Georgleboui

V1 is notoriously picky and quick to drop things (dead2me) and he's stuck around with SI for a surprisingly long amount of time. Seems to genuinely like it.

"This does not seem legit" is a response to something in this case. That something is a wall of AI generated text that reads like an incredible sales pitch. And here's the thing, it may very well be true. In that case fine. But it's absolutely acceptable to respond to what OP has posted with criticism. You're right, we know next to nothing about the product except what the developer has told us. And well... see my point earlier. Personally, I see this as constructive criticism. Making claims about your product before you're ready to actually show anything does nothing except put you on the back foot. There's a reason why products tend to be developed in radio silence until they are ready to be marketed.

There's nothing but marketing here. The OP is 1700 words full of lofty AI-isms such as... And not a single shred of evidence. You don't have to be a negative Nancy to find that just a little bit odd. I'm not saying this to put the guy down, he very well may be working on the next BATC or SI. But this stuff is really hard to pull off, and the people that managed to do it weren't posting about how it's the most amazing, genius thing in the world without something to show for it. That's the disconnect here. We've just had an incredible amount of fluff so far and not much in the way of anything substantive. I could start a new thread right now and go on massive diatribes about how I'm building a next generation flight sim that will compete with XP and MSFS. I could get ol' Gippity to write me up some amazing things like "TO FEEL REAL, FLIGHT SIMULATION MUST BECOME REAL. THAT'S THE MISSING PIECE – WE ARE BUILDING IT". What does that mean? Who knows. Would be odd if someone didn't call me out on that, no?

In this world full of vibe-coded promises and shallow substance, a healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing to have.

You might be thinking of the CL-415 which indeed is firefighting. Historically Albatrosses were used for a lot of search and rescue operations and transport for Coast Guard and the Navy. Interestingly also used for covert operations by special forces during Vietnam. But in civilian form everything from private ownership as basically a flying RV to airline services in the pacific. It's a versatile platform with a bit of power and sizeable capacity. They are also being brought back into production as G-111s which is what the glass version is.

I’m going to throw something a bit different as a suggestion - the default Grumman HU-16 Albatross. Has a modern version with glass. Lots of carrying capacity, can land on water or land, and can transition between both under its own power. Quality wise I reckon it’s one of the more detailed default planes and clearly one made with a lot of passion. It’s received a lot of updates and more in the pipeline too.

I appreciate if you're coming into this from the point of view of seeking out content on the new plane and unfamiliar with V1. It's easy to then have totally different expectations and misunderstand what kind of content V1 does. And I think in any case people, especially older generations, generally have this misunderstanding about the different content you get out there on youtube these days. Like back in the old days (and I'd say those are my days) everything was a review and geared for informative content - you had long articles on Flightsim.com, videos were all factual impressions and well prepared, etc. And you get that stuff now - you have Into The Blue, Q8 Pilot, etc all doing this sort of stuff. However, there are also different kind of streamers, and that's what V1 does. It's more of a hang out, basically more geared to entertainment. Hey let's see what sort of thing we can get into today sort of thing. He'll go and check out SayIntentions, or Black Square Commander 114, or the Falcon and usually the devs will pop up and offer help. Sure, he does separate videos on specific topics, and stuff he's familiar with like A320 and 737s will be more in depth. But his live streams generally are more about community and just having fun with it. Not everyone's cup of tea I'm sure. Like I said, I'm only bringing this up because I see totally different expectations that are applied to all the flight sim content out there and it's just not the reality.

To be fair, I can't think of any case where a mod for a paid addon was necessary. Like majorly necessary, beyond just basic cosmetics? And as a counter argument – pretty sure the default DC-3 is encrypted, as is the Beech 18 and Boeing 307 and yet all have really substantial flight model and functionality mods. Personally, I'm all for MP. In fact even more so recently after doing a tour of my old add ons to see which are still holding up after all these years. Trying to figure out what version I have installed, going to each developer, trying to remember my login details, then downloading everything separately is such a pain. Just Flight is particularly bad with that. I'd much rather it all just gets updated on its own without me even thinking about it.

Details are great but how about fundamentals. We haven't really seen how you would tackle the actual ATC part. Personally I'd love to hear how you would approach ATC differently to the likes of SayIntentions and BATC. That's not meant to be confrontational at all – I'm genuinely curious and it would go a long way to generate interest. I purchased every single ATC tool since XP10 came out, it's a big part of the flight sim experience for me. And hey, it's great that the once forgotten genre of flight sim tools has this many new competitors and so much innovation. But you know, is it voice based or button? Will you support both IFR and VFR from launch or only one of those? Will you support the entire world or just US? Would it support failures? Is it built around simbrief or works independently? Does it work off a flight plan or is it more ambient (like MSFS ATC)? Are you relying on AFCAD data for taxiways or your own solution? Would you handle historic weather or only real time? Is some sort of multiplayer planned? Or is it player only? What sort of features could we expect from the very first release?

It just feels like you're a bit too early. A bit like those slightly naive posts where a brand new development team announces an ambitious new airliner with a grey box render of some landing gear. Ultimately, what are we supposed to react to here? It is not final UI - you're not showing any. It is not final voice - you're not showing any. It is not final traffic density - guess what? It is not the full product - very clearly not. There's a very lofty original post full of promises but as anyone with development experience and those keeping an eye on the monumental work done by SI and BATC teams – big words are the easy part. I'm not dunking on you by any means, I think it's great that there may be a new player in the ATC space. It's just obvious why you're getting the reaction you're getting. You talk about wanting to build an AI ATC that's really flexible, knows aviation and feels like you're talking to real people. That's great, and if you would have come in with a short video – a vertical slice of some interaction that demonstrates what you're talking about – the reaction would have been different. Hell, it could have even just been a mockup to demonstrate what the vision is. Something for people to react to. Instead just looks like you got the equivalent of a grey box landing gear and lofty promises.

Ultimately it's gameplay – challenge, whatever you want to call it. Whatever sim you use, it's all just entertainment at the end of the day. And sure, glass is fantastic if you're doing real world flying, absolutely. But it just sucks out the fun in a sim. An NDB approach with no visibility with terrain around you is exciting. Takes skill, thought, attention. Trying out celestial navigation while flying over the ocean where there's a real chance you'll get lost – really fun. The Dark Souls of navigation. Following a magenta line for six hours - might as well look at Reddit on your phone or go watch a YouTube video. Or worse – flying a screen by way of synthetic vision. As soon as I see that big G1000 monstrosity in a plane it puts me to sleep. Couldn't care less about VORs in real life, except maybe to bore my wife to death as I explain what that round thing is when we drive by the airport.

No contradictions here. I disagree with the mildness of his criticism and the overall sentiment that "it's not quite all that bad" and "people have been overly harsh". The shellacking this thing gets is rightfully deserved, and anything less than that is letting the dev off the hook. It's a $60 add-on that pretends to have depth (while misspelling switch labels) but is really just MScenery quality, and a developer who has pretty much completely abandoned it.

@Joshua757 Are you the guy spamming Reddit about this? I hadn't commented there because you've been rightfully called out and downvoted for this AI slop multiple times. It's a shockingly bad plane. Almost on the level of MScenery - and I say this for the audacity to charge such a huge amount for such low quality. I had hopes for the last patch but it barely fixed anything even though it was promising a lot. The worst money I ever spent on the sim, and I'm the only one to blame as I like the plane itself.

I know it's not to everyone's budget or appeal, but honestly this is where I'm glad for SayIntentions. The injector works the same way as FSLTL (ie set and forget) but you have the added benefit of it all being controlled in VFR and IFR. And there's pop-up IFR as well which is something I've been wanting for ages. I do wish there was a more accessible solution - can't beat free - but anything else just feels clunky to use.

This is an absolutely iconic helicopter if you're from the Northern Caucasus thanks to one of the best soviet aviation movies ever made: Bonus fact - my parents called me Mimino growing up because I was 1) obsessed with the movie and the little helicopter, and 2) looked like a miniature version of the main character (sans the amazing moustache).