This wont be popular, but hear me out. My vote is Aerosoft Airbus 318/319.

 

I bought it to get some heavy iron into P3D prior to PMDG releasing their aircraft. To date, I most avidly enjoy A2A, PMDG and MJC planes (in FSX and now P3D) and I strive for complexity and depth. I bought the Airbus (like the QWSim Avro146 a few years ago) because of the good reviews and apparent reasonable systems depth. I know they are not PMDG standard of complexity, but i thought close enough.

 

Both I uninstalled within hours of purchase. Why? I have always struggled to put my finger on it - its just a feeling i get with them. The lasting memory of the QW purchase is the poor switch clicking sounds in the cockpit and instantaneous sound of equipment when its switched on (same with the Coolsky DC9). With the Airbus? - it was the lack of graduated lighting. Cockpit lighting is either on or off. No dimmers.

 

Are these silly little features that I shouldnt get too worked up on? Yes, absolutely, but i guess its that immersion factor which makes such a large difference to me.

 

In the interest of balance, best purchases for me this year were P3D v2.4, P3D versions of A2A Cherokee and C182, UTX-USA v2.0 and ASN.

This wont be popular, but hear me out. My vote is Aerosoft Airbus 318/319.

 

Both I uninstalled within hours of purchase. Why? I have always struggled to put my finger on it - its just a feeling i get with them. The lasting memory of the QW purchase is the poor switch clicking sounds in the cockpit and instantaneous sound of equipment when its switched on (same with the Coolsky DC9). With the Airbus? - it was the lack of graduated lighting. Cockpit lighting is either on or off. No dimmers.

Well, you are more than welcome to have a opinion, I cant please everyone. 

 

Ultimately you bought the product after seeing its feature list and dimmable isn't one of those there. A good number of the flights can be done in daytime where lighting dimmers have zero usage (in off pos) in real life here. The fact that you uninstalled straight away because of that makes me think its something else rather than the dimmers. (but feedback is duly noted... - and yes I read all stuff, good or bad and filter as needed)

 

 

With the Airbus? - it was the lack of graduated lighting. Cockpit lighting is either on or off. No dimmers.
 

 

Wouldn't it be great if there were real and practical lights that the developers could use?  Having studied what these guys have to do to make decent lighting effects, it boggles the mind.  I was working on a scenery at the time and just gave up.

Well, you are more than welcome to have a opinion, I cant please everyone.

 

Ultimately you bought the product after seeing its feature list and dimmable isn't one of those there. A good number of the flights can be done in daytime where lighting dimmers have zero usage (in off pos) in real life here. The fact that you uninstalled straight away because of that makes me think its something else rather than the dimmers. (but feedback is duly noted... - and yes I read all stuff, good or bad and filter as needed)

I hope the tone of my post reflected more the self-confessed ridiculousness of my requirements rather than a criticism of your fine product! Your acceptance of feedback is admirable though. It genuinely was simply an immersion thing. Unused switches and functions detract from it but in no way do I insinuate that this was not clear prior to me purchasing.

I hope the tone of my post reflected more the self-confessed ridiculousness of my requirements rather than a criticism of your fine product! Your acceptance of feedback is admirable though. It genuinely was simply an immersion thing. Unused switches and functions detract from it but in no way do I insinuate that this was not clear prior to me purchasing.

Fair enough.

 

The Airbus was meant to reach a large customer base, so I do lookout for feedback on both ends.

Wouldn't it be great if there were real and practical lights that the developers could use?  Having studied what these guys have to do to make decent lighting effects, it boggles the mind.  I was working on a scenery at the time and just gave up.

P3D offers some things that makes this much easier, but its not the dominant market platform.

You're not gonna believe my biggest disappointment of 2014.  It was getting a newer system after my 9 year old Windows XP system fried in November 2014.  Through Newegg I got a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit system with 4GBs of RAM, a Graphics Card much better than the 9-year system had (gave that card to my grandson), bells, whistles, and even a siren or two...

 

Oh, it was awesome. sliders mostly maxed in FSX and all the way in FS9.  Stunning.  I flew all day with a big ....eating grin.  Then I tried my FSX Wilco B737-300 classic... :(

 

Not the greatest payware in the world, but one of the few...if not the only...B737 Classic birds.  Won't work on my 64-Bit system.  Researched and tried all the fixes (and I see Wilco has a Win7, 64-bit version now) to no avail.  Disappointing.  A small disappoint, true, and really my only one of 2014 so I guess I can't really complain.

 

Randy

 

P.S. Please don't "hijack" this thread with what I should/could do to make it work.  I've accepted it and have moved on.  Let's keep this focused on the topic.  It's interesting and educational.

I moved from FSX to P3D2.4 this year, and had a mixed experience.

 

Yes, I can run max autogen, the 3d waves are beautiful, and my framerates are perfectly acceptable. Huge bucket of win.

 

On the other hand, ASN+REX4 looks nothing like it did in FSX. "Tiled popcorn" would be the most simple way to describe it. What once looked stunning in FSX, looks awful in P3D. I was not expecting this.

 

AA suffers too, but I was aware of this issue before purchasing. I was willing to make the sacrifice.

 

Otherwise, I have learned (the hard way) to properly research my addons before hastily making a purchase, so I can't think of a time I got burned in 2014. Just a bit disappointed by a few specific issues in P3D2.4.

Well, you are more than welcome to have a opinion, I cant please everyone.

 

I know that I'm hugely unpopular here. But let me state this: The Aerosoft Airbus is an EXCELLENT add-on. Even though it does not offer the system depth of, for example, the Majestic Q400 (which I also fly a lot and enjoy very much), it is a lot of fun and well worth the money. And it has excellent performance in P3D. So please, do filter these opinions. I'm sure there are much more positive ones than those negative once with rather weird rationale. This was also the reason why I made my initial comment on the thread. I think it is rather unfair talking negative about the hard work of developers which for the majority delivered an excellent add-on...

I know that I'm hugely unpopular here. But let me state this: The Aerosoft Airbus is an EXCELLENT add-on. Even though it does not offer the system depth of, for example, the Majestic Q400 (which I also fly a lot and enjoy very much), it is a lot of fun and well worth the money. And it has excellent performance in P3D. So please, do filter these opinions. I'm sure there are much more positive ones than those negative once with rather weird rationale.

Very well said - thank you for adding balance to my weirdness!

 

 

thank you for adding balance to my weirdness!

 

I hope, you don't get me wrong. The "weird rationale" wasn't meant to offend you. It's just that I personally think that disliking an add-on just because of the cockpit lighting is a bit, let's say, "special".

 

 

I know that I'm hugely unpopular here. But let me state this: The Aerosoft Airbus is an EXCELLENT add-on. Even though it does not offer the system depth of, for example, the Majestic Q400 (which I also fly a lot and enjoy very much), it is a lot of fun and well worth the money. And it has excellent performance in P3D. So please, do filter these opinions. I'm sure there are much more positive ones than those negative once with rather weird rationale. This was also the reason why I made my initial comment on the thread. I think it is rather unfair talking negative about the hard work of developers which for the majority delivered an excellent add-on...

 

As some have pointed out, overall, I'd say it's been a pretty good year.  There was much more grumbling last year than this.  I probably bought, maybe 20-25 addons and only disliked 2.  So, yeah, that's pretty good.  This isn't the wall of shame...just a place where folks can talk about products that didn't meet their particular expectations.

Nothing from Intel  to WOW me.  

With the Airbus? - it was the lack of graduated lighting. Cockpit lighting is either on or off. No dimmers.

 

I'm not in the slightest angered or made upset by this comment, BUT, I'd like to share my opinion on it. 

 

I'm an avid freeware scenery designer (I've made many a scenery for Calclassic - user chris34 on their forum, and if you're interested, look for anything made by Chris Helton in their scenery page).

 

I absolutely love to make scenery. It's something I've grown a passion for and I have many a scenery project under my belt and many more up on avsim, and I personally believe that my evolution can be well witnessed (except in my KDCA 1960 scenery... I look back at that and shudder, which is why I'm making a much better V2)

 

One of the things that truly irks me about scenery design, specifically texturing, is the lighting effects. It's incredibly difficult to create a realistic feel with light effects with the way FS9 or FSX or P3D does it, and I think what Aerosoft has done is fairly incredible if not outright outstanding. Not PMDG level no, but fantastic none-the-less. 

 

It's amazingly difficult to make a realistic light environment at an airport, where things that don't need to be seen very often can be made a bit lower res and therefore a little easier. But in an aircraft cockpit...  :rolleyes:

I've never said that Aerosoft Airbus is not an utterly awesome addon. It is brilliant in fact. But for some strange reason it doesn't perform on my system as it should, and I can't enjoy it for good. Luckily an upgrade price is very good and acceptable, so I was using it for at least 15 hours, with lot of stutters and bad fps though, as I said earlier. At the end after probably equal amount of hours trying to get rid of stutters and bad fps, I finally lost any hope and interest to even load Aerosoft Airbus in FSX, so I uninstalled it for good and migrated to NGX and possibly Boeing, for good.

 

Another possible disappointing moment is when I checked my hometown in OpenLC EU. It was completely wrong. Also a lot of Adriatic towns were non existant. After the update the situation is a bit better, but still there are some towns completely wiped of the map. But since OpenLC is covering the whole freakin' continent, I don't have any right to complain. After all, Global + Vector + OpenLC is something that converts FSX into something I've ever dreamed of. It's utterly brilliant and beautiful. I'm not missing UTX and GEX even a bit. UTX for eating VAS and GEX for converting Europe into a desert.

So please, do filter these opinions. I'm sure there are much more positive ones than those negative once with rather weird rationale. 

Well, does that mean that in future products (A330) people do not want to see dimmable lighting? I think I have the answer to that already  . As said, I look for feedback into future products (and remove negativity from it). People can say "why no winds aloft, bad product", I simply take the negativity away and interpret it as some people would like to see winds aloft in future products (which I do think people want to as well).

 

There is always something good to extract from comments like this.

 

I've never said that Aerosoft Airbus is not an utterly awesome addon. It is brilliant in fact. But for some strange reason it doesn't perform on my system as it should, and I can't enjoy it for good. Luckily an upgrade price is very good and acceptable, so I was using it for at least 15 hours, with lot of stutters and bad fps though, as I said earlier. At the end after probably equal amount of hours trying to get rid of stutters and bad fps, I finally lost any hope and interest to even load Aerosoft Airbus in FSX, so I uninstalled it for good and migrated to NGX and possibly Boeing, for good.

Again peter, my offer still stands. If you ever want to retry getting into it again, send a ticket and I will try to solve your problem personally.