Wow,

I checked out the Katana and indeed might be exactly what I'm looking for! :)

I have to apologize though. Naming the A2A titles was redundant due to your first post, which I have read too fast.

 

Right you are, that Katana could be the thing you are looking for. Pretty unique package when it comes to those details while not flying a warbird.

And for the OP... if you get the Katana BE SURE it's the latest release, their 4x version:

 

http://www.aerosoft.com/cgi-local/us/iboshop.cgi?showd,6102247770,11977

I'd say: the Katana4X is as good as it gets.

 

If there's any addon better than that, please tell me (I'm really interested)

 

 

EDIT: In case you plan to buy it, remember that Aerosoft have their easter sale currently running. So I'd check their store every day until april 10th to see if it might be discounted.

It's great for in-depth systems that's for sure. I honestly don't fly it much because it's slow.... so I prefer others like the RV7 or Duke... but yeah I don't think there's a more in-depth GA FSX plane out there. The Mustang's G1000 setup is really nice for bizjet...

 

About the Katana, one of my favorite parts is the gyros powering up .... the ADI looks extremely realistic hehe

I have to apologize though. Naming the A2A titles was redundant due to your first post, which I have read too fast.

 

Right you are, that Katana could be the thing you are looking for. Pretty unique package when it comes to those details while not flying a warbird.

 

No apoligies needed. :)

I'll just wait to see if they are discounting it, then I'll let you know how it is to me. I love having a responding aircraft, those kind of features make me want to fly it properly, to check the manual for the correct flight parameters, etc...it really makes the airplane "yours". To me the it has become a standard, just as having a copilot (thank you FS2Crew) and having failures (thank you PMDG) has become a standard on airliners. It takes the whole experience to a new level. What's the point of going through ten minutes of flows when there is no risk of anything going wrong if you don't? Pure fashion, it gets tiring after a bit. Knowing that while you are in flight something might happen out of your control makes you hold your QRN really close at hand. :)

 

And for the OP... if you get the Katana BE SURE it's the latest release, their 4x version:

 

http://www.aerosoft....102247770,11977

 

I will, thank you!

I like the little gimmicks that appear in the back of the Katana from time to time. Like the chocolate santa during christmas season...

If you enter your birthday at the installation, the magazine will change too. Wait, April 1st is over already. :P

 

To the OP, I'm sure you will like her at any price. However, Ryan is true, the rather slowish speeds may be the only downside with her. The author, Marcel Felde, is working on some more planes though.

The duke looked funny to me aswell at first, but with the random failures, Virtual cockpit coupled with the best Reality xp integration and the flight dynamics the Turbine Duke is the best GA every produced, but of course this is just my opinion, I never tried the Kantana X its to small and slow for me :) but it seems that others think its good.

I think the Duke's T failures are limited to the engines only and also to some specific items there. So it's not about oil levels and things, more about overtorque and temperatures I think, with the oil temps being higher than they should be in regard to the real plane. No (big) downside though, but another kind of failure simulation when compared to e.g. the Katana or A2A. But a fun aspect for sure.

 

I like the Duke for the looks and the speed, most of all. And the sounds. That hum is magic.

The failures of the Duke are rather limited and only relate to the engines. It's a nice fast one though and looks great.

 

I got the Katana 4x during the last VFR sale and have not flown anything else since. Sure it's slower cruising at ~110 but the immersion is great. The complexity is immense, the PMDG of GA. You can break pretty much everything if you don't follow the rules and do your checks preflight. Every single circuit breaker works correctly, the plane gets dirty and needs to be cleaned, under icing conditions you suffer ice buildup and will have a hard time even landing the thing. Extremely underappreciated adding as it seems.

Maybe we can all join in and state that there may be a market for those kind of GA planes. I mean, I have lots of good ones, but nothing like the A2A things or the Katana in regard to the failures and things. With the Katana being the only normal one, no warbird.

Maybe we can all join in and state that there may be a market for those kind of GA planes. I mean, I have lots of good ones, but nothing like the A2A things or the Katana in regard to the failures and things. With the Katana being the only normal one, no warbird.

 

Totally agreed. As good as they might be, most of the planes I have miss something in the end. And I think it is the fact that I feel like flying a brand new plane every time. Adding failures, service hours, wear and tear, and even dirt (love this, will have to try :) ) gives you continuity and a bit more of realism. In all those years we have improved graphics, flight models, sounds. Now it's time to bring in atmosphere (having to twist your rotor by "hand" like in the cub is a great plus), systems that interact with each other and bring anything from light to severe consequences into play and, what I love most about the way some addons have been developed lately, responding flight crews and passengers.

If you are prepared to include rotary-winged aircraft too, then the DodoSim Bell 206 JetRanger is one that ticks a lot of boxes in the immersion and realism departments, although I will say that I think the Aerosoft Katana is somewhat unique in taking things to another level, so that one is indeed what I would regard as 'the pmdg' of GA aeroplanes.

 

Al

If you are prepared to include rotary-winged aircraft too, then the DodoSim Bell 206 JetRanger is one that ticks a lot of boxes in the immersion and realism departments, although I will say that I think the Aerosoft Katana is somewhat unique in taking things to another level, so that one is indeed what I would regard as 'the pmdg' of GA aeroplanes.

 

Since you've brought this to my attention I have a question. I've always got sick of helos in FSX since I couldn't trim them. The only sim I could fly them in has been DCS Black Shark, thanks to the nice auto-trim that it provides. Never tried any payware ones, so I'd like know if it has trim, how does it work, and on top of that: do those helicopters have any autopilot? (as long as the real one has, which I have honestly no idea). Thank you.

The Dodosim JetRanger is a realistic simulation of a helicopter, so it is, to use that over-used term again 'the pmdg of helicopters'. However, real choppers are difficult to learn to fly, they are even difficult to start unless you like turbine fires. They are hard even for real-world fixed wing pilots to learn, since there is a lot of anticipation required (much more than in a fixed wing aeroplane) thus flying one means that many 'pre-emptive inputs' are required in order to maintain control and stay ahead of what it is about to do. With that in mind, Dodosim added five 'difficulty levels', which are selectable from within the cockpit, plus wear and tear/maintenance simulation if you want that too, although you can turn all that stuff off if you want. There are in fact also two engine variants simulated as well, which present a slightly different start up procedure if you so desire, although you can skip that too if you like.

 

As noted, since choppers are hard to learn, the difficulty levels on the Dodo 206 range from what might be described as: 'make it really easy for me and help me a lot' to 'I'm a 'Nam veteran who flew these babies in combat', plus three points in between those two extremes for the aforementioned five levels of difficulty, so it has what ends up being a scalable way to learn the thing, where you can gadually 'remove the training wheels'. Thus, you can find a level you enjoy and up the stakes as you learn, but don't be fooled into thinking you could learn it in five minutes on the hard settings, because hard really is hard indeed, so this does present a good long term and indeed rewarding challenge in the same way that learning all the PMDG NG's systems also does.

 

With regard to autopilot, some expensive military choppers do indeed have autopilots, but the Bell 206 JetRanger, which was originally developed as a military scout chopper, is not one of them, so you have to fly it manually all the time. Because this is so, where trim is concerned a concession was made on the difficulty settings: Some helicopters have what is known as 'force trim', again usually the fancy expensive ones, but, in the concession to making the thing at least posible to enjoy for those without 10,000 hours on Hueys in Vietnam, Dodo added force trim to their JetRanger, even though the real thing does not have it. Force trim is basically a button that will centralise the controls in the current position in order to relieve stick forces. There's actually a bit more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. So yes, it does have trim if you want it.

 

All of that stuff is why people rave on about how fantastic the DodoSim 206 is, since it can be a realistic as you want it to be, but it can be tamed with the difficulty settings and learned at a comfortable and progressively introduced pace, which means it is indeed the helicopter for FSX which is for people who could never fly helicopters in FSX, and much more beyond that too.

 

Al