Take a look at those gems - C47 and DC3

[Nobody2020 24]

25 minutes ago, Chock said:

You should bear in mind that if you are prepared to use Control+E to start it, at least until they've fixed it, then there is nothing else really show-stoppingly 'wrong' with it. ... but it is undeniably the prettiest and most detailed DC-3/C-47 you can get for your simulator and it does fly well.

I agree about the flying qualities.  Initially, I was able to get it started the old fashioned way, albeit with some difficulty, and enjoyed a couple of successful flights.  Got the gear and flaps to work (what convoluted controls!) and actually walked away from the landings.  And I've never had any real life experience with anything like a DC3.

Hated to uninstall, but in its current state, frustrations outweigh the enjoyment.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Nobody2020

[regis9 4,014]

42 minutes ago, Chock said:

You should bear in mind that if you are prepared to use Control+E to start it, at least until they've fixed it, then there is nothing else really show-stoppingly 'wrong' with it.

Thanks Chock, I think I’ll wait a bit since for the price being charged i wouldn’t want to have to ctrl-e it to get started.

Off topic thanks for your detailed YouTube reviews of this aircraft and the DC Designs super hornet.  I bought the latter last night based on your review/overview.  

I’ve always wondered how you can consistently write such lengthy, detailed, informative posts on avsim (my attention span when writing is no where near that good!) but after watching a few of your videos I’m getting a really good sense for your attention to detail 😁

[Chock 17,769]

24 minutes ago, regis9 said:

I’ve always wondered how you can consistently write such lengthy, detailed, informative posts on avsim (my attention span when writing is no where near that good!) but after watching a few of your videos I’m getting a really good sense for your attention to detail 😁

Alternatively, it could be regarded as banging on about stuff for ages lol. If you want a good laugh on that subject incidentally, have a look at my humorous reply to a comment on youtube (which I'm fairly sure had an ulterior motive) concerning my review of the Lionheart Bellanca Viking. That should give you a laugh. 🤣

Edit: I just noted that she deleted her comment, presumably because of my reply, but I have a record of it, so I'll reproduce it here for the comedy value:

Dominique Hannaford commented: 'With all due respect, you need to talk much less.'

My reply: 'Of course it is always difficult to cover a complex subject whilst remaining brief, talking in detail about technical aspects and history and explaining about the product under review in a useful manner, but I'm nothing if not up for a challenge, so from now on, all my reviews will be conducted through the medium of dance.'

You always know when somebody prefaces a comment with 'with all due respect', respect is the the last thing they have on their mind.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Chock

[JasonPC 173]

7 minutes ago, Chock said:

Alternatively, it could be regarded as banging on about stuff for ages lol. If you want a good laugh on that subject incidentally, have a look at my humorous reply to a comment on youtube (which I'm fairly sure had an ulterior motive) concerning my review of the Lionheart Bellanca Viking. That should give you a laugh. 🤣

The real thing is more physically demanding to actually get started but less psychologically demanding. For now I am thankful I saved the v1.0 installer because I do enjoy this plane even if the startup procedure is incorrect, at least that version will start. The workaround to the launching into orbit glitch is to press Shift-Ctrl-F4 before starting. The devs actually blame the sim for this bug but I have never seen it happen on any other addon! And although the freeware C-47 is a different version of the aircraft, at least they got the startup procedure right.

Edited April 30, 2020 by JasonPC

[Nobody2020 24]

30 minutes ago, Chock said:

Dominique Hannaford commented: 'With all due respect, you need to talk much less.

My reply: 'Of course it is always difficult to cover a complex subject whilst remaining brief ... so from now on, all my reviews will be conducted through the medium of dance.  You always know when somebody prefaces a comment with 'with all due respect', respect is the the last thing they have on their mind.

Many young people these days have very short attention spans.  When they're confronted with lengthy technical details and the like, their eyes glaze over.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Nobody2020

[regis9 4,014]

I tried to go read the comments and though it said there were two I couldn’t see them so if they were in the process of being deleted that would explain it.

Chock, the ultimate reverse trolling action on your part would have an eight paragraph response 😆

[Alan_A 1,650]

6 hours ago, Chock said:

You should bear in mind that if you are prepared to use Control+E to start it, at least until they've fixed it, then there is nothing else really show-stoppingly 'wrong' with it.

I believe you, and I might resort to that.  But one of the pleasures of working with big radials is managing the start process - which of course can be ill-tempered, but not like this. And as you noted in another post, I really don't want to have to resort to CTRL+E in a $65 add-on. 

I spent the afternoon testing it and out of about two dozen attempts, I was able to start the number one engine once, and the number two engine once, but not both at the same time. I know my startup procedures - this makes me think there are things wrong in the coding, as @Wothan has already discovered.

For others who are trying to deal with the startup issues, here's the report I just posted in the SOH thread.

I'm not quite ready to uninstall yet... but I'm thinking about it.

 

[Alan_A 1,650]

5 hours ago, JasonPC said:

The real thing is more physically demanding to actually get started but less psychologically demanding.

I agree.  Have to say I also find some of the design choices odd.  For example - I know the mixture levers in the original had locking levers, but was that the most important thing to simulate?  The result is that it's impossible to use hardware mixture levers, and instead you have to grab clickspots and drag.  A lever that snaps to a detent - the way the levers do in Manfred's C-47 and in the A2A Connie - would have been much more useful.  Similarly, the gear latching is fascinating but really hard to work with in a VC - I suspect that if I ever do get it airborne, I'll just assume a copilot and toggle the gear with a hardware switch instead.  Seems to me they went down a couple of wrong rabbit holes.

They also really need to decouple the GPU from the hamburger door.

[LHookins 3,103]

21 minutes ago, Alan_A said:

For example - I know the mixture levers in the original had locking levers, but was that the most important thing to simulate?  The result is that it's impossible to use hardware mixture levers, and instead you have to grab clickspots and drag.

I dislike being negative but this kind of thing indicates a certain lack of judgement on the part of the developers.  Plus when you find one issue like this there are always others.

Sorry, guys.

Hook

[JasonPC 173]

3 hours ago, Alan_A said:

I agree.  Have to say I also find some of the design choices odd.  For example - I know the mixture levers in the original had locking levers, but was that the most important thing to simulate?  The result is that it's impossible to use hardware mixture levers, and instead you have to grab clickspots and drag.  A lever that snaps to a detent - the way the levers do in Manfred's C-47 and in the A2A Connie - would have been much more useful.  Similarly, the gear latching is fascinating but really hard to work with in a VC - I suspect that if I ever do get it airborne, I'll just assume a copilot and toggle the gear with a hardware switch instead.  Seems to me they went down a couple of wrong rabbit holes.

They also really need to decouple the GPU from the hamburger door.

One thing you can do if you have the appropriate hardware and software (I did it with Spad.next) is make a script for a button (in my case I used two of my fuel switches) to toggle the mixture switches on and off.

I found LVARs for the following variables used by Aeroplane Heaven to control various items in the cockpit. Note that this is highly convoluted and a bad design, but it is possible with some work.

Gear Lever/Latch Animations-
C47_GEAR_SAFELATCH (1 or 0)
C47_GEARLATCH (0, 1, or 2)
C47_GEARLEVER_HANDLE (0 or 1)
C47_GEARLEVER_MAIN (0 to 100)
NOTE: The standard simconnect gear up/down controls still actually raise/lower the gear (GEAR_UP and GEAR_DOWN)

Mixture Control/Animation-
TRIGGERS
C47_LEFT_MIXTURE_TRIGGER (0 or 1)
C47_RIGHT_MIXTURE_TRIGGER (0 or 1)

IDLE/CUTOFF
C47_LEFT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 0
C47_RIGHT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 0
MIXTURE1_SET=0
MIXTURE2_SET=0

LEAN
C47_LEFT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 50
C47_RIGHT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 50
MIXTURE1_SET=5461
MIXTURE2_SET=5461

RICH
C47_LEFT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 100
C47_RIGHT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 100
MIXTURE1_SET=15500
MIXTURE2_SET=15500

EMERGENCY
C47_LEFT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 120
C47_RIGHT_MIXTURE_LEVER = 120
MIXTURE1_RICH
MIXTURE2_RICH

Edited May 1, 2020 by JasonPC

[Chock 17,769]

It would have been far better to ally the mixture lock levers animation/function to a parameter such as 'lower concorde visor' or 'lower arrestor hook' so that an existing command in the sim could have a key press applied to it. I'd have been inclined to do something like that.

[Alan_A 1,650]

3 hours ago, LHookins said:

I dislike being negative but this kind of thing indicates a certain lack of judgement on the part of the developers. 

Well, in their defense, I can understand why they wanted to try it.  The mixture locks and the gear latch are things that to my knowledge have never been modeled in a sim DC-3 or C-47.  They're quirky features that are distinctive to the airplane.  The problem is that they forgot about useability - or put it in second place.  These are interesting features that don't fit well with the way we actually interact with a VC.

@JasonPC - Thanks! I've never done any LVAR programming but this might be my chance.  But on the other hand...

@Chock - I agree that would have been better design.  I'm just not convinced the locks should be a sim feature at all.  In practice, in the real aircraft, you'd learn quickly to squeeze the latch handle while moving the mixture lever - it'd all be one motion that would become second nature.  My take is that the other way of programming the mixtures - having the lever move like a normal mixture axis and snap into the detents - better represents the actual moves you'd make in the real aircraft.  If I recall correctly, it took Manfred and his team some work to get the right mixture values for the auto-rich and auto-lean detents.  But you'd have to do that in any case - the AH levers still snap to a detent and (I'm guessing) produce an air-fuel ratio.  So the only issue is whether or not you simulate locking the levers, and whether or not you can use your hardware to control them.

My biggest beef is still with the hamburger door.  They call it that for a non-food-related reason - that ladder, when it's extended, is two feet from the propeller arc of the number one engine.  So there's no way you'd have the door open and the ladder extended during startup.  They really need to decouple the GPU from the door animation so that it (and the fire extinguishers) can be displayed separately.

All of these things will matter more to me if and when I can get through my startup issues.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Alan_A

[Wothan 173]

Regarding the Mixture levers, I have to defend AH on those.

I´m not sure how much they do to the engines management / simulating engine degradation.

As the former developer of the Aerosoft Catalina, I did the same to the mixture levers, though without any locking mechanism.

The reason is that by using xml for coding, features, like sparkplug fouling, carburator icing, engine power degradation etc.. the only option is to manipulate the fuel mixture.

For aircraft like the DC3/C47 and Catalina (and most other vintage prop aircraft), You are lucky as a developer to have mixture levers that are using detends, i.e Cutoff, Auto Lean, Auto Rich & Full and set them via custom variables and then manipulate the mixture in the background.

In normal operation You can control the mixture according to the mixture lever setting, but You can also lean the mixture to the point where engine starts to run rough / loose power, without seeing this in the cockpit.

Caveat though is that it is best for the user not to assign any hardware lever to mixture settings, since with xml code the axis input would intervene with the code.

 

A work around for the current need to click the interlocks on the mixture levers, would be to only animate these interlocks as You click and drag the levers, so no need to click on them, they simply just get's animated as activated as You move them.

In normal operation You don´t move them anyway, only between Auto Rich and Auto Lean.

The same could be done to the gear mechanism.

If they want to please the purists, they could make this optional i.e "Auto interlock activation" On/Off

Edited May 1, 2020 by Wothan

[JasonPC 173]

57 minutes ago, Wothan said:

Regarding the Mixture levers, I have to defend AH on those.

I´m not sure how much they do to the engines management / simulating engine degradation.

As the former developer of the Aerosoft Catalina, I did the same to the mixture levers, though without any locking mechanism.

The reason is that by using xml for coding, features, like sparkplug fouling, carburator icing, engine power degradation etc.. the only option is to manipulate the fuel mixture.

For aircraft like the DC3/C47 and Catalina (and most other vintage prop aircraft), You are lucky as a developer to have mixture levers that are using detends, i.e Cutoff, Auto Lean, Auto Rich & Full and set them via custom variables and then manipulate the mixture in the background.

In normal operation You can control the mixture according to the mixture lever setting, but You can also lean the mixture to the point where engine starts to run rough / loose power, without seeing this in the cockpit.

Caveat though is that it is best for the user not to assign any hardware lever to mixture settings, since with xml code the axis input would intervene with the code.

 

A work around for the current need to click the interlocks on the mixture levers, would be to only animate these interlocks as You click and drag the levers, so no need to click on them, they simply just get's animated as activated as You move them.

In normal operation You don´t move them anyway, only between Auto Rich and Auto Lean.

The same could be done to the gear mechanism.

If they want to please the purists, they could make this optional i.e "Auto interlock activation" On/Off

I'm just thankful they used easily accessible LVARs to control this and nothing more complicated. A free program that could control this is LINDA, but I've never been very good at using that as I just refuse to take the time to learn how to write lua scripts.

[MaDDogz 242]

9 minutes ago, JasonPC said:

I'm just thankful they used easily accessible LVARs to control this and nothing more complicated. A free program that could control this is LINDA, but I've never been very good at using that as I just refuse to take the time to learn how to write lua scripts.

Its not that hard to learn how to do it, and when you do it will open up a world of options. If i had the aircraft, i could easily make a module for Linda. As i don't own it, i cant even try. Once a module has been created, its very, very easy to assign the buttons for the mixture locks ect. All YOU have to do is select what control ( from a drop down list ) gets sent to the sim, when you press your chosen button.