Well, truth be told, sometimes Flight Simulator (or whichever sim ie: Xplane or Prepar3d) can get quite boring especially once you get used to flying the stock aircraft through and through, but thankfully, over the years, developers within the sim community have been able to come up with more realistic addon aircraft, liveries or paint schemes that match those found on actual airlines, engine sound packs that come amazingly close to what the aircraft sounds like in reality and so on.
Having addon aircraft that behave as close to the real thing makes for a more thrilling sim experience and puts the pressure on you to learn how to correctly operate the aircraft.
In this way, it makes you a more proficient aviator.
Below, I have a list of two aircraft that I have in my hangar (well, there are more but I don't want to make this review tooo long) which you guys could check out, together with some pros and cons that I have experienced flying them.
It is also worth noting that these are freeware addons, and, as the name suggests, you can download these from addon sites (such as simviation.com, fs-freeware.net, rikooo.com etc) at no cost, as opposed to payware, for which you would have to pay to download.
The advantage of payware aircraft is that in many cases, the quality of the product is quite good, whereas, freeware aircraft tend to have alot of compromises such as unrealistic flight dynamics, unresponsive cockpit buttons, incorrect airline paintschemes and so on.
To find the right one, a lot of trial and error on your part is required and it is quite frustrating, but, you become more adept at identifying good quality freeware from the not-so-good quality ones.
In addition to this, there is massive support from online simulator forums with users helping each other troubleshoot common problems and so one does not have to worry if their addon is faulty as information is out there.
To start us off:
Project Opensky (POSKY) Boeing 777-200ER Multi-livery package
This appears top on this list of downloads, because, for one, the 777 is a majestic aircraft that I absolutely love (despite having never flown in one).
It is a marvel of engineering with massive and very powerful engines and it has that aura that just oozes POWEEEER!!!
Secondly, the team behind the creation of this addon did such an amazing job capturing as many liveries as they could of well known airlines around the world accurately.
The extra detail they added on the aircraft exterior such as the oil stains around the flaps, ailerons and other flight control surfaces, really adds to the realism of flying this bird.
Next, the cockpit interior has been excellently captured and looks exactly like the real thing. The interior textures are verrry crisp and the main buttons and gauges crucial for flight control work quite well, though, the rest of the buttons are static, both in the 2D and 3D points of view.
The flight dynamics are another aspect that they captured really well. Even when using using your mouse as the yoke to control the ailerons and elevators, you get that sense of heaviness while maneuvering the aircraft. It has been tuned quite well to bring out that effect.
Lastly, the sound packs on this download are amazing IMO. The creators did such a good job including the three main engine providers for the 777, ie PW (Pratt&Whitney), RR (Rolls Royce) and GE (General Electric) and you can easily distinguish one provider's sound from the next as the package comes with many 777's, featuring different airlines and the engine variants that the airline uses.
Here's a summary of the pros and cons I experienced with this aircraft.
PRO's
- The flight dynamics have been well tuned to give it that realistic heavy feel. You also get the sense of power as you apply full throttle. One can still adjust these dynamics in the aircraft configuration file (.cfg file) in the main aircraft folder
-The liveries are very accurate, matching those of real world airlines and the interior textures are very crisp. You also have the option of deleting the airlines you don't want, thereby freeing some space on your device, but be sure to make the necessary changes to the aircraft . cfg file, so that you are not greeted by aircraft with question marks in the main aircraft window in FSX.
- The sound!!!!! As mentioned earlier, the sound packs are very well detailed and you can actually tell the difference between the 3 engine providers.
CONS
- While not necessarily a con, the download file is quite huge, amounting to almost 1GB. But this is expected due to the good quality of the download and the many aircraft included therein.
- You might also have to download the 777 gauge file (.gau file) separately and copy it to the main FSX gauge folder because the addon does not come with one, and so, upon loading the aircraft into FSX, you are greeted by blank cockpit screens, even when the aircraft is fully powered up. You will also have to go tweaking the panel .cfg files and copy pasting files here and there in order to get them to work. This get very tiresome.!!
- Next, the aircraft tends to porpoise quite a bit during cruise and in slow flight when coming in to land. This is a well known issue, but there have been fixes for this suggested in flight simulator forums.
- The nose wheel does not turn during taxi and so, even at bends, the aircraft wheel assembly is locked at a straight position. The aircraft does get into turns smoothly, but the animation does not match the simmer's inputs. Regardless, there are remedies for this suggested in those simulator forums.
- Lastly, because the quality of the download is very good, it tends to consume a lot of processing power (if your machine cannot handle higher texture and detail settings) and so, upon loading the aircraft for a flight, the other AI aircraft textures and surrounding scenery get blurred. Furthermore, AI aircraft parked at the gate begin bouncing (I suppose it is a way that the system uses to refresh scenery) and FSX also begins to lag soo bad that it eventually crashes.
If you have a higher end machine, you might not experience this, but the fix for this glitch is to lower the overall graphics quality so as not to encounter these problems. You may also have to reduce the amount of AI air traffic to lessen processing demands on your machine.
The game runs smoother, but if you're big on graphics and visuals, and enjoy a lot of AI traffic you will be disappointed.
Overall, I'd give it a 9/10 for a freeware addon.
Number 2 on this list is the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
This is yet another neat project by the POSKY team. They feature all the variants of the 787 family, ie: (the 787-8, 787-9, 787-10) and they come with liveries matching real-world airlines that are known to have these aircraft in their fleet
I decided to download only those with African paint schemes because, hey! I'm proudly African and proudly Kenyan :D and I settled for Kenya Airways and Ethiopian airlines because their paint schemes are simple but stunning.
This addon usually comes complete with the aircraft featuring one particular airline, but those multi-livery packs still exist.
This means that the file itself is not that bulky, usually under 100MB but you get something good.
Now to the PROS
- The aircraft model appears incredibly similar to the one in real life. This detail was captured quite well by the team. I say this because I have come across Dreamliner addons that look nowhere close to the real thing, and this for me is a deal breaker. (I tend to delete the entire download file if I come across an aircraft that has not been modeled well and flies badly even after tweaking.)
- The liveries are very crisp, although I wish they could add more detail like the oil stains around the wings and other parts of the fuselage, like on the 777 addons, just for that extra touch of realism.
This addon comes with the GEnx-1B Trent 1000 engine sound. (These are the engines currently fitted on the Dreamliner) and I must say, they captured those engine whines quite well.
- Just like the 777, the tuning has been done to give the aircraft that heavy feel to enhance the sim experience.
CONS
- While the flight dynamics have been adjusted to give it that heavy feel, the aircraft surprisingly manages to attain climb rates of +6000ft/min even when fully loaded after take off!!! This is very unrealistic for an aircraft classed under a wake category of "HEAVY".
I also found that it has an overly exaggerated rate of acceleration, evidenced by the aircraft easily speeding to well over 300knots upon climb out. This happens even when the aircraft is carrying almost full load and full fuel tanks, which again is very unrealistic.
And just to echo the point above, the default power settings are also questionable, because on full take-off thrust, the aircraft behaves almost like a Concorde and so I find myself having to reduce take off power to slightly above 50% to operate within take off limits and thereafter increase power steadily once the aircraft wheels leave the ground during climb out so as not to loose speed. This is not how aircraft operate even in the real world!!
-Additionally, upon reaching cruise level of flight, with the autopilot on, the aircraft flies with almost five degrees of nose down the entire flight, while on some other 787 addons, the aircraft flies with 10 degrees of nose up attitude, and speeds almost reaching Mach 1!!!
Very bizarre if you ask me, but like I've mentioned a couple of times before, with a few tweaks in the aircraft .cfg file and with plenty of support from members of the online sim community who have also experienced the same kind of issues, you should have a proper functioning aircraft in no time.
-The aircraft also comes with the default 737-800 panel and cockpit.
While it works well with most buttons and switches functioning, it kinda takes away the experience of flying using the actual Dreamliner cockpit.
Some Dreamliner addons do come with a 'semblance' of the real cockpit, but you'd find these are not too well done, with gauges all over the place and other unnecessary detail not even found in the real aircraft.
-Another minor pet peeve would be the lights. The navigation lights do not go off at all even after switching them off.
- Lastly, it causes a scenery crash just like the 777 does owing to the level of detail on this aircraft.
All in all, I'd give it an 8/10.
Finally, this by no means concludes my addon aircraft review. There shall be a part 2 of this with a couple more aircraft, so stay tuned!!
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