Hi guys,
First of all, great product, best and most realistic soaring sim I have played with (I am a soaring pilot myself). I would say that you are well on the way to achieve your stated goals.
Before getting to the meat here are my system specs: AMD Athlon 1.2 Ghz on Abit KT7A-RAID, 768 MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 (128 MB), Creative SB Live! Platinum 5.1, Windows XP Pro (SP 1), Logitech WingMan Extreme.
Sound: I had to separately install the OpenAL driver you have provided on your website to make it work.
The sound simulation could use some improvements, when touching down the sound does not change (wheel noise etc.). You can only deduct by the behaviour of the plane that you have actually touched down (or bounced off the runway again...). It would also be nice to hear the wing touching/dragging along the ground as a reminder...
When side slipping the noise level does not change either, it would help to be able to deduct by the sound level if you are flying with increased resistance or not. When flying a sailplane noise variations are an important feedback for the pilot to indicate yaw and speed, e.g. most pilots can tell the speed to within a few km/h just by the noise they hear in a particular airplane. This is especially important when on final approach to avoid having to constantly monitor the airspeed and being able to focus on approach angle. It also holds true when turning/circling since when focused on a thermal and close-by airplanes an acurrate change in noise will help the pilot to remind him to adjust yaw and/or speed/pitch.
In addition, when close to stalling the airplane the typical buffeting and associated noise is not as it should be.
The noise should also change when the airbrakes are extended, this would be important feedback to remind you that they are out and how far they are out without having to look at the lever or out the window.
The variometer does not make an audible noise when indicating a negative sink rate. This is important for being aware of and getting quickly out of down drafts. It is also important when approaching a thermal because an increased sink rate is often an indication that the lift area of the thermal is approaching since you always have a downdraft around the actual lift area of a thermal.
Imperial Units: For us living in the US we unfortunately still have to deal with the inept imperial units. When selecting Imperial Units in the setup the altimeter and variometer setup changes but not their labeling. The air speed indicator setup does not change at all, it still shows km/h. It would be helpful to be able to have either mph or knots (or both - both units are used here in the US).
Cloud Display: I noticed that sometimes when getting close to or even into clouds the more distant clouds (with their more brillant white color) overlay the more grayish cloud you are inside or close to. Even though you are in the cloud or the cloud is between you and the next set of more distant clouds the more distant ones display ontop in the foreground. This only seems to happen momentarily and then reverts back to normal before reapearing again for a split second and it only happens when very close to or in a cloud.
Default Forward Looking Cockpit View Position: I believe it has been mentioned in a previous post, the default cockpit view position is a little too low. When snapping back to this view position by using the relevant button after having scanned the sky to the left or right (e.g. when thermaling or when scanning for the runway on base before turning into final) I always have to adjust the view position up. The ideal position for me would be (using the Grob in the demo as an example) to just see the very tip of the stick which leaves all the instruments on the panel in my view but nothing more. That's all I care about when I circle or land (the most common scenarios where you need a quick re-adjustment to the forward view position after having scanned the surroundings). Often I even adjust to just having the airspeed indicator, altimeter and variometer in view (the top row of the instruments).
Maybe you could even provide a functionality where the users can set the default view themselves by pressing a button when having adjusted the view to the right angle. That would give everybody the possibility to set the default to their prefered position.
Cockpit Details: The compass ontop of the instrument panel is difficult to read. When in the default view it is pretty much imposible to get a reading (using 800 x 600), you have to zoom in to be able to figure out where you are going if you rely on the compass.
Joystick Sensitivity: This has been previously posted as well, the initial joystick movement sensitivity is too high. I put the airbrakes on the throttle lever on my WingMan Extreme. While thermaling or ridge soaring I sometimes heard a brief weird noise. I eventually figured out that it was the airbrakes briefly unlocking before locking again. When that happened I was nowhere near the throttle lever.
Originally I also had a little play in the twistable joystick handle I use for the rudder. I actually had to take the joystick handle apart and eliminate any play since I was initially faced with constant small rudder movements back and forth which made clean flying almost impossible. It might help to have a real small dead zone around the neutral positions to avoid problems like these. I still have some fluttering in the elevators at times which lead to small but constant up and down movements of the airplane's nose when in a shallow dive.
Monitor Refresh Rate: As mentioned in a previous post screen resolution adjustment works fine but refresh rate seems to be 60 Hz no matter what.
Landscape: I noticed a clear line across the landscape in areas where possibly two different projection areas are fused together (e.g. a North/South line along the mountains between Lake Tahoe and the Carson Valley to the East.
These are my initial observations after randomly flying around for a day. I hope this helps, great Beta, looking forward to the full release :-)
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