My grandson has moved on to MS 2020 and I have been the "beneficiary" of his old computer replete with Prepar3D 4.5. I cannot believe something that looks and feels like FSX can give me 50fps as opposed to the often blinding speed of 6fps in days of yore and the resulting slide shows of the more advanced craft.

Just a couple of observations coming back into the flight sim world. Why haven't the other big boys (you know who they are!) not produced a top of the range private jet complete with full systems etc, similar to Eaglesoft's latest offering. I am not saying I would spend over £100 on it but there are many who would.

Which brings me to my next point. My go to aircraft used to be Eaglesoft's Citation x v2 which I am sure is still a great plane but very old fashioned with regards the look of the cockpit and I just wondered if it wouldn't have been cost effective to have upgraded that aspect in the interim years and say charged £10 to £15, for the privilege of having a more modern looking plane with the same great flight characteristics once the throttle detent had been adjusted.

Finally, in an ideal world Carenado would hand over their astonishing, in my humble opinion, Phenom 300 to one of the others to finish the systems.

 

 

I quite agree on the Phenom 300 (the 100 is basically the same aircraft too - I have both). Great fun but lacking in systems and the Carenado G1000 is slow and drags the FPS down (which I suspect is because the gauge UI is all-XML). I actually use external G1000 software with it but I hacked out a new gauge from the Carenado G1000 MFD to act as a 'systems' display for stuff I can't simulate otherwise. 

There's a general dearth of bizjets for P3D (not saying there are none... but there are many that aren't available or are only pale imitations of the real thing). In fact there's a lack of advanced avionics altogether outside the tubeliner world. Where's the G3000? G5000? A good ProLine? Entegra? I guess the return is just too low to justify the work that goes into properly simulating software systems that took huge amounts of time and money to develop in the real world. Perhaps bizjets fall between the two schools of GA and airliners in that they're a minority interest? 

It's a real shame. I do like to fly bizjets as well as the others and I much prefer modern avionics to steam gauges and would like to fly the latest stuff in as much detail as possible. But there are limits to what developers will invest their time in, and right now it seems like the P3D add-ons market is slowly being strangled to death by MSFS. Maybe that's pessimistic but I can't keep pretending like it isn't any more 😞

Still - just seeing how far things have come on since FSX must be a blast. Finally, a flyable sim with complex scenery and aircraft! Just a shame MSFS blew it out of the water with next-gen graphics but (IMHO) very little actual depth. Not that I think it won't get better - I'm quite sure it will - but I don't want to spend 5 years getting there again.   

Edited February 22, 20215 yr by neilhewitt

I too, love the Carenado Phenom 300.  There are some mods out there that make its systems somewhat workable, see the Carenado/Phenom 300 subforum here at AVSIM.

1 hour ago, Mace said:

I too, love the Carenado Phenom 300.  There are some mods out there that make its systems somewhat workable, see the Carenado/Phenom 300 subforum here at AVSIM.

Cheers. I'll have a look. I should probably point out that I need to both have the G1000 PFD/MFD displayed on separate screens, without the bezels, and also be able to interface my G1000 hardware with it. From my examination of the G1000 XML code I worked out that many of the functions can only be triggered by an actual mouse click (ie there are no triggering LVARs or events and there are no key-bindings except where the code uses the usual internal sim values, and FSUIPC mouse macros don't work). I tried multiple times to get it to work and I came close using a jerry-rigged Key2Mouse solution, but it still wouldn't work properly. 

I get that most simmers will be pointing and clicking on a desktop (or in a VR HMD), but it's a shame that Carenado and so many others don't make any provision for cockpit-builders. Providing a key-binding or a LVAR that triggers a gauge action would not be a lot of work and it would only have to be done once. I did ask and they basically told me to forget it. Unlike QualityWings who asked me for a list of what LVARS I needed and said they'd look at it if they got time (they didn't, but at least they offered!).

I do occasionally wonder if it might be worth while starting an open-source project to simulate the G1000 (and eventually 3000 etc) as an external application that can be customised properly by end-users. Most of the 'trainer' products are actually software wrappers around the real Garmin code so you only get the features they have licensed - for example Flight1Tech's G1000 Student Simulator hasn't got synthetic vision, doesn't support turboprop types, and while they have all of this available in their turnkey commercial products they've told me they have no intention of adding it to the 'consumer' product line and basically we get what they give us. Noble Flight Sim have built their own G1000 (or 1000-alike, as it's not officially licensed) system which I know they can customise but they aren't making an SDK available (and I can see why - people will pay through the nose for the right software for training and hobbyists aren't really their audience). But doing it from scratch would be a huge project requiring the efforts of many people with experience in avionics and flying the real systems and I just don't see it happening, and if it did it would take 5 years to ship something. It's a nice dream.

Sorry, I'm wandering well off-topic, but this is a hobby-horse of mine 🙂

Edited February 22, 20215 yr by neilhewitt
Random new thoughts

7 hours ago, Seagreen said:

Finally, in an ideal world Carenado would hand over their astonishing, in my humble opinion, Phenom 300 to one of the others to finish the systems.

Some of us have indeed taken the Phenom panel apart and put it back together, using a GTN 750 as the navigation device..

See here: https://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=53360&title=gtn-in-phenom-300

Several of the newer Carenado bizjets actually come with GTN 750 integration.. the S550 and the C560X for example.. have you looked at those?

Thanks for the suggestions, Bert and I will have a look. The thing I find fascinating about the Phenom is the checklists which I follow to the letter when starting her up and it is so satisfying to find it becoming more natural as I become aware of the flow in the procedure.

I also have the Carenado Premier 1A which I love but it has a problem following Vor and Glideslope ( finding myself shouting back at the repetitive "GS" warning, " I know, I know it's not my fault!) although the GPS works wonderfully well, with regards to FMS Nav, Vnav and landing.

I have just been informed to assign a button or key to the GPS/Nav toggle switch. So off to do just that.

Update: GPS/Nav toggle assignment didn't work, heading out to sea. Speak well of me...

1 hour ago, Seagreen said:

Update: GPS/Nav toggle assignment didn't work, heading out to sea. Speak well of me...

Come back! Don't end up like Charles Nungesser!