Fly Tampa's OMDB and Aivlasoft's EFB...a users review

[kmkc6403 8]

A few days ago, my significant other let me loose with the credit card, knowing i was REALLY wanting to buy Aivlasoft's Electronic Flight Bag since my demo time ran out and i was flat out hooked on it. And i happened to sneak in Fly Tampa's Abu Dhabi scenery with it. Needless to say, both are EXCELLENT addons, and EFB will enhance your flying experience by making you look like a pro, and Abu Dhabi was just a feast on the eyes. Ill start with Aivlasoft's EFB.

 

To ease the strain on Avsim's servers, im trying out hosting screenshots of both products on Google+. The Links are below.

 

Aivlasoft Electronic Flight Bag

 

Fly Tampa OMDB

 

EFB is simply worth every penny. Realistic flight planning, SID/STAR and even ground maps with labeled taxiways. You can look up METAR's by downloading NOAA information, or it can pull the info from Active Sky or REX, I am a OPUS user, and that is not yet supported, so i just pull NOAA and it works fine for me. And once you build your flightplan, it gets exported to the FMS of your choice. The whole route is thrown into the sim, and the gps will follow the entire route, including the SID/STARS, if you so choose or you can hand fly it. It also calculates top of climb and top of descent and gives you what your vertical speed should be. If you look at the screenshots i have linked to, you can see the arrival chart for EGLL, and the altitudes you should be at at each fix. EFB monitors your plane and tells you how far off the correct vertical speed you so you can adjust. It wont fly it for you, it just gives you an idea of where youre at.

 

Also on that EGLL approach chart youll see the glideslope for the ILS on the bottom, when youre in range of the ILS a silhouette appears on that bottom chart showing your position on the glideslope. Ive never seen anything quite like it for FS, it is really a nice touch. There is a seperate aircraft monitoring window that shows your cruise altitude, how far off TOC is, your next waypoint, destination distance/time, and your ground speed, vertical speed, fuel flow, fuel on board, and time remaining before youre out of fuel.

 

Of course there are options to see AI traffic on the various ground and enroute maps.

 

Another big thing that this program has is ability to be used with VATSIM or IVAO. I am not a online flyer so i havent really looked at this part of the program much yet. It has the ability to recieve NOTAM's that VA's put out for their pilots.The entire program can be used on a touchscreen for home cockpit builders. I have seen youtube videos demonstrating this and it really works well.

 

It also logs each flight and saves the logs in PDF format for later use. There is just a lot of features and im glancing over trying to remember them all

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I highly recommend you try this product. It comes with a full 30 day demo and is available at http://www.aivlasoft.../efb/index.html

 

Now, on to FlyTampa's OMDB

 

I bought and downloaded this with some fear to be honest. Before buying i had seen youtube videos and screenshots of the scenery and saw that it was pretty dense and i was worried about it being a FPS killer, i was in for a nice surprise. My FPS hardly dipped much at all, and i think it did only because of the large amount of AI traffic in the area. (MyTraffic X 5.4b set at 40 percent) The scenery itself was gorgeous. The airport was very detailed and just looked real. They also did the city and environs and the Burj Kalifa is there in all its glory along with those man made luxury islands just off the coast. Even the main shipyard where the US Navy docks its ships is there.

 

When you see the screenshots, youll notice my fps meter is stuck at 35. I set the FSX internal fps limiter to unlimited and use NVIDIA inspector's external limiter and set it at 35, and it has done wonders for my framerate and overall happiness with the sim.

 

I could see OMDB becoming a home base for my long hauls, given how well it runs on my modest system. And i run Windows 8 and in windowed mode. No problems whatsoever.

 

I hope you like the mini review and pictures.