FS2Crew - Experiences?
Hello pilots.
Simmarket has FS2Crew on sale, including the iteration for the MJC-8. Does anyone have it and would care to share some experiences? I've never used any FS2Crew product but am very curious and at half price I'd be inclined to get it, but I have a few worries about it. Will the voice control cause issues when communicating with online ATC? Will the FO be very insistent and particular about his procedures or will he accomodate if "my" SOPs are a little different from his?
Any reviews by any of you guys would be greatly appreciated!
Comments
Hi, I love and own almost all of the fs2crew packages, but keeping honest I have try this one 3 or 4 time and I uninstalled it. The manuals for the Dash are pretty poor and confusing compared with the other fs2c products at my taste, and it's not developed so deep maybe for SDK interactions not implemented or developed by FS2C. I finally get back for enjoying flying alone because this fs2c version has a horrible learning curve. Hope that helps.
I wound up getting it as the sale was too good to pass and I'm glad I did, mainly because it's a neat thing to have but in my humble opinion it's worth far from the 40 to 50 bucks they ask for it full price.
I can only speak for this particular fs2crew as it's the first one I got (and I pretty much fly nothing but the MJC-8 anyway) but I think it's quite obvious that the actual programming behind it is kept very simple and while that can be a good thing, the whole checklist management via voice can glitch up so your guy gets stuck on checklist items and won't react to any command anymore until some weird accumulation of happenstance unsticks him and he finally wakes up or you cycle his mode yourself. Now that I'm fairly proficient with his operating procedures and the checklists, this happens on ever third or fourth flight I'd say but it's really annoying when you're hand-flying it, relying on your FO to run his climbout flow and clean her up for the climb only to find he's still stuck at "Runway?" and you can't unstick him by giving the proper response as he tends to glitch up if the item he's asking for is a couple of steps behind the actual flight at that point. That's the kind of issue I really would have hated to have payed full price for.
Then for a 40 €/$ product I think it would not have been too much to ask to get some customization options. I'm no programmer by any means - but it strikes me it could have been possible to allow for people to enter their own phrasing and responses into a .cfg file or whatever that the program would then allow via voice, or maybe eben switch around or remove checklist items to accomodate their "own" SOPs. There is absolutely nothing of the sort. I'm just barely okay with that having spent 20€, but that's really pushing it. At 40€, the price point is in the range of the Pilot's Version of the MJC-8 itself. I think that's far out of proportion.
For the actual FO and checklist management and all that, I gotta say it also seemed a little intimidating and confusing to me at first, but I got the hang of it after a couple of short flights. Printing out the checklists is a must. "Set and checked" will let you skip 95% of the items if you don't know what he precisely wants to hear, but not all of them and it's a little nasty to sit on a taxiway connected to VATSIM, trying to run the After Start and getting stuck on "Ice Protection Test" because he wants neither "Test", "Tested" or "Set and Checked" but absolutely needs to hear "Complete".
I had to adjust my single pilot procedures a little bit, but once you get the grasp of how the "Flows" outside of the checklist items work, what you're supposed to do and what he will do, I think it's very, very nice when everything runs smoothly. It certainly did add to my immersion especially on the ground, as the division of tasks is very noticeable and really nice. From T/O to After Landing, as Pilot Flying you barely have jack to do other than actually fly and navigate. Granted, I find the DH8D to be a pretty low-workload airliner compared to many others and I got around on my own in it pretty dang good as well. One you have your flows in place, staying ahead of her is really easy and FS2Crew does make it even easier and gives a much more realistic and immersive experience. I'm not gonna knock it when it's working well, not glitching out. But I will still maintain that I don't recommend getting this at full price. It's a nice-to-have and it draws its price point from the fact that there's zero competition out there, but it is not a piece of software that is in and of itself worth upwards of 40 bucks. So that's my review now, in case anyone else was curious. Wait for a sale if you know what's good for you.