Related posts

• SuperATC Connects To Radar Contact 4 (0)
• It’s Your Plane ‘Does’ PMDG (0)
• Flight Simulator For Blind People (0)
• Vickers “Wimpey” Review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (8)
• Review: Wilco Tiltrotor (FSX Version) (7)

Related posts

• Vickers “Wimpey” Review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (8)
• The simMarket Newsletter (7)
• SimMarkets Newsletter Revamped (0)
• Review: Wilco Tiltrotor (FSX Version) (7)
• Review: RealAir’s ‘Spit’ (0)

Aerosoft Discus Glider X v1.00
A Fleeting Floating Review by Peter Hayes.

In the Sim

Setup
If you have joystick or Yoke that has a slider I suggest that this axis is set to “Spoilers” it will make landing more realistic and less problematic. If you do not have a separate slider this little gadget maps the throttle to slider with a single click, you can download here: Throttle2spoiler.. Other controls are standard.

In the Select aircraft menu in FSX you will see a new tab for Specific 3d design and this allows the choice of all 10 models. We’ll choose one of the BM models (self powered) for the first flight. I loaded a glider in FSX to ensure it ran OK, then closed FSX and ran a “Complete Name” defrag with O&O ver 11.0.

In the Select aircraft menu in FSX you will see a new tab for Specific 3d design and this allows the choice of all 10 models. We’ll choose one of the BM models (self powered) for the first flight. I loaded a glider in FSX to ensure it ran OK, then closed FSX and ran a “Complete Name” defrag with O&O ver 11.0.

Settings in FSX
The fuel and payload shows that the BM is 74 pounds overweight, but this may be due to a limitation in FSX with respect to the “water ballast” and doesn’t seem to affect the take-off performance. Realism settings should be set up according to the manual to ensure the best flying flight characteristics.

The Visuals
Externally and Internally excellent, and I hope some of my “screenies” reflect that excellence Here is a picture of the VC view (There is no 2-D cockpit):

This is a quality model chock-full of goodies for the ultimate flying experience. Most of the flight instruments can be selected with a mouse click some left some right. The “pilot” can be hidden/shown with another click of the mouse.

Instrumentation
The instruments are comprehensive with 3 variometers (vario) in the models which are much more accurate than the default instruments. As all glider pilots would know the variometer (aka the rate-of-climb indicator, or the vertical speed indicator (VSI) is a vital piece of equipment for flying a glider (sailplane). These instruments inform the pilot of the rate of descent or climb, and can be read in knots, feet per minute (101.333 ft/min = 1 knot) or metres per second. (Wikipedia).

The three variometers modelled in the Aerosoft Discus are the Total Energy Compensated (TEC or TEK) vario, the “Netto” vario and the “Speed-to-fly” vario. Simply Total Energy Compensation is the actual sink or climb rate of the glider and is basically used to find the best rate of climb in a thermal. The Netto vario is a further enhancement of the TEK in that it simply nets out the sinking speed of the glider at a specific forward speed, to give you a reasonable approximation of the movement of air outside the glider. The Netto is excellent for ridge flying optimising your flight relative to the thermals/landscape. The “Speed-to-Fly” vario is modelled in the Discus as a SDI C4 Competition LCD gauge. This gauge takes into consideration all the parameters of the glider, eg water ballast, headwinds/tailwinds, detritus on the forward surfaces of the wings and computes the optimal airspeed that the glider should fly at. There is an excellent tutorial article on the Aerosoft Forum by B21 on “How to set up and use the SDI C4″, worthwhile reading.

Other Instrumentation
The radio is basic and has a limited range but is quite usable. Other instruments include, an Airspeed Indicator, an altimeter, and a PDA based GPS unit, all adding to the flying experience. Yaw String This is faithfully modelled in all variants and basically this does what the turn indicator ball does in motorised aircraft, i.e it accurately depicts slip or skid in a glider in flight. The manuals and the forum give a good indication on what the controls do and how to use them. Including the actual manuals for the real instruments is a masterstroke as it shows the amount of work and accuracy that have gone into creating the Discus.

Take-Off
Initially this does not appear to be straight forward in that certain set-up procedures need to be properly executed to ensure that your take-off is perfect. The manual describes how to set up and start the engine in the BM model and how to call for the tow plane in the un-powered model. There is an excellent guide on the forums again by “B21″ on “How to take-off in the powered BM”. Once mastered either the winch method or the powered take-off are easy to use, but as know, “practice makes perfect”. So if at first you do not succeed it is all down to practice, more practice and even more practice and the forum is very supportive.

In Flight
The flight characteristics are excellent but as I am not a pilot I cannot compare them to a real-life Schempp-Hirth Discus glider. I liked the handling and it was easy to get those “thermals” using the free add-on Cumulus X. Everything seemed realistic and landing was much easier than the default glider by using basic flying techniques and judicious use of the spoiler. I landed the BM in both powered and un-powered mode and it seemed very realistic in both modes. The FTX Hervey Bay scenery used with real weather experiences a lot cross-winds and on several landings I had to “crab” the glider to stay line up on the runway. The 3 variants do seem to handle differently and the “hardest” to land was the unpowered model which seemed to have much more lift coming into land but using the spoilers made it a lot simpler to achieve a happy landing. I liked the retractable gear again a great aid to landing. In one glorious flight I managed to get up to a “giddy” 15,000 feet. Wow!

The Sounds
The Sounds are very good, being custom made, for the 3 variants and the swoosh of air as you fly un-powered is very satisfactory. I have attached some pictures of the Discus in flight and it certainly looks the part.

Conclusion
I liked this glider but I do like flying low and slow. I had a couple of minor issues when I first installed the “Discus” but these were easily fixed with a post on the forum. I can’t wait to see how far I can fly or how high I can get in this glider.

Peter Hayes
Australia, 2009.

Table of the Important Bits:

VC NO pilot!!

VC showing yaw string, GPS on Final

Tags: Aerosoft, DISCUS GLIDER X, Peter Hayes, review

Related posts

• Glide away with Aerosoft: Discus Glider X (1)
• World Of Subways Vol 2, Aerosoft (0)
• Vive la France ! (0)
• Virtual World Aerobatic Championships 2009 (0)
• Vickers “Wimpey” Review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (8)

Hot on the heels of the recent Birmingham review comes Screenshotartist.co.uk’s latest, this time covering the First Class Simulations box set of the Vickers Wellington World War II bomber, by Ian Pearson, with screenshots, as usual, by Nick Churchill.

The Wellington, also known as the “Wellie” or “Wimpey” was one of the few aircraft that both started and ended World War II in front line service and this package gives you a collection of aircraft, a scenery and for FSX users, a small collection of missions to complete. To read this, or any other of the site’s reviews, please visit screenshotartist.co.uk. The Halcyon Media publication of the same package is also available from simMarket, here.

Related posts

• A Wimpey is rolled out… (3)
• UK2000 Birmingham review (1)
• Wilco Publishing Products Available at SimMarket. (0)
• vroute: how to get your flight planned in 5 steps (0)
• VRoute Adds Support For PMDG’s JS4100 (2)

Related posts

• Tutorial – Make Your Own Runways In FSX (0)
• Review: ScreenshotArtist On Plum Island (1)
• Plum Island Patch Released (0)
• Westland Lysander Hollywood Star (1)
• Tongass Fjords X Gets Award (6)

If you haven’t met this model, and the technology advances that come with the 1950’s predecessor of the B747 and A380 double-decker airliners, or if you have, but are still undecided as to whether you want it, you might like to read the review. If you already have it, or it’s not really ‘your cup of tea’, you can always look at Nick Churchill’s screenshots instead!

The review can be accessed at the Screenshotartist.co.uk website, here.

Related posts

• Review: Captain Sim B757 (5)
• Hawk review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (2)
• FSX; A Program With Amazing Potential (15)
• A2A Stratocruiser And Extension Pack (1)
• A2A Simulations release B377/Accu-Sim SP1 (1)

Seen only at air shows and other “Public relations” events over the past few years, the Tiltrotor was recently released into the sim skies by Wilco Publishing. Due for civilian certification in 2010, this new aircraft is set to revolutionise quite a few niches in the aerospace scene in coming years. About the only niche safe from this proven concept will be the large mass transit systems (commercial airliners) that pack more than a dozen passengers into their tubes.

Wholly intrigued by this “float like a butterfly – sting like a bee” aircraft, we decided to review it for you.

Many thanks to Wilco Publishing’s Fred Goldman for providing the review copy.

STOP PRESS!

I have just had a reply from Fred Goldman of Wilco Publishing. (Monday 12 noon) Most of the issues I address in this review are being looked at by the developer team. They are also looking at a few more issues that have been put to them by concerned customers. From what I now know, the patch will be extensive and effective.

Thank you all at Wilco for your efforts and thank you for listening to your customers.

Back to the story:

INDEX

The potted version (skip to summary)

The full version (read on)

INTRODUCTION

DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL

FIRST LOOK – EXTERIOR

SECOND LOOK – INTERIOR VIEWS

LET’S GO FLYING

HANDBOOK

HANDLING

THE 3D MODEL AND TEXTURES

MISSIONS

SUMMARY

Various screenshots – for those with time

The test system

About the author

INTRODUCTION

This is going to be difficult without superlatives (and the odd critique as well)…

It sounds like a didgeridoo on strange herbs, it will fly like it’s being chased out of hell and it will probably be the biggest thing on the civilian vertical pursuit market for a while. If you’re the snooty kind, you can hover with your nose in the air, and if you’re in a hurry… well, 250 Knots or so should keep you happy in the intercity business.

If the Moller Skycar is set to de-congest our inner cities, then the Agusta Bell 609 Tiltrotor is certainly poised to be the stretch limo of the “Got to be scene to be seen” scene. The Tiltrotor is the civilian kid brother of the military’s Osprey. Also sired by Bell, but with Boeing as partner, the Osprey started a new style of thinking in the aviation world and the military have found a great deal of favour in the tiltrotor concept. Vertical AND fast is definitely a must have in the military world.

Now Bell have teamed up with Agusta to create the world’s first civilian tiltrotor aircraft. If you want to know more about the real world version, then visit: http://www.bellagusta.com/ for in depth information and several excellent videos.

So… what have we got here? An aircraft with the ability to move up to 5500 pounds of useful load from point A to point B at up to three hundred miles per hour and for a range of around 750 miles. Now whether your load is nine executives hurrying between business meetings or a pampered VIP going home for supper, or even a hotel’s courtesy bus for VIPs, this aircraft will literally move your “fares” door to door. Air ambulance services will love this too, because the interior is spacious enough to carry critically ill patients to hospital even faster than any helicopter has yet managed. Speaking as an engineer, I would even wager that the tiltrotor is a good deal more comfortable than a helicopter too, because it can go from vertical to horizontal flight without needing to tip forward, like helicopters do.

One final comment here about the real world tiltrotor – it will also be easier to learn to fly and operate than helicopters

Burning Question Number 1: Who in the sim-world will this craft appeal to?

Anyone! Except perhaps the dyed in the wool intercontinental flier – and even then, those simmers will be rewarded with a pressurized aircraft that will fly at 25000 feet. Better still, you and even fly into the busiest airports by the back routes and not interfere with the traffic. It’s everything from a small commuter-liner, taxi, air ambulance, private fly-around, bush plane (yes – this is perfect for the bush) all the way through to military operations. It is capable of full VFR operations and yet you can fly it VFR and enjoy the scenery too.

Burning Question Number 2: Should I add this to my fleet?

…which is the purpose of this review: to help you decide (hint: skip to the end or go buy it now – you won’t go far wrong). Anyway, let us take a good long look at the Wilco Publishing Bell-Agusta Tiltrotor BA609.

Caveat! This aircraft is still in the development phase in the real world and not yet in full series production – certification is due in 2010. A lot of the technical information needed to create a sim-model is still ‘classified’ so Wilco Publishing and their developer team do not have all the answers. A certain amount of educated guessing was needed in the development of this aircraft. Those people who already own this add-on and are wondering if they made the right move – perhaps you should read on here too.

back to top

DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL

Wherever you decide to buy this aircraft, your purchase will give you a download of just under 100 MB to park on your hard drive. As it is an ‘exe’ file, installation is as simple as double clicking the installer and following the on-screen instructions. Once finished, the Tiltrotor will use 503 Mb of hard disc real estate.

A boxed Version may be available later.

Words of caution:

1. The installer will offer a pre-written path to FSX. If you have installed FSX elsewhere or you have Vista 64bit installed, you should check the installation path and make sure.

2. Wilco clearly state on their site that the Tiltrotor does not support 64 bit operating systems. (Check the review system details at the end of this review and you’ll see that the test was carried out on 64 Bit Windows Vista). If you are running on 64 Bit, then some things probably won’t work or not properly.

3. Wilco clearly state in the manual that the Tiltrotor NEEDS FSUIPC installed. You can either buy the full version (on simMarket of course) or install the free version. There is a link to the Schiratti website in the manual. Tiltrotor uses and needs a few of the FSUIPC signals to control the aircraft.

But otherwise installation is no-nonsense and finished in a couple of minutes. Once installed, you will now have 6 new airplanes in eleven paint schemes (I’ve already added a paint of my own in this screenshot)

Let’s fire the sim up, pick a version, an airport, a time of day and let’s go. You’ll get a familiar request from FSX to ask you if you wish to allow this software. (XML to FSUIPC Interface Gauge). Simply allow it and in a few more seconds you’ll be ready to go.

back to top

FIRST LOOK – EXTERIOR

The first thing 99% of buyers will want to do, will be to install, fire up and “look see”, so let us do the same.

The first thing you’ll see after leaving the hangar (real world) will be the cockpit view, but let’s skip that for now, press “S” and go outside for a moment. As for all “default starts” you will be standing outside your aircraft, engines running, blades turning. BUT BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE COCKPIT, apply the parking brakes or you’ll get sliced and diced…

She’s probably one of the odder flying machines you have seen recently. The blades have such large diameters that when on the ground there are automatic overrides that prevent you tilting them too far. As you swing your viewpoint around, you may just realise why I likened the noise to a didgeridoo. In fact you could have a bit of fun swinging the viewpoint and recording an outback soundtrack… Enough of that! Back to the text. You see in front of you a strange contraption with two oversized propellers, a set of very large flaps and ailerons and a fin with a T-tail stabilizer and elevators. But no rudder. She’s standing on a trio of pretty legs and closer inspection reveals that they are nicely modelled too. What’s more, if you look close enough, you’ll even see that the “Dunlop Aviation” lettering on the tyres is bump-mapped. Nice touch! The undercarriage bays are also worth a peer as you do your exterior walkaround.

If you’re more discerning, you may find the exterior paints look a bit “unfinished”. That is indeed one of my critiques on this add-on, but this is not a show-stopper. It’ll be for the painters to iron out some of the texturing fluffs that the development team have missed. I’ll go into texturing in a bit more detail later.

All in all though, the exterior walkaround is convincing. This machine looks like she belongs in the sky!

back to top

SECOND LOOK – INTERIOR VIEWS

Cycle back to the interior view and press “A” to cycle through the different views. All in all, there is plenty of eye-candy between the 6 model types. This ranges from a military interior with a chain gun to blow away those baddies, through an ambulance interior to the business version with a long-legged cutie typing away at her laptop – be careful with this one – she’s got a glass of red wine at hand, and if you spill that… well, you know what girls are like about red wine stains! And if you look at the image below – yes, the map display is linked to the cockpit GPS and yes, you can follow exactly where you are flying.

Anyway, enough of the looking, let’s get on with some ‘doing’.

How on earth are we going to get this thing airborne?

Well, if you’re like me, you’ll be dangerous. You’ll have a little bit of knowledge and you’ll want to get airborne as fast as possible. Handbooks? What do I need handbooks for? I know how to fly. Let’s have a look round and see what controls we have…

The layout is fairly familiar – and a pleasant surprise. Three big glass panels for the crew on the main panel – A PFD (Primary Flight Display each for pilot and co) and a central MFD (Multi Functional Display) for things like nav, comms and engine data. Air vents, standby instruments, an autopilot panel above. There are two unfamiliar displays are in the panel – one for the pilot, one for the co-pilot. These look like position indicators – for the engine nacelles maybe? (More on that in a bit) There’s a lighting switch panel in the centre – hmmm someone really thought that out well (not): you can’t read the labels under the switches… There’s smaller glass screen – it’s a secondary GPS display – and glass comms display panel can be seen in the centre console, behind which are a few more buttons, knobs and switches.

Ahh – that’s interesting! At the rear end (ish) of the centre console, there’s a switch marked “Security”. Turn that whilst on the ground and suddenly the wheel chocks are in place, safety cones put up near the props and the “remove before flight” tags are waving in the breeze. I wish there was a button that did that in the real world! Useful thinking by Wilco there.

Above your head you’ll find more lighting, anti-icing and engine control knobs, buttons and switches. One thing that might disturb the more discerning aviator could be the fact that some switches are duplicated – the lighting switches for instance, while things like fuel management and cabin pressurization are barely touched.  We’ll read the handbook later…

Now we can also see the “Business end” of flying – the controls. You can’t miss the helicopter ancestry of this aircraft – there’s a collective lever on the left and a cyclic in front of you.

OK – FIRST BIGGER CRITIQUE here – The position of the pilot’s control column simply looks wrong. It looks very much like the pilot will have difficulties with moves to the right – his right leg would be in the way.

And… SECOND BIGGER CRITIQUE here – the sales blurb gives a service ceiling of 25000 feet. There’s no “real” environmental control panel, nor instruments or displays to tell you what the air-conditioning units are doing.

back to top

LET’S GO FLYING

All in all, the ‘office’ lives up to Wilco’s statement that a certain amount of guesswork had to go into the project. It is useable however, and besides, the controls are on your desktop anyway. Now just how do I control this thing? By the way – my standard desktop controls are a Saitek stick and throttle set (X52) plus the Saitek pedals and a TrackIR Hat.

For the purposes of this review I simply pushed my Saitek X52 throttle forward and waited to see what happened. Noise – yes. Motion – no. Ah! Release the parking brake….

Now that is pleasant! The tiltrotor accelerates in a straight line down the runway and unsticks at around 80 knots without any control input. In fact it was a hands off take off all the way. Cockpit sound is there and sounds possibly OK. In no time at all I am climbing up through 200 feet and passing 174 knots – I’d better pull the gear up. There’s a satisfying whirr as the gear retracts and the tiltrotor is climbing away steadily at 175 ish knots. Time for some control input.

Control response is good and watching the control surface movement in exterior view reveals good model animation. Roll is very responsive, pitch feels damped – a good thing! Yaw doesn’t seem to go far though. But then there is no rudder on the fin – the yaw pedals adjust propeller effort and as such, yaw control is for balancing your turns – it seems that the tiltrotor is well balanced as it is. Now, about those tilting rotors… There is a clickable button on the model’s collective gauge. Try it. There is a sound of motors turning and lo and behold, the propellers tilt to forward flight.

From now on the plane is flying like one – a pretty good turbo-prop performance. With those big props, she accelerates quite rapidly up to cruise speed and pulling back on the throttle, the tiltrotor reacts as can be expected for a twin turbo.

So far the model handles easily enough so that a first timer can jump in, push the throttle forward and fly. We discovered a switch on the collective that tilts the props over and there was no ‘instructor’ breathing down our necks. You might say this is unrealistic, but ask yourself: what do a large number of hobbyist sim-pilots want? So far so good. The tiltrotor is most definitely easy to get off the ground and into the air. The ‘airplane’ handling characteristics are ‘turbo-prop’ like, and if you have flown the built in twins in FSX – the glass-cockpitted Beech Baron, or the turbo-propped King Air 350, then you are in a familiar environment.

Which is a good point to take stock!

Get your experience on turbo-props and glass cockpits by using the FSX built in aircraft and tutorials, because sadly, you aren’t going to get any help from the Wilco handbook. (More in a bit)

Now about those tilting rotors again. I pressed a button on the on-screen collective. It doesn’t take much to discover that it is linked to the flaps controls, so using that knowledge, HERE IS SOME ADVICE for users:

If you have the Saitek X52 throttle control, go to the FSX controls menu (Options / settings / controls / control axes) and set the slider under your left thumb to control flaps.

If you have joystick only, learn the keyboard flaps controls. You control the propeller tilt using this, and with the thumb slider, flying the tiltrotor becomes a dream!

Anyway, rather than trying to fudge a landing at this stage, I used the sim “reset” to get me back on the ground. It’s now time to…

back to top

RTFM – OR: DISCOVER THE WORDS OF THE WISE

What everyone really should do, before using a new add-on for the sim is to “Read the Flaming Manual!” And even before that you should read the advertising blurb before deciding to buy. Anyone who doesn’t has only him or herself to blame when things go wrong. All too often the help forums are filled with hate mail and flames because of just that. With this review I want to try to help you avoid that stress. Unfortunately the Wilco handbook leaves a lot to be desired – and at the same time I can commend the Wilco manual for its simplicity. Does that sound like fence-sitting or what?

Well, the manual does tell you the basics. How to control the plane on the ground, how to operate the rotor tilt mechanisms, how to start and stop the engines. In other words it tells you enough to operate the Tiltrotor in Flight Sim. You will also discover that that strange new gauge on the instrument panel is indeed a gauge to tell you at what angle your nacelles are tilting (with TrackIR a glance over your shoulder will help too). It will also pont out that that green line is a wind direction indicator and the numbers are a radar altimeter that will read feet above ground up to 1000 feet. But that’s about it. The manual is a better “readme” with pictures. If you are expecting to find P’s and T’s, operating limits, procedures (normal and emergency), performance data and so on, then you might be disappointed. Mind you – what the developers don’t have, they can’t give. They clearly state that a lot of information is still classified.

What you will also miss in the manual are guides for the “Glass Cockpit” – despair not. Just follow the FSX built in guides and tips – even to the extent of going “off-site” to places like Garmin and so on. If you want to know what things like condition levers are and do – learn about flying twin turbo props using the FSX tutorials. Or don’t bother with the glass cockpit. Use the FSX built in info display lines – shift+Z to display things like airspeed, altitude, fuel etc.

Personally I find that glass cockpits don’t work too well in my VC view anyway – too small and hard to read. I usually “pay the FPS price” and open the PFD (Primary Flight Display) in a new window on my second monitor anyway.

Wilco have obviously taken the path that their customers are more experienced and wiser and certainly no fools. So they have provided a handbook which does not take away any of your valuable flying time. Now whilst that can be seen as a somewhat cynical viewpoint, it is also a compliment, because in the final analysis, the Tiltrotor is easy enough to fly – and FUN – and if you want to be a “procedures” pilot, the systems use readily available data from FSX. You don’t really NEED all that extra handbook.

What I would have liked in the manual would have been a few more arrows on the pictures, pointing to buttons like the one on the central MFD which switches on the engine performance display – Ps and Ts

If you are a bookworm, the manual will disappoint. If you want to know enough to use the software adequately, then this manual meets those needs.

If you want to learn a bit more about flying the tiltrotor, there are half a dozen (sim) videos on the Wilco site – and these really do help you get used to the bird and they are worth quite a few pages of manual – so do watch these videos folks – they help a lot.

back to top

HANDLING

Here is the biggest single piece of praise I have right now for the tiltrotor. Moving her around on the ground – taxiing – is a dream! Whoever did the gauge work to make this thing move around on the ground did a great job – and as far as we can tell and see, this is exactly how the real tiltrotor works. Leave the throttles at ground idle and don’t try using them for taxiing. All you need to do for taxiing is:

Move the nacelles to vertical.

Stick forward – plane goes forwards

Stick back – plane goes backwards

Pedals – left and right – whichever way you are going.

Hovering isn’t much more difficult either. It is by no means as difficult as hovering a real helicopter and it is also easier than hovering a sim helicopter. First of all, there are the two big propellers providing lift – that’s steadier than a single rotor for a start. Apart from those big flaps and flaperons diverting the air around, there are also various nozzles around the plane, which are used to control your position in the hover. You do need to make sure your joystick is calibrated of course (and that is in the manual). Personally I favour a relatively tight “null zone” in my joystick setup, but a slightly wider one won’t hurt.

To go from hover to forward flight, the handbook says simply move the nacelles to horizontal. Apart from the thumbwheel on the collective, there’s a “helicopter / airplane switch” on the overhead panel that does that too. Also, for the sim, you can click on the VTOL gauge on the instrument panel to vary the rotor tilt.

According to the Wilco manual, you can tilt the rotor nacelles at all speeds. So with a bit of practice, flying the tiltrotor is relatively easy and, if you have the tilt “wired” to your left thumb slider, very intuitive. Flying along at 270 knots, simply throttle back allowing drag and attitude to slow you down a bit – to around 160 to 170 knots. Tilting the rotors helps too – but don’t forget: If you have throttled back and you tilt the rotors vertical, then your “helicopter” isn’t providing lift – down you will go. Which means that being gas turbines, they take a few seconds to spool back up to power and if you are too close to the ground, that results in some rather expensive panel beating needed.

I shall cover the sim flight dynamics here too.

You will recall that a lot of data on this aircraft is still classified. That does mean that the developers had to guess. That also means that people can come along and say the handling characteristics are terrible.

They most certainly are not. If I could design a real plane I would go for exactly what the team have tried to do here. Ease of use, minimal management needed, no unnecessary lights and dials. This is a principle you will find in all modern commercial airliners Airbus A320 and on. There will be no lights on, whatever colour, if everything is functioning correctly. For my personal flavour and as a recommendation for other users, I would say the handling is very pilot-friendly. You can fly this thing pretty much like the real world tiltrotor appears to fly in the various online videos in places like YouTube.

Sadly, on my PC I have a warning light on, on my warning light panel – maybe this is the “non-64 bit PC functionality” referred to in the Wilco information? I expect a reply from Wilco on this and a few other questions I have posed within the next day or three.

Also, and due to the lacking data in the handbooks, you can’t be sure that the engine performance data on the central MFD is correct or accurate. On the other hand, most aircraft these days are fly-by-wire, so the normal situation is that no matter what the pilot does, the computers manage the systems.

If Bell-Agusta are marketing this aircraft as “Easy to handle” then Wilco’s developers have succeeded. Yes, there are a few things in the dynamics that could be programmed better. There are performance issues that do leave us wanting more. I would hope that perhaps the developers will come up with some improved flight dynamics in the coming weeks, but even so, the plane is extremely flyable.

As already stated, Wilco and their developers don’t have performance data to hand, so they have gone for as good a mix as they can. If there’s anything to critique on the flight dynamics, then perhaps the fact that the tiltrotor doesn’t slow down as fast as it ought to when you tilt the rotors to vertical. Those huge flaps and ailerons really ought to kill airspeed a lot faster.

In another part of the sparse data available, we read that the service ceiling for this aircraft is 25000 feet and that HOGE is 5000 feet. So when I landed on top of Mount Everest, I am sure you will understand my surprise.  By the way: HOGE is Hovering Out of Ground Effect. Ground effect is that cushion of air that any rotorcraft builds up when close to the ground. In this state you can use a lot less energy to hover. HOGE needs a good deal more energy and air. The higher you go, the less dense the air and thus the maximum height limit for hovering in “free air”.

There are a few other less significant concerns about the aircraft configuration and .air files, for example: there are no “crash” contact points and the wheels must be made of solid matter (they don’t “flatten” under load).

back to top

THE 3D MODEL AND TEXTURES

All in all, the developers have succeeded with the exterior model. There are a few funnies in DX10 preview mode (mostly lighting effects, but I believe these are in hand). The painters have done a reasonable job on the textures, although I personally feel the mapping could have been a lot better for the calibre of user that Wilco are marketing this at. For my money too, they could have aligned the camouflage better across the fuselage and nacelle joins – the paints look a wee bit cheap.

There is also one big issue with model visibility as you zoom out your point of view. The model simply disappears at maximum zoom or in Tower view from a distance – again I believe Wilco and the developers are looking into this.

The animations are good all round. Especially the way the prop hubs tilt on the ground while taxiing or while hovering. Control surfaces, doors, wheels, retraction – no issues here.

The review model is FSX, so when I looked in the texture folders I was disappointed not to find any specular textures in the aircraft folders. Now while adding reflection and specular shine to the model itself is OK, it does limit the appearance of the aircraft in flight – even if only slightly. Especially when you consider that the executive variants will have “fancy trick” paintjobs and there’s nothing like a specular texture for making metallics look metallic.

Of course, the real tiltrotors are mostly composite, so the exteriors will be mostly shiny smooth. There is a good selection of interiors there too, in fact there is plenty of eye-candy in the various configurations and this does show a good deal of willing and thought having gone into the creation of the package. My personal favourite is the Executive interior – those seats look really good!

If you visit the Wilco site, you can download a paintkit for the exterior textures. In my “Eagleskinner” alter ego, I have taken it apart and made a “partner-look” paint to go with my Real World lookalike paint of the East Texas Medical Center’s Eurocopter EC 135. Now I really do miss the specular texture for the Tiltrotor for that metallic turquoise I had… Anyway. The tiltrotor is paintable with relative ease.Verdict here is a definite thumbs up. The texture artist added some registration targets to make alignment of textures easy. WELL DONE! I can envisage this aircraft being painted relatively often and in as many paint schemes are there are ambulance services, air taxis, armies, police forces, coast guards…

As far as lights go, Shockwave lights owners may be disappointed. Apart from cabin lights, all other lighting is hard coded into the 3D model and not accessible via the aircraft.cfg.

back to top

THE MISSIONS

The tiltrotor download also adds several missions for the budding enthusiast tilting pilot to fly. If you have the Aerosoft Monaco scenery addon installed, then there is a patch on the Wilco site for the Monaco Casino Mission where you have to collect a VIP and fly him to a casino.

Another Mission has you rescuing injured mountain climbers on Mount Everest. If you have Mesh addons such as the Aerosoft Lukla scenery, then the start will be a wee bit “dramatic” as the mission will drop you onto the default Lukla airport, which is totally hidden by the Aerosoft terrain. Also recovering the injured climbers won’t work because they are on a cliff face, and the tiltrotor version used can’t land. I understand that Wilco have an eye on that though.

The missions are flyable and do add a respectable amount of immersion to the sim.

Where the tiltrotor will also prove very interesting, will be for you adventurous readers who already have all the rewards for the FSX missions. You can re-fly nearly all these missions again using the tiltrotor. I certainly plan to do a few like that.

back to top

SUMMARY

After several days of intense flying, I can honestly say that this aircraft has won a big place in my heart. It may not be the best, the most accurate, the most memory evoking or anything with “best” like that, but it is so versatile that it will fit in anywhere. Whether it’s dragging some damfool whitewater rafter out of the Grand Canyon or picking up a “fare” at McCarran International and taking them for a tour down “The Strip”. Certainly I will use very good / extremely good / great fun / good “Wahoo” factor in my list of superlatives – but remember my “nickname”… this isn’t a Christen Eagle

As an aircraft engineer who can fly (a bit) I also realise that if Bell-Agusta can make this thing as flyable as Wilco have done, then the Tiltrotor WILL revolutionise aviation. This aircraft will go anywhere, where it is physically possible to put something of this size and weight. Yes, I have been having a good deal of fun with it, no it isn’t perfect – you can still get yourself very “tangled” in a tight place. The model itself is not perfect, there are various bits of the programming “anatomy” that could be improved, the price is high, there is a small performance hit on the dreaded frame rates, BUT the usability factor far outweighs the negative comments I do have about this addon.

Even flying over “High Density Scenery” such as Megasceneries Hawaii, Vegas, Reno, or over Aerosoft’s VFR Germany, and even with my scenery and other settings really pushing my PC to its limits, I am getting respectable and usable performance.

It is easy to get used to. I will gladly stick my neck out and even suggest that the real Tiltrotor will be as easy to learn and fly. I am sure my colleagues at Bell sincerely want it to be easy to fly, and I am pretty certain that it benefits from a lot of computer power taking the load off a real pilot. So just like the real thing, this has to be an ideal aircraft to complement your hangar and your experience

This Aircraft is very much worth having in your hangar. It is even worth saving for – although I am looking very hard at Wilco here with a polite “nudge nudge”.

…and I sincerely do believe that the developers want to improve this too and that they are ironing out the minor bugs and working away at improvements as we “speak”.

Four Stars out of Five

The Summary in brief

What it can do	What it can’t do	Who will like it	Pro	Con
Hover	Go everywhere the Cristen Eagle can	People who want real “point A to point B” travel without flying under bridges	Easy to Learn	Not guaranteed for 64bit OS
Fly faster than the Christen Eagle	Race at Reno	People who want to fly fast and land on a sixpence but not fly in circles	IFR using FSX equipment	Manual could be more detailed (systems and performance data
Carry up to 12 people	Carry more than 12 people	Taxi drivers, stretch limo drivers, fun drivers, Sunday pilots, playboys and family guys	Wide choice of options	Price
Fly down the Grand Canyon	Fly VERY tight corners at high speed	Careful Aviators	Excellent ground handling	The developers are still working on several (minor) fixes
Fly at 25000 feet	Fly for more than 750 miles	Simmers who don’t have the time for a Frankfurt to Rio run	Good hover characteristics
Look great in Monaco	Look like a vintage plane	The more ‘modern’ simmer	Easy to fly, but not unrealistic
Look new and shiny bright	Look old and worn and abused	Painters	Uses FSX equipment – no major learning curve
Carry up to 5000 lbs of ’stuff’	Carry underslung loads	Freight dogs, mail men, “Men in white vans”	Easy to use documentation
Fly IFR in the ‘worst clag’ (and you can always drop down to read the high way signs)		Bad weather masochists and Active Sky users	Attractive to a very wide range of users
Land on top of Mountains	Land on water	Air rescuers and good swimmers	Reasonably good performance even over high-density photo-terrain
Look mean in uniform	Look as mean as its big brother, the Osprey	Military aviators

back to top

Various Screenshots for those with time…

Here are some more screenshots of the latest ‘Skinnerpaint’ rescuing those ‘Damfool white-water rafters’ ot of the Grand Canyon:

back to top

The Test System

PC:

AMD FX62 based
Foxconn AM2 Motherboard
3GB Corsair RAM
nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS graphics, 512 MB VRAM
Realtek onboard 8:1 sound
three x 250 GB SATA2 Hard drives

OS:

Windows Vista Home Premium, 64 bit

back to top

About the author

Chris ‘Eagleskinner’ Brisland is an aircraft engineer with flight experience. He was knitted over half a century ago and at his current age has collected quite a few books, videos and T-shirts. A simmer since the very early days of “PC Flight”, he has a broad knowledge of flying around bedrooms, studies and home-offices. You will often find him at his desk thinking up new paint schemes for sim-planes – “finger painting without the mess”. Find him online at the simFlight Forums and many of the other places flightsimmers lurk.

back to top

Related posts

• Wilco’s Tower Simulator (8)
• Wilco’s Revolution: Tilt your Rotor, Land in your Garden! (2)
• Wilco Updates Tilt Rotor (1)
• Wilco threefold: E-Jets, Tilt Rotor & Missions (5)
• Vickers “Wimpey” Review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (8)

So it was less than an hour after discovering about the release of this plane, to the moment I was firing up FSX and raring to go.

Actually I had the feeling that IcarusGold’s Giuseppe was almost as insomniac as I was – he answered my messages almost instantly. After a couple of forum PM exchanges a review copy of the Pitts was crossing the ether and parking on my hard drive. Thanks Giuseppe

So what is a Pitts?

Pitts is a name. Curtis Pitts was born in 1916 into a world that had just entered the aviation era. Growing up in the depression years, one can only guess what the young Curtis Pitts must have felt, as he watched those early “barnstorming years” evolve into the “Golden Age” of aviation. Nowadays people talk of “Pitts” and mean an aerobatic legend who has inspired several generations of aerobatic flyers. During the 1930’s and early 1940’s he looked up to his own legends and was infected by the desire to create a plane of his own.

The result was a small biplane that was designed and built as a purely “one-off” aeroplane that he wanted to win aerobatic competitions with. In hindsight, the name he gave his plane was probably just a whim of the moment – “Pitts Special”. If memory and Google serve me well, his second choice of names was just as mundane – “Little Stinker”. I guess it probably was a smelly bundle of tubes and rags to deserve that name. But now, after more than sixty years of Pitts Specials, if you mention that name to any aviator I can promise you that nearly all of their eyes will mist over as that person instantly connects the two biggest dots in sport aviation and aircraft design.

That is what a Pitts is!

FIRST REVIEW STAGE – THE DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL

In a word: Foolproof! The download takes the form of a 78 MB zip containing readme, installation and instructions. This may differ slightly in the shop copy, but the installer is the Release Candidate version. Click, read, agree, click, acknowledge the EULAs and such, wait a few seconds and installed! That simple. However, I did make one mistake – When clicking through an install process, I didn’t actually look at the offered path to FSX. Installing on Windows Vista 64 bit, you have to be sure that the installer locates the correct folder for FSX.

Other than that, the installer is foolproof – just not quite idiot proof for the likes of me

Full marks to IcarusGold so far!

Once the Pitts is installed, the new aircraft folder in FSX sim Objects / Airplanes folder unpacks to model, panel, sound and texture folders as expected. Also in the main folder is a sub-folder for some “Flight Simulator X Files” and onde called Paintkit (I’ll take a very interested look at that later!). All the other folders are more or less involved with the running of the Pitts – nothing really unusual or unexpected in there.

A read through of the installation instructions is recommended. You will discover that there is a note to tell you that the install has added files to the Addon Scenery folder and that you should make sure your addon scenery is activated in the scenery library. You will also discover that you should move the files in the “Flight Simulator X Files” folder I mentioned in the previous paragraph need to be transferred into the “Flight Simulator X Files” in Windows. These instructions may just confuse some less experienced user, so read through carefully.

What you get for your money here are some pre-saved flights that you can load from the FSX Free Flight setup window.

Summary:

+ No-nonsense download and install.
+ Simple instructions to configure and prepare the Pitts for flight.
+ Paintkit.
+ Pre-saved flights.

- You have to actually move files from FSX to Windows yourself. I would have liked to see that covered by the installer.
- Scenery is installed into FSX’s Addon Scenery Folder rather than a folder of its own.
- There isn’t actually a clue as to where in the world the scenery is.

I must add here, that the “MINUS” points above do not in anyway reduce my expectations or make this addon bad. Just hang around and see. And besides – there may be limitations in the review copy.

All in all, the download and install is 100% and as this plane will soon be on the simMarket shop, that fact alone should reassure all potential owners!

SECOND REVIEW STAGE – BLOW THE MANUAL, LET’S JUST GO!

My fingers were itching by now, even though it’s taken less time to install and prepare than it has to write the preceeding paragraphs. So let’s fire up FSX and see what we have. Go to the “Load” saved flight menu, sellect one of the pre-saved Pitts Airshow flights and wait for the sim to load…

First impressions – a tan coloured runway ahead, plenty of static AI planes, a spectator tribune or two in the near distance, some hangars, some birds flapping around the scenery… “Now where on earth am I?”

Check FSX map – Barber Field (C089), sitting on the threshhold of runway 35 in a cold and dark Pitts. A very swift first glance at the paint – G-BPLY – is reassuring. This model looks good. Let’s jump in and go.

Inside the cockpit we see a typical Pitts/Christen configuration. Altimeter, airspeed, magnetic compass, G-meter, manifold/fuel flow gauge, CHT/EGT, oil pressure and temp and an RPM/hours flown gauge. VEry much familiar stuff – let’s just see if I can start this plane “out of the box”?

But before I do, some plus and minus points:

+ If you’ve got some aerobatic hours already, this is a very familiar kind of cockpit. You won’t get lost.
+ The 3D modelling is very good . Here’s a plane designed over 60 years ago, nothing fancy, just good solid airplane!
+ A spartan cockpit – exactly what the aerobatic doctor ordered – and basically well textured

- A bit too FS2002 for my liking. The textures could be sharper. The gauges are good, but the labels and placards on the panel are way too blurred.
- Didn’t I just say we are in G-BPLY? The Panel label says N29 RG. A minor “oops”
- The controls in the front cockpit don’t move with the joystick

Right… how do I start this thing? I haven’t RTM’d but I think I know what I am doing.

Master switch? Under the panel. ON
Fuel pump switch / primer? Three to the right of the master. ON
Wait 10 – 15 seconds and turn the starter switch – I used the rotary key magneto switch…

WHOAAA THERE! The Pitts lurches under the start-up torque – make sure you have the brakes set and you don’t have the throttle opened too far. VERY GOOD! She started first time. Switch on avionics and alternator, turn fuel pump off. So far so good.

I watched the Ps and Ts rise – no problems there. Switch off magnetos one at a time – magdrop check – sounds right and the instruments don’t complain. Now for a fly. Ease the throttle forward gently… This is a narrow-track biplane with lots of horses under the bonnet (or hood if you prefer western atlantic descriptives)

Take off roll – the power comes on exactly as expected. Push the throttle forward and you will not be surprised. There is noticeable torque reaction as you let the horses free rein, but as long as you do it smoothly, there’s no stampede – although there will be if you don’t treat this plane like a thoroughbred.

The climb out is very “proper”. Ease off the throttle slightly after take off and adjust the trim – I don’t know what the book says yet, so I’ll settle for 85 to 90 knots and see what happens. There’s no rate of climb needle in a Pitts – what the dickens do you want one for anyway ? So using the stopwatch, I can see that a steady 85 kt climb, slightly off full throittle and just a touch back on the RPM – this Pitts is climbing at a comfortable 700 feet per minute. Not bad considering the start airfield is already 5000′ above sea level.

Start, climb and cruise around is absolutely straight forward in this plane. She’s very responsive to the controls and with ActiveSky real weather in effect, the odd bit of turbulence makes for excellent first impressions.

So… any concerns so far?

Nothing major, but yes:

I’ve flown quite a few lycoming engined models in FS and I have some real world flights with the Lycoming powered aircraft. The fuel flow and exhaust gas temperatures don’t appear to be behaving as expected. EGT is below 800° and fuel flow is very high. I can’t see a mixture lever or a propeller RPM lever anywhere either. Now that is odd, because I can use my joystick controls to move propeller and mixture and I can make things happen. I really must check with Pitts to see if this model has prop and mixture levers.

Unless I have missed something, this could be a fairly big minus. I’ll check back with my Pitts info and get back to you on that.

Let’S go throw it about and dance on the clouds!

Throttle up, 135 knots, ease back to vertical. Hey, feels good so far, let’s hit the aileron!

Vertical climbing roll – Yessss! Stop the roll after two. Chop the throttle…

After a bit of practice I was doing “Hammerfalls” and really enjoying myself. The “Hammerfall” is just something I invented that is probably common as much anyway – it’S simply flying up and down the runway doing a hammerhead or stall turn at each end of the runway.

Climb up further – stalls and stall recoveries are as straight forward as can be, although perhaps stall speed is low. Again – I will let you know after checking the manual

Spins? Yes – if you keep the controls in spin. As soon as you let go, she’ll level out and recover.

Rolls? Yes. A bit slow if you are used to Extras, Sukhois and the like. Remember – this is one of the older Pitts models. Sophia Loren, not Shakira.

The IcarusGold Pitts does all of the standard aerobatic manouevers. In fact, after a half hour shake out over my desktop I was feeling ready to land. One especially fun aerobatic figure that’s worth doing is this:

Fall of the top of the hammerhead with a chopped throttle. Either way – onto your back or forward. As soon as your nose touches the horizon, hit the throttle and left pedal. Then fly out of the ensuing chaos and do an instant replay. You’ll watch that footage for hours and still not understand what you’ve just done. You have used engine torque, aided with full rudder, to tumble the Pitts simultaneously about all three axes – and a few more that may only exist in some Einsteinian theory.

It’s called a Lomcevak. This end-over-end, wing-around-wing cartwheel was invented by Zlin and Yak pilots and translates into English more or less as “Drunken Bum” – because that’s what it looks like: “You must have been drunk to do that!” It is also one of the most lethal aerobatic manouevers, because that sudden application of full power in a horizontal cartwheel can tear your engine out of its mountings.

On the other hand, it looks great for the crowds.

So now I’d given ourselves a work out, it was time to head back to the airfield for some more ordered display flying.

There was a great big surprise in store for me as I made my first pass along the Barber Field display line. “What on earth…?”

I think I’ll leave that surprise for you potential users to discover on your own. Just bring a smile along!

Although I had a really great fun display session, and I literally threw the Pitts all over the place, I did have a few minor itches. To cut them short and keep them simple though, I could imagine a slightly crisper set of flight dynamics. Four and eight point rolls need a lot of check-stick to stop the part roll crisply. “Thruppeny bit” loops (well – octagonal loops) are also a bit “soggy” and perhaps the airspeed is a tad too high (VNE should not really be possible in straight and level normal flight at 7000 feet up. The Engine and fuel instrumentation is a little behind and either Icarus forgot to model in micture and prop controls, or the Pitts doesn’t have these, in which case the FSX functions should be edited out.

Tomorrow I shall go for some more flying and see how the other 9 paints handle. For now though, my interim verdict is very favourable, despite the last few lines.

THIRD REVIEW STAGE – LONGER TERM FLIGHT EXPERIENCE

In the meantime, I’ve started dating the new GF a bit more. She’s definitely very exciting to be around. As I said a few lines up, this is no young lady. The more you study the lines, the more you see the true age of this design. When you look at her modern successors like the S2C, S2S, S2T and the  and the Christen Eagle, you’ll see what I mean.

At this point I would like to add a good handful of praise for Giuseppe and his team at IcarusGold. I voiced some misgivings about the aircraft performance and dynamics during the initial stages of my reviewing. I am not a real world power plane pilot, so my knowledge of sitting in a tight two-seater is very close to zero. I have flown gliders for real and I have gained many “second seat” stick hours as an aircraft technician, so when I wrote that I felt the performance was a little under par, it was a subjective comment. But IcarusGold took that to heart and listened.

There is a new configuration now available for sim-pilots who like their planes a little wilder. Excellent service there!

…and that also serves as a good reminder to tell you about the market this model really is aimed at. This particular FS model is primarily aimed at someone who wants a good solid practice plane. Something to learn aerobatics in, but something with a little bit of realism. As you trundle around on the ground, you get the rocking feeling that you really are in a small plane with a narrow undercarriage. The wings can – and will – bounce on the grass if you aren’t too careful. Once in the air, this plane will handle most aerobatic manoevers with ease and more or less by the book. It is an early S2 design, not one of the later real custom built show jobs such as Sean Tucker’s Oracle Challenger. You won’t get a climing torque roll out of her for instance. Nor will you get killer roll rates.

Also, the missing animations in the cockpit weren’t forgotten as such. This is an aerobatic plane! If you are flying aerobatics, you will not have your head down inside, looking at pretty animated levers. You’ll have a TrackIR hat on your head and you’ll be using a hardware throttle quadrant or the keyboard commands to set trim, mixture, prop etc. This is not a touring plane. This is a short duration sprinter, where you will need your eyes focussed on the world outside, beyond the edge of the cockpit.

If you don’t know where your controls are by now, then you’ll be spending a lot of time in hospital…

So whilst I had some misgivings initially about the detail of the cockpit, these were indeed purist misgivings. I was looking for things to complain about. The truth of the matter is, I have my controls on the desktop, not in the screen. So the lack of visible controls in the VC is not really a lack. I can see my own hands operating the controls on my desk and the display on my PC monitors is adjusted so that I can see outside. If I want to see the dials and buttons, I can glance down and see them. In the real Pitts your throttle hand is at thigh/lap level and not twenty-four inches in front of your eyes.

Why waste PC power by displaying something you wouldn’t be focussing your eyes on in real life anyway? And in that sense, IcarusGold have done a good thing. Which reminds me. In many aspects I am not an “FPS Junkie”. Everytime I hear some addon user complain about this or that addon having low FPS I can only shrug in disdain. As long as the sim visuals are smooth, then I don’t even look at the FPS counter. The visuals for this addon have been extremely smooth, so I hadn’t even looked at the counter until last night. I hadn’t even given the matter a second thought! All that flying was so smooth, despite the rough and tumble of aerobatic flight.

Now you can imagine my surprise, when I finally did turn the counter display on and discovered that I was getting frame rates in the high thirties. “That’s not that brilliant” I hear you say… well on my PC it’s a miracle! I have set my FSX settings for high visual quality, I fly with ActiveSky and Xgraphics enhancements on. I have the FSGenesis scenery meshes installed and a lot of visual improvements added. MY PC is no slouch, but the CPS is three years old, never the less. Most of my flying lately has been at around 20 FPS and I am very happy with that.

Aerobatic flying is a lot more demanding on your PC than point to point cruising. Even on FS9 setups you have to ideally fly aerobatic flights away from heavy scenery areas so that you can replay your flights and still see reasonable motion as you flick through countless different attitudes.

This, then, is one of the very few occasions you will always hear me asking for “more FPS please”… and the IcarusGold Pitts delivers! Throw this plane around as much as you like, and the instant reply will display your flight with all the spins, tumbles and twists that you flew. Even the mistakes…

FOURTH REVIEW STAGE – THE PAINTKIT

Aerobatic planes are the most colourful creatures. There are a few larger aircraft that give the painter something to do, but aerobatic planes offer painters the greatest number of real world variety you could wish for. Take a look through websites like airliners.net and you will be rewarded with enough different repaints for the Pitts to keep all the sim-flight world’s painters painting for years to come.

My first glance at the textures that came delivered with this plane was therefore somewhat of a disappointment. The textures are not even as good as the Microsoft default textures that come with FSX. See for yourselves; the screenshots so far have been taken using the include textures. From a slight distance, the artifacting fades into the anti-aliasing and the planes do look presentable, but take a viewpoint any closer than wingtip distance and you will see grainy textures.

What more of a challenge could an ‘Eagleskinner’ want? The paintkit comprises of a single layered PSD texture for the exterior paint details. What is more, there appears to be quite a large part of the sheet unused, as you can see in the accompanying screenshot.

There really isn’t much you can do with a single sheet texture for an entire aircraft. Here’s a twenty foot wingspan that takes up aout 700 pixels on the texture sheet. In PC terms, a pixel is still a pixel, and the Pitts weighs in with barely thirty-five pixels per foot or about three per inch. Put quite simply: of course the standard textures will look grainy.But I wouldn’t be a critic if I didn’t have the answers.

The layered PSD itself is good – all the necessary layers are there. The texture is relatively simple to follow and the parts of the plane readily identifiable. There is even a wireframe layer. Shadows, panel lines and rivets are separated out and there’s even a separate ‘lighting’ layer to give depth to the finished paint. All in all, this paintkit is something that even a beginner can attack with gusto and get satisfactory results with. So now it was time to get the paintbrushes out. Even I am satisfied with the efforts of making vector graphic images and logos for this plane. The paint you see here depicts the Road Angels display team Pitts that flew many displays in England in recent years. I’ll let you be the judges. I am happy so far and the prospect of doing many more skins for this plane is very high.

Yes, of course your favourite Eagleskinner went and painted this plane! Gow could I resist? My fingers had been itching since the moment the Pitts arrived on my PC – this is the plane I have been waiting for…

FINAL SUMMARY AND VERDICT

Here is an FSX addon plane that has a niche and a purpose. Maximum performance for your PC display to fly aerobatics smoothly and with a maximum of enjoyment.

Minimum requirement – if your PC was happy to fly FS9, that’ll do!

Verdict – Despite the critical comments, the fun factor far outweighs any gripes I may have voiced here. A winner across the board. I could fill a few pages with gripes and grumbles, but the “Yahooo!” factor is more than enough to counter this – and what’s more: the price is right too. Even though the dollar is recovering…

BUY!

About Eagleskinner (aka Chris Brisland, CBris, ChrisB or even “Oi, you!”): You don’t really want to know, do you? Oh, OK… Lives in a place called RAIN Mid-fifties, aerospace engineer, quality assurance manager, flight sim since the early eighties and I once thought simulated flight ought to be cheaper than real world flight. Real world glider pilot, a few hundred hours on helicopters as “ballast in control” – the pilots liked my work in setting their choppers up to fly smooth, so I always got told “you have” while the pilot dozed, smoked, read his paper or did the shopping list. Four dogs, three children, two sets of wheels and (let’s hear it now…) a partridge in a pear tree… You could of course visit Eagleskinner dot com or Brisland dot aero and be amazed…

Tags: Icarusgold, Pitts Special, review

Related posts

• Pitts Special From Icarusgold (1)
• Icarusgold Release Pitts S2B (0)
• Vickers “Wimpey” Review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (8)
• Sky Chief From IcarusGold (1)
• Review: Wilco Tiltrotor (FSX Version) (7)

Featuring more screenshots by Nick Churchill, the review can be found by clicking on the link here. If you like what you see, the model itself is available from simMarket, along with the B757-300 and B757 freighter expansion packs.

Related posts

• Hawk review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (2)
• Captain Sim B757 for FSX (4)
• A2A B377 & Accu-Sim Reviewed (2)
• Weather Gauge From Captain Sim (0)
• Vickers “Wimpey” Review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (8)

“Imagine playing a game with physical wind blowing on your face, the room illuminates depending on the game play monitor color tone and your desk starts to rumble in explosions. Philips made it possible with a new technology called amBX and here and now we are going to review it for you. Could this be the next big thing in the gaming experience ?”

Sound interesting? Read the review here.

Related posts

• PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 2048MB GDDR3 (0)
• Guru 3D Review Sparkle GeForce 9600GT (0)
• Galaxy GeForce 9600GT Review (0)
• Force3D Radeon Cards (0)
• XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 Black Edition Review (0)

The full review can be accessed here and, for more information on the package, Skysim can be found here.

Related posts

• Skysim Releases Red Arrows (0)
• SkySim Hawk Released (0)
• Review: Captain Sim B757 (5)
• A2A B377 & Accu-Sim Reviewed (2)
• Vickers “Wimpey” Review at Screenshotartist.co.uk (8)

I’m sorry but that’s just a heck of a lot more value than the 9500 GT will offer gaming performance wise. And next to that, as this review will show .. the product has a few surprises ready under it’s sleeves, it’s passively cooled, overclocks like a beast and looks drop-dead gorgeous !” Read the full review here.

Related posts

• Galaxy GeForce 9600GT Review (0)
• PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 2048MB GDDR3 (0)
• Guru of 3d reviews Philips amBX kit (0)
• Force3D Radeon Cards (0)
• XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 Black Edition Review (0)

“……. We now tested the first in a two-fold of passively cooled GeForce 9600 GT products. This one comes from the lads at Galaxy and is completely heatpipe based. There are situations where passive cooling can be ideal – Home Theater PCs for example. Or even the common desktop PC if you game heavily and you like the lack of noise as much as I do. But is it any good ?…..”.

Read the full text here.

Related posts

• Guru 3D Review Sparkle GeForce 9600GT (0)
• XFX GeForce 9800 GTX Black Edition (0)
• The Guru Of 3D Reviews GeForce GTX 260 (0)
• PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 2048MB GDDR3 (0)
• New Release Of Rivatuner (0)

“……… PowerColor released a Radeon HD 4850 graphics card with, get this … 2 GB memory. That certainly brings a smile to my face, as if anything, I like innovation. But even yours truly is going .. “Hmmm, that’s not gonna work, is it?”. You can read the review right here….”.

Related posts

• Radeon HD 4840 Reviewed (3)
• Gigabyte Radeon 4850 Reviewed (0)
• Force3D Radeon Cards (0)
• Radeon Reviews From Guru3D (0)
• Radeon HD 4830 Reviewed (3)

“………Force3D is a Hong Kong based company that opened its doors earlier this year. Their focus is completely on AMD’s ATI graphics solutions. Their timing could not have been better with the 4800 release, so here we’ll review two of their 4800 series products, the Radeon HD 4850 and 4870…….”.

Read full article here.

Related posts

• Radeon HD 4830 Reviewed (3)
• PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 2048MB GDDR3 (0)
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 (1)
• ATI Radeon HD 4670 Tested (0)
• Radeon Reviews From Guru3D (0)