How would one standardise scoring for landing a fictional aircraft in a fictional environment? It can only score based on items that the sim is able to quantify and how virtual passengers may react to them.

Exactly, it's impossible and hence all a nonsense! It possibly even puts people off flying in challenging conditions, knowing they'll get penalised if they do. These sort of scoring systems really require a lot more finesse or a human assessor, they don't really seem to consider flying conditions or differences between aircraft in their marking. And a floater/greaser landing tends to give you a good score but it's not actually recommend practise, you're suppose to have a positive touchdown. Etc etc, you get my point, basically there are too many nuances that these sorts of programs just can't consider.

Not much love for FSPAX - let me try balance that a bit.

 

First off - it is absolutely nothing like FS2Crew. I have both, and use both. FS2Crew simulates a co-pilot (and some others) incredibly well. FSPAX doesn't try to do that. Apples and Oranges.

 

What I like about FSPAX:

 

- works with just about every plane I fly, including the NGX (though with FS2Crew you need to tweak a .cfg file to get it all working nicely - not hard)

- gives you boarding sounds and some fun copilot/steward interactions

- lets you play an economic & career "game" if you like - this kept me interested for ages - more flights generate more money = more planes etc; you can play about with prices etc; it's not full-featured in this respect, but there are other addons that do this better if that's all you want; good flights/landings will progress your career more quickly

- failures work on the whole - land too hard and your tyres can blow; you'll scrape to a halt on the runway - I've seen that even with the NGX

- landing assessment - speed/vspd are reported and you get a "rating" for the landing

- interesting sound fx e.g. gasps from passengers in turbulence

- you can control (or automate) food/drink service/in flight movies - it's another thing to add to the "to do" list, so increases the challenge

 

I've never regretted having it. I use it often. It's shame it's not now actively supported, but I've yet to find something I can't fix with a bit of forum help.

 

It ought sensibly to be sold as a budget title now, though.

 

 

Exactly, it's impossible and hence all a nonsense! It possibly even puts people off flying in challenging conditions, knowing they'll get penalised if they do.

 

I think being too hard on scoring landings is mainly problem with FSpax... I have made some quite hard landings with Fscaptain, it doesn't seem to penalize you for those that much.

 

Really bad weather conditions aren't an excuse for a touchdown that would in real life damage the aircraft, though Fspax indeed has nasty tendency of making tires blow up too easily, again something that fscaptain doesn't do.

Then there is this from the makers of REX.    http://www.simairexperience.com/   Not sure how exactly it relates to FSpax or FScrew but it looks interesting.

Yeah Simair is surely worth remembering too, based on the information released so far it will be truly awesome product.