High Plains Flyer

The answer really can be found in Agutz's March 19 post: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/397951-my-little-pro-atcx-review/page-5 I bought the Captain Sim 777 when it was offered in beta. It did not work very well at first, but has improved over time. (It still is flawed.) But that was the deal I made. Captain Sim offered a significant discount and let everyone know they were getting a beta. I took a chance knowing I was taking a chance. I have no beef with Captain Sim. I basically got what I was promised. Black Box has been offering Airbus models in beta. Because of their past difficulties, I do not trust them to deliver a fully functioning product. So I have not purchased their product. They disclosed that it was in beta, and I chose not to take them up on their offer, yet. In this case, no deal was made. I have no beef with them. Similarly, Blueprint does not sell high quality sceneries. However, they are pretty upfront about telling you this. And the price reflects the lower quality. So, no beef with them either. The problems with pro-ATC could have been avoided easily if Pointsoft had disclosed that this product was a work in progress. That's all; if it's not finished, just say so. That way potential customers can decide whether they want to hand out their money. Perhaps some will not, knowing that they are dealing with a new and untested developer who does not have a track record of delivering a functioning product. However, this product was represented as a finished product. And it was priced as a finished product. There is no fraud if there is full disclosure and everyone tells the truth.

@ High Plains Flyer - Have you any idea how ridiculously dellusional you are?...... You refer to some reviews and opinions made by people, as "Fraud" because you don't agree with them. Fraud, simply put, is lying. If you say a product does X, Y and Z, and it does not do X, Y and Z, you have committed fraud. The solution here is simple. You simply do not state things which are not true. You do not make claims about a product which are demonstrably false. You tell the truth. This is one of those basic Sunday school rules of life. Whether a product functions as promised is not a matter of opinion. It is a readily demonstrable fact. It seems that many people here are unable to distinguish between facts and opinions. What I find ridiculous about this community that people get ripped off, and other people like you try to shrug of the fraud. In fact, you go beyond that. You defend the fraudsters and attack their victims. Blaming the victims really is quite shameful. I just don't understand why you love fraud and theft so much. You must be a Republican! This state of affairs seems to be unique to the flightsim community. Again, one does not find such widespread acceptance of fraud in other hobbies and other gaming communities. Maybe that's why fraud seems to be such a major part of this hobby. Of course, their are good developers who seem to take their reputations quite seriously and do not misrepresent their products. I am talking about companies like Aerosoft, PMDG, and ORBX, among others. I really have not seen these guys put out a product which does not do what it promises to do. When people like you go beyond accepting fraud, and start promoting it as well, the entire hobby suffers. I really don't think asking developers and reviewers to tell the truth is asking too much.

Well, I have been having problems with crashes, but I won't be too quick to blame the 777. I have had some problems with the 737NGX, as well. For a while, I was blaming Coatle with the FS Dreamteam sceneries. But the problem persisted after I removed the FS Dreamteam products along with Coatl. So my initial assessment on that was incorrect, I think. But I am not sure that it is even a PMDG problem. I will need to try several other aircraft. But I am not even sure that it is an FSX problem. One of my video editing programs has been doing weird stuff. I guess I will need to play the Sims for a while to see if I have crashes there, because, that, too, is a fairly demanding 32 bit program. But I have been bird dogging this problem for about a month now.

I have been experiencing a lot of crashes and have not figured out the problem. My quick work around was to install the full (pay) version of FSUIPC. It saves my flight every minute. If I crash, I simply restart FSX, load the last saved fight and am on my way. Of course, it would be nice if the damn thing did not crash in the first place...

Actually, I purchase this product a couple days after that review, like some of the AVSIM moderators. I have been patiently waiting for well over a year to receive the product that I was promised and that was described in that review. Yes, I know that the decision to purchase a product based on an AVSIM review was foolish, and I will never repeat that mistake again. I guess the lesson here is to wait to purchase a product for a year, until the people on the forums have a chance to speak to its weaknesses, provided they are not banned for criticizing a product. But, you have to understand, that at the time I purchased this product, I had been in the flightsim hobby for about six months, and I was still not wise to the ways of Flight simulator developers and reviewers. I had been involved in a number of other hobbies, where this level of fraud and misrepresentation was not the norm. I have been purchasing and playing computer games for well over 30 years, starting with Collossal Cave on an IBM mainframe in the 1970s. In that time, I have been stung about three times, prior to starting flight simming, or about once a decade, on average. I also have been a retailer and understand that when a product does not live up to its claims, the only real alternative is to return the customers' money. In fact most retailers will accept the return of a product, even if it is perfectly good, with no questions asked. Unfortunately, I came into this hobby with the mistaken belief that developers and reviewers could be trusted. I now know that this was a very immature attitude because it does not reflect the reality of the state of this market. At the time I purchase the product, there were not a lot of complaints on the forum. I relied upon an Avsim review. As someone who has been a commercial litigator for over 30 years, I can assure you that caveat emptor is not the law, and never has been the law. A developer committing fraud is probably a more serious offense than someone making an unauthorized download of a product. In fact, if you check out the Uniform Commercial Code, you will discover that the rule for goods is "Perfect Tender," not substantial performance, but perfect tender. Quite frankly, I am shocked that you apparently approve of fraud and theft and feel no responsibility for insuring that the reviews which appear on your site are honest. If you really want to talk about immaturity, I would suggest that you reread your own post. Responding to a legitimate criticism by stating "don't let the door hit you own the way out," hardly speaks to responsibility and maturity. In fact, the mature response would have been to state, "We're sorry. We messed up. But that reviewer no longer is here." It's called "taking responsibility." Quite frankly, I expect to be banned for telling you the truth. But I also thought it was important to remind you that people rely on the review you publish, and that they spend good money on the representations that you make in those reviews. It is pretty obvious that the way you react to criticism is to have a childlike temper tantrum.

I actually purchased this product based on a quick review which appeared here on AVSIM: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/376905-a-quick-fly-by-of-pro-atc/?hl=+pro#8208atc&page=1 In no place in that "quick flyby" was it indicated that the product was still in beta and that it was basically non-functional. There was no mention that there was no documentation for the program. The main complaint about the product that it was missing a number of SIDS and STARS, which struck me as being relatively minor and easy to fix. I really believe that I was misled. (And yes, this is a complaint.) My decision to purchase this product was informed by that review. If I have learned anything from this experience, it is that I cannot trust the reviews that I see here. This is unfortunate, because I will hesitate to purchase good products from reliable developers. This site does have other value to me, in having a good library of files and active forums where I can occasionally get good advise. (However, there is a lot of bad advise and unhelpful comments -- so that aspect is something of a mixed bag.) Since I started this hobby, I have discovered that the usual norms of conduct one finds in commercial transactions do not apply to the flight simulation hobby. It really is the Wild West with this hobby. Fraud is rampant. Developers feel free to sell unfinished and non-functional products. Promises are made, which the developer has not intention of keeping. Reviewers feel a need to protect developers from legitimate criticism, at the expense of the consumers who purchase these products. Nothing every works quite right. It really is a sad state of affairs. The consumers are at a disadvantage in this setting. They plunk down their money and hope the product is as described. They trust that reviews are honest. But once they pay their money, the Ferengi First Rule of Acquisition seems to apply: "Once you get their money, you never give it back." This state of affairs just encourages unauthorized downloads of software. The people making unauthorized downloads can say, with some justification, they are trying the program to see if it works as promised; and they will actually purchase the product if it does work correctly. Of course, whether such a purchase is ever made is debatable. It would seem that developers would want to discourage these unauthorized downloads by eliminating one of the justifications for them. All in all, this is just plain bad for the hobby as a whole. It really goes without saying that markets cease to function when they are unregulated, corrupt, and riddled with fraud. What we have seen the developers do with this product should be roundly condemned by everyone.

Watch out! This guy is trying to sell you something! You should always be wary of someone who has a financial interest in the advice he gives. Watching videos for 19 hours is a lot of time to invest. There is a lot of wasted time either watching stuff you really don't need to know or "panning for gold" looking for those new nuggets. My blog is not a lesson in doing things right. It is the frustration of a newbie trying to figure out the basics. When I look back at it now, it is actually rather embarrassing. There simply was a lot of stuff I did not know, and more experienced flight simmers never thought were important enough to mention. Of course, these are the things which are critical to understand (like the 250 speed limit below 10,000 feet). One of the biggest problems with people who have been doing this for a while is they overcomplicate things. Very few of them know how to get to the point, how to strip out the extraneous garbage and just tell you what you need to know to get started. At the same time, there is a tendency to leave out important details, because, for them, those details are so routine as to seem unimportant. Many of these people thrive on complexity and making things as difficult as possible. The end result is they end up confusing people. It becomes the classic case of asking someone for the time, and they give you instructions on how to build a watch. As for ILS, I had a blog entry,http://flyingsims.blogspot.com/2012/01/adding-ils.html, where I tried to explain in the simplest terms how to do it. This same basic system works for all of the FSX default aircraft, including the jets. They all have a panel to enter an ILS frequency and they all have a gps/nav switch. Not learning how to use this simple ILS will guarantee that most of your flights will end in crashes. In fact, I would go so far as to state that trying to land aircraft without the ILS system is far more advanced and difficult than landing aircraft with it. This is NOT how things are done in real life. Real life is much more complicated. However, Microsoft's philosophy appears to have been to simplify real life procedures into something which does not take days or weeks of study to understand. My approach has been to start with something simple, then gradually add complexity. The fun is in the journey. When you have the default aircraft mastered, there are a number of simplified aircraft, from CLS or Just Flight, which make a nice next step. Eventually you might want to look at the Aerosoft Airbus Extended, because the thing almost flies itself.

Then please tell me what you are doing right and I am doing wrong.

Please tell me what those issues are. My computer is only two years old. At the time I got it, it was one of HPs top of the line computers which was special ordered. I7 processor, 8 gb of memory. ATI card. It's a standard issue factory model. No custom builds here. The first time the case was opened was a week ago when the new hard drive was installed. The installation of the new hard drive and Windows OS was done by a professional who also cleaned the computer (but it really was not too dirty), Usually this guy also does diagnostics. When he reinstalled the OS, he did not install HPs bloatware. He did install AVIRA, and Microsoft's online Office. Also, he installed Adobe reader and flash. Additionally, I ran the hardware diagnostics, and no problems appeared. I did re-install ATI's latest drivers. I reinstalled the Saitek drivers for my yoke, throttle and rudders. What other drivers do I need to install. Keep in mind, this is a clean windows installation which was made less than a week ago. FSX is the only program I have installed to date. Along with FSX, I installed the PMDG 737 and 777. I also installed all of the FSDT airports (except Zurich, which I do not own), and Flightbeam's Phoenix Sky Harbor. I loaded the UK 2000 program from my former bootdrive (which is now drive E). So please advise me which programs I should remove. Should I remove Windows? How about AVIRA? Internet Explorer? Office? Adobe Reader? Adobe Flash? FSX? PMDG aircraft? That's about it.

OK. I just did a fresh install of EVERYTHING. My old setup was giving me the blue screen of death every time I tried to run it. So I installed a new 3TB hard drive and made it my boot drive. (I did not do the install but took it to a local computer shop run by people who know far more than I do.) A clean install of windows and a clean install of FSX. For the most part, I am just putting in the add ons as I need them. Which means the only planes I have been using for the past week are the PMDG 737 and 777. The setup was working pretty well, until I added the FSDT airports with Coatl. I did add the DBS GPS system for airports, but since it never installed correctly (if has a horrible copy protection scheme which really punishes legitimate users), I uninstalled it. Last flight was with the 777 from Dallas Ft. Worth (FSDT) to Heathrow (UK2000). The computer bombed about a half dozen times along the route. I don't mean Crash to Desktop. I mean crash to reboot. Since I had a similar problem with a flight from Honolulu (FSDT) to Kona (FSDT), I had reinstalled the payware FSUIPC which save a flight every minute. So I would reboot the computer, reload FSX, and reload my autosaved flight and be on my way until the next crash. I have not posted on the FSDT website, because all indications are that is a complete waste of time. Plus, I am going to try a few flights without an FSDT airport being enabled. However, GSX will still be running, so it will not be an entirely clean experiment. First will be London to Copenhagen on an SAS 737 and next from Copenhagen to Budapest.. I have been installing FS Altitude, but have not yet reinstalled FTX Global or GEX. The ONLY reason I am posting here is because there are people here calling the original poster a liar and engaging in ad hominem attacks against him. I don't know what their problem is: whether they are "very excited users." or whether they just want to spread misinformation. However, these ad hominem attacks are not helpful to those of us who are having a real problem and are seeking a solution. Given my own experience, the original poster and other experiencing difficulties are not making things up. It is entirely inappropriate to brush them off as liars. I suspect some users are not experiencing problems because they may not be challenging the software. For me, I did not have many problems with FSDT/Coatl until I started playing with the PMDG aircraft about a month ago. Yes, occasionally, no buildings would show up. But it worked more often than not. But add the PMDG 737 to the mix and I get crashes and the blue screen of death. Maybe it's a PMDG problem, and the naysayers are really saying that PMDG makes crap aircraft; but I'm not buying that. It may be correct to say that FSDT sceneries do not play nice with PMDG aircraft. I want to see if the crashing persists. But the prime suspect is FSDT and/or Coatl. I may post to the FSDT forum if these flights go off without a hitch. Quite frankly, if I am told that the problem is with other software (i.e. FSUIPC, AES (a belt and suspender approach to ground services), the PMDG aircraft, or FSX itselt), or my configuration (a clean install of both windows and FSX; with my anti virus software excluding my FSX folder), I am not going to be impressed. If Coatl does not play nice with programs like the PMDG aircraft and FSUIPC, then it is no good. Moreover, blaming it on anti virus software is a no go. I had been using Kasparsky for a couple of years. With my clean install, I have gone to Avira, because Kasparsky seemed to miss some stuff. In these days, one really needs more than one anti-virus package. I am sure that if I disabled my anti-virus software, I would be told that my problems were caused by a computer virus. This really places the user between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, we are told that the problems are caused by our anti-virus software, and on the other we are told that our problems are caused by a virus because we did not enable our anti-virus software. I don't think it's too much to ask that a software package cooperates with the most commonly used anti-virus programs. By the way, isolating the problem with a clean install, is no mean feat. After a couple of fails, a clean install is no longer clean. With my clean install, I have already been experiencing problems with COATL/FSDT airports. I will install an airport from a fresh download from FSDT, enter the security code, but when I run FSX, I only see jetways. When I check to add on manager, it reports the airport was not installed, even though I just installed it with FSDT's installer. Sometimes an airport which had just been installed is suddenly uninstalled. In two cases, things like runways land taxiways are not appearing (specifically at FSDT's Dallas Fort Worth). I own just about all of FSDT's products, except Zurich -- where I use the Aerosoft version. I have spent a lot of money on this scenery and I expect it to work properly. It is a sad state of affairs where scenery from the likes of Blueprint works better than the high end scenery from FSDT.

Over a year ago, I purchased the Sim Savvy photoscenery for the United States. While it had some good points, its creator did not know how to do water masking. This meant that coastal states like Louisiana, Florida and California looked absolutely awful. (Louisana by far was the worst.) The developer of this photoscenery apparently could not figure out why this expensive package which looked like crap was not selling particularly well. I just chalked it up to another incompetent developer trying to sell a half finished product for a high price. Eventually he sold his stuff to Megascenery. Megascenery, to its credit did much of the water masking and fixed some of the coloring. The colors on many of the sceneries really pop out now, as opposed to the desaturated Sim Savvy versions. Of course, they jacked up the price by about a factor of 5. All in all, I am willing to pay a higher price for a quality product, which this is. I have purchased Megascenery Earth and have also purchased many sceneries for coastal states which were botched by Sim Savvy. It is fair to say that the Megascenery Earth California scenery is a marked improvement over that done by Sim Savvy. I will qualify this by saying that I have not spent a lot of time with this scenery -- primarily a flight with Floaty Twotter from Pier 29 in San Francisco to Lake Tahoe. (With the obligatory detour of flying under the Golden Gate bridge.) So, to date, my experience has been limited to the Central California region. Where this type of scenery really stands out is in desert areas. With the default FSX scenery, and even GEX and FTX global, states like Utah are just a sea of brown. With the photoscenery, the desert areas come to life. I have also found this to be the case flying over the Mohave desert (using the Sim Savvy scenery -- fortunately the Mohave desert is a long way from the ocean, so the awful lack of water masking is not visible.) The main criticism I would have with the scenery is that while the water masking is much improved from the Sim Savvy version, it is still far from perfect. I noticed this in San Francisco Bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge and particularly around Alcatraz. the water masking really is not there and FSX interprets this as solid ground rather than water. This probably does not interfere with most flights, but Floaty Twotter did not like it at all -- it just stayed beached in the middle of San Francisco Bay. My hope would be that Megascenery would continue to work on the water masking. This is particularly true since the Pier 29 scenery is part of the Aerosoft Floaty Beaver scenery. Besides, some of us use boats with FSX.

No, it isn't. It's fair use. Making archival copies has always been considered tone fair use. Plus people have already paid for the right to download these videos. Look, the downloads were offered as an alternative to offering them on DVDs. DVDs really are not expensive, especially when purchased in bulk. However, Chris Palmer thought he could make more money by allowing people to download the videos rather than burning DVDs. Now he's decided there is more money in a subscription model. Fine. But that does not mean that he can sell the videos, then after he sells them, turn around and charge a subscription fee to the people who just purchased them. It really takes a lot of chutzpah for someone to get on his high horse and start pontificating about copyright law in the face of such fraud. The people who PAID for the right to download the videos are not the bad guys here, The crooks at Angle of Attack who have just defrauded a buch of hobbyists are, .

This is consumer fraud, plain and simple. I bought their 767 training form them a couple of weeks ago. Since I paid with Paypal, I opened a dispute with Paypal. I want my money back. If enough people file disputes with Paypal, Paypal will close their account. This can be the death knell for many businesses, Similarly, anyone who paid with a credit card should initiate a dispute with their credit card company. Again, if their are enough charge backs, they will lose their merchant account. For an Internet business, that is the end. Meanwhile, simviators need to get the word out about these dishonest and fraudulent practices.

Anyone suggesting that you purchase pro-ATC is not doing you any favours. In fact, it is probably fair to say they are lying through their teeth. It''s a very expensive opportunity to be a beta tester for a project which appears to have been abandonded. In short, it is a scam. I bought it over a year ago, and have never used it. It does not help that there is no documentation and that the video tutorials are unhelpful. Maybe it's problem is it is trying to do too much. I don't need it's flight planning; there is better flight planning software out there. While I could always use a co-pilot, there is other software which does this. What I want is a non brain dead version of FSX's ATC, which can handle SIDs and STARs, and which can be turned off when the dog wants to go for a walk, or my dad wants to eat. If the developer wanted to do th right thing, he would refund everyone's money until this works right. I purchased a fully functioning program and received an early alpha.

I will confirm it for you: the FSX Jet Tutorial is garbage -- utterly unhelpful and confusing. Having been in your position a while ago, I would advise the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid! It is really easy to overcomplicate things. Take things one step at a time. Don't overly complicate things. Learn to do one thing at a time. Stick to the default aircraft until you get the hang of things. Don't even think of going to the PMDG site or the Angle of Attack site. Those are for more advanced users. Don't worry about ADFs/NDBs, VORs, Intersections; they are not needed to get you started. Don't mess with FSX's brain dead Air Traffic Control. All of these things will confuse the bejeebus out of you. You can jump down these rabbitholes and waste a lot of time there. You need to learn how to use ILS landing system. You need to learn how to use the autopilot. You need to find the location of the GPS switch on the default aircraft. Learn how to use the Garmin GPS system. A while ago, I started a blog describing my misadventures in learning how to use Flight Simulator: http://flyingsims.blogspot.com/ I sort of lost interest in keeping up with this, but it might be of some help. Just plan on crashing a lot of planes.