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alexcolka

Carenado next project Hawker 850 XP

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Like I said in another thread, we should check our demands on devs with modern avionics like the G1000, Pro Line, and Primus Apex systems. Other wise, we'll be stuck with the same 1970's planes.

 

I think we'll have to respectfully agree to disagree.  I would far rather fly that 1970's plane with capable avionics and crisp readable gauges than a shell of a 2014 plane who's basic gauges are hard to read and who's functionality doesn't match the 70's plane.  That, to me, makes the new one the antithesis of what it is in real life and singularly uninteresting.  As I said - it's hard for me to see the point.  Newer should be better or it's just so much pretty fluff.

 

 

 


I believe most people who don't like glass/modern AC, are so because of the limitations of their particular computers.

 

I don't think that's most folks major objection.  It's certainly not the case in this discussion or in my case.   Function, function, function!  My only 1000-based payware plane, the F1 Mustang, flies quite well.  And its avionics suite actually brings something to the table, making it enjoyable.  It's still a bummer that I have to constantly use popups in order to perform many tasks (and that simple fact keeps it from being one of my favorites), but I like it fine and enjoy learning a bit more about the 1000 suite with it.  And I can actually fly a modern approach with it!

 

Scott

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There are a few problems with demanding in depth functions in your addon aircraft:

 

i) Development time would increase dramatically. Instead of the 3-4 aircraft Carenado currently pump out every year you can expect one every 18 months at best.

 

ii) The price would rise correspondingly.

 

iii) Not every developer has the skills and resources available to make a high level sim.

 

iv) You'd remove one of the major stepping stones between default aircraft and the advanced or high end stuff.

 

As I outlined above Carenado are actually increasing the pace at which they release aircraft and have started an offshoot developer. That indicates very well that the demand for Carenado type aircraft is very much alive and well.

 

There's plenty of room for Carenado in the market, demanding that they turn into another PMDG, A2A, MilViz or RealAir is unrealistic and fails to recognise both the reality of the market and the role that Carenado plays in it.

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The thing is, Carenado would do the general aviation aircraft and Alabeo would do the exotic aircraft. Now Carenado are doing the bizjets and Alabeo are doing the general aviation aircraft.

While their Piper looks like a solid modern GA aircraft, the Cardinal and the C195 definitely aren't common GA aircraft, just as the rest of Alabeo's offerings (bar the Tomahawk and to an extent, the Cutlass) are rather rare or specialty aircraft. I would love if Alabeo sticks to the rarer, more vintage side of GA if they do take over Carenado's market, as their products sure are a hell of a lot more interesting than most of Carenado's offerings.

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Very seriously true... and a shame. Two working slobs like my Father and Brother were in the market in 1977 for something like the Grumman Tiger... A manageable 30,000 dollars off the show room floor.

 

You have to build it yourself to get close to that now a days.

 

 

We will have to agree to disagree on new aircraft for FSX. I don't think new AC have to be carbon copies of the real thing, or replicate their abilities with avionics. I'll be very happy with a developers economical simulation of such. Like I said in another thread, we should check our demands on devs with modern avionics like the G1000, Pro Line, and Primus Apex systems. Other wise, we'll be stuck with the same 1970's planes.

 

I believe most people who don't like glass/modern AC,  are so because of the limitations of their particular computers.   I get that. Not everyone can throw a couple grand at a desk top. 

 

I love aviation. AC of today is exciting and advanced in so many fabulous ways to what I grew up with.  Completely and utterly out of my price range however. For 60 bucks, I can at least have some idea of what those planes are like in my simulator.

 

Sorry for the long post!

My system will run glass just fine, but glass makes flying boring If i switch from my C182 with the g1000 to the the TMB850 with the g1000 its basicly the same panel and that's whats boring I like looking at all the gauges lit up at night and a different set up in each plane as it keeps things interesting. The most glass I want in a plane is an Aspen and a Garmin 530. 


ATP MEL,CFI,CFII,MEI.

 

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There are a few problems with demanding in depth functions in your addon aircraft:

 

To be clear here, I don't think any of us are "demanding" anything.  Just not interested in some planes we otherwise would be.

 

 

i) Development time would increase dramatically. Instead of the 3-4 aircraft Carenado currently pump out every year you can expect one every 18 months at best.

 

Yep.  Quality or quantity.  I don't think its any surprise that many former Carenado customers are, well, former as the 3-4 per year thing wears thin.

 

 

 

ii) The price would rise correspondingly.

 

Perhaps, perhaps not that much.  Pricing isn't that simple as we've discussed many times.  In any case, I'm certainly willing to pay fair value for a good effort.

 

 

 

iv) You'd remove one of the major stepping stones between default aircraft and the advanced or high end stuff.

 

You have to make a lot of assumptions to come away with that conclusion.  Another equally valid point of view suggests that they'd provide even better stepping stones if they satisfied a larger set of desires.  See below.

 

 

 

There's plenty of room for Carenado in the market, demanding that they turn into another PMDG, A2A, MilViz or RealAir is unrealistic and fails to recognise both the reality of the market and the role that Carenado plays in it.

 

Again, no one is "demanding" any such thing.  Carenado have never been the 100% systems plane maker and most of aren't suggesting they should be, but they did slowly improve on almost all fronts over the years, and gave themselves a significant advantage when they started offering RXP integration.  This allowed them to please multiple segments of the flying population, as the planes could be reasonable Ctrl-E planes for the "I just want to fly" folks as well as reasonably good platforms for those who wanted to run checklists and follow by-the-book procedures.  And because they could do both, they made very good transition aircraft, as above. 

 

Recent attempts at more advanced avionics have ended up being a step back from what they'd evolved to.

 

And with that, I think I've beaten this horse enough.

 

Scott

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I have the perfect jet for Carenado to tackle. The Lockheed JetStar 731 is complex and yet its all steam gauge, and it has 4 engines  B)

I just looked at photos of a JetStar on Controller.com. It's a great looking old jet.


Keith Guillory

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I just looked at photos of a JetStar

 

To be honest... even though I've be in and out of airports my whole life, I never even knew this bird even existed.  Looks like they took a page out of the Russian design book. They like to stack engines together like that too. I'm sure the short life span (manufacturing) is due to fuel cost.

 

 

 

I would love if Alabeo sticks to the rarer, more vintage side of GA

 

Yes, I was hoping for something like the 195, and both the Lockheed 10/12, Beech 18, and Spartan Executives (freeware is great, but a real studio is almost always way better). We need more accurate round engine planes! ... With G600 and up avionics! LOL.

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To be honest... even though I've be in and out of airports my whole life, I never even knew this bird even existed. Looks like they took a page out of the Russian design book. They like to stack engines together like that too. I'm sure the short life span (manufacturing) is due to fuel cost.

 

I had to laugh at this one because I also found a modified JetStar that had only 2 Garrett turbofan engines in place of the side-by-side configuration. The whole jet was going for about $42K USD as-is. While it showed the refitted engine mounts the engines were nowhere in the pictures.

 

The first time I saw one up close in a hangar near Chicago I happened to bump into the owner and he kindly let me and a few friends sit in the front seats and chatted a bit. It was a very busy cockpit and sort of reminded me of a mini 747 with the 4 columns of engine gauges.

 

I was told it was a beauty, but way too expensive to operate on a regular basis.

 

Keith


Keith Guillory

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To be clear here, I don't think any of us are "demanding" anything.  Just not interested in some planes we otherwise would be.

 

I'm not talking about demanding in a personal sense, but in a market sense i.e. as a customer you are wanting Carenado to produce different types of products to the ones they do now.

 

 

 


Yep.  Quality or quantity.  I don't think its any surprise that many former Carenado customers are, well, former as the 3-4 per year thing wears thin.

 

Unless you can source Carenado's sales figures that statement doesn't have a leg to stand on. The simple fact that Carenado are pumping these aircraft out at such a rate means that they must be selling pretty well. It would appear that the demand for such aircraft is very much alive and well.

 

 

 


Perhaps, perhaps not that much.  Pricing isn't that simple as we've discussed many times.  In any case, I'm certainly willing to pay fair value for a good effort.

 

Take a look at the Carenado B200 versus the Flight One B200. The Carenado costs $40 and the Flight One costs $60. Then consider that a great deal of the G1000 code used in the Flight One would have been inherited from their earlier Mustang and T182T releases. Don't forget that Flight One is a bigger outfit than Carenado and has a division providing real world training products - and as such are therefore far better placed to embark on such lengthy and complex projects. More complexity and features means more development time and higher cost - something that is especially difficult and risky for a small outfit like Carenado.

 

 

 


You have to make a lot of assumptions to come away with that conclusion.  Another equally valid point of view suggests that they'd provide even better stepping stones if they satisfied a larger set of desires.  See below.

 

Not really - you can see that the Carenado King Airs are placed rather nicely between the default King Air and the Flight One of MilViz in terms of complexity and features. Without the Carenado products there would be no middle ground which is where a great many flight simmers want to be.

 

 


Again, no one is "demanding" any such thing.  Carenado have never been the 100% systems plane maker and most of aren't suggesting they should be, but they did slowly improve on almost all fronts over the years, and gave themselves a significant advantage when they started offering RXP integration.  This allowed them to please multiple segments of the flying population, as the planes could be reasonable Ctrl-E planes for the "I just want to fly" folks as well as reasonably good platforms for those who wanted to run checklists and follow by-the-book procedures.  And because they could do both, they made very good transition aircraft, as above. 
 
Recent attempts at more advanced avionics have ended up being a step back from what they'd evolved to.

 

I'd say Carenado were never a good solution for the "run checklists and follow correct procedures" crowd. Carenado have always stuck very close to the SDK and as such are inherently bound by the limitations of it. The simple fact that you can fly any Carenado aircraft all day with the throttle wide open without any consequence is evidence of that. Likewise the Carenado aircraft that didn't receive the attention of Bernt Stolle often had rather flawed flight models.

 

Carenado have always been aimed at those who want something that is more than the default, but nowhere near the complexity of some of the higher end spectrum. That is how they've become so popular, that is how they've built a customer base, and that is how they are apparently doing so well. From a business perspective at least, if it ain't broke, why fix it? I'd very politely suggest to anyone that isn't satisfied with Carenado's complexity and features to move on to one of the developers that does cater for those tastes.

 

The apparent move of Carenado from GA to biz jets and Alabeo from esoteric types to GA is a very smart one from a business perspective. As we all know biz jets have been neglected for a very long time and the kind of product that Carenado put out at the price they sell would have a far wider appeal than something more complex and more expensive. They've identified a gap in the market and are moving in. Whilst the Alabeo stuff is a lot of fun, you have to agree that the esoteric stuff they've made thus far is of limited appeal, so it makes sense for them to move into the area that their big brother did before where the sales will almost certainly be bigger.

 

The mistake is in assuming that everybody wants ever increasing complexity and features. The reality is perhaps that the vast majority of flight simmers are quite happy in the middle ground and don't necessarily want a G1000 modelled to the Nth degree or realistic engine failure modes.

 

Go and have a read about what happened to the wider flight simulation genre at the end of the 90's - developers were stuck in a loop chasing ever increasing complexity, realism and features at the behest of their very vocal "hardcore" customers. Eventually the whole thing came crashing down because they were taking too long to make too complicated products that too few people purchased. That's exactly what will happen here if everybody expects developers like Carenado to get stuck in the same loop of acquiescing to some customers demands for ever greater complexity and features.

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I said I was done, and I'm not going to continue in the vein of refuting point by point as it gets tiresome for all, including the two of us ^_^, and the crux of the argument often gets lost as details and turns of phrase get picked apart. 

 

I am a Carenado customer - or, at least I have been.  I am a checklist sorta guy.  Many of Carenado's planes from the last few years work surprisingly well for me in that role (not perfectly, but well) a point I often make to refute some who want to dismiss Carenado planes as nothing more than "flying textures".  Many of their efforts rose well past that.  I DON'T think it's a case of either or, and I DON'T think that means Carenado have to suddenly become PMDG or A2A.

 

You're eloquently arguing against a position that I'm not taking.

 

Scott

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This was a very interesting thread, and I thank all that contributed!

 

 

Now... about the popcorn debate.  Butter or Salt.. Or both? :huh: :P

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Now... about the popcorn debate. Butter or Salt.. Or both?

 

Hmm. High cholesterol or high BP?  Both, thanks.  :lol:

 

Scott

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