1 hour ago, BusBoy55 said:

but to my eyes this could quite possibly be one of the worst flight simulator addons ever and it is very expensive!

Can you say more about why? I was thinking of maybe getting this but the feedback here is quite mixed, it would be helpful to have more detail about what works and what doesn't. When I have a moment I can get the trial and see for myself, but I appreciate feedback.

I don't understand that comment of one of the worst add ons ever.....I too want to hear why. Also unsure of the comment of it being expensive. This price is right in line what what FSPassengers was and they are going to continue to update the program and add more features....

Edited November 26, 20232 yr by ywg256

Some people are just never happy and don’t even back up comments with any explanation to their hate. 

1 hour ago, ywg256 said:

 and they are going to continue to update the program and add more features....

Which is why I didn't pre order. They said this during development and It gave off vibes it was unfinished and It looked unfinished in most of the videos they showed. You Can't create a seat map so people are flying an A320 layout in their MD11 in sim which kinda makes the tycoon aspect part of it weird to me. They have a ways to go to even be at FSpassengers level let alone surpass it. These are Their quotes not mine that it would be better than FSPassengers. 
 

That is a bold statement. FSPassengers released in 2011. Until now Nobody has been able to or have the desire to develop a successor despite the fact it clearly would sell. 

37 minutes ago, environmental_ice said:

FSPassengers released in 2011. Until now Nobody has been able to or have the desire to develop a successor despite the fact it clearly would sell.

What was it about FSPassengers that made it so well liked? Many people have tried to come up with a similar concept or approach but no one seems to have replicated it.

FSPassengers was amazing (for it's time). Although I'm not sure, it would have been as widely accepted now, as it was then.

But it just worked. No animations. No deep-dive into catering- tow and service contracts negotiations. You just input your aircraft (which could be configured per model), your destination and arrival airports and your estimated time enroute, landing etc. Then it simply gave you a number of passengers and let you get on your way. You could then manually serve drinks, entertainment or you could automate it. Simple sounds, music (I can still remember the boarding/taxi music!) and it wasn't clunky interface which took a second monitor... 🙂

In my view, it was one of the best pieces of addons there was. Simple. Efficient and it just worked. It wasn't complicated and it didn't promise a lot. But what it did, it did very well. 

My experience with FS Passengers was quite different. The idea was great but I found that when I used it, FSX and P3D crashed about every 3 or 4 flights. The developer was MIA most of the time so nothing ever got fixed.

Edited November 26, 20232 yr by Spike54

5 hours ago, Cognita said:

What was it about FSPassengers that made it so well liked? Many people have tried to come up with a similar concept or approach but no one seems to have replicated it.

I'm sure I'll forget some things but things I liked about it were how in depth it was. Passenger2 does capture the tycoon aspect of paying for catering and I'm assuming the quality which can affect your airlines reputation. Higher quality=more cost and vice versa.
 

I liked how if you hit turbulence you were docked points if you didn't turn the belt sign back on because passengers could actually get hurt which would obviously ruin your reputation. I remember I crashed once and killed half my passengers and the next flight the estimated number of passengers was almost NIL. Nobody wanted to fly my airline because of the accident. It's just little touches like that we don't have today. 
 

To be fair there are a ton of things FSPassengers did that probably can't happen in MSFS now because of third party aircraft being run in external applications with their own failures (Fenix). If you Landed hard and burst your tire(s) Then the plane would sag/lean and even favor that side making it hard to taxi to the stand. Fuel leaks could occur during flight so cross checking how much fuel had during cruise actually was important. The war zones over certain areas. If you flew over them you risk being shot down. Other things like decompressions, belly landings due to landing gear not extending or retracting after take off (better keep up on maintenance to avoid those!) even the passenger manifest had attention to detail.
 

There was no seat map but there was at least families. You could see people with the same last name with ages. Every program today has a manifest but some how it's 200 people all flying by themself. If you do happen to find someone with the same last name in PACX or SLC they aren't sitting together. PACX and SLC show little kids sitting alone which is strange. Where are their parents? There was once I checked and saw a 14 or 15 year old "enjoying an alcoholic drink" in SLC....

these are just the few things I can remember from FSPassengers. Looks like the website doesn't have a manual or anything showing all of its features so if you have never used it you wouldn't know what you were missing. 

8 hours ago, ywg256 said:

I don't understand that comment of one of the worst add ons ever.....I too want to hear why. Also unsure of the comment of it being expensive. This price is right in line what what FSPassengers was and they are going to continue to update the program and add more features....

Based on the 30 minute trial, it is appalling for the price:

• The interface is mediocre, there's no flow to the user experience as the buttons are in random places depending on what you are trying to do?
• The sounds are terrible. Click on Brace! Brace! to see what I mean. It's just amateurish and sounds like random files they found on the internet.
• The colours are terrible - it's so bright at night if you are flying in the cockpit.
• The window is tiny on a 4k screen and cannot be resized.
• The window cannot be "always on top" so keeps disappearing behind the simulator
• You don't truly know what is going on with the app or what it expects of you at any point in time. Not even a "5 mins until pushback" notice anywhere. 
• You only have one "seat map" for all types of aircraft? Again they promise more but surely they cannot be serious about releasing with only one for every single aircraft.
• You click on passenger information and can't see anything about them apart from satisfaction % - no explanation of why they are unhappy or happy.
• Everything from the developer is based on "we're planning it in a future update" and it is nowhere near worthy of the price right now or indeed to compare itself with FSPassengers!
• They even promised GSX boarding back when it was announced in July/August and now say it is "very hard" and you just have to use the time sliders. It sounds like they make it up as they go along just to get people to buy.

I will keep my money tyvm, we need to demand more from developers than this level of effort for such a price. I get the feeling anyone defending this program is someone who pre-ordered and needs to justify their mistaken outlay by telling everyone how amazing it is. The only thing they have done right is offer a trial but I think it will simply result in less sales for them because people will realise how it is not worth the money? This is just my opinion though, you are free to trial it yourself after all.

1 hour ago, BusBoy55 said:

Based on the 30 minute trial, it is appalling for the price [...]

This is just my opinion though, you are free to trial it yourself after all.

Appreciate the feedback. As you say, anyone can use the 30-minute trial to judge for themselves. The laundry list of issues, combined with a rather basic-looking UI, means I'm not persuaded to do even that.

10 hours ago, environmental_ice said:

FSPassengers released in 2011. Until now Nobody has been able to or have the desire to develop a successor despite the fact it clearly would sell.

Would it sell well though? I wonder if FSPassengers benefitted from being in the right place at the right time.

2011 was such a long time ago that the PMDG 777 wasn't yet available for FSX.

MSFS has better scenery to look at during the cruise, there are more distractions (YouTube, Twitch, social media are far more developed than in 2011) some of which can be used on an aeroplane's EFB, and airliners are more immersive and complicated now (greater risk of aircraft failures occuring).

Does that leave much interest in dealing with an app that tells you via some text that your unrendered, imaginary pax are thirsty/hungry/bored? The dearth of realistic sound packs to match country of origin, let alone airline and aircraft type makes these apps less immersive, not more.

I had to sign up here to say you really shouldn't listen to BusBoy. Just to say, I'm not anything to do with Passenger2. I purchased it and completely disagree and it sounds like someone hasn't read the manual.

I think the interface is great. It's clear and the buttons make sense to me.
The sounds are not terrible? I have worked for a major airline and it's exactly what happens in the real world but I guess you wouldn't know this if you haven't ever had emergency cabin training. Why would you pull something down without knowing this?
The colors are bright at night, yes BUT if you read the manual you would know there is a night mode for night flying. I guess someone can't read.
4K resolution I can't comment on as I don't use it but did you contact the devs? How can they make it better or fix it if you don't tell them? They are really engaged in the community unlike SLC.
You say you don't know what is happening in the app? Again, did you read the manual?
You also said there is 1 seat map? Hu? There is loads and more are going be released. This is normally how things work. Did the Sims release with all features right away? Most things release and then are built upon. Very normal.
Passenger information I have displayed on the bottom bar. I think it just doesn't show if there is nothing majorly wrong. I forgot to feed my passengers and I got a red warning message informing me passengers were hungry. Not sure if that's in the manual but again, I feel like you could contact them to ask about it.
When did they promise GSX? I followed the development and they said it was impossible to sync but they added on a community suggestion to allow the boarding to be sped/slowed at anytime to help sync. This works really well for me. I guess you didn't read the manual again or research enough. You can always ask the devs as I've said above.

I'll be honest. it sounds like your just trying to hate something for the sake of it. My honest review is Passenger2 is a great add-on. It's feel real and better supported than the others. PACX seems to be abandoned and SLC devs are just a nightmare and I have no respect for them. Passenger2 announcements is exactly what I was expecting and I have not had any problems using the problem. I can't wait to for it to progress with new features. This is gonna be great. If your unsure do the trial or maybe wait a month and follow the development. 

Just a gentle reminder to all please keep your views objective rather than subjective. If something doesn’t work as intended and you’ve read the manual then post your views by all means.

We'll see. Maybe I'll try out the trial. I really liked the videos and it looked promising. Also, the inclusion of the IFE was really nice. Thought it was a nice touch.

Maybe because I really miss FeelThere Map! for FSX/P3D 32-bit. A real shame, that they didn't update it to 64-bits...

I'm with Josh on this one. It is nowhere near how BusBoy describes it. While you cannot totally customize the seat map, you can adjust how many business class seats there are to closely match rw map. With everything there are going to be minor bugs on release and this is no different. They are doing a great job with being communicative on their discord and promptly looking after fixes to any minor bugs reported back to them. Anyway I stand by my comment saying it's worth the price of what it is now and what other features will be added down the road.