RealFlight G3 running now. $450! and counting...

So what did you replace the Parhelia with? And how many monitors do you run?

So why did you want to upgrade realflight in the first place that makes it so important to you?

John

PNY's 6600 GT, a fine gamer's card, as far as that goes. It runs two monitors with no problems, or a monitor and a TV, which I haven't tried. A cheap PCI card should run the the third monitor easily, and put me back to normal. So far, nVidia's drivers have proven to be as stable as Matrox; no problem there. So far. I only resent the upgrade cycle "leading edge" software forces on you. What on earth was wrong with just fixing G2's physics model, and adding in the weather changes? I have a difficult time believing these were dependent on the graphics enhancements.

In for a dollar... you know how that goes. It's a good question, and I don't have a sufficiently good answer. G2 is certainly serviceable for primary flight training. I felt it fell short for 3D on small planes, though, and hoped for improvement in G3. Anyway, the thought was to not dork up my $20 piece of foam... Heh.

| So far. I only resent the upgrade cycle "leading edge" software | forces on you. What on earth was wrong with just fixing G2's physics | model, and adding in the weather changes?

A: doing so did not make Knife Edge/Great Planes any signifigant amount of money.

RFG3, on the other hand, well, how many G2 owners have bought G3? Probably more than a few.

| I have a difficult time believing these were dependent on the | graphics enhancements.

Of course they're not. But KE/GP is working to maximize their profit, and they obviously felt that releasing a whole new version with no upgrade path (beyond buying it again, with a miniscule rebate for previous owners) would do so.

And maybe they were right.

From the relative silence, I think not nearly enough bought in. It had to have been an expensive development cycle, with most of it attributable to the new graphics. I think the opposite; that they tried to match the flash and dash of the new competition, and basically bet the farm just to stay in the game. How large can this market be, anyway?

And released it early with NO helicopters which means another CD (free) to add to your collection....probally another serial number as well...

No thank you. If you did as I have, bought Real flight from the beginning, bought each upgrade and four add on disks, you fume every time you rework your system and have to re-install this beast with all the disks and serials and it asking for this one, now that one, and again the original one...and on and on..

Guess I could solve all that by buying G3 once it ships with the heli's added....but...

no, never again!

cheers Papa Sharptooth

Bouncing about the living room, my then three year old grandson declared himself "a kangaroo". "If you're a Kangaroo, what is Grampie", I ask. His reply:  "you a dinosaur"

| > | So far. I only resent the upgrade cycle "leading edge" software | > | forces on you. What on earth was wrong with just fixing G2's physics | > | model, and adding in the weather changes? | >

| > A: doing so did not make Knife Edge/Great Planes any signifigant amount | > of money. | >

| > RFG3, on the other hand, well, how many G2 owners have bought G3? | > Probably more than a few. | | From the relative silence, I think not nearly enough bought in.

Could be -- it's hard to tell.

| It had to have been an expensive development cycle, with most of it | attributable to the new graphics.

I'll bet it's not that large of an operation. Fancy graphics aren't that hard to create, and RFG2 was never that polished of a product. (I haven't seen G3.) I'll bet they don't have more than a handful of programmers.

I know that X-Plane (the flight simulator) used to be mostly written by Austin Meyer, and I suspect that this is still the case. (Though it's got a much larger `niche' than RF.)

| I think the opposite; that they tried to match the flash and dash of | the new competition, and basically bet the farm just to stay in the | game. How large can this market be, anyway?

That's hardly the opposite of what I said -- I merely suggested that they didn't upgrade G2 because there was no additional money in it, and it's quite obviously that RF is all about collecting additional money. :)

As far as catching up with the competition, you may be right. Knife Edge may very well be in an `adapt or die' mode -- they've mostly been left alone as the leader of the pack until recently, and their product showed it.

A bunch of us flew G3 at a modelers get together over the holidays. It's supposed to be better at 3d flying, but I don't do any of that and can't comment.

The graphics looked the same, a few new planes and fields, but nothing different that I saw. There is supposed to be better wind settings too I think. A lot of new menus and settings available.

The planes break apart when hitting the ground or an object, but this is far from real. wings and tails fall off and then the undamaged fuse and undamaged parts bounce about on the ground. While you DO know you've crashed, it's more cartoonish than anything.

And if you hit a tree and tear off the tail fin for instance, the plane still flies on...which it would probably do in reality...that's never happened to me in real life, but somehow I think the result in Realflight makes recovery from that too easy.

but the one thing they should be doing, of course they did not. No way to design your own planes in this sim.

If they added anything in G3, it should have been the ability to design planes....

cheers Papa Sharptooth

Bouncing about the living room, my then three year old grandson declared himself "a kangaroo". "If you're a Kangaroo, what is Grampie", I ask. His reply:  "you a dinosaur"

In article , astroflyer wrote: | And if you hit a tree and tear off the tail fin for instance, the | plane still flies on...which it would probably do in reality...that's | never happened to me in real life, but somehow I think the result in | Realflight makes recovery from that too easy.

While slope flying, we'll bump into each other and lose a wingtip and just keep on flying ... :)

| but the one thing they should be doing, of course they did not. No | way to design your own planes in this sim. | | If they added anything in G3, it should have been the ability to | design planes....

If you could design your own planes, they wouldn't sell so many Add-On packs. Once again, it all comes back to GP/KE revenue ...

I can see that happening no problem. however, have you ever lost a whole fin, including rudder and kept on flying for some time?

no kidding. But it doesn't seem to have hurt other simulators out there, aerofly, and Microsoft flight sim in particular. In fact I think it's one of the attractions of both.

cheers Papa Sharptooth

Bouncing about the living room, my then three year old grandson declared himself "a kangaroo". "If you're a Kangaroo, what is Grampie", I ask. His reply:  "you a dinosaur"

I won't be buying anymore Realflight software. I own and like G2, but G2 and G3 aren't compatable on several levels, and the INSULT of an offer the give to existing owners of G2 to upgrade is just STUPID. Knifedge has a history of not being customer friendly, my mistake on buying G2. My next purchase will be aerofly pro.

Phil

Boat wrote:

Should have just gone with aerofly or reflex, they both look good!

I've had Aerofly Pro Deluxe for a few days now. So far I'm impressed with it. Looks great on my desktop with a Radeon 9800 Pro, but scales down enough to be workable on my laptop, albiet not as prettily.

PCPhill

astroflyer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

G3 has had the heli update for a couple of weeks now. You just use the G3 update system to add it - no disk required.

The "upgrade path" was pretty bad, although I used my own upgrade scheme of selling G2 on ebay for about $130 and then purchasing G3 for $200. My Add-Ons all work with G3.

G3 really likes (needs) some nice hardware. I upgraded my PC to get better performance out of it. That being said, on a strong PC, and with all the graphic goodies set to highest level, the program is quite stunning.

Yes, I've seen that mentioned. saw as well that it's available on Cd, and since indications are that the download is pretty big, that's probably where a lot of modem users will go. Especially if it's like their other upgrades where it self installs and you can't store the download on your hard drive.

That was another annoyance when you reworked your pc and re-installed realflight. you then had to download the same updates you'd downloaded last time you installed it. At one time they had a site where you could download the files and keep them, but the last time I looked that was long gone.

Not sure if that actually is the case with the heli update as I don't and won't have G3. suggest though that you get the CD so you can have it the next time you need it.

ditto for my upgrade scheme, except I'm putting my ebay money into their competitor's simulator.

cheers Papa Sharptooth

Bouncing about the living room, my then three year old grandson declared himself "a kangaroo". "If you're a Kangaroo, what is Grampie", I ask. His reply:  "you a dinosaur"