you can have the copilot look after everything and auto reply. PFE in its wisdom does a bit of both and it's a tad confusing to figure out when it does what where. For example you need to tune the ATIS yourself. Okay no problem. But then if you want to get your clearance and then push back clearance separately this involves changing your virtual co pilot mode to 'off' or when you tune for initial contact he rattles all the way through both, getting clearance and then calling for push and start whilst you've still got the jetway attached and the passengers are still trying to squeeze their luggage in the overhead bins. Changing the mode is apparently as simple as pressing control+shift+V, although (through lack of display showing it) I'm concerned that I won't know which mode he's in to get him back to the radios so I simply get everything ready for departure and AES hooked up before calling for the clearance and the push back. It's an annoyance, to be honest. In the real world your clearance comes some time before the actual push back. Anyhow once started up and pushed back you then have to tune yourself (what's the lazy assed copilot up to?) for taxi clearance (hope you remembered the frequency they gave you during the clearance!) and when it comes it's fast, so be on the ball for it. Thirdly, PFE does some weird stuff to your flight plan. It drops waypoints that are close together which is fine but I did a Bristol to Teesside flight and it dropped all the waypoints apart from BADIM, which is barely 10 miles to the north of Bristol. This meant that after BADIM I was given vectors all the way to Teesside, 150 miles to the north! Thankfully Teesside has an NDB that I could drop into the legs page to give me some situational awareness on the ND but it hardly made for a realistic flight. I also had to plug it manually into the FMC as the PFE route was different from the route originally given to me by Vroute. The beauty of RC is that you can drop in your flight plan from vRoute or FSBuild and away you go, the route you've plugged into it is the one you've got on your FMC. Another challenge came at Birmingham where PFE gave me the weirdest ever taxi instructions to runway 15. I've drawn a little picture so you can see it. Across the runway, past the cargo hub, up to the active, along the active and then left back along alpha to the runway! After this marathon I needed some more fuel! And PFE won't give you take off clearance until you've completed this little rally although googling the forum tells me that you can turn off the taxi guidance and then tune straight to the tower at the holding point and request take off. Although turning off taxi guidance involves....knowing which keys to press (which is dependent on who you're tuned to, of course) and there's no display to tell you, so you're trying to taxi and figure this out at the same time. Annoying. I must add though that a second flight from here using runway 33 gave me perfect taxi instructions! Once you're in the air it generally goes well. I flew the TNT4E SID all the way up to the SID height of 6000, before PFE came in to climb me to 7000. After TNT (the end of the SID) I was climbed to FL120 and then brought back down to 10,000 for the arrival into Teesside. There are no STARS at Teesside of course, so I was vectored for the final. The vectoring was nicely done and quite challenging to fly as you're asked to descend and slow down at the same time, initially to 240 knots, then 210, then 180 and 160. This adds a nice level of realism that RC doesn't do. I was turned onto base at about 15DME on the ILS and intercepted the LOC and GS at around 12DME, which worked out pretty well. The unpredictability of the speeds and vectors adds a bit of tension to the proceedings and that I liked. I'd already changed the settings so as not to be slowed down by PFE below 160 knots as out of the box it'll ask you to slow to 140 knots around 10 miles out, which is unrealistic and a tad dangerous in a heavy 737-800! Once on the ground your VCP will contact ground once you're clear of the active. You invariably are asked to hold position, so that gives you a few moments to clean up the aircraft whilst stopped. So PFE has a pretty steep learning curve and I'm still a novice with it, but on balance it's a huge step forward in creating a realistic ATC environment for FS and I must admit that on one particular flight from Bristol to Cork where I used AES, PFE, FDC for my own customised announcements and FS2Crew it all just came together in that way that FS sometimes does. Hearing Irish accented Aer Lingus pilots on frequency for Shannon control along with my own announcements in the back and the FS2Crew PNF doing his things with the checklist in the descent along with a lovely sunrise outside it all just felt wonderfully immersive and all the farting about that we do with this little game of ours seemed worth it. However, there are strange quirks about PFE and it's one of those annoying add ons whereby it seems the only way to get into it is to get it all wrong and swear at it a lot until you figure it all out, which is a bit of shame really. In an ideal world, we'd have something with RC's ease of use along with PFE's audio fidelity and features. That would get my credit card burning!

"In an ideal world, we'd have something with RC's ease of use along with PFE's audio fidelity and features. That would get my credit card burning!" I think "ideal world" was going to be called RC5 but it seems to have lost itself in FS dreamland! Thank you Ben - I found this to be very helpful.

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[Glynn 405]

the PFE route was different from the route originally given to me by Vroute. The beauty of RC is that you can drop in your flight plan from vRoute or FSBuild and away you go, the route you've plugged into it is the one you've got on your FMC.

HelloGreat review, sums up PFE perfectly.It can be quirky but is ultimately worth the effort and is a welcome break from being told off in RC After Converting your FS Fplan to PF2000 and then compiling, have you tried using the Adjust FS FP for PF2000 buttonThis will sync the flightplan you will use in FS9 with the compiled plan.

[vololiberista 205]

"In an ideal world, we'd have something with RC's ease of use along with PFE's audio fidelity and features. That would get my credit card burning!" I think "ideal world" was going to be called RC5 but it seems to have lost itself in FS dreamland! Thank you Ben - I found this to be very helpful.

I think in an ideal world RC5 would in general be playing catch up to PFE in its current form.vololiberista

[ARCO 245]

Has any of you PFE users utilised the time acceleration of FS and, if so, what result did you get?Thank you.

[nam1394 10]

Has any of you PFE users utilised the time acceleration of FS and, if so, what result did you get?Thank you.

I have and so far, it hasn't caused any problems.(16x)

[vololiberista 205]

Has any of you PFE users utilised the time acceleration of FS and, if so, what result did you get?Thank you.

I have had it up to 2x It usually works. I don't go beyond 2x because my INS won't work above that.vololiberista

[ARCO 245]

Thanks for the feedback regarding acceleration, very helpful indeed as I make from time to time some long hauls like LSZH-WSSS or VHHX or VTBS, I usually accelerate up to 4 times, it may not be realistic, but it's "green"!

[Dave Morgan 68]

I have and so far, it hasn't caused any problems.(16x)

Is there any background chatter, or PFE interaction with AI?How well do all the wavs fit in with 16× acceleration? Cheers,D