Cameron

Dave, I, of course, do have a vested interest, however, your perception of a sensible business model or my own again appears you want to be the final call and set an agenda. Additionally, I used quotes from topics of other users here to support my claims so that it's not just me being supportive of what I say. In reality, I'm very open to reviews and encourage them. The goal at X-Aviation is to have the best quality products for X-Plane, and the only way to get better is to hear the criticism. This comes from all angles, be it software applications, web applications, and anything X-Plane related that we publish. The only problem I see with your review is that while it's negative, it's not very open-minded. I guess this comes with the territory on anything you write, as it's typical DaveDuck material. Opinions are certainly one thing I can't control, but trying to find a happy medium is something I CAN control. My counteraction posted above is to show that I (as a regular RS user), do not view the terrain to be too light in contrast as you, and why the airports are the way they are. Without getting too much into it, you simply feed in the negativity and never give credit to the other side of what you speak of. It's not open-minded, but very "I have an agenda to kill." To you, it makes sense. To the person reading your review, all they take in is what you speak. You're still a great writer, but your review is more a fun read of journalism than anything accurate, or remotely open-minded to those reading. Your sidebar is also riddled with incorrect information and false assumptions. I highly disagree with the review itself in most instances, simply because you don't invest any time into discussing any type of pros vs cons. I'm not sure that's even possible for YOU to do, especially in the creative way that you write. For you it's either negative or positive, but never both. Don't let all of this shy away from the fact that I am aware of people not always agreeing and having different opinions. This is why we encourage reviews from various publications; so that many opinions can be shed about. Best, Cameron

Dave, It's great you've taken some time to write a review. I believe it's sensible to have someone with good writing skills to be writing something clever, however, one thing is quite evident to me in your writing: you have an agenda in all of what you write; your mind is made. I mean no offense to this, however, with your writing and assumptions so incredibly negative, it's hard to believe you had any other intentions or felt the need to be subjective/take into account varied opinions of those that may read what you have written. To me it wreaks of someone irked or feels as if the wrong button was pressed on them (you), and that's simply that. Regardless of these things, your negative writing is still good, so job well done there! With the above said, you are most certainly entitled to YOUR opinion, so I'll also share mine. 1.) Your review clearly shows some drawbacks to photoscenery. I think it's very important you shared this, however, it appears you took in NO account to those that fly online. A great deal of users fly online (VATSIM, etc), and it's important airports line up to the scopes of controllers on networks like VATSIM. Not only for that reason, but also for the simple fact that it's nice to see traffic at your airport. X-Plane will not display online flying/moving aircraft in the correct position within sim unless lat/lon/alt all match up. This is a trade off that's made, and not entirely a fault of the RealScenery product line. Additionally, it's important to note that a good number of airports match up with the photos just like a good number don't. Of course, the bigger airfields match up more proper than those that are "in the sticks." I wish there were a way to make this perfect, as do you it appears, however, what you may think would be perfect, others will disagree with. As an online flyer myself, I appreciate the photo terrain below and the fact that my airport data has NOT been adjusted. It would drive me batty otherwise, that's for sure! 2.) You spent a great deal of time discussing the terrain coloration. I think this one is definitely an agree to disagree section. I find your preference of coloration too dark, and X-Plane's default to be as well. The RealScenery Oregon product may not be perfect, but I also feel it's not far off. Of course, unlike you (it appears), I understand one opinion is different than the next, so if darker works for you, all the power to you! All the power to you that you found an author from FS whom you feel shared your opinion just because his terrain was darker, however, I feel his is a tad too dark. There is no question, though, that FlightZone02 is a fantastic package, and I recommend all to get it regardless of terrain coloration perception! To those interested in non-edited (minus the cropping) photos of Oregon, there are some here. It's better to draw your own opinion: Other images: http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=183.0 Using a direct quote from a customer of all the RealScenery products posted here: http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php?topic=241.0 3.) I'm a little dumbfounded by your fascination to dig so deeply into one's personal life (speaking on the additional column you created called The Curious Case of Eric Gillett), however, I'm somewhat pleased you did it for the comedy of the misinformation included! Typical quality journalism from an ex professional journalist though, right? It was certainly a good laugh, especially with your fantastic writing ability, Dave, and I sincerely mean that! I won't really speak more on the misinformation you posted regarding Eric, as I feel his personal details are for him to correct you on should he feel the need. In regards to hidden whois info, one word: spam. I have a lot of domains, and one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was leaving all my info in them. I've received so much spam over time through snail mail, I've finally begun to invest the extra $ to privatize such information. Yet another X-Planer proving my point that everyone has their own opinion and won't always agree with you or others around, and it's not even regarding a RealScenery product. Quite frankly, when I read this post, Dave, I already knew to expect negativity. After all, there's no fun in reading DaveDuck's blog without it, as it's become the norm. There are a few non-negative posts that have been made by you on your site, but they in no way outnumber the consistent negative opinions of our well-versed, Dave! I could keep going and going, but this review of your review may get a bit too long for the normal person to have patience for...like someone else we know. Oh, but before I forget, I give your review: Let's see...according to your rating guide here: http://plainlyxplane.blogspot.com/search/label/flight%20sim%20software%20reviews This means your review is "Monkey dung." Oh, okay, I feel bad now. You DO have good writing ability. Much better than me, in fact, so I'll up it. According to your own ratings guide, basically: It's a great read but fails to deliver a great review. It's also impractical (opinions suck sometimes, don't they?), but damn is it a fun read. While your ratings state "Not Recommended," I'm going to have to scratch that little tidbit and encourage people to get some good laughs from a great writer! Cheers, Dave. Mad respect!

I assume you purchased the Javelin through Jrollon.com, as I see no order on X-Aviation, however, PayPal provides your email address when you send money. Javier will send you your files soon, I'm sure.

Jimmi, Thanks for the report. The error you saw with the verification for the user guide is actually an error on our side. Very minor, but in short we updated the user guide since the original version, so the MD5 sum is different than the original version of the zip file. The verification is still checking for the old zip, thus flagging the new one as faulty. I'll fix this, but you DO have all the correct data downloaded. You've been able to report back here relatively fast since your purchase time. I assume your download speeds are good? Thanks!

They'll continue to be produced. Be on the lookout for new one's soon!

As has been stated, this has been released with the plane since day one.

Jimmi, The screenshots are taken at a mix of altitudes. Very high altitudes is a bit of an overstatement. X-Plane uses texture paging, so there is no blurry effect like you have seen in FS. The load time for scenery is generally not as long as FS is with a product like MegaScenery either (I can load up an airport in Oregon in about 20-25 sec.), but it does increase load times in the end. You can expect the scenery to perform just about as well as it does with your default scenery settings. Your setup is more than capable. The scenery will be supported for a long time to come. Part of this is that the X-Plane scenery format is very solid these days, and we don't anticipate much change over time. Ben and Laminar have done a great job with that. Most airports are aligned as best they can. As you get into the HR series of sceneries, the alignment becomes even greater. I will say, however, that when I'm flying around RealScenery, it never bothers me. The misalignments at most are quite minor. As to which is better? Both! It's a matter of preference I suppose, but the mountains are fun to fly around! I would suggest that you download the demos available for each scenery. On each products page on X-Aviation, you'll see a link to the demo in the description tables. Hope this helps, and happy flying!

What Goran was trying to say was..."Have fun!"

Hi, John, Because most of this relies on our programming now, we have no reliable release information. As we have a more definitive answer we'll definitely be in touch with everyone here. It's often times bad practice to give out a release date in the software side of the world due to angry people when deadlines aren't meant. I can tell you we have goals, and those goals are for late summer, but I can't make a promise to you on anything other than we will work hard to achieve the finished product.

Theo, While I won't get into details or choose sides, I will say that behind closed doors, Rafael has admitted to taking what he is accused of. Whether he chooses to come out about it publicly here, that's his choice. I won't dive into this one further. I'm not here to judge one person over the next. I understand the excitement some people may get when they are developing aircraft, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, some good will finally come out of the humiliation of all of this for Rafael. There is much more to life than just the XP world, so I definitely don't wish him ill will, however, should he choose to continue the use of others' work (which has been proven elsewhere aside from here on different projects), then I can't support or root for him in the aspect of an aircraft designer. It will definitely be hard for him to earn users' trust back, but I'm sure he'll soon overcome these possibly overwhelming feelings of disapproval and come out stronger in the end (or I hope he does).

Looking good, Goran! Keep it up!

Nice job, Goran! Keep up the good work...as has been said here, looks like you're off to a great start! Keep us updated on the progress.

Kesomir, The engines are spinnin' for the most part now. There will be startup effects in the sense of engines spinning from stop to start, however, any puffs of smoke or anything like that for now are still up in the air.

Kesomir, You can report bugs here: http://dev.x-plane.com/support/bugreport.html I know the ATI drivers have caused some issues too, so reporting this may do you some good, though not immediate. Even though it's a pain, I would encourage you to swap out your ATI for the Nvidia card you have just to see if you're able to do a successful flight at the very least. That will pinpoint whether it's a video card/driver error or not!

Kesomir, I'm beginning to wonder if this is an ATI driver issue. Have you reported this to the bug system for X-Plane yet? You system is more than capable of handling hi-res settings in the sim!

Jason, That's the float hanging down from the left wing.

Hello, Hector, We will not be doing any paid beta test subscriptions for this project. We want to make sure all customers get a working product without having to test things when it goes on sale!

Looks fantastic, Javier! Looking forward to seeing what you do with the texture work on this one.

I'm going to assume Giant Fight Robots is a spinoff of the old Young's Modulus: http://laminarresearch.com/

Nova, It's a new section added here on X-Pilot.

This is really sad to hear! I'm a frequent visitor to the Avsim community as well. Hopefully they are able to salvage things out of this!

Dan, This is still under the poly count of the MU-2. I think everyone will be quite pleased.

The airports are not part of the RealScenery package.

Noplamodo, My avg FPS is about 105. It decreases to around 85 when going to heavier detailed airports like SEA. My setup is as follows: Intel E6850 3.0GHz 8GB Ram 768MB VRam through an Nvidia 880GTX.

There are no previews to give of this at this time. We are in the very early stages of systems, as the primary concern over the last bit of time has been the 3D modeling. Systems are up next, and will be a rather lengthy process. The shine is from X-Plane.