Hot on the heels of the recent Birmingham review comes Screenshotartist.co.uk’s latest, this time covering the First Class Simulations box set of the Vickers Wellington World War II bomber, by Ian Pearson, with screenshots, as usual, by Nick Churchill.
The Wellington, also known as the “Wellie” or “Wimpey” was one of the few aircraft that both started and ended World War II in front line service and this package gives you a collection of aircraft, a scenery and for FSX users, a small collection of missions to complete. To read this, or any other of the site’s reviews, please visit screenshotartist.co.uk. The Halcyon Media publication of the same package is also available from simMarket, here.
0 Responses
The FSS Wellington is the only FS plane I’ve regretted buying. First impressions are lasting, and the simply *awful* painting leaves a big sour taste. When I wrote a mini review on one of the forums I said it looked like it had been painted by a Warhammer wannabe. The Wimpy is unique in having a completely geodetic structure, and in EVERY photo I’ve seen, it shows through the fabric very clearly both on the wings and fuselage. They had a bit of a half-hearted go with the fuselage, but the wings are painted with conventional ribs and stringers, which the Wimpy didn’t have. (I think they then textures it with plywood out of sheer embarrassment!)
Then there’s the VC. Did nobody ever look out the windows during testing? The spinners are just hanging in space! There are no wings or engine! The model in front of the window is missing too.
It’s a right dog’s dinner, and with the lack of an accessible interior too, I give it 2/10, purely for being an ‘FSX’ model. And that’s before I tried to fly it!
Yes, Tim was one of the people who didn’t think that the painting looked at all like fabric, in case anyone might possibly be wondering, from those comments.
The line drawings and sketches in my period book (made by the RAF!) don’t show the geodetic structure in the wings, Tim, so it does depend on your source, but I agree from photos that the structure should be a lot more visible than they made it.
The biggest problem with this model is that it wouldn’t take a whole lot (mainly some new textures!) to make it a lot better than it is. The lack of engines in the VC which you find so intolerable don’t seem to worry many people as much as the texturing and “interesting” flight dynamics.
With a TripleHead2Go, I can’t use 2D cockpits (imagine stretching them to 4000 pixels wide, at the same height…) and so have to use the 3D. Almost always the eyepoint is too low (I’m a shortarse!), so the first thing I do is adjust my seat up a couple of notches. Very quickly you see the shortcomings. The VC in this plane works at the defined eyepoint, and NOWHERE else! Which is poor IMHO.
Given the easy access on the Internet to images, and also museum exhibits such as Hendon, they should have done better.
As for the flight model… when the uncommanded roll put it on it’s back, I tried to bail… no access to the exits of course! So me an it ended in a smoking pile in some farmer’s field. And that’s where it stayed.
In FSX, the virtual cockpit is not only the ability to move the view in it, but a more immersive experience. Thinking about glass reflexions, G forces applied, and seeing the engines when you are supposed too. Can you imagine to do not see the Catalina’s ones?
When I pay for an addon, I want more than the default planes, which you can see them, and which I find pretty cool actually.
My 2 coins, thx
Ben.
Sorry Tim, but methinks thou protesteth too much. It took me two taps on the aileron trim to cancel out the roll, which was nowhere near at risk of ‘flipping it onto it’s back’.
You have a very expensive setup – far more than 99% of FS users have, and thus very high requirements. This package, flawed as it is, was never intended by the author to be a top end product.
Although it seems that there is no intention to fix even the most glaring errors, according to comments from the developer, most people I have spoken to who have actually bought and used it say it’s “OK, nothing special. Could do with a patch”. I’m inclined to agree with them, which means that you and I will just have to disagree on exactly how bad it is.