Michael Basler wrote: > I received the June issue of FlightXPress, a German language > (actually THE German language) language journal on Flight simulation > (http://www.flightxpress.de/) today. > > This issue has a one page review on Flightgear written by a Marc Stoering
This actually seems mostly fair to me. I mean, let's face it -- if you wanted to introduce your 10 year old niece to flying, would you choose FlightGear or FS2002? :) > - Old-fashioned overall appearance (4 screenshots delivered, including > KSFO + C172 panel), not to be compared with state-of-the art > simulators > - Very few functions compared to other simulators > - Cockpits "from yesterday" They seem to want eye candy more than functionality, IMHO. Someone who actually flew the planes (the Cessnas and DC-3 in particular) would have come away with a far better impression of the panel. The MSFS panels are especially bad in this regard -- many of the core instruments update at something like 2-4Hz, and are useless and chunky (but attractive, always attractive). The panel is what drew me to FlightGear, and I continue to believe that our panel infrastructure (the important part, not the glitzy textures) is better than any other available to a consumer PC simulation enthusiast. They also seem to have skipped stuff like the KSJC photo scenery, which is hardly old fashioned. The criticism about lacking functionality is correct, of course. > - Bad flight characteristics (sometimes planes react too sensitive, > sometimes too sluggish), much worse than X-Plane Some of the models are awful. Some are very much not. There's far too much variation across our flight models (across different code bases and even between individual aircraft in the same FDM) to permit a blanket statement like this one. It's just kibitzing. If he had specific complaints about specific aircraft, though, I'd love to hear them. Most of the reported problems get fixed within days. > - Weather + Scenery disappointing True. Some of our ground textures could use replacement, and it would be good to have a dynamic scenery facility that could add things like taxiway markers and trees at runtime without rebuilding tiles. The metropolitan areas could use some buildings, too. As far as weather goes, I've never seen a good weather system in any consumer simulator. FlightGear lacks a lot, but at least it doesn't duplicate all the bugs I've seen in FS2002 or Fly! :) > Their summary: FlightGear is for a minority of technically advanced simmers > who are prepared to go into programming only, but not for the normal simmer. That sounds about right to me. The "programming" bit might be better translated as "development" -- there are many (!) non-programming activities that match FlightGear really well. But basically, FlightGear is most appropriate for users who want to get inside the simulator and tinker, rather than running something out of a box. In my experience, *nothing* is quite right out of the box. Every simulation product has serious shortcomings. With FlightGear, I can make those go away, and *that* is why I use it. Andy -- Andrew J. Ross NextBus Information Systems Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com "Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one." - Sting (misquoted) _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
