FL510

Caribpilot, as I hinted in the other thread and as others have mentioned many many times, why do we have to be Carenado's free beta testers? They release a 1.0 full of bugs, take our money and wait for us to give them a list of things that aren't working. It's one thing for us to find a thing here or there and contact the producer and suggest a thing or two. But this? In fact I have sent them messages about the Meridian after I discovered the incorrect condition lever colour in their pre-release video and offered them support as a real pilot with time in and access to the real airplane but they dismissed me. So I ask you, who does the beta testing and lets all the bugs through into the release?

Yeah, the magenta line as well as dist info are gone but it does seem to fly straight there, go figure. However it flies straight to the new waypoint only if I quickly manually delete all the previous waypoints in the flight plan. I tried that online in a busy airspace and unfortunately I gave ATC more unables than Sully over the Hudson. Otherwise it activates the previous leg not a real direct to, much like in their otherwise excellent CJ2!

The Meridian is improved indeed in 1.1. The G1000 though... For example the Direct-to can be selected from the flight plan page but it automatically erases every waypoint before AND after. It's basically useless. A few other things are better, although VC windows reflections on/off aren't fixed. Yaw damper effectiveness is corrected now too, it makes a difference. Also some new things showed up, like on taxi every time you add power the 'starter engaged' in both white and yellow keeps coming on and off on MFD. Or the G1000 hangs if you go to weather radar page and try to turn the outer knob accidentally. No way out no matter what I press or turn, restart the aircraft. Luckily the Shift+6,7,8,9 are not really needed in this one so after putting in the RXP530 and weather gauges it's quite an enjoyable airplane to fly now! That's just from a quick test flight, we'll see later tonight.

Eh, you're probably right Gregg..

Well said Bert, absolutely. And another thing we should all keep in mind is that 'tested' does not equal 'approved'. The developer may invite a real pilot to test it, he or she won't like it but it's still 'tested by a real pilot'. In reality this marketing play on words means zero. Great idea, do you think we should send them paypal or bank details so they can pay us for being their beta testers? Yes, but there's a fundamental difference in the product not having, say, as indepth systems or high quality as other developers and when they charge money for a released aircraft that has mistakes all over it. We can expect and live with it when we spend $37 for medium quality product that doesn't have all the switches actually doing something like PMDG or even Eaglesoft. But to claim something and then deliver something else where ridiculously basic things are wrong as if tested like other stated in 10 minutes while watching Netflix, that's not fair.

Hi all, just got it so here we go. I've based my to-buy-or-not-to-buy decisions on these forums many a time, so it's time to give something back. Given the excellent Jetprop the expectations were high... As a real pilot I do also have a bit of time in the 46 and other turboprops, although very limited. In addition to what others already said, here's what I've dound in the first few flights, total of about 3 hrs flying - VC windows, ON/OFF not working - MFD goes black when opened big in 2D (both the pop up and the VC remain black so the only option is to zooooooom in in VC) - MFD switching between Topo and Terrain not always works - PFD FD too high? Even in descent with VS in serious negative it asks for a few degrees up - Can't overtorque max 84%, the Meridian has an over-torque protection, could it be Carenado got it correct? - Overshoots ILS loc few times during zero wind approaches. GS fine - The real Meridian is very right rudder demanding on take off, sure, but in this one you need a serious amount to even taxi straight at 10kts - FDE seems meh, ok. Extremely light on the controls expecially ailerons Now, the G1000 - FLC and D-To: FLC yes, D-To no. FLC is very accurate but for Direct-to you can't from the flight plan. Need to type in the fix, then it will fly direct - G1000 flight planning airways? Forget about it. - MFD G1000 airframe showing still TBM850. Is it really that hard... - Where did the Navigraph go? Even with current 1701 Airac installed it shows 2006, all the post-2006 waypoints are missing. The CJ2 can see it, why not the Meridian? - Weather radar actually works, showing something. I added the AS16 gauge and it doesn't seem to agree, really. And then it shows tilt of...150 degrees UP and can't change it. Not a word about weather radar in the supplied documentation. - Pressurization works Overall - Actually, suprisingly not so bad on FPS. Even on my old i7 3770 (yes, non-K) at 3.40GHz it gets well over 20 with weather and heavy sceneries - Stall behaviour seems quite reasonable, incipient spin- forget about it. - Here's one shocking find, the visual is actually not as amazing and pretty as expected. Like others pointed out the vents for example, the yoke shape is weird (I'd know, I got my licence in Pipers). Outside as well, honestly the Jetprop looks like higher quality. Doesn't make sense, it's 2017. I'll post some photos and videos tomorrow since it's 4am. Anyway, that's just few thoughts, hope it helps and looking forward to what others think and find. If you have any questions, happy to help out. Cheers, Chris

Ok, great, thanks guys. Jim, it does make sense completely. I took your advice Mark, went and found and checked these registry entries and everything looks fine, including correct CD path. It still didn't help though. Having 2 options (apart from re-installing the whole FS2004) it was either find the NO-CD crack and use the sim without the cd in, or do system restore. I restored the XP to three days ago and it works fine again! I've checked the registry entries again now ad they look exactly same as before restoring.. No idea what it could've been. Speaking of this NO-CD crack, any idea if it affects the sim's performance in ANY way? Maybe it s a good idea just for the future. Cheers,Chris

Hi Jim, Thanks a lot, I've tried both. Come to think of it, I did unplug the 2nd hard drive a while ago so even though FS2004 worked until now, I've tried changing the letter to E and back to D, neither made a difference though. I ran the registry repair tool too, didn't help either.. I don't know, I went through the cfg file looking for the path to the optical drive but it isn't there. Hm...

Hi guys, I've been flying for years and never had this problem until this morning. When trying to run FS2004 I get the 'Please insert FS2004 Disk 4, select OK and restart application' error. BUT: -The CD (disk 4 of FS2004, legally bought) is in the DVD-ROM (also, when I use right click+explore it opens and shows all files no problem meaning CD is not damaged or scratched etc)-DVD-ROM works fine, all other CDs or DVDs open and play ok-No new aircraft/sceneries/files installed since last flight yesterday-Kaspersky anti-virus running as usual, never caused problems with FS9 or FSX before-FSX opens and flies normally without issues Any ideas what it could be? I have a large number of add-on aircraft and sceneries that I've been using for a long time and I don't really feel like re-installing FS2004 form scratch again! Thanks in advance,Chris