FilbertFlies

Evening all! Hope you're well and apologies for my long absence. It's been a while since I've produced a video, but I found another real-world pilot prepared to work with me on a tutorial for the PMDG 777 so I thought I probably should! The video is in a similar vein to my previous live lessons, in the 737, CJ4 and CRJ but with some additional "non-normal" procedures and PMDG 777-specific features covered during the cruise. It's quite long as a result of this, but I've created chapters to allow you to jump to specific stages of flight. We simulated an entire British Airways flight from Heathrow to San Francisco, covering everything you need to know to fly almost any flight realistically, from setting the aircraft up from cold and dark to shutting it down at the other end. This tutorial has something for everyone - it's simple enough for beginner flight simmers and detailed enough that hopefully even experienced virtual pilots will learn something from it. If you'd like to fly along as you watch, see the video description for the flight plan and links to the sceneries we used. Hope you like it! Cheers, Filbert

If you're interested, here's the section from my Dubai stream looking at the airport scenery: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2011789112

I've become a streamer, streaming for clicks and cash! 😉 No, I'm still around but I'm doing fewer videos and more streams because I enjoy them more. Those reviews took me a good 8 hours each, which was fine during lockdown when the whole process was new and fun and there wasn't much else to do, but it got to the point that I was dreading doing them and I also got sick of listening to myself saying the same sorts of things over and over again, so i stopped. I do feel a bit bad about not doing them any more as I know people liked them and found them useful, but life's just too short to do things that you dislike doing (outside of earning a living!) Whenever there's a new airport out these days, I do a flight to it on Twitch and review it live on arrival. I don't go into quite as much detail as I used to, but I think these reviews give a good idea of whether the airport's worth buying or not.

Hey Carts! Nice to hear from you and thanks for thinking of me. All's well but I've still not been tempted back into the world of scenery reviews I'm afraid. The last one I did was a year and seven days ago. They just take a very long time to do and this is not balanced by the number of views they get unfortunately. Then there's the general feeling of drudgery that comes from listening to myself saying the same old things over and over again! 😂 If there's (god forbid) another lockdown or something else that leads to me having loads of time on my hands then I may do some catching up, but otherwise I'll be sticking to having a look at new products live on Twitch. Anyhow, seeing as you asked, here's what I think of it so far, briefly and in text form! The good: General atmosphere - excellent Modelling - excellent Building Textures - excellent Performance - incredible. Better than many worse-looking, smaller airports for me Night lighting - very good Ground Textures - mostly very good, some oddities here and there Taxiway bridge visuals - very good The less good: Glass - disappointed that it disappears from the inside. It seems to be something that FlyTampa have never quite managed to get right. Taxiway bridge taxi experience - disappointingly bumpy, but I know they're working on a fix Interior modelling - not bad at all, but not up to the standard of some other devs (before you all start, yes, I know it's a FLIGHT simulator!) Oddities with jetways - sometimes the wrong one moves I'm certain they'll fix the odd bug that people have found but, given how long they've been working on it, I was a little surprised it wasn't more polished on release. Overall though, another fantastic addition to the sim and you'd be mad not to buy it. Cheers, Filbert

Hello all! I've released a little update video, looking at which of the things I criticised about Heathrow V1 have been improved in V2. Take a look, if you like 🙂

Yes, I do. It's rare, but if the sun's at the right angle, it can really mess up your views.

I also removed Asobo's EGLL. I don't think this is necessary, but I figured it might just be sensible and could reduce the sim's workload ever so slightly. I don't know if this is true or not. It certainly shouldn't have had a negative impact on performance.

Well, this has generated a lot of discussion! I'd like to add a few more opinions of my own based on what's been said. I don't think this was rushed, or a cash grab, or released 'unfinished'. I think that it was painstakingly made, with skill, by people who wanted to produce as faithful and accurate a version of Heathrow as they could. It's not garbage by any stretch of the imagination. As I said in the video, I feel really guilty about being critical of an add-on that has had as much work put into it as this clearly has. I think, because this was less positive than a lot of my recent reviews, it's very easy to focus on the negatives. This is, as I said, a "pretty solid representation of the airport" and "has plenty to recommend it". It's not the Heathrow of our dreams, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Finally, it's really commendable that @iniBuilds have taken on board so much of what has been said by me, by others in this thread, by people in the YouTube video comments and by people on their forums, and are actively working on fixes and improvements. There aren't very many developers who are that responsive and that keen to improve a product after release.

Hi all, I'm back! I was in the process of uploading this review of a pre-release version of EGLL when it was released. I'm pretty confident nothing much will have changed since I got my copy this morning. Hope you find it useful 🙂 Cheers, Filbert