Well, having bought this over the holiday weekend and then thoroughly trying it out I have to say I am very disappointed with this software. While the external models on the aircraft are OK (nothing special) internally they look awful with jaggies all round the edge of the 2D cockpit textures (I have high AA enabled) and near enough 80% of the controls are not clickable. The VC cockpits look equally awful with blurred textures and most of the controls inactive. On the ready made flights loading up any missions in the dark (dusk or night) seem to result in a see-thru deck with the sea washing over it and the internal hull visible with planes floating in the air. In daytime views the carrier hull shows up OK :-hmmm On some of the ready made flights the catapult will not work when you power up and release the brakes - you just coast to the edge of the ship and plummet into the sea every time (try sea of Bengal flights). Just about the only benefit of FD4 is that with the Alphasim USS Enterprise installed you can port over the FD4 catapult and arrestors so that they work on Enterprise thanks to an included registry installer with Enterprise V2 for FSX. Enterprise works and looks great on my PC. I really cannot recommend FD4 with the current problems and can only hope they add another FSX patch to fix all these errors.

Can't say anything on FD4 since i don't have that (and will not buy it either) but i used to have FD3 with FS9 and i was as dissapointed as you after i installed it. Big point in FS add-ons is to select what is good and what is rubbish and i learned to "not" follow pictures and comments on the boxes but do a search on the various FS forums if i want a to buy an add-on. If most people refer to it as rubbisch then i simply don't buy it.The VC cockpits in FD3 were horrible too and then those HUD's... Just compare a HUD in FD with an 8 year old Falcon4.0 and you directly know what i'm talking about.

Thanks for the feedback. I did read widely on many FS forums about FD4 in advance of purchasing although there was admittedly not much to read. Views seemed to be mixed between people who definately would not buy it (but gave no reason why) and those who were quite happy with it bar a few graphical glitches. Overall it did not seem a bad purchase - how wrong can you be !!I noticed last night that the graphics showing the wake of the ship are messed up too. Instead of appearing at the rear of the ship they are right out to the side of the carrier as if some ghost carrier was following on a parallel course. The wake also has some graphical blocks mixed in with it that look plug ugly. You can see this particularly if you go to the top down view. As I don't have any of these problems with the Alphasim Enterprise carrier or the rest of the FSX sim I have to assume the botched graphics and controls are wholly the fault of very poor programming and design by the Flight Deck 4 team. They should really be ashamed of themselves putting out such a poor quality product with a complete lack of effective quality control by Abacus.

When will folks learn that Abacus is the "Playskool" of FS toymakers? ;)They are deliberately aimed at the uninformed masses of flightsimmers, and make no pretense of catering to the "high fidelity simmers" at all.

Abacus? say no more

Yeah, I bought this too and was sad at how poor the package was for FSX. It's better for FS9, but not great.One time I accidently launched off the catapult when I was perpendicular to the runway! Now i'm just a sim pilot, but isn't that just a little bit silly :D Also at night, as you said, a strange wave or some kind of mist is covering the runway, and it makes near impossible see the runway when landing. There are also major clipping issues with the carrier, and i've had a few lockups with it.I agree, the aircraft are just below par, nothing spectacular.The worst part is, I sent an email to Abacus, and I did get a response and that response was something along the lines of "We'll get back to you, Adam is really busy right now." I'm like who is Adam and why is he to busy to respond to me? Needless to say I never heard back after sending another round of emails their way.Terrible marks for customer service, but at least Sharon was kind enough to respond to me in the first place.

A couple of examples of what I am experiencing so that others are made aware, how this stuff got past the testers, if they even had any, I don't know .......The see-thru deck on evening or night flights. The wake underneath the ship is visible but no ships deck........ The parallel ships wake travelling with you instead of underneath and behind the ship, plus some odd surf waves way out to the sides and front of the ship

That's pretty funny. Sad thing is, I'd be embarrassed as a developer to release something like this and charge money for it.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Gee I dunno bill...FSDS, ASD and AF99 were all pretty useful toys in their time. :-)But I know what you mean, the aircraft and scenery add-ons are entry-level for sure. They certainly continue to command shelf-space in the software stores - they must be fulfilling someone's needs.

There is a great freeware that does the same thing for FS9 as well as FSX. You can use any aircraft that you have do carrier landing and take offs.For FS9 rcbco-20.zipFor FSX rcbco-30.zipThe FSX version is a lot simpler and more flexible.There are also some freeware aircraft carriers you can download too.Manny

LOL!I think the Abacus people might soon be headed for jail...for revealing the latest secrets in U.S. Navy stealth technology!

>Gee I dunno bill...>>FSDS, ASD and AF99 were all pretty useful toys in their time.>:-)>>But I know what you mean, the aircraft and scenery add-ons are>entry-level for sure. They certainly continue to command>shelf-space in the software stores - they must be fulfilling>someone's needs.OK, maybe comparing them to "Playskool" is a bit much. But Abacus does fill a very lucrative niche in the FS market that few - if any - of the other developers do outside of Europe, and that is getting "boxed items" in retail stores.It's the "Walmart philosophy" applied to flightsim products; sell cheap sell thousands... ;)

>>Gee I dunno bill...>>>>FSDS, ASD and AF99 were all pretty useful toys in their>time.>>:-)>>>>But I know what you mean, the aircraft and scenery add-ons>are>>entry-level for sure. They certainly continue to command>>shelf-space in the software stores - they must be fulfilling>>someone's needs.>>OK, maybe comparing them to "Playskool" is a bit much. But>Abacus does fill a very lucrative niche in the FS market that>few - if any - of the other developers do outside of Europe,>and that is getting "boxed items" in retail stores.>>It's the "Walmart philosophy" applied to flightsim products;>sell cheap sell thousands... ;)>I hear ya.Like I said, I think they've done some of their tools right - and that's about it.Couple guys in your shop came up with FSDS eh?

I also purchased Flight Deck 4 for FSX and have run into the EXACT same problems. See thru flight deck at night and funny looking wake. The USS Ronald Reagan looks great in the daytime but at night the deck is a mess.I also e-mailed Abacus regarding these issues and included pics. The response I got was "Are you sure you installed it correctly?" When I insisted I had installed it correctly, I got no reply back. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I will not be purchasing another Abacus product in the future. I eradicated it from my hard drive.Instead, I downloaded the F-14D freeware and Battle Groups scenery for FSX from avsim. Together, these files give you over 20 fully landable carriers around the world with arrestor cables. The F-14 even has carrier landing navaids. 'Nuff said.

I have exactly the same problems, and apparently Abacus is completely ignorant about them. Here is the response I got from their customer support:"If you have a carrier 'surface' visible, but not the full carrier in FSX, then you will need to increase the Scenery Complexity in FSX. In FSX, open the Options | Settings | Display menu and set the Scenery Complexity to Normal or higher."LOL. Needless to say I won't be buying anything from them again, especially since they obviously aren't interested in fixing the problem.Cheers,Stefan