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Abacus released the original Commuter Xpress package back in May 2004, which brought an ATR-72, a CRJ-700, a BAE-146, a Beech 1900D and a Boeing 757 to FS2004. One of the longest established FS developers, Abacus have been around since 1978 and have become well known for their multi-aircraft addons, including the classic Private Pilot - and Corporate Pilot, which had its flaws, but sold well, because the planes were well-chosen. There was no doubt that Private Pilot was the better of the pair, because the cockpits had had a lot more attention paid to them and looked much more real; our reviewer's comment on Corporate Pilot being that the panels were a bit 'FS98-ish'. That was eight years ago, when if you saw a multi-aircraft addon, you knew what to expect - attractive visual models with FS98-ish panels that usually made the default planes look good. Private Pilot stood out from the crowd because it bucked the trend of 'never mind the quality, feel the width' that was so prevalent then and gave you a set of planes that were better than the default aircraft at a price that was hard to resist.
The trouble with multi-aircraft addons is that a compromise has to be made somewhere along the line, because it isn't possible to charge premium rates for these packages. Predictably, the economies usually end up being made in the panels, because not only does it take longer to code and debug gauges than it does to develop a visual model, but there is a shortage of gauge developers and a relative over-supply of people who can create planes. So publishers are faced with a no-brainer decision and as a reviewer, I more or less know what I am going to be looking at when a multi-plane pack thuds onto the doormat before I get around to peeling off the shrink-wrap. So, is Commuter Xpress 2 any different? After all, it has been around for four years now, which is time enough to get the bugs out and shoehorn in some eye-candy and add in the virtual cabin pressurization every red-blooded simmer hankers after. Will Commuter Xpress 2 pass the test of running on FSX SP2? Will it crash Vista SP1? Will Andrew's socks blow off with the sheer excitement of it all? Stay tuned for another cliff-hanging instalment of FS Addon Review.
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The package comes in a DVD-style case, which contains a single CD-ROM; a couple of pieces of card, one of which is a quick-start guide, the other of which has the serial number printed on it; and a 31 page monochrome English language manual. The first part of the booklet explains how commuter airlines and the hub-and-spoke system they are tied into works, following which there is a few pages devoted to the development and operational history of each of the six planes included in the package; an ad for Abacus' CoPilot product; and four plates, two of which are for Chicago O'Hare and two of which are for Charles de Gaulle. I would love to know why the plates are in there - I suspect the reason was to fill up four pages that would otherwise have had to have been left blank, because the plates appear to have been randomly selected and, given the size of the booklet, are something of a challenge to read, particularly the airport diagrams, which are absolutely tiny.
Until recently, the original Commuter Xpress was still available and would have been a bargain if you did not plan on upgrading to FSX. However, Commuter Xpress 2 FSX has a completely different selection of planes, the only real overlap being the CRJ and even that is a -900 in Commuter Xpress 2 for FSX, the older pack featuring the -700 version, which is, of course, one of the default planes in FSX. So I guess FS2004 users could construct a case for buying both versions, which would get you ten addon planes and eleven if you count both variants of the CRJ. And, just in case you thought you had it all straight in your head, there used to be a version known as Commuter Xpress 2, which only ran on FS2004 - this can be upgraded to Commuter Xpress 2 for FSX, but only via the Abacus website.
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I couldn't find a minimum system spec anywhere, which, for reasons which will become clear later in the review, is because the planes in Commuter Xpress 2 for FSX probably stress the system less than the default aircraft. For what it is worth, I did the review on a 2.66 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 GB of RAM, a 768 Mb GeForce 8800GTX, Windows Vista SP1 and FSX SP2 and the CX2 planes ran at flat-out frame rates throughout - so if your PC can run FSX, it can run this, and the addon should fairly scream along on an FS2004/XP setup. No patches were available on the Abacus website and no version number was given on the CD. The first bug I came across is that some of the planes do not skin if the DX10 preview is enabled in FSX SP2, so if you like to have that enabled by default, this addon may not be for you.
Installation is straight forward, given that all you have to do is stick the CD in the drive, decide which version of Flight Simulator you want to install the addon into, enter a serial code and then follow the prompts. When it was done, a new Abacus Commuter Xpress 2 FSX program group appeared on the Start Menu, containing links to a Word readme and the CX2 for FSX applet, of which more in a second. The readme describes how to use the applet and also gives the low-down on the 'ground handling unit', a neat little gauge that gives you total control over pushback and taxiing speed; right at the end are the credits, which tell us that Barry Blaisdell and Bob May did the Dash-8, the CRJ-900 and the EMB-190, Brian Gladden did the Saab 340, Massimo Taccoli and Dennis Seeley did the Fairchild/Dornier 328 prop and jet, and Ed Knapp and Barry did all the paint schemes between them.
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The CX2 for FSX applet gives users an easy way to choose an aircraft and set up a flight: first you select which airline you wish to fly; then you select a departure airport from the list associated with that airline; then you select a destination; then a departure time from the choices available; and finally you choose an aircraft, before hitting the 'fly now' button, which loads Flight Simulator. The applet provides some basic data about the flight, but the neatest thing about it is that when the aircraft appears at the gate in Flight Simulator, a flight plan is already loaded in the GPS. The one problem with the applet was that, for some unfathomable reason, it extended the load time for FSX tremendously if I launched a flight using it; it was hard to say whether this problem was due to FSX, one of the FSX service packs, Vista, or the addon itself, but it seems to run much faster on FS2004.
Bearing in mind you are getting six planes for the price of one in the addon, the visual models are okay, although none of them exactly set the imagination alight. The polygon count is relatively low, which keeps the frame rates up, but means that the planes look a bit bland and you have to go without the super-detailing that we have come to expect on better FS addon planes. Animations are limited, although all the planes have at least one opening door. Other reasons why the frame rates are so good is that the cabin windows are opaque, the gear is basic and you don't get 32 bit textures, but for the money, you aren't being robbed - although you aren't getting a bargain either. The Saab doesn't even scrape over the bar, because despite being the most basic of all the visual models, its props appear as black disks with missing segments in FSX - which is one of the things about this addon that makes me wonder if anyone actually checked how the package looked before they stuck the 'Flies Great With FSX' sticker on the outside of the box.
The panels. Ummm... The 2D panels are a bit FS98-ish and the virtual cockpits (VCs) could be improved upon, especially in the Fairchild/Dornier 328, where the segments of panel directly in front of the pilots have an unusual see-through effect, which is tremendously useful for judging height on landing, but could do with fixing. Although the gauges are in general up to the standards of the default planes, the panel graphics are fairly low resolution and most of the VCs lack any kind of perspective effect, making them look like, er, FS98 panels. The one glowing exception to this is the Bombardier CRJ, which by comparison to the other planes in the pack has the most fantastic 2D panel... although it looks strangely familiar, the reason being that it is the 2D panel 'borrowed' from the default CRJ. On the other hand, the VC in the CRJ-900 isn't from the FSX CRJ and suffers from exactly the same problem as the Commuter Xpress 328, with parts of the panel being transparent, although this time the good news is that you can't see out through the nose of the plane.
I didn't spend a lot of time on the flight models, for reasons I am sure you can understand, but suffice it to say that the planes can all be flown and landed.
You have already heard the sound sets: the CRJ is aliased to the default 737 (why not the default CRJ?); the Dash 8 and the Saab to the King Air; the Embraer to the default CRJ; the Fairchild/Dornier 328 jet to the 737 and the 328 prop to the default Cessna 208.
Verdict? Abacus have done much better than this - being charitable, it could be that the prop and panel bugs are caused by incompatabilities with the FSX service packs, but the universal aliasing of the sound and the quality of the panel graphics disappointed this reviewer. Even allowing for this, of the six planes in Commuter Xpress 2 FSX, three have show-stopping bugs in this release, so wait for the patch.
Andrew Herd
andy@flightsim.com
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