P3D DA62

[Chock 17,769]

[signmanbob 592]

Looks great!

What do you think of it Alan?  I haven't tried mine yet.

 

Bob

[Chock 17,769]

I like it. I know Carenado get slagged off a bit, but I think it's quite a nice thing.

[edpatino 1,976]

1 hour ago, Chock said:

I like it. I know Carenado get slagged off a bit, but I think it's quite a nice thing.

To which extent the G1000 is simulated?. Does it allow the import of P3D flightplans?. How good the FPS are?.

Cheers, Ed

 

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Alan and all,

I think I may wait for the Vertx version of this.  Bert Pieke apparently loves it and I think we can safely bet that it will feature a/his mod for the F1GTN.

Personally, I am hoping it is up there in the quality rankings with the RealAir Duke Turbine and that aircraft is aeons ahead of anything Carenado. This is a personal belief and not to be taken in an inflammatory way. None the less, though, a very, very pretty aircraft.

My only problem is waiting but a recommendation from Bert is pretty well paramount in choice of aircraft for me.

Regards

Tony

[Chock 17,769]

2 hours ago, edpatino said:

To which extent the G1000 is simulated?. Does it allow the import of P3D flightplans?. How good the FPS are?.

Cheers, Ed

The G1000 is of course the included Carenado one, so it isn't massively functional. The DA62 comes with a total of seven PDF manuals, and of these, two are related to the included G1000; one for the PFD functions and one for the GPS/Map unit, these being 7 pages long and 25 pages long.

It does do a fair bit, but is essentially something which is slightly more functional than the default flight sim GPS unit. It will handle departure/arrival procedures, so that's good, but it ain't like a real fully functional G1000. On the plus side of that, it won't exactly take you forever to read its avionics manuals, and the mouse hotspots for the GUI functionality it does have, are pretty good and not hard/clumsy to use, which is not always the case for some mouse-driven avionics buttons, even on fancy add-ons, as anyone who has ever used the one in the PMDG DC-6 will know.

Considering the thing only costs about 25 quid, it's a fairly reasonable panel you get. You just have to accept that at this price point, there is no way they'd be including a fully functional replication of a G1000 avionics unit, for example, you can't switch from a 'North Up' view to an Aircraft Heading orientation, it's stuck on North Up as the only choice for map orientation. Yet it does have things such as TCAS with audio alerts and it is a very readable display.

It won't load a flight plan, nor will it read the default P3D flight plan you have loaded, which is annoying, but it will let you input a plan manually, so whilst that is a slight faff, it's not terrible. As noted, it can fly procedures and a decent flight plan shouldn't have too many waypoints for an aircraft which has a maximum range of less than 1,300 miles, and considerably less than that if heavily loaded, so on the whole it's alright in terms of the avionics. The PFD part of the avionics will display the synthetic vision system similar to the one which was debuted in that Carenado Cessna a while back, providing you are subscribed to it. So it does have one or two fancy tricks up its sleeve if you want to fly socked in IFR through mountainous terrain.

Frame rates are pretty good for the thing although, since there are some 'lite' versions included with the package too, FPS is unlikely to be an issue for pretty much any half decent computer. Paint jobs are okay, but I'd prefer a few more varied colour schemes. On the whole I think it's quite a lot of bang for the bucks, since as noted, it is only 25 quid, and that won't even get you a night in the pub these days.

Edited October 2, 2018 by Chock