Just Flight Cargo Pilot for FS2004

By Andrew Herd (23 September 2006)

ust Flight's Airliner Pilot is deservedly a big hit, tapping directly into the market of bored flight simmers who want to do something more than drill holes aimlessly about in the virtual sky. Bored simmers? Yep, the Achilles' heel of Flight Simulator has always been that once you have mastered the art of flying the default planes, bought some addon scenery, explored that, bought some complex addons planes and learnt how to use those, and flown the 747 inverted under the Golden Gate, there isn't much left. Sure, there is online flying and VATSIM and all that deal, but many simmers aren't into that, yet still need a challenge to keep their interest going. Airliner Pilot puts you on the bottom rung of an ATPL's career - to be exact, as the junior officer in the right hand seat of a turboprop - and sets the tough task of working all the way up through the ranks to 747 captain. The program works as an addon that manages your use of flight simulator, career progression being contingent on accurate flying and completed missions. Every flight begins in a smart virtual ops room, where all the admin necessary to handle your career and flying schedule takes place and once you are in the air, a little gadget called the 'route tracker' simultaneously keeps an eye on what you are up to and acts as a kind of mini-FMC.

Although it is possible to add extra planes into the Airliner Pilot's fleet, the addon is optimised for passenger transport operations and doesn't cater that well for freight dogs, so it was inevitable that Just Flight's thoughts would turn to a solution for the problem. The result is Cargo Pilot, which takes you all the way through a cargo pilot's career from a one-horse operation out in the boonies, to - you guessed it - Captain of a 747 freighter, although the career path you choose and the planes you fly are very much up to you. The addon I reviewed was supplied on a single DVD (note, not a CD), in the usual slim plastic case. Contents include a manual in English, French and German and a DVD.

Minimum system requirements are listed on the outside of the box as FS2004, Windows XP/2000, 512 Mb of RAM, a 1.7 Ghz processor, 250 Mb of hard disk space and a 32 Mb video card. What the box does not tell you is that you also have to install the Microsoft .net framework version 2.0, but this is included on the install disk. The manual takes an alternative view, stating that 130 Mb of disk space is needed, so you can take your pick - and as I am sure you are expecting me to add, the faster the PC you run the app on, the better your experience of it will be. When the installation had chuntered to an end, I found I had a new program group under the Just Flight menu, with links to the Cargo Pilot app itself and the 'CargoPaint Default Aircraft Livery Tool'. As anyone who has been following Alejandro Hurtado's excellent series will know, the major barrier to repainting is handling the format conversions involved and CargoPaint takes care of all of this for you, outputting the file to the graphics editor of your choice, from Microsoft Paint all the way up to Photoshop. In theory, users can share repaints between themselves and there is an upload facility to facilitate this on the Cargo Pilot website, but at the time I did the review there weren't any additional liveries available - which wasn't totally unexpected, given that the default Microsoft planes which form the bottom line for Cargo Pilot have been heavily targeted by the repainting community anyway.

The main manual runs to around 27 pages in each language and tells you more or less all you need to know about getting started on your new career; a smaller 14 page manual for CargoPaint being included as a pdf. A Cargo Pilot flight starts not by firing up FS2004, but by clicking on the Cargo Pilot icon in the Just Flight start menu group, taking you straight to the company office. Apart from the fact that it is inside a sectional building and has a Grand Caravan parked outside on the ramp, Airliner Pilot users will feel at home immediately - you click the desk to access the options menu; the window to manage your fleet; the map to get to the base management menu; the door to organise flights; and the filing cabinet to set up new pilots view flight logs and access (gulp) the financial reports. The first time Cargo Pilot runs, it takes a while to make a list of possible bases, which is a good opportunity to make a cup of coffee, or read the manual. A neat feature of the program is that as you move up in the world, so does your office improve, the hope being that if you keep your nose clean and work hard, you might escape from that container.

The first tasks after entering the office (remember to clean your shoes on the way out) is to click on the desk to set up your choice of language for Cargo Pilot to use; fix a currency conversion rate against the dollar, if you are flying outside the US; choose between various weather generation options (you can let Cargo Pilot make weather for you, fly with real weather, or use a third-party addon); select the number of flights to generate; and decide between the airport database selection options, which govern how Cargo Pilot manages starting ramp positions. The final option lets you choose whether to start FS2004 automatically after you exit Cargo Pilot - I recommend checking this, because it makes life a whole lot easier.

Now you have to click on the filing cabinets, create a new company and pilot, buy some planes and select a home base. You get some starting capital, which is enough to buy a plane or two, but here you hit the first snag - there isn't anywhere near enough to buy a Grand Caravan. The choice of planes includes any addons you have installed, which means that theoretically you can fly anything you have installed on your hard disk, but if you only possess the default set of aircraft, you will be limited to the Cessnas and they don't have much cargo carrying capacity (a 172 isn't really fit to take four people out of many airfields, let alone carry cargo). If you have any other addons installed - freeware/payware, Cargo Pilot doesn't care - it can short-circuit the process by giving you access to a little more carrying capacity, which will enhance your chances of making a profit, but newbies will have plenty of fun with the 172 and 182. Scrolling through the list on a system stacked with addons is an entertainment in itself, because Just Flight appear to have costed just about every aircraft in existence, including the Wilco A400M (no, you can't afford one of those). Once you have enough money, you can buy anything you want, although cargo ops in an F-104 may not be that profitable.

The next step is to click on the door, which opens up a the job options. This is the point at which your choice of home airport really begins to make a difference - if you chose Nowheresville, Boondocks County, where the nearest airstrip is a thousand miles to the west, the choice of flights will be limited and it will take you a long, long time to make enough cash to upgrade to that Caravan. On the other hand, if you were smart and chose somewhere surrounded by dozens of nearby airports, you will be able to shuttle back and forth making money on a series of short flights. The real killer would be if you had set all the options to hard and chose Nowheresville, because you will probably have to make each flight about a dozen times to earn a few miserable bucks. So my advice is to start somewhere near a center of population - you can always add more bases later, which will considerably extend your choice.

Cargo Pilot has a database which lists how much cargo each type of plane can carry and the volume of the hold, which means that when you select from the list of possible cargos it generates, you must bear in mind not only whether your plane can carry the weight, but whether it will fit in the hold and if that will allow you to uplift enough fuel to do the trip. At this point, some annoyances about the dialog layout notwithstanding, Cargo Pilot really begins to shine, because the applet brings home a horrible truth - most planes can't take a full load of cargo and a full load of fuel. So that attractive load of wet fish shown in the left hand screenshot in the second row ain't gonna get flown in the Beaver, because the plane is limited to a teaspoon full of fuel. The green bars show the various parameters affecting your ability to shift a cargo and make it possible to see at a glance what can be shifted and what cannot, although it would be handy if they changed color as parameters were exceeded. Potential cargos can be sorted by ICAO code, delivery date, category and weight, but the headline figure - the fee - is missing as a sort parameter, which sentences you to having to scroll through the list eyeballing what is on offer - like life, I guess. Needless to say, all the mouthwatering stuff always turns out to be too heavy, or needs ferrying too far, or takes up too much space for that humble first plane of yours to shift.

If your plane can handle a cargo and has the range to make the flight, clicking the accept button generates a plan with an option to print and you are set - I seriously suggest printing the flight plan, because if you don't, you might to find it tough to make a profit, because Cargo Pilot doesn't load the route into the FS planner and any deviations from it could end up costing you, should they result in you burning more fuel. If you left the start FS2004 option checked, Flight Simulator should start automatically and you will find yourself parked on the ramp with a cold and dark cockpit, ready to roll.

So you do the preflight, turn on the fuel and crank the ignition, but nothing happens, except for a lot of 'this engine ain't gonna take us very far' type noises, followed by silence. You switch on everything and try another start and then you get out and kick the tires and... hold on a second, we didn't dip the tanks.

Empty.

That's when I really began to like Cargo Pilot. Yep, in order to make a profit, you have to manage the fuel and filling the tanks cost bucks, just like it does in the real world. There are expenses to take account of and while the app doesn't go to the Nth degree trying to simulate these, it does a good enough job to introduce you to the hard old world of flying for money. If you don't treat the airplane properly, it will run up enormous maintenance bills; if you forget to lean, Avgas will eat you out of house and home; and if you use the Lear to do 500 buck (or Euros, or Kronor, or Pound, or Swiss Francs, or Australian or Canadian dollar) runs, you will go out of business pretty quick. A balance sheet is calculated at the end of every week and your choice of cargo and the precision with which you flew it will govern whether you make enough bread to move up to the Caravan you always wanted, or end up having to sell the 172 and hang up your flying helmet - the choice is yours.

Verdict? Much better than Airline Pilot, largely because of the much more sophisticated business modelling, which really does contribute to the experience. Cargo Pilot doesn't put a route tracker app in your face all the time, which was one of the things I didn't like about Airliner Pilot and adding planes is much easier in CP than it was in AP. With any luck, the nature of Cargo Pilot means that it won't take too much effort for Just Flight to patch it up to FSX standard and in my view, the sooner they get that done the better, or a lot of simmers are going to miss out on a great deal of fun. Almost a compulsory purchase for bush pilots, I would think - maybe Just Flight will get working on a bush pilot edition?