F-Lite Airbus Collection
By Eric van der Veen (11 October 2006)
A new Just
Flight product has arrived! In a move to thwart Boeing’s seeming dominance
in the Flight Simulation domain, there are now an
Airbus Collection and an
A340
package. In this review we’ll take a closer look at the Airbus collection
package. The package consists of the Airbus A300-600, A310, A300-600ST Beluga
and A310 military derivatives. The Airbus collection was developed by Commercial Level Simulations, who
also sells each of the aircraft individually. Just Flight packed it into the
F-LITE series, describing this as very high in quality and yet easy to operate.
Avoiding cliff-hangers, let me state now that this is a proper description
indeed. Just Flight is properly telling you what you get. It’s a package for
those moving away from the default aircraft on their way to complex systems.
It’s also for those who don’t want to read through the manual or program the
FMC to get underway. So in this review I won’t come down hard on hardcore
realism.
But first, let’s delve
into Airbus history for a moment or two.
Airbus Genesis
In the beginning the earth
was void and dark. Then there were early aircraft and then there was Boeing,
and Boeing dominated the world. Meanwhile, in Europe, Aerospatiale, CASA,
DaimlerChrysler and British Aerospace formed the Airbus consortium, which now resides
under the enormously big EADS Company. They started off and first designed and
built the Airbus A300, which has become a great success and sold to many parts
of the world. Since then, Airbus has slowly overtaken the market with a wide
range of aircraft and outranked Boeing commercial aircraft sales in 2005.
Presently the Battle of Giants is extremely fierce, with Boeing once again
taking lead. Read your newspapers and magazines, ladies and gentlemen, for a
daily update.
The A300, for those
unfamiliar with Airbus, is very roughly comparable in size and range to the
Boeing 767. It actually was the first true two-engine wide-body. The initial versions
are the A300B2, -B4, and FF. 249 were built. The A300-600 is a more modern
version with 2-man electronic cockpit and numerous other improvements. Roughly
300 of those A300-600’s have been ordered. Versions include an extended range
-600R and freighter -600F. The A300 is offered with both CFM and PW engines.
From the early
A300B-series, Airbus developed the A310 aircraft. Slightly shorter than the
A300, it really marked the start of the fly-by-wire concept for Airbus. The
abovementioned A300-600 series was developed using experience gained from the
A310. Airbus sold around 300 A310’s. The A310 is offered with CFM and PW
engines.
Building on the success of
these aircraft, Airbus adopted them into special versions. Due to Airbus’
scattered facilities across Europe, major subassemblies (wings, fuselages) need
to be transported between sites such as Filton (UK), Hamburg (GE) and Toulouse
(FR). To be able to do this, Airbus modified several A300-600’s into the
A300-600ST Beluga. The Beluga is a bulky aircraft that cannot escape your
attention and will cause jaw-dropping. Simply put, it’s an A300-600 with
lowered cockpit, and a huge circular cargo hold replacing the upper half of the
fuselage.
The A310 forms the basis
for several military aircraft. Just Flight’s package includes the demonstrator
aircraft for the EADS air-to-air refueling boom (currently offered on the
A330), the German MRTT multi-role transport tanker, and the Canadian Air Force
CC-150 transporter/tanker.
The package and installation
The Just Flight package
comes as a boxed DVD, but is also available as a download version. I used the
boxed version for this review. Now make sure you understand what you are
buying. Let me dissect the package for you. If you include the liveries, it’s
more than 30 aircraft with a different appearance. However, essentially they
are two aircraft: the A300 and A310. How does this work out? Disregarding the
liveries (official and unofficial repaints are available from Commercial Level
Simulations), there are 5 basic types:
- A300-600R
- A300-600 ST Beluga
- A310-200 (in passenger and freighter versions)
- A310-300 (in passenger and freighter versions),
and -308
- A310-304 (military versions)
Installation is straightforward using a standard automated install
routine. No fuzz, no problems. Total installed space for the aircraft, liveries
and sounds is around 1.9 Gb.
The DVD package comes with
a compact operations manual and Just Flight product catalogue to further
appetite your FS needs with some excellent titles. The manual isn’t the best
I’ve seen. It does give you a compact instruction for all phases of flight, but
is also contradictive and incomplete at some points. For example, numerous
references are made to approach speeds to use, such as Vref+10 and Vref+20.
Nowhere, however, is a table to find Vref for various weights. Also, at some
point the manual says you should flare on landing, at another point it says you
shouldn’t. Again, the package is not supposed to come with a 500-page
operations manual. But specifically those simmers moving up from default
aircraft may need this sort of help in a good manual. So there’s definitely a
point of improvement here.
Features
I spent some time to
unravel the feature list, to make absolutely clear to you what you are getting.
According to the manual, there are many features, but they are described to be
spread across the different aircraft. Let me comfort you… as far as I’ve found
all the generic features (pushback truck, wing flex, VC, contrails) apply to
all models. Some models have an inherently unique feature (nose cargo door on
the Beluga, refueling boom on the EADS tanker, etc.).
I was however unable to
detect the advertised wet runway effect, tail scrape sparks and others, which
are all standard FS effect files. They just seem to fail to be activated.
On the upside, I liked the
effect of lifeless control surfaces (ailerons and elevator) when there’s no
hydraulic power. When you shut down the engines, these surfaces slowly drop to
their fully down position. Nicely done!
As to dynamic wing flex,
it’s there as advertised. However it’s barely noticeable as the wing bends up
just a bit. Now this is extremely well done…if you bear in mind that the A300’s
wing span 45 meters span will just not flex a whole lot in normal flight. Put
it in perspective between a B747 which has clearly visible wingtip bending at a
60 meter span and a B737-600 which has hardly any visible bending at all with a
span of 35 m. So it’s actually very realistic, but provides for marginal eye
candy. I had to do several dedicated take-off runs to see it.
The pushback truck,
opening doors, stairway and refueling boom or hose are all nicely done.
The outside
The aircraft all look
good. They capture the Airbus looks well, and give a good impression on being
large aircraft. The wings shine in the sun, windows light up at night and are
coupled to the landing light. That’s actually quite nice, if gives the effect
that people wake up by the time you get to the landing phase. The crew is
visible in the cockpit. Really, the longer I had these models, the more enjoyed
looking at them.
Some small imperfections
are visible. Upon braking the nose wheel slightly sinks into the ground rather
than the strut moves. And the main gear does not properly rotate on touchdown
and liftoff. The gear does look good, with sufficient detail. The gear
retraction and flap/slat movement are nicely animated as are the spoilers and
ailerons. The landing lights drop down from the wing underside. Most of the
antennae seem to be there and most of the signs and stickers, and there’s no
signs of use (soot stain, wear & tear).
Just Flight included
Flight One’s “F1 view
utility” with the package. This basically is a small tool to manipulate the
external and VC viewpoint in a way that default FS2004 cannot do. It is a
freeware program that is not as versatile as Active Camera, but I’ve been using
it with satisfaction for years.
The liveries are all
good-looking and from various parts of the world, including freighter versions.
Inside the Beluga, if you open the nose cargo door, you can see the fuselage of
a new Airbus-in-the-works.
The aircraft come with both GE and PW engines, and you can see the differences
between them.
The inside
Inside there is a 2D
cockpit that seems identical for all versions. The 2D cockpit shows the
character of the package. There’s is not a whole bunch of sub-panels to call
up. Most, if not all, functions can be accessed from the main forward cockpit
view. There is a center pedestal, but no overhead or flight engineer's panel.
Remember, this package was not meant as a maximum-complexity model. The only
main missing item (or, I didn’t find it) is the main power switch. So it’s back
to the old ‘shift-M’ to switch the machine on.
The 2D cockpit has a nice
complex look, with several switches not clickable. It’s a major move from the
default aircraft to more complex add-ons. I particularly like the purple engine
data. The PFD is functional, but lacks some of the advanced features such as
stall speeds and flap speeds. The gauges run smooth and allow for precise
control. Some of the text is unclear or blurry, but maybe that’s because of my
resolution setting of 1600x1200. Interestingly, I think there is a small
typo….the gear indicator lights seems to says ‘FALE’ rather than ‘FAIL’….
I feel that the view from
the cockpit is somewhat low and gives poor visibility during approach. Make
sure to keep your speed well up to keep sight of the runway, even with full
flaps. In the Beluga, the low cockpit gives a feel as if you’re in a small
aircraft, so low above the ground you are. I’m glad the guys at CLS thought of
that. The autopilot resembles the default A/P and operates similarly. However,
the Airbus is capable of auto-land which I found to work well.
The VC is less perfect, with
the overhead and center pedestal being blurry. This is not a big deal, because
there are no operative switches there anyway, the front panel switches can
operated from the VC. The VC is primarily there to give you the ‘flying
feeling’. The update rate of gauges is a bit on the low side (at around 4 Hz on
my system) so manually flying the aircraft from the VC on approach and landing
is a bit of a challenge.
If you choose the models
with wing view, you’ll have the wing view instead of the VC. The VC seems to be
identical to all models, just as the 2D-panel.
Flight model
And now…for something
completely different. Let’s fly!
First of all, the aircraft
have a nice and credible ‘heavy’ feel to them. I did not go at length to
compare the various flight models; I assume they have a common basis with
modifications for aircraft size and weight.
You need to anticipate a
bit more than with the default aircraft, but once accustomed to they are easily
flown. They seem slightly overpowered, achieving very high climb rates even at
maximum weight. At the same time however, the start of the take-off roll is
nicely ‘sluggish’ and the aircraft take a bit of time to accelerate. Also, the
aircraft will decelerate on descent and idle power. You can achieve descent
rates of up to 3000 fpm in clean configuration and at 330,000 lbs weight,
without acceleration. So all in all, the flight model seems fairly well
balanced. On approach, take care not to let the speed drop too far. The flaps
give quite a bit of drag and you’ll loose sight of the runway quickly due to a
nose-high attitude.
The aircraft also handle
well with one engine inoperative. I made a manual approach and landing with
relative ease.
I was less pleased with
the stall. The aircraft will stall without any significant stall warning.
There’s no nose-down tendency, so take care. You’ll have a nose-up attitude and
a MAJOR sink rate, and hence no airspeed recovery. I was (unrealistically) able
to stall the aircraft with the speed dropping to below 40 kts before the
aircraft dropped a wing and stalled truly and fully.
I did like the braking on
the ground, it’s not nearly as powerful as default aircraft, so you may be
slightly more excited in the roll-out on smaller airfields.
The package includes a
custom sound set, which is very good indeed. Although there are no differences
between the PW and GE aircraft, there’s a nice combination of whine and roar
from both inside and outside. There are also some sounds associated with the
opening and closing of doors, and wind noise when the gear doors are open. The
only minor issue I found was that the engine sound doesn’t quite stop after
you’ve shut down the engines.
Summary
All in all, a good piece
of work. CLS/Just Flight did as advertised. They sell you a great looking set
of aircraft at an ‘intermediate’ level of complexity. It’s perfect for those
stepping up from default aircraft towards complexity, and for quick ‘kick the
tires & go’ flights without further ado. The 2D panel, VC and exterior are
easy on the frame rates which makes the models suitable as AI traffic should
you want so. The sounds are impressive and credible. The aircraft are easy to
fly, but are of more complexity than the default aircraft.
There are some minor
comments for example on the manual, flight model and panels. But they don’t
take away the fun and enjoyment of flying these aircraft. Remember, you get the
A300, A310 and Beluga, and each of their variants for £29.99 / €44.99 / $44.99.
Happy landings!
Eric ‘FSnerd’ van der Veen
mailto:fsnerd@tiscali.nl
Learn More Here
Test system specs
FS9.1, Win XP SP1
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
1 Gb RAM, ATI Radeon
9600XT
Dell 2001FP 20,1”
1600x1200
