What's your WORST Flightsim Payware of 2013?

[Ted Striker 338]

Ah, the CS love-hate relationship. I've got to jump in here. I keep flying the FSX versions because there are no alternatives for the 727/707 (Paul Golding, where are you?). Having grown up flying in them, I just love the 727 and 707 aircraft. The first and last full price CS aircraft I ever bought was the FS9 707...everyone knows the reasons.

 

To sidetrack a little...It just happened by luck that I got to fly on one of the last American Airlines 727 flights from Miama to Grenada. While all the other passengers were whispering "what a piece of junk, are we going to make it?", I was telling my girlfriend how excited I was because I never thought I would ever be on another 727 flight. She gave me a look of "what kind of nutcase am I leaving the country with?"

 

Well I think Captain Sim modeled their 727 after that Amercan Airlines one. Unlike Dreamfleet, Eaglesoft, and Realair where the systems just work and work well, when I fly the CS planes I feel like I'm flying a "rent-a-wreck". You never know if anything is going to work. My avatar is myself trying to land the unmodified CS 707 in IFR conditions. But dang it, I can't resist loading them up. At the sale price I got these at they are like an old car that I don't mind working on when I have time. I would not be happy if I paid the full price or got suckered into their "buy early as we develop it" program. Now who can tell me how to fix that turbo-charged 727 trim without messing up the autopilot?

 

I don't regret buying any of the aircraft I have as I research well beforehand and never by at the initial release. Learned this from the purchase of the CS FS9 707.  All my other CS aircraft are my most frustrating FSX addons, but have still been a good value at 10.00 Euro each.

 

Ted

[T_Fleck 36]

Absolutely. It's just a shame the user reviews section on Avsim is in such a sorry state. There's not a lot in it and everyone is super-positive about everything they write about. Reminds me of that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer is hired by some magazine to review restaurants.

 

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I urge everyone who reads this to write more reviews. It doesn't need to be loads of text, just explain why you feel as you do towards the product, list the good stuff AND the bad stuff, and write a proper recommendation and clearly state to who you recommend it. Even an overly praised product like the PMDG NGX would be a complete waste of money to some people. Be critical but fair and don't just review the add-ons you liked but also the ones you felt was a waste of money, because those reviews are often more useful to others than the super-positive ones.

 

Also it doesn't hurt to have more than one review of any particular add-on. Quite the opposite actually so don't let the fact that someone else was first stop you.

 

 

I concur with this entirely. We have been thinking about removing this feature because it is so under utilized. It could, in fact, be one of the most invaluable tools for the community. I encourage everyone write a review of a product of interest to them and which they own. That way, users who have an interest in the product can find those reviews and impressions quickly and without having to do extensive forum searching for product performance.

 

I admit, I have been coming to Avsim since the 90's and never really paid much attention to this section (was only vaguely aware of it).  Instead of posting my "worst of 2013" here I will make some simple reviews of my payware library, good and not so good.

 

Thanks both of you for pointing out this [for me] unexplored corner of Avsim.

[Nathan3219 113]

I have a number of regrets but the one that bugs me the most is the 727 from Captain Sim. This product is unfinished and even with many many community fixes, is still a PITA to fly. I have yet to be able to trim it properly without it making large vertical movements and its quite unstable. My attempt to contact support resulted in CS closing the ticket without a response.

 

This is my first and last purchase from them.

The sad part is that it probably would'nt have taken much effort from CS to turn a frustrating add on into a great one.

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

 

 

Thanks both of you for pointing out this [for me] unexplored corner of Avsim.

 

We are occasionally guilty of under-advertising our features. But that will change in this case in about 10 minutes. ^_^

[BrianG 12]

First I'll clarify by saying what bothered me about a particular Add-on might not bother someone else, so I can't definitively criticize a product.   This is just my opinion, and I'm not hear to bash developers. But for me, my worse payware addon was the JF DC-8. It was a let down for many reasons but these being the most critical

1) FDE- I could land effortlessly at  130 knots, 240k lbs, nose trimmed completely forward and no flaps.

2) Major performance drop every time you banked even slightly in the sky - reported by many.

3) Idled at 2.2 EPR- so no useful EPR info.

4) graphics appeared to be cartoonish and Abacus looking in many area's.

5) Really bad eye point in VC

I guess they attempted ( or did) fix a few of these things. I didn't stick around long enough to find out. Opted for a refund instead. Others may really be enjoying this AC so is my opinion really that important? Only to me I guess.

 

As for the CS 727 trim, I assigned "trim up" and "trim down" to my stick and put the "trim up" and " trim down" sliders all the way to the left in FSX> settings> controls. Works great for me now set up like that. Make sure you install all the mods, especially the Micheal 2 mod. It will fly by RW docs if you do that.

But, I do understand the frustrations. Those things and others should have been fixed along time ago.  Among many others, CS has a bad habit of relying and customer patches and work arounds,

[Jeff H 63]

...and got a great deal of entertainment out of reading the "Lou Stories" in the process.

 

Jim, if that means what I think it means,  I'd sure like to hear some of those. :lol:

[Jim Robinson 122]

Jim, if that means what I think it means,  I'd sure like to hear some of those. :lol:

 

Lol, probably not Jeff, Lou is a retired 727 captain that hangs out on the CS forums, the guys got him sharing war stories and he had a way of telling them that sort of riveted you to the monitor. There's a dedicated thread now actually, aptly titled "Lou Stories":

 

http://captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1298308309

 

Probably the best though were just his normal comments in the 727 threads, he had a war story for just about any occasion.

 

 

Now with that outta the way... You wanna hear some "loo stories"? :Big Grin:

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

 

 

Now with that outta the way... You wanna hear some "loo stories"? :Big Grin:

I suspect there might be a ToS violation waiting to happen with those. :LMAO:

 

However, if you could invite Lou to come over to the dark side and post some of his stories here, I am sure the larger community would enjoy them.

[zmak 331]

Lol, probably not Jeff, Lou is a retired 727 captain that hangs out on the CS forums, the guys got him sharing war stories and he had a way of telling them that sort of riveted you to the monitor. There's a dedicated thread now actually, aptly titled "Lou Stories":

 

http://captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1298308309

 

Probably the best though were just his normal comments in the 727 threads, he had a war story for just about any occasion.

 

 

Now with that outta the way... You wanna hear some "loo stories"? :Big Grin:

Thats a great thread! You gotta read this letter from 8 yr old Nicola

 

http://captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1298308309/15

[Jeff H 63]

Lol, probably not Jeff, Lou is a retired 727 captain that hangs out on the CS forums, the guys got him sharing war stories and he had a way of telling them that sort of riveted you to the monitor. There's a dedicated thread now actually, aptly titled "Lou Stories":

 

http://captainsim.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1298308309

 

Probably the best though were just his normal comments in the 727 threads, he had a war story for just about any occasion.

 

 

Now with that outta the way... You wanna hear some "loo stories"? :Big Grin:

Oh, ok Jim, I got ya.  I was thinking about another Lou.  As for "Loo" stories, I have some doozies...talk about war stories, lol. One of the best was the guy who dropped his teeth down the toilet in the forward lav of a 737.  We had to dump the lav into the trough of a lav truck to dig them out. When we got them back to him, he rinsed them off in the sink, put them back in his mouth and walked off the plane.  A couple of folks almost hurled, lmao.  I got a ton of 'em, but we'll save those for another day.   :Big Grin:  

[Jim Robinson 122]

When we got them back to him, he rinsed them off in the sink, put them back in his mouth and walked off the plane...

 

Well I guess you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of digging them out of the loo (poo) if he had no intention of putting them back in his mouth, but I think I'd at least run 'em through the Effordent first! :wacko: (where's the barfing smiley BTW?)

[stretch1365 40]

Hi all,

 

I love these threads about your worst add-ons they usually get stopped within a very short time, but this one is running..............I think because people are being sensible. Weird I know!

 

So the only add-on I kind of regret buying last year was the Just Flight L1011 Tristar. It was also the only one I bought on release day too. I think the Tristar is a truly remarkable aircraft and has been so forgotten in flight sim. So I was thrilled when Just Flight said they were making one. 

 

The exterior model is very nice, nothing wrong with that in my opinion, the interior is fine too, not such great textures as CS and PMDG etc but still ok. However what really let it down in my eyes was the lack of functionality in the panels, especially the flight engineers panel where you don't even need to turn on certain systems for them to work in flight. The Tristar does however feature a fully working INS system, which is another reason I bought it, to try and learn this navigation system. I assume it's the Delco INS system from Simufly.com, it works fine and actually works better than some of Just flights own panels! 

 

The flight dynamics don't seem quite right too, it sinks alot in a hard turn, like 1000-3000ft/min which I'm sure it shouldn't do. Just flight did release a patch or sp1 whatever you want to call it, which corrected some issues but not the ones I mention here, shame really. I do still fly it sometimes for a change but not as often as I should!

 

Someone here mentioned wishing they hadn't bought CS707, GSX, and REX4 Textures. I have all of these and have had no problems with them at all, they all work brilliantly. I don't have a super computer either, just an i3 running Windows7-64bit and I'm very happy with it. Could these problems be caused by not turning off Security features or using a download manager in the case of REX4 during the download process. In the past I have found that has caused a majority of any problems I have encountered in FSX. 

 

Thing's I did encounter in the three mentioned above are these,

 

CS707 the Master Avionics wouldn't turn on when loaded so the radio's wouldn't work, and the trim was a bit erratic, cured by setting a button on the yoke for Avionics and using my Cessna trim wheel to get really accurate trim. 

 

GSX works great for all airports where as AES which was mentioned only works at add-on airports, so not quite sure how you can compare any functionality between the two, as one does 100% of the airports and the other 50-60%!

 

Rex4 Textures, I haven't had a single problem with this product at all. It isn't a weather engine and there has been some confusion as to whether or not it is a Rex Essentials upgrade. It isn't on both counts, at the minute you still need Rex Essentials for your weather engine but don't install the textures use Rex 4 for that. Their forum is very helpful and they have answered all questions quickly too..

 

That's it sorry to go on, but we were asked to be constructive with any criticism given in this thread.

[Lowflyer 97]

We are occasionally guilty of under-advertising our features. But that will change in this case in about 10 minutes. ^_^

Sounds good, Tom. I noticed just now that there are two places for user reviews on Avsim. There's the one accessed via the top menu and also there's a subforum under FBO. Which one do you prefer us to use?

 

I have to admit I don't really like the member review system that I used for my RV7 review. The ratings are not optional and some of then does not apply to all add-ons, especially those that are not aircraft but even those that are. 2D cockpit for instance. What score should I in if there just isn't one? I can't for the life of me give an add-on a 1/10 for that because I don't want one anyway. 2D cockpits are a waste of time for me and while others may disagree my review is about my opinion, not theirs. Mercifully you can set any total score you like but I'd still rather not. The important bit is the text, not in the numbers.

 

The recommendations needs to change or go away. Selecting "yes" translates into s "Must buy"-sticker but honestly there are no "must buys". There is nothing on the market that I can recommend for everyone and the "try first" recommendation sadly doesn't always apply either, because most devs/stores simply won't give us that option.

 

Anyway, enough ranting for now.

 

If this takes off (yes I know...) then a search function would come in handy and also I would appreciate if it would sort by product name by default because that's usually why you're there, to find a certain product.

[-Stark- 3]

I appreciate threads like this immensely.  I combed through similar threads and reviews to determine which Yoke & Peddles had the highest probability of meeting my expectations. After a week or so of off and on research I ended up with the Saitek Cessna Yoke and Peddles and which it doesn't exactly match real flight dynamics I think for moderate realism they work great.

 

Looking for the same in any additions to P3D, not perfection but some moderate realism.  My first purchase was a Carenado PA46 which seems to be a high quality, well thought out addon.  My next purchase was some scenary and I picked up Megaearth for my state which was half off.   I'm not sure if I actually installed it correctly but it seemed to add the photorealistic textures and I have no issues with it.

 

I'm now looking to update the realism with some additional scenery and texture.  So reading through this helps to make sure I get a product I'll be happy with.

[HiFlyer 9,374]

Still, I think it was the prompt "The cops are watching" notice that helped steer this thread away from the express road to pile-on city.  :lol: