Hi
I tried this simulator before I bought it from heliguy.com, cheapest I could find at £134.
It is developed by
www.knifeedge.com. They seem to develop this actively with regular patches/upgrades
One thing that one should consider is that you can use the FUTABA 6 ch controller (not a transmitter!) provided with a buddy link. So if you want to follow BMFA recommendations...
I haven't tried it yet with the TrackR2, will let you know about that later.
One nice touch: it support a device called TrackIR (£120 from flightstore.co.uk), which allows to use your head to look around. from third person view it is really nice.
In cockpit mode, useful for us FPV flyers, the track IR also work, and you can pan/tilt. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any airframe shown when you look around there.
I would have like to see my wings when I turn my head full right and left.
There are 70 "airports" (Some of them are repeated twice, with day and night version) to fly from, split into 2 categories: normal and "Photorealistic".
Photorealistic airports are basically just a background photo and although they looks very good, one cannot fly flown from the cockpit, only from the ground pilot view
Other airports are 3D scenes (FPV flyable) that are all connected, at least for all in the same group (Sierra Nevada, Islands), you can fly for long distance from one to an other.
It comes with an editor, and one can edit the map by adding/moving/removing objects, but the ground mesh doesn't seem editable.
Lots of very interesting airports, like flight school, obstacle course, slope soaring, water for amphibian planes, etc ...
It has lots of addons, airports and planes, some payware, some freeware
I have found Easystar and Funjet Models for it, 2 popular airplanes for FPV.
http://www.knifeedge.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=3110 (EasyStar)
http://www.knifeedge.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=8093 (TwinJet)
http://www.knifeedge.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=3655 (FunJet)
I never found a MultiPlex TwinStar II model, neither a mikrokopter model. The closest I found where those:
http://www.knifeedge.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=3764 (quadro, X-UFO, but doen'st work well, unfinished)
http://www.knifeedge.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=9740 (tri, Y-UFO, fun enough, works well, but not a quadro)
All the airplanes can be easily tweaked with an integrated graphical editor. (modifiy channel assignements, separate engine power control, propellors parameters, control surface area/deflections, weight, dual rates, add/setup gyros, etc...)
I really like how the airplanes get damaged/break and one can still carry on flying with missing parts (their flying characteristic are then changed to reflect damage (break landing gear and your plane might go faster ! LOL) However, it's something that still works, but one just can't see in fpv mode, only in third person view. Picture in Picture feature can allow to see both at the same time.
It does require a fairly recent/fast PC.
On my laptop, an HP HDX16 (core2Duo 2.4GHz , nvidia 9600M), I can run it almost with almost all details to the maximum at 1920*1080 at 60 frames per seconds, but without the bloom/blur (Depth of field effect) which gives a Field of Depth effect. Frames dropped to 15 if I enable it maxed out, Not so bad after all.
I will try sometimes on my HTPC (corei7 overclocked 4GHz /nvidia 9800GTX) once I setup a dual boot from Ubuntu
To me, it would be one of the almost ideal FPV simulator. There is a navigation widget, but it is not quite as good as an OSD. Maybe contacting the developers would sort that out.
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