I have flown many addon aircraft, from the wonderful Carenado 206II to the brilliant PMDG 737, but most of my aircraft purchases have been for the ???bigbirds??? of which I own the Level D 767, the PMDG 747, 727 Professional, PMDG 737 and Captain Sim???s brilliant 130C Hercules ??? what can I say, I have an understanding wife (and bank manager!).
I am sure you will agree that the addon???s listed above are amongst the best addon aircraft available for FS2004, and with my experience of these addons I thought I would tell you how my latest purchase, 757 Professional (published by Just Flight), stacked up against the competition.
Purchasing & Installation
I decided to make my purchase through a direct download from Just Flight???s website. The transaction was very smooth and I felt ???safe??? dealing with a company with a reputation as good as JF.
The only issue as far as the website is concerned however, is that there is a patch available (1.3) that really is an essential download for 757 Professional, but you need to have previous knowledge that this patch exists as it isn???t mentioned on the info page before you purchase the product. Alternatively, you can notice a little strip of text that scrolls across the title bar of the website that mentions the patch.
Installation, activation and patching of the product was, as you would expect, painless and completely straight forward.
The Product
The manuals were very good and contained a fair amount of detail including a guide for a complete flight for a cold & dark cockpit to shutting down at the destination. There were also a few PDF files detailing speeds & weights etc.
The product also comes complete with a load manager and a fuel calculator and this was where my first (and only problem occurred). I am running a fully patched up version of Vista Home Premium (64) and for some reason the load manager just plain refuses to fire up. So I have been onto JF and they responded with a solution within a day, but this hasn???t done the trick and so they came back with instructions to send them my DirectX settings. I am now waiting for a response, but am very impressed with how friendly and quickly the support team responded.
This actually wasn???t a huge deal for me anyway, as I always do my own calculations on a flight prep chart I have created for myself.
The Flight
Well what can I say; this is a beautiful product to look at. The 2D panel is very nice, although I have never used it so cannot comment further.
What I can comment on it the virtual flight deck. I would say it is definitely up there with any of the other products I own (personally I still think the PMDG 747 is the best), but the 757 flightdeck is easily more impressive and immersive than the Level D767 or PMDG 737. If you have either 777 Professional or PMDG747 then you will find the standard of this 757 reaches these lofty heights.
The FMC and all the functions seem to work very well, and I found it very easy to pick up as I am used to using the FMC from the other Boeing based products. I have yet to find any quirks or bugs and each flight has so far been great fun.
Some people have reported problems with getting the aircraft lights and radios to work and also people were posting that they were unable to tune and catch the ILS. I too, had all these problems, but a quick look on the forums cleared up all the issues. It seems you need to fire up the default flight, leave the settings of the Cessna well alone and then change the aircraft. As long as you do this you???ll have no problems
There is also fully working Wx radar that works perfectly with ActiveSky6 and also the TCAS system is fully functional. A very important feature for me is that you can fly from start to finish in the virtual cockpit, and when in use with Active Camera is a joy to work in.
As for the external appearance, the standard is very good, some texture sets are better than others but there are a huge amount to choose from and the general standard is very good ??? of course it helps that the aircraft is a nice looking bit of kit in real life.
Take a look here for some screenshots
http://www.air-source.us/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=2398
For me this add on is terrific, graphically it???s beautiful, it sounds great and functions perfectly (providing you remember to start with the default flight). The thing I really like is that the aircraft fits nicely between the 737 and the larger 767/777.
I should add that the JF support are chasing up my load editor problem and so I can???t fault the customer support folks either.
9/10