I ended up with both the Carenado and Just Flight Arrow III.  I think I like Carenado's a tad bit more.  It seems like the consensus prefers the Just Flight version what do you all think?

Edited June 3, 20215 yr by Todd2

 No doubt Carenado visuals are top notch. But personally for me JF Arrow behavior resamples more RL Arrow as I know it while Carenado version is not 

I did a shootout of them both on my youtube review channel, and concluded that the Just Flight one edges it a bit. (I presume you meant Just Flight, not Real Flight).

The primary differences between the two are that the avionics fit in the Carenado one is more modern, but the Just Flight one has some options in this regard which add to it a little. The Carenado one has rudder pedals which do move when you apply the parking brake (like the real thing) whereas they don't do that in the Just Flight one. Some of the texturing is a slight bit fancier on the Carenado one as well. But the main thing which actually does split them is that the Carenado one doesn't lose much speed in a dirty configuration (or even clean when throttled back), whereas the Just Flight one does. So flight dynamics-wise, the Just Flight one is the better add-on, and I guess that's what people would mostly be concerned with. I demo this on my video.

With all that in mind, my conclusion for that shoot out video was that there wasn't a desperately large difference separating them, but that the Just Flight one just edges it on the realism front when it comes to flight characteristics, however, it edges it one price too, since it is subject to numerous loyalty purchasing bonuses and a considerable discount of 66 percent for subsequent variants.

I've done this kind of video comparison before on the relative merits of one sim aeroplane and the other on my channel over the years, and it's usually pretty close in most ways. For example, I compared the Just Flight (Aeroplane Heaven) P3D Mark 1 Spitfire versus the A2A version of the Mark 1 Spit (they were pretty close, especially if you used Accufeel on the sim and it was only the maintenance stuff in the A2A one which gave it the edge if you like that kind of thing), I compared the Just Flight PA28R in Flight Sim World to the same JF one in P3D (FSW was better than P3D) and the Vertx Diamond DA62 to the Carenado Diamond (it was very close and hard to pick an outright winner, but the 3D model on the Carenado offering was more accurate and given the fact that the Vertx one was much-praised, personally, I thought it wasn't the slaughter many might imagine it would have been when comparing the two, and of the two, the Carenado one is the one which still has some support from the developer and can use synthetic vision avionics).

I guess what you can conclude from this, is a few things: As much as people like to rip on Carenado, they make some nice stuff for the price, and they often compare quite favourably with offerings which are perceived by many by default to be significantly better when in fact this isn't always the case. The same is true of that Just Flight/Aeroplane Heaven Spit, where the default position from many would be that the Aeroplane Heaven one would not be a patch on the A2A one, whereas this simply isn't true either, nor is it true for the Aeroplane Heaven B-17F/G, which also compares very favourably with the A2A B-17 offering.

However, back with those Carenado and Just Flight PA28s, we are now in the position where if you buy one JF PA28, you can get another one at a considerable discount, and you get loyalty points for doing so too (although to be fair, you do too if you buy Carenado stuff off the Just Flight website, but not for MSFS, only for other sims). So in the end, this does make the Just Flight MSFS PA28 edge it over the Carenado one in another way other than purely in terms of flight characteristics, but as I say, it's not the obvious slaughter one might suppose it would be when comparing the two.

That shoot-out if anyone is curious:

 

Edited June 3, 20215 yr by Chock

1 minute ago, Chock said:

I did a shootout of them both on my review and concluded that the Just Flight one edges it a bit. (I presume you meant Just flight, not Real Flight).

fixed it

 

 

I want to like the JF Arrow so much since I did all my Commercial training in this exact model (I think it had the same paint job!) back in the 90's.  I just cannot get past the bizarre jumpiness that it exhibits.  I fly with live WX and it seems to be caused by how it reacts/responds to turbulence but I get it all the time.  I have not seen this behavior in any other aircraft...

Im flying the Carenado Arrow and i love it 🥰

having both...I was impressed by the Carenado one as I did not expect it to be half as good as it turned out. It holds it's own against the JF flight. While the JF one does edge it out, Carenado deserves kudos.

1 hour ago, Todd2 said:

I ended up with both the Carenado and Real Flight Arrow III.  I think I like Carenado's a tad bit more.  It seems like the consensus prefers the Just Flight version what do you all think?

Looks good, doesn't fly like a real airplane. Try a stall in the Carenado, no Piper stalls like that. It's garbage. 

Edited June 3, 20215 yr by Bobsk8

Luckily we have the ability to choose.

One thing I'd like to mention is the extensive care JF shows listening to their customers and updating the aircraft.

Karl

I did one flight with Carenado Piper after I bought it, I have not touched it since, I think it is inferior to JF Arrow in every way, except in textures, I had hopes it would be in class with their Mooney in flight dynamics, but unfortunately it is not in my opinion.

Edited June 3, 20215 yr by Ixoye

1 hour ago, Ixoye said:

I did one flight with Carenado Piper after I bought it, I have not touched it since, I think it is inferior to JF Arrow in every way, except in textures, I had hopes it would be in class with their Mooney in flight dynamics, but unfortunately it is not in my opinion.

Exactly. It look's good but flies like a brick. 

6 hours ago, kaha said:

Luckily we have the ability to choose.

One thing I'd like to mention is the extensive care JF shows listening to their customers and updating the aircraft.

Karl

Worth pointing out that Carenado did that too. Their PA28 came out two days before an MSFS patch dropped which stuffed up the flaps in the sim. JF waited until after the patch, so for two days the Carenado PA28 was unflyable, flaps would cause it to somersault on the runway if you applied take off flaps, or go into a screaming nose dive if you applied them for landing, but Carenado updated it, as noted, with a patch which was on the MSFS market within two days of the issue cropping up. I was impressed with them doing that.

Edited June 4, 20215 yr by Chock

I like them both.  

5 hours ago, Chock said:

Worth pointing out that Carenado did that too. Their PA28 came out two days before an MSFS patch dropped which stuffed up the flaps in the sim. JF waited until after the patch, so for two days the Carenado PA28 was unflyable, flaps would cause it to somersault on the runway if you applied take off flaps, or go into a screaming nose dive if you applied them for landing, but Carenado updated it, as noted, with a patch which was on the MSFS market within two days of the issue cropping up. I was impressed with them doing that.

I have the impression, Carenado uses MSFS to improve their product care (compared to the old times with FSX and P3D.

Still not on level with some other companies, but improving.

7 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

Exactly. It look's good but flies like a brick. 

Well some people would say real life Pipers fly like bricks  😄