FlightSim.Com Reviews: Just Flight's Airbus 2000

Airbus 2000 by Just Flight

A rehashing of FS98 airliners

By FlightSim.Com Staff (12 September 2000)

Virgin Atlantic A340-300 - Looks good from afar, but up close, you'll notice it's a great FS98 airliner, top quality for back then. Now, it's just not so pretty anymore.

INTRODUCTION

In most of my reviews, I seem to come across great add-ons that enhance your FS experience greatly, and often offer far more quality than the small cost associated with a purchase. Sometimes, I feel designers are "giving away" their products too cheaply! This is not one of them.

I was hoping Airbus 2000 Special Edition by Just Flight and Flight 1 Software would be something to get excited about. As I feared, it's just a rehashing of some FS98 airliners that look just like popular freeware ones, redone with some animations, to fit FS2000. With the quality of today's freeware and payware jetliners, these just don't cut the cheese. I would feel rather unhappy, having to spend the $29.95 for airplanes you'd probably already have in your FS98 directory.

Airtours A320. Again, it shows its origins as an FS98 model.

All of the aircraft look pretty good in general with scaled parts and dimensions. However, the engines and other surfaces are not rounded as we have now. The engines are really "edgy" and once again, two year old design quality just doesn't look good compared to what we have now. The animations work well, but some of the nose wheel animations turn too far around the axis and actually pivot up in a weird fashion that looks like it's going to cost the airlines several hundred thousand dollars in repairs!

Stepping inside the Airbuses, you'll be disapointed by the purely FS98 designed panels. The gauges are right out of FS98! They don't even come close to the latest freeware Airbus panels available here at FlightSim.Com. They are ugly to look at, take up far too much of the viewing area, and have an odd loading issue. When looking around to the outside views, where there is not even artwork for the flightdeck, you'll get

Aer Lingus "Shamrock" A330. Nice paint job and overall look, but not for FS2000.
giant pauses for absolutely nothing to load. Usually, even in FS2000, loading a blank screen is fast, right? Not here. Loading a front corner view, again with nothing, takes 5 seconds on a PIII850! Even fancy artwork with other panels take only a second or two. This is just another example of some problem, that no one looked at, or any beta team found. How could this happen?

Well, let's try the "custom" sounds that are included with each airplane. The startup sounds are nonexistant. In fact, I could not even start each airplane using CTRL-E. I had to use the old CTRL-SHIFT-F4 then J+ etc. This is proof it's an FS98 airplane, converted to FS2000.

The engine running sounds are not true FS2000 sound sets. They are FS98 sound sets that run in FS2000. They don't contain nearly the large amount of files and configs that true FS2000 sound sets are. The only good thing, is that they sound fairly good at idle. As long as you don't advance power at all, they will always sound good!

CONCLUSION

FS98 Airbus A340 panel.

I want to thank Just Flight for sending me the package to review. But even for free, this flight simming nut removed the software in under an hour of having it installed. Everything was so outdated, combined with the poor view loading, that I had not even an interest in flying these birds. After testing the sounds with the brakes held tight, I gave up. The only thing this package did for me, was to give me a manual, with some handy performance data about each airplane. There are a lot of Airbuses included. If this had been a true, solid, made for FS2000 product, complete with sounds and everything, such as the Phoenix Simulation 777, it would have been one of the best releases of all year. So far, no one has a complete set of really great Airbuses for FS2000, complete with real panels and sounds. Whoever does it first, please do it right this time. We'd all appreciate that. I guess I'll go back into our file libraries, and search for some great Airbus jetliners, panels and sounds. I know I'll find ones worth at least $29.95.

Airbus 2000 Special Edition gets a 60 out of a possible 100 points.

Visit Just Flight for more information: Click Here

Visit Flight 1 Software: Click Here

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