V
VFR Reviews
Guest
Latest VFR Review from me, I hope you enjoy. It seems to me like the sim community doesn't like this aircraft, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. What's more, you won't see a hint of Nick's shots this time!
I still feel bad about that :redf:
This package was originally released in FS9, and was rebuilt for FSX. In Captain Sim's C-130, I was a bit surprised to see the amount of systems programming in her, as it didn't really click with what I'd seen from Captain Sim in the past. However, when Captain Sim updated this for FSX and released the Block F, I think that this was a sign that they are looking to enter the market of the sort of models that make you feel like you could fly the airplane in real life. They're turning their backs on models that just look nice and are now looking to designing software that not only looks good, but performs.
Please note that this was reviewed with the Pro Pack, -300 upgrade, and the Freighter upgrade.
First Impressions-
As usual, the download came in the form of three different packages: the Pro Pack, the -300, and the Freighter package. The installer ran, requiring your order number and product key. A fairly short time after clicking the install button, I found a new 757 group under Captain Sim in the start menu, as well as related files in the FSX folder. As is usual with Captain Sim's latest releases, there was a massive manual required for the Block F. Quite frankly, if you're new to large, in-depth simulations of airliners, you'll need to read the manual very thoroughly to understand the airplane. I read it, section by section, have flown the airplane, but I'm not foolish enough to think that I could hop into a real 757 and fly it. This was my first such airliner, and while I can't say I enjoyed the mass quantities of tedious script, I must say that I learned a lot, and hopefully this knowledge will leave me better prepared for similar packages I may fly in the future.
Interior-
*Whistles* Very, very nice. Detail right down to the seat controls. The cockpit is a mass of tan, brown, and grey textures, which, while drab, are very crisp. The seat bottom is a grey material, and here, perhaps, the textures are not quite up to scratch with the rest. It looks like wool, and I can imagine that might become uncomfortable on long flights. As the rest of the parts of the seats are composed of movable armrests (click-to-drag), a surprisingly nice headrest (again, very good texture quality) and seat controls on the inner side of the seat which actually move it, but not the eyepoint, unfortunately. I always have to chuckle a little when I see the seats on a high-quality simulation like this. While they're nice to look at, I sometimes think it's perhaps a little ironic to use my graphics cards’ precious memory on these. Not that I'm complaining, however. It's just that you rarely see them. The rest of the cockpit controls are fully modeled, with detail on the fully-functional overhead panel, pedestal, and glareshield.
It's nice to see so much realism crammed into this cockpit. Realistically, it's all unnecessary and for show, but there are some neat features which will keep you entranced for about five minutes in your first flight. For instance, on the pilot's left side, there is a small sort of indent, where some of the manuals are kept. Clicking them raises them up out of their bin a little bit, just so that you can see the titles. There's another bookcase with a door that swing open when clicked, the fuse panel opens, etc. These neat, but rather unnecessary little things are littered throughout the airplane to keep things interesting.
Moving away from the cockpit, which is somewhat inadvisable in flight, you'll find that Captain Sim modeled part of the passenger cabin. This section behind the opening flight deck door includes the galley, a restroom, and part of the seating area. If you think your passengers are cruising in absolute luxury, think again. This isn't a first-class configuration, but more like the business class. The seats are in rows of two, and there are about three rows. Even though the passengers may be a bit cramped, at least they'll be entertained; on the forward bulkhead, there's a small TV mounted on each side. While you can't play a movie, by clicking a button near the bottom you can switch through the 757 safety procedures pages. These seats are modeled quite as well as the flight deck ones, but are of a streaked grey fabric (intended to be streaked, I hope) and have the row of in-flight magazines on the back. Above the seats are the luggage bins, lights (which turn on with the FSX light command) and of course a window, the shade of which can be opened or closed.
I must say, I was fascinated by the restroom. Never having flown much aboard commercial vessels, I was interested to compare this to the bathrooms that I'd seen. Well, let's call it an upholstered Porta-Potty. The walls of the airplane give it a cramped feel, and, I hardly need to say, there's details right down to the tissue box. The flush lever, sink, tap, and the bathroom as a whole is nicely done, with great texture quality and a realistic look. I was rather disappointed to find there were no animations here.
The galley is a simple little thing, with levers that you can click to move out of the way, then take the food carts out of their little cubby. Next to the galley area are some of the doors, which you can open by clicking. The area is photoreal, so there are some switch boards, a phone, the lock and stickers on the door, etc.
Exterior-
I was rather less taken by the exterior than the cabin. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with outside the airplane, but there's less to look at, and consequentially less to write about. The length of the Boeing 757 always strikes me. While looking down from above the airplane, she seems very thin in proportion to the length, and for whatever reason, the engines look large to me. I'm sure they're quite necessary to power the aircraft, but I can't shake the mental image of a street car with a massive scoop on the front. In any case, all of the usual qualities of a good external model are here, with excellent texture quality, plenty of polys for a smooth look, the textures look good from all angles, and stand up to examination far past where you'd zoom in during normal flight.
There are some really nicely done photoreal textures in some of the various equipment bays. For instance, the landing gear bays, ram air turbine bays, engine access bays, and all the associated doors are covered in some very nice, if somewhat dirty, textures. One feature that I really like is the landing gear. When you lift off the ground, they tilt back to 'hang' beneath the airplane. I always think this looks neat. However, when you touch down, the effect of the landing gear straightening out again isn't done too well. It's pretty jerky, and the backs of the wheels can sink into the ground. There are a ton of different liveries for this bird, ranging from UPS to Air Greenland, each of which are of standard quality, and, as I've said, look good from every angle. There's an excellent selection, with some 45 different textures, including variations for Pratt and Whitney engines, Rolls-Royce engines, and versions for the -200 and -300 series.
Systems-
Here we go... It seems to me that a major point in Captain Sim remaking this aircraft for FSX was to show that they are capable of making not just an addon which is pleasant to look at, but that they are capable of producing some of the industry's most competitive and cutting-edge simulation models for FSX. Rather like the C-130, unless you've flown similar in-depth addons, you have absolutely no chance of making this bird fly without reading the manual, then subsequently reading it again, and then going back to double check the parts you're not sure of. Now, you can consult the checklist (which is long enough to be in its own download) and spend your first thirty minutes in the airplane getting it read, just to start the engines. Don't even think about taxiing, taking-off, or even actually moving the switch to start the engines. No, if you don't have everything in place, you might as well not move the start selector for all the good it will do you. CTRL+E doesn't work, so you're going to need to learn. I cannot stress enough that if you're not willing to spend hours going over the hundreds of pages of tedious documentation, then you'll waste a good deal of money. Everything here works: The Flight Management Computer, almost every single button in the cockpit, the overhead panel, the autopilot, the cabin door lock, it's all here. This is what you'd be getting yourself into.
Now that I've tried to impress you upon how important it is to understand the aircraft, I'm going to tell you something: I don't understand it, really. Well, perhaps that's not entirely true. I can operate the aircraft well enough, but realistically I'd need months of flying this airplane to really go through in order to find whatever significant bugs lay in the depths of the coding. So, you must know that this was my first plane like this. Normally I'm more of a GA flyer, but I don't mind a bit of long-haul flights in large jets. However, I've just never flown something this intense. We all have to start somewhere, and this aircraft will give me a better experience next time I get an addon with similar qualities. So, I can tell you how the airplane looks, feels, and flies, but I confess that you might have to look elsewhere for a really comprehensive view on the systems. I can tell you from what I read on the forums and experience myself that this airplane models every system a pilot uses in flight, but I'm afraid I can't tell you too much about these particular aspects.
The Freighter Expansion Pack-
While alike in the basic aspects of the airplane, the freighter and passenger versions of the 757 are quite different. They fly quite similarly, but the cargo hold and a couple of features in the freighter model beg a description. Once you leave your cockpit, you find two stories of cargo bay with some crates already installed, as well as a nicely textured floor. Crawling from the upper bay down a ladder into the smaller lower bay reveals just where those baggage handlers chuck your luggage. Captain Sim decided to model an actual real-time loader for both of the bays. When you bring up the load manager panel (exclusive to the Freighter version) you can display a really excellent loader next to the aircraft that moves back and forth, lifts and lowers cargo, and actually adds weight to the airplane. It's a tedious process, honestly, as you have to wait for the loader, so only do one at a time. The reason for this is that when you save one, it resets the airplane with that weight, so your time-consuming progress with the other one is erased. This is really a great feature, and the cargo and the loader is really top-notch quality.
Flight-
I was a bit surprised by the flight characteristics of this plane. As I've said, I'm used to either GA addons or a select few airliner packages, so I was interested to find that her dynamics are quite squirrelly. Stalling can happen fairly easily and without much warning. When you make a turn, it almost feels and looks like the body of the airplane is slewing around behind you. However, with some practice, I think it's easy to acclimatize to the flight characteristics of the airplane. Those engines provide plenty of force, and as long as you keep an eye on your speed, you won't have much of a problem with the usual parameters of flight. The mistake that I made was to look at the ground speed indicator rather than the actual airspeed. The ground speed indicator is a bit more prominently placed than the airspeed indicator, but after some practice I broke that habit. I didn't notice a whole lot of difference between the two engine variations. Oddly enough, I found that in cruise, the 757 would start violently rocking from side to side. Generally, re-engaging the autopilot helped here. It's an odd issue, and has been addressed by Captain Sim.
Lights and Sounds-
The sound in this airplane is really quite superb. I especially love to hear the reverse thrust spool up. The two engines types are distinctly different, and the quality of the sound makes for rewarding listening. Inside the airplane, there are sounds for doors opening, cockpit announcement (which you can activate by clicking a button on the overhead), landing gear, etc. Normally I'm not used to hearing much more than the grunting of a nice piston engine, but after the jet engines became background noise, I enjoyed hearing the life of the aircraft around me.
The lighting is, again, very well done. The passenger area looks great at night, with soft yellow light coming from the top and sides of the airplane. In the cockpit, there are the lights that the pilots use, and these 'come on' when you turn on the lights interior lights. There are controls on the glareshield and overhead which control all of the different interior lights, but FSX only provides for one actual light, so it's all of the lights or nothing.
When flying at night, the airplane's windows are lit up, and you can see the reflections of the light on the wing. There are a ton of lights on the forward landing gear, and there are rays of light cast in every direction. However, when you turn on the landing gear lights, they come on, but don't illuminate all of the area that it seems they would. It looks like there's a dark patch that should be lit. In general, the lighting of this airplane is just about standard, and there's nothing too special.
Final Word-
While I can't compare this addon to other similar packages as I don't have much experience with complex airliner simulations, I can only tell you what I think about the aircraft itself. For that matter, I consider the Captain Sim 757 to be a highly legitimate competitor in the market of such high-intensity simulations. It seems to me that Captain Sim is turning over a new leaf and is going from the world of simply having nice textures to the world of outstanding aircraft ; that is, they're considering all of the aspects of what a pilot-to-be might look for. There are plenty of little goodies, like all of the things on the animation panel, and all of the clickable things in the cockpit that make this not just a heavy-duty sim, but also a product that can entertain and prove a certain amount of attention to detail. I think that I can safely say that you should consider this airplane very carefully if you're in the market for some serious, heavy iron flying.
I still feel bad about that :redf:
VFR Reviews
The Captain Sim 757
By Kevin Glover
The Captain Sim 757
By Kevin Glover
This package was originally released in FS9, and was rebuilt for FSX. In Captain Sim's C-130, I was a bit surprised to see the amount of systems programming in her, as it didn't really click with what I'd seen from Captain Sim in the past. However, when Captain Sim updated this for FSX and released the Block F, I think that this was a sign that they are looking to enter the market of the sort of models that make you feel like you could fly the airplane in real life. They're turning their backs on models that just look nice and are now looking to designing software that not only looks good, but performs.
Please note that this was reviewed with the Pro Pack, -300 upgrade, and the Freighter upgrade.
First Impressions-
As usual, the download came in the form of three different packages: the Pro Pack, the -300, and the Freighter package. The installer ran, requiring your order number and product key. A fairly short time after clicking the install button, I found a new 757 group under Captain Sim in the start menu, as well as related files in the FSX folder. As is usual with Captain Sim's latest releases, there was a massive manual required for the Block F. Quite frankly, if you're new to large, in-depth simulations of airliners, you'll need to read the manual very thoroughly to understand the airplane. I read it, section by section, have flown the airplane, but I'm not foolish enough to think that I could hop into a real 757 and fly it. This was my first such airliner, and while I can't say I enjoyed the mass quantities of tedious script, I must say that I learned a lot, and hopefully this knowledge will leave me better prepared for similar packages I may fly in the future.
Interior-
*Whistles* Very, very nice. Detail right down to the seat controls. The cockpit is a mass of tan, brown, and grey textures, which, while drab, are very crisp. The seat bottom is a grey material, and here, perhaps, the textures are not quite up to scratch with the rest. It looks like wool, and I can imagine that might become uncomfortable on long flights. As the rest of the parts of the seats are composed of movable armrests (click-to-drag), a surprisingly nice headrest (again, very good texture quality) and seat controls on the inner side of the seat which actually move it, but not the eyepoint, unfortunately. I always have to chuckle a little when I see the seats on a high-quality simulation like this. While they're nice to look at, I sometimes think it's perhaps a little ironic to use my graphics cards’ precious memory on these. Not that I'm complaining, however. It's just that you rarely see them. The rest of the cockpit controls are fully modeled, with detail on the fully-functional overhead panel, pedestal, and glareshield.
It's nice to see so much realism crammed into this cockpit. Realistically, it's all unnecessary and for show, but there are some neat features which will keep you entranced for about five minutes in your first flight. For instance, on the pilot's left side, there is a small sort of indent, where some of the manuals are kept. Clicking them raises them up out of their bin a little bit, just so that you can see the titles. There's another bookcase with a door that swing open when clicked, the fuse panel opens, etc. These neat, but rather unnecessary little things are littered throughout the airplane to keep things interesting.
Moving away from the cockpit, which is somewhat inadvisable in flight, you'll find that Captain Sim modeled part of the passenger cabin. This section behind the opening flight deck door includes the galley, a restroom, and part of the seating area. If you think your passengers are cruising in absolute luxury, think again. This isn't a first-class configuration, but more like the business class. The seats are in rows of two, and there are about three rows. Even though the passengers may be a bit cramped, at least they'll be entertained; on the forward bulkhead, there's a small TV mounted on each side. While you can't play a movie, by clicking a button near the bottom you can switch through the 757 safety procedures pages. These seats are modeled quite as well as the flight deck ones, but are of a streaked grey fabric (intended to be streaked, I hope) and have the row of in-flight magazines on the back. Above the seats are the luggage bins, lights (which turn on with the FSX light command) and of course a window, the shade of which can be opened or closed.
I must say, I was fascinated by the restroom. Never having flown much aboard commercial vessels, I was interested to compare this to the bathrooms that I'd seen. Well, let's call it an upholstered Porta-Potty. The walls of the airplane give it a cramped feel, and, I hardly need to say, there's details right down to the tissue box. The flush lever, sink, tap, and the bathroom as a whole is nicely done, with great texture quality and a realistic look. I was rather disappointed to find there were no animations here.
The galley is a simple little thing, with levers that you can click to move out of the way, then take the food carts out of their little cubby. Next to the galley area are some of the doors, which you can open by clicking. The area is photoreal, so there are some switch boards, a phone, the lock and stickers on the door, etc.
Exterior-
I was rather less taken by the exterior than the cabin. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with outside the airplane, but there's less to look at, and consequentially less to write about. The length of the Boeing 757 always strikes me. While looking down from above the airplane, she seems very thin in proportion to the length, and for whatever reason, the engines look large to me. I'm sure they're quite necessary to power the aircraft, but I can't shake the mental image of a street car with a massive scoop on the front. In any case, all of the usual qualities of a good external model are here, with excellent texture quality, plenty of polys for a smooth look, the textures look good from all angles, and stand up to examination far past where you'd zoom in during normal flight.
There are some really nicely done photoreal textures in some of the various equipment bays. For instance, the landing gear bays, ram air turbine bays, engine access bays, and all the associated doors are covered in some very nice, if somewhat dirty, textures. One feature that I really like is the landing gear. When you lift off the ground, they tilt back to 'hang' beneath the airplane. I always think this looks neat. However, when you touch down, the effect of the landing gear straightening out again isn't done too well. It's pretty jerky, and the backs of the wheels can sink into the ground. There are a ton of different liveries for this bird, ranging from UPS to Air Greenland, each of which are of standard quality, and, as I've said, look good from every angle. There's an excellent selection, with some 45 different textures, including variations for Pratt and Whitney engines, Rolls-Royce engines, and versions for the -200 and -300 series.
Systems-
Here we go... It seems to me that a major point in Captain Sim remaking this aircraft for FSX was to show that they are capable of making not just an addon which is pleasant to look at, but that they are capable of producing some of the industry's most competitive and cutting-edge simulation models for FSX. Rather like the C-130, unless you've flown similar in-depth addons, you have absolutely no chance of making this bird fly without reading the manual, then subsequently reading it again, and then going back to double check the parts you're not sure of. Now, you can consult the checklist (which is long enough to be in its own download) and spend your first thirty minutes in the airplane getting it read, just to start the engines. Don't even think about taxiing, taking-off, or even actually moving the switch to start the engines. No, if you don't have everything in place, you might as well not move the start selector for all the good it will do you. CTRL+E doesn't work, so you're going to need to learn. I cannot stress enough that if you're not willing to spend hours going over the hundreds of pages of tedious documentation, then you'll waste a good deal of money. Everything here works: The Flight Management Computer, almost every single button in the cockpit, the overhead panel, the autopilot, the cabin door lock, it's all here. This is what you'd be getting yourself into.
Now that I've tried to impress you upon how important it is to understand the aircraft, I'm going to tell you something: I don't understand it, really. Well, perhaps that's not entirely true. I can operate the aircraft well enough, but realistically I'd need months of flying this airplane to really go through in order to find whatever significant bugs lay in the depths of the coding. So, you must know that this was my first plane like this. Normally I'm more of a GA flyer, but I don't mind a bit of long-haul flights in large jets. However, I've just never flown something this intense. We all have to start somewhere, and this aircraft will give me a better experience next time I get an addon with similar qualities. So, I can tell you how the airplane looks, feels, and flies, but I confess that you might have to look elsewhere for a really comprehensive view on the systems. I can tell you from what I read on the forums and experience myself that this airplane models every system a pilot uses in flight, but I'm afraid I can't tell you too much about these particular aspects.
The Freighter Expansion Pack-
While alike in the basic aspects of the airplane, the freighter and passenger versions of the 757 are quite different. They fly quite similarly, but the cargo hold and a couple of features in the freighter model beg a description. Once you leave your cockpit, you find two stories of cargo bay with some crates already installed, as well as a nicely textured floor. Crawling from the upper bay down a ladder into the smaller lower bay reveals just where those baggage handlers chuck your luggage. Captain Sim decided to model an actual real-time loader for both of the bays. When you bring up the load manager panel (exclusive to the Freighter version) you can display a really excellent loader next to the aircraft that moves back and forth, lifts and lowers cargo, and actually adds weight to the airplane. It's a tedious process, honestly, as you have to wait for the loader, so only do one at a time. The reason for this is that when you save one, it resets the airplane with that weight, so your time-consuming progress with the other one is erased. This is really a great feature, and the cargo and the loader is really top-notch quality.
Flight-
I was a bit surprised by the flight characteristics of this plane. As I've said, I'm used to either GA addons or a select few airliner packages, so I was interested to find that her dynamics are quite squirrelly. Stalling can happen fairly easily and without much warning. When you make a turn, it almost feels and looks like the body of the airplane is slewing around behind you. However, with some practice, I think it's easy to acclimatize to the flight characteristics of the airplane. Those engines provide plenty of force, and as long as you keep an eye on your speed, you won't have much of a problem with the usual parameters of flight. The mistake that I made was to look at the ground speed indicator rather than the actual airspeed. The ground speed indicator is a bit more prominently placed than the airspeed indicator, but after some practice I broke that habit. I didn't notice a whole lot of difference between the two engine variations. Oddly enough, I found that in cruise, the 757 would start violently rocking from side to side. Generally, re-engaging the autopilot helped here. It's an odd issue, and has been addressed by Captain Sim.
Lights and Sounds-
The sound in this airplane is really quite superb. I especially love to hear the reverse thrust spool up. The two engines types are distinctly different, and the quality of the sound makes for rewarding listening. Inside the airplane, there are sounds for doors opening, cockpit announcement (which you can activate by clicking a button on the overhead), landing gear, etc. Normally I'm not used to hearing much more than the grunting of a nice piston engine, but after the jet engines became background noise, I enjoyed hearing the life of the aircraft around me.
The lighting is, again, very well done. The passenger area looks great at night, with soft yellow light coming from the top and sides of the airplane. In the cockpit, there are the lights that the pilots use, and these 'come on' when you turn on the lights interior lights. There are controls on the glareshield and overhead which control all of the different interior lights, but FSX only provides for one actual light, so it's all of the lights or nothing.
When flying at night, the airplane's windows are lit up, and you can see the reflections of the light on the wing. There are a ton of lights on the forward landing gear, and there are rays of light cast in every direction. However, when you turn on the landing gear lights, they come on, but don't illuminate all of the area that it seems they would. It looks like there's a dark patch that should be lit. In general, the lighting of this airplane is just about standard, and there's nothing too special.
Final Word-
While I can't compare this addon to other similar packages as I don't have much experience with complex airliner simulations, I can only tell you what I think about the aircraft itself. For that matter, I consider the Captain Sim 757 to be a highly legitimate competitor in the market of such high-intensity simulations. It seems to me that Captain Sim is turning over a new leaf and is going from the world of simply having nice textures to the world of outstanding aircraft ; that is, they're considering all of the aspects of what a pilot-to-be might look for. There are plenty of little goodies, like all of the things on the animation panel, and all of the clickable things in the cockpit that make this not just a heavy-duty sim, but also a product that can entertain and prove a certain amount of attention to detail. I think that I can safely say that you should consider this airplane very carefully if you're in the market for some serious, heavy iron flying.