FSPassengers Question

[Guest]

+1

 

I personally would NEVER buy or recommend an addon of which I KNOW the developer has disappeared of the map and/or isn't supporting the addon anymore...

[Noel 4,563]

I understood what you were saying perfectly.

 

Your comment, 'if you are happy with XP great' triggered my reply. I understand the purpose of your post to caution inquirers as to the lack of support piece, however felt compelled to let the OP know others using Vista have no troubles w/ the software--i.e., it has not required any ongoing support for me as it works as intended. I would purchase it again...for another Vista 64 installation.

[kvk1 2]

+1 for FSCaptain.

 

It's already a fantastic product with great support and enormous future potential. You do have to engage in some minimal fiddling to get it working to your liking, but nothing major. There is a standalone version in the works which should alleviate all that anyway.

 

Highly recommended.

[Pe11e 812]

I've tried the demo of FSCaptain for a short time today, and now I'm on edge to consider buying it. I'm a FSP addict, love the economy side of it. FSP is good those who like to create their own Airline company, to buy & sell planes, mantaining them. Then paying attention to flying, to let your company build a proper status.

FSCaptain is focusing on a pilot career. I don't like that I can't choose my own route to fly. FSCaptain let you to chooes a random route based on a distance you entered in Administrator, as far as I understood...?

 

I incidentally found a cheat for FSP how to buy a plane for 0$, so with that c*ap in my mind I'm not interested anymore on a economic side of it, so I will give a FSCaptain a couple more chances. If the flying and landing evaluations are more sensitive than FSP, than FSCaptain will be a winner! In FSP you can land at -200/300ft/m you'll get a good mark for that, and that is a HARD landing if you ask me.

[DetCord 24]

So I spent the past 15 minutes creating this in Photoshop. Just a very quick example of a streamlined and intuitive GUI, and what FSC could look like. Minimal fields, concise data (as opposed to a overload of it), easily navigable, and of course visually appealing. Obviously there are options I placed in their that don't exist, but aspects I'd certainly like to see nonetheless. This is one of the core reasons I'm being drawn to the REX airline simulation addon. If the FSC devs are still reading this topic, I hope they'll consider revamping their interface.

 

[VeryBumpy 272]

Very nice DetCord.

[Taipan 30]

That's what I call constructive criticism, nice looking GUI!

I haven't used FSCaptain since a demo a long time ago, but it looks like it's going places I may look at it again in future.

[Q400lover 4]

I like FPS, but It is unsupported and there's one main flaw to it, That is, you have to land between 1 ft./m and 400 ft./m Making Landing on short runways difficult. But overall, it's an easy interface. But if you haven't bought it I would suggest not to I was just starting off with something like FScaptain. The only reason I'm using FSP Is I found the other ones Have a harder to learn interfaces, And with being so used to FSP It makes it that much harder. But it works for me and it Does What I need to do so No complaining here I guess.

[Dutch727 543]

I've tried the demo of FSCaptain for a short time today, and now I'm on edge to consider buying it. I'm a FSP addict, love the economy side of it. FSP is good those who like to create their own Airline company, to buy & sell planes, mantaining them. Then paying attention to flying, to let your company build a proper status.

FSCaptain is focusing on a pilot career. I don't like that I can't choose my own route to fly. FSCaptain let you to chooes a random route based on a distance you entered in Administrator, as far as I understood...?

 

I incidentally found a cheat for FSP how to buy a plane for 0$, so with that c*ap in my mind I'm not interested anymore on a economic side of it, so I will give a FSCaptain a couple more chances. If the flying and landing evaluations are more sensitive than FSP, than FSCaptain will be a winner! In FSP you can land at -200/300ft/m you'll get a good mark for that, and that is a HARD landing if you ask me.

 

Happy to reply. In response to your first point, FSCaptain works both ways. If you want to select your destination and any other details of your flight (payload, alternate, etc) just click on "Specify Flight Details" and you pick any details you want and leave blanks for what you would like the program to fill in for you. This was put in to support VAs who issue flights rather than have the FSCaptain dispatch system do it. But it also serves to emulate other programs as well. Personally, I like clicking on "Get Assignment" and having it assign me a flight. But that's your choice.

 

On landing speed if you land at less than 200FPM you may get a compliment from your passengers on a nice landing, but this is not guaranteed and a lot depends on how well you've treated them over the whole flight. Staying in touch and letting them know what's happening by making announcements, or flying smoothly and professionally will incline them to say nice things about you which will help your score.

 

So I spent the past 15 minutes creating this in Photoshop. Just a very quick example of a streamlined and intuitive GUI, and what FSC could look like. Minimal fields, concise data (as opposed to a overload of it), easily navigable, and of course visually appealing. Obviously there are options I placed in their that don't exist, but aspects I'd certainly like to see nonetheless. This is one of the core reasons I'm being drawn to the REX airline simulation addon. If the FSC devs are still reading this topic, I hope they'll consider revamping their interface.

 

 

Wow that's nice looking! I'm a programmer, not a graphic designer, but we've had several people suggesting ideas for the new interface and this really impresses me. Thank you! You might well find a release in the near future looking a lot like this. I can guarantee the user interface will be improved, that's a must-do. It'll be the first thing on the agenda once this next release is finalized.

 

I really like the idea of putting the advanced options in a separate place to de-clutter the more commonly used ones. This makes it look less intimidating without sacrificing actual features and flexibility. We were simpler in the early days but so much has been added the framework has got to change.

 

Of course we read all these threads and are always looking for good ideas. Much more than half the ideas that have improved the product over the last three years have come from the community and that's not going to change, it's going to accelerate.

 

Dutch

[DetCord 24]

I'm just glad you guys are looking at revamping the interface.

[LeeL 272]

Dutch can I just give you a couple of things I would like to see, while we're here?

 

1) Being able to set up multi leg flights directly in the ACARS. it could be one of the screens after the select destination one. With this also the ability to say if you want to just pick up passengers on your first stop (so like 55 PAX get on and then at the next airport another 60 get on, then you fly to your destination) or if it's just a normal scheduled service day with PAX getting on and off at your various stops.

 

2) also it would be nice to have the ability to input which airport you are making a tech stop at

 

3) more of a randomizing of technical problems, I always seem to get the same ones, although that might just be a setting on my end.

 

Thanks for the great support Dutch, it's much appreciated.

 

Cheers

Lee

[Q400lover 4]

 

 

Happy to reply. In response to your first point, FSCaptain works both ways. If you want to select your destination and any other details of your flight (payload, alternate, etc) just click on "Specify Flight Details" and you pick any details you want and leave blanks for what you would like the program to fill in for you. This was put in to support VAs who issue flights rather than have the FSCaptain dispatch system do it. But it also serves to emulate other programs as well. Personally, I like clicking on "Get Assignment" and having it assign me a flight. But that's your choice.

 

On landing speed if you land at less than 200FPM you may get a compliment from your passengers on a nice landing, but this is not guaranteed and a lot depends on how well you've treated them over the whole flight. Staying in touch and letting them know what's happening by making announcements, or flying smoothly and professionally will incline them to say nice things about you which will help your score.

 

 

 

Wow that's nice looking! I'm a programmer, not a graphic designer, but we've had several people suggesting ideas for the new interface and this really impresses me. Thank you! You might well find a release in the near future looking a lot like this. I can guarantee the user interface will be improved, that's a must-do. It'll be the first thing on the agenda once this next release is finalized.

 

I really like the idea of putting the advanced options in a separate place to de-clutter the more commonly used ones. This makes it look less intimidating without sacrificing actual features and flexibility. We were simpler in the early days but so much has been added the framework has got to change.

 

Of course we read all these threads and are always looking for good ideas. Much more than half the ideas that have improved the product over the last three years have come from the community and that's not going to change, it's going to accelerate.

 

Dutch

 

I tried FS captain once. But dealing with two FMC Like Panels was Too difficult For me, One thing I like that FS passenger is you set it up before your flight And while the passengers of boarding you set up your FMC and the rest of the aircraft, The other thing I liked about FS passengers Was that I felt it gave me more freedom in Flying, You could create your own company and Your own Pilot But you can allow to fly any aircraft or Allowed to move up in the ranks with a set number of hours. you could use that company for any Flight you want and in any Aircraft, Which allows me to wrap up a Told number of hours passengers. You could also transfer your Pilots from company to company So you could start with a small Airline with a Cessna, And then move to a Learjet then to a CRJ7 and then to a 737 Which would be more or less like Real life, Which I like. If you made FS Capt. interface More like the FS passenger interface I'd be more willing to Try it Again. Who knows maybe you guys could get Dan (The Developer of FS passengers) To sell you the rights to FS passenger (Just a dream) Or at least maybe you'll get him to come back to the FSpassengers And revamp it (Another Dream).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WotanUK 289]

I tried FS captain once. But dealing with two FMC Like Panels was Too difficult For me, One thing I like that FS passenger is you set it up before your flight And while the passengers of boarding you set up your FMC and the rest of the aircraft,

You can configure FSCaptain to operate much like this by stripping off the co-pilot, cabin crew and position reports other than starting the flight you don't have to touch the CDU device.

 

The other thing I liked about FS passengers Was that I felt it gave me more freedom in Flying, You could create your own company and Your own Pilot

You can create your own company in FSCaptain, it doesn't have the economic features of FSP (by the way i migrated from FSP) but you can do more aircraft stuff for your company, for example you can set company policies on minimum visability etc.. You can also make...in fact scratch that, you have to make your own pilot.

 

But you can allow to fly any aircraft or Allowed to move up in the ranks with a set number of hours. you could use that company for any Flight you want and in any Aircraft, Which allows me to wrap up a Told number of hours passengers. You could also transfer your Pilots from company to company

FSCaptain does this, it just doesn't have the restrictions, so effectively you can fly a 747 at any rank. Being entirely honest i also wish FSCaptain had user definable restrictions on flying aircraft at different ranks.

 

So you could start with a small Airline with a Cessna, And then move to a Learjet then to a CRJ7 and then to a 737 Which would be more or less like Real life, Which I like.

FSCaptain attempts to simulate a pilot environment not a company environment.

 

Really if you have already made up your mind then nothing i say will persude you; i also didn't like FSCaptain at first and went back to FSP for a time, however once i got past the unfriendly interface and actually read the manual i found it too be deeper than FSP and now wouldn't swap back.

[Q400lover 4]

For now I'm going to stick with FS passengers, That'll keep Monitoring FS captains Development, You know What they say "good things come to those who wait" /:)

[darem 84]

I think I was one of the first customers to buy FSCaptain. I loved it back then, but it was really hard to install on my payware aircraft. I came back to FSCaptain with the latest version, and it has improved so much that I am really addicted to it again. It's wonderful to see that the development is ongoing.

 

BTW, FScaptain and ProATC-X a perfect partners :-). Together, they offer great immersion.