vic365 wrote:I'm very interested in your thoughts on the Maddog, Brett. I have been contemplating this addon for a long time.
I love it. It is a very involved aircraft. Much more than any of the PMDG series. I have had it for sometime now, but always had issues with a hot start. I ran across a nice guy on VATSIM who was so kind to share his check list with me and that forced me to dig even deeper into the manuals. Now I can't put her down. Except right now, Im in the PMDG 747....
Flight model is great. VC is about a 7 out of 10. It comes with a Load manager and allows you to set up some performance issues with graphics and what not to help with the framerate hit. And it will hit your framerates hard. Much harder than any or the PMDG series. FMC is great, more attention needs to be placed here than PMDG, meaning you need your ZFW, (not just hit the L3 and it loads for you, you need to do it) V speeds you need to add. My point, the MadDog will have you thinking. I have watch approaches and landings of MD-80's on youtube, and compaired them to mine, and they are identical. And what I mean, is you really need to fly her in. Is it worth the money. Yes it is. If I had it to do again, I would go with the standard instead of the Pro. Differences are you get an analog panel and that is really about it.
I just got FS2Crew for it and played with it this morning, and man, that a complicated program to learn, still reading on that.
The ONLY issue I have is in 2D cockpit, when I look out either window, I get a studder for about 5-7 sec then smooth. That seems to be a bug of some kind. Many people have complained about it. Im sure it is fixable if you get into the panel cfg, but other than that, very smooth!! Sounds?? AWESOME!! Compatiable with WIN7 and FSPax.
On the flip side, tech support is about a 3 out of 5. Good forums, but slow tech support responce. When I first got the 06 version, I had to wait about a week and many emails to get my activation key. With the 08 upgrade, it was instant. I do not know if that was because of the upgrade, or they improved their activation method. But I cant knock them too hard, their forum had tons of help and lots of info on it.
Shes worth the $$ I would not steer you wong Vic!!