Sim pilot view on Arma 3

I've been spending a lot of time lately in Arma 3 so I've decided to share my opinion in this game from the point of view of a flight simulator pilot looking at the flight possibilities in Arma 3. This is somehow related to the recent release of Helicopters DLC for Arma 3, but I will not focus on that part since I did not get the chance to buy and try the full DLC, however I've had some fun with the flight improvements the DLC introduced that come for free for everyone with the latest Arma 3 update (most notably the new realistic flight model).

What is Arma?

Prepar3D v2 Academic Preview - Aircraft and Vehicles

My second post in the series will focus on the aircraft that come out of the box with the Prepar3D V2 Academic simulator.

Prepar3D v2 Academic Preview - First Look

I promised to get back with the first impression after installing Prepar3D, but this took longer than I expected due to a lot of activities and projects I had started lately. Also it took me a while to the simulator up to speed and get familiar with its ropes, how to install addons, different paths and so on.

As there is a lot to tell I will start presenting Prepar3D v2 in a mini series of posts, starting with installation, interface and first look.

1) Purchase, download and install.
Purchasing prepare 3D went as smoothly as it could have went. I accessed the store, chosen the license, added to cart, accepted a list of terms and conditions and payed with a credit card online. I also had to register for an account on the site before doing all of this. All in all I don't think the purchase took longer than 10 minutes. After payment I received my license at the email address I registered my account with and received some instructions on the website on how I can download the installation files.
There are two ways of downloading Prepar3D v2, in a single 10GB archive, or multiple smaller archives. I choose to download the big archive. Download took around 8 hours for me (@ 300kb/s average speed), but this is probably because of my location, and also the fact that I purchased it in the very first day and the servers were loaded more than usually.
After the download ended I had to extract the 10GB archive to start the installation (so in total you need 20GB of space even before installing it). And you also need a couple more GB on the system partition since I noticed the installer also extracts some temporary files that are a couple of GB in size. I didn't had that space on C: drive so the installation failed first time and had to spend another 30 minutes cleaning up my partition. In my opinion the installation process can be somehow improved, like having a very small launcher downloaded from the site which then downloads the application directly to the installation folder (to avoid all of the archive extraction on the local machine). Then 10 or so minutes later Prepar3D v2 was installed an ready to be launched.

2) Ready to launch
At first launch you are asked to activate the product, this was quite easy to do on my end sine I went for the online activation. I just had to enter the license details I received by email at the moment of the purchase and hit the Activate button. After this the application started.

First thing you are seeing when starting Prepar3D is this nicely design splash screen:

Then the simulation loads directly and you are placed in an F22 raptor at Langley AFB that is aligned with the runway and ready for takeoff.

You can choose from the settings not to start directly on the runway, but to have the Training Scenario setup screen showing up on launch if you miss that from FSX. I personally like starting with the Training Scenario setup screen since I like to setup all the parameters of the flight and just wait one time for the simulation to load. Unfortunately I am still missing a couple of the settings that FSX had on that screen, most importantly fuel and weight and flight plan. The second downside I encountered is that it seems there is a bug on some video cards and the Prepar3D freezes after a flight is loaded from that screen. I was one of the unlucky ones to be affected by this bug, so until Lockheed Martin rolls out a fix I need to setup my flight after the default flight loads up. However I see the team is already working on an update to fix this bug.

As you can already see the interface has changed a lot from FSX and also there are some changes from Prepar3D v1. What I like is that all settings are now grouped in same window and it takes less time to change them or just go trough them and review. There are new sliders and check boxes to control the new features (HDR lighting, shadows, tessellation, etc.), however they are well place, keeping the whole interface intuitive and familiar to someone that  used either FSX or Prepar3D V1. The menu bar values are also very similar to what FSX / Prepar3D v1. 

Although redesigned from FSX the Vehicle Selection, Airport selection and Flight Planner are having similar options.

You can now search for a vehicle in the list and also mark some as favorites.

Kneeboard and flight log have nice looks:

I did not had Prepar3D v1, so I am not sure how the Scenery Library looked in that version, but I was happy to see it working well on Prepar3D v2 and also I was glad all the changes made there were applied immediately and without the need of the simulator to be restarted.

Also everything seems to be much faster than it used to be, simulator starts faster, terrain/scenery loads faster, frame-rate is better and so on.

I hope this gives you a quick preview in the interface and I hope to be back in the next week with a more in depth presentation of the aircraft and features of the new Prepar3D v2.

Tom Clancy's HAWX

For the dogfighting fans and those who like aerial combat games I will try to present a few features of this nice combat flying game from Ubisoft, which is available for multiple platforms including PC and XBOX 360. From the start I would like to say the game does not want to be a flight simulator but more like an arcade or action game so do not expect to have all knobs and switches working in the cockpit, or the systems modeled to the last detail. There is no fuel gauge, no advanced instruments, the player does not even have to take off and land his aircraft, every mission is started in mid air. Even so I can bet you will not be bored with it and it promises a lot of fun during either the single player campaign or in multi player mode. 

FSX Eurocopter Super Puma AS332L2 by Dirk Fassbender Review

I will start this review saying that this is probably the best freeware helicopter made so far for Flight Simulator X.
During the last couple of days I flew the Eurocopter Super Puma AS332L2 by Dirk Fassbender that has been recently launched for FSX Acceleration on Christmas Eve 2009. The helicopter is available for free download at Avsim and Hovercontrol. It works only in Acceleration and not in SP2 or earlier versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

I have to say the quality of this helicopter and the complex level it was model is better than some payware models on the market. Even if the helicopter uses quite a few of FSX default gauges this is hardly noticed as they are perfectly integrated to make the cockpit look like the real thing. Besides this the cockpit has all the gauges you may want at a helicopter from the default GPS to an working autopilot modeled after the real unit. Systems are also very close to reality as far as I could tell from the material I have read about the helicopter.

The 3d model contains quite a few eye candies, including working windshield whipers that actually clean rain, realistic icing effects, multiple animations (wipers, visors, dors, survivors, search light, flir pods ...), external payload model and emergency flotation system.

This is the first helicopter I flew with an trimmer system that makes flying the helicopter very convenient and gives you some time to relax your hands from the control. Although this is good it is far from the stability that an airplane has so you still have to make adjustments to the joystick from time to time. This is where the autopilot unit comes in handy; you can use it to make a complete automatic flight from hover to instrument approach and landing. I have tested most of the features and it works quite well. The system doesn't like when you pause the game. I also had some issues when I was engaging the diferent functions, the helicopter takes some time to transition to the selected mode, during which it makes quite drastic movements. You can see below some images from a full automatic ILS approach and a hover flight using the autopilot.

When it comes to flying manually, the helicopter responds very well even to the slightest joystick movements especially during hover and low speeds. I have not flew the real thing, but the dynamics of this helicopter look very good. I took it to the extremes and it responded as I expected in each case.

The helicopter comes equipped with the default FSX GPS which is good, although I would have loved to see the real flight computer, but taking into account payware models don't have it either or have even worst implementations of the FSX GPS I would say this is something you can leave with. I could navigate very easily using the GPS unit and it did not bother me much.

What I like:
- Realistic autopilot;
- Very good VC and external model;
- Animations;
- The way it flyes;
- Trimmer gauge;
- Internal lighting of the VC;
- Wipers and icing effects.

What I don't like:

- nothing  ;)