I FINALLY finished the download last night. Then I had to spend the morning updating Windows because MS is stupid. At first I was disappointed....my home area is meh...and KCMI looks like crap. Xplane looks better. I agree with the critique someone made that there are no towers. FSX at least had generic towers placed anywhere there was something tall on the sectional. The really sad part was that the autogen put tall, round apartment buildings in place of all the grain elevators lol. The GNS 530 doesn't act quite right, and the flight model is just okay. It seems like the flight model and ATC are nearly direct ports from FSX.
I was about ready to quit, and decided to load up the area in Florida we've vacationed for several years. WOW. Flew from St. Pete to Sarasota and on south. Disappointingly no Sunshine Skyway bridge, but the beaches, islands, and buildings are incredible. Found the Ringling in Sarasota, which looks pretty good, and continued to fly over the condo we stay at. It's all there....the state park, I could even recognize the houses along the beach. Unreal. I could even date the data because there was a beachhouse in the sim that was destroyed by a storm a couple years ago. I was surprised that my internet kept up just fine.
It definitely needs some patches, but I think the bones are there. I was hoping it could replace Xplane completely, but I think both Asobo and I are going to have to put in a little more work to make it as valuable as a trainer. As something I can turn my kids loose on.....it's amazing. I'm a little bit CPU limited, but it looks great and runs pretty well. I think the little stuttering I have can be solved by eliminating a couple other programs that were running in the background. Personally I'd give it a buy recommendation, although I wouldn't fault anyone for waiting for the first couple patches.
