S-Combo for FS (Dave March)
By FlightSim.Com Staff (19 May 2001)
dding that "little extra" to your virtual world. That's the motto for Dave March's S-Combo program for Flightsim. More appropriately would be changing the "little" to a lot of extra. This is one of those once-a-year freeware releases that all serious flightsimmers should have, regardless of what type of simming you do. This program is so fantastic, and so flawless in its operation, you'll be scratching your head saying "is this guy nuts? Why wouldn't he be charging for something this good?" Luckily for us, that's the beauty of freeware. This stand alone environmental enhancer (S-Combo is for Stand Alone Combination) is the best I have ever seen! It adds random ATC, scheduled cabin announcements by the flight crew, co-pilot callouts and checklists, airport sounds, and a GPWS (ground proximity warning system). What more could any virtual airline pilot need on his flights? This is something I have been wanting for years, but in the past have always had to settle for either just cabin announcements, just ATC chatter, just co-pilots, or just a GPWS. I had always found AETI's ProFlight 2000 a bit daunting for me, and this add-on is fast and easy to use for Simpletons like myself. In my week of testing, I have found no flaws, and have received only hours of endless fun and enjoyment added to my airliner flights.
Within minutes of installation, you'll be able to go to the main options page and quickly figure out what to do. All the options are presented right in front of you and you can customize stuff the way you want, right off the bat (if only Burger King had a menu like this, you'd never get the wrong order!). The only thing that got me was the time delay boxes that correspond to the seconds between playing each random ATC wav file, airport sounds, or cabin crew announcement. I didn't know it was in seconds, so the first few days my airport sounds played on top of each other or too close together. Ever since spacing the timing out for ATC chatter to at least 25 seconds and the same for airport sounds (more like 90 seconds or more works better as how often do planes really take off near you?), everything plays realistically and when it "should". As you can see from the screen shots here, setting up your personal configurations is a piece of cake. Once done, all you have to do is to hit the [Connect to FS] button once FS is booted up. S-Combo will start at once and run in the background. Please note, S-Combo does require FSUIPC by Pete Dowson to operate. However, this is a good thing, is FSUIPC is another MUST HAVE utility that no flightsimmer should live without! Shame, Shame if you don't use FSUIPC! (If you don't know why you need FSUIPC, read our review.)
Since installing S-Combo, I have downloaded almost every ATC wav file known to mankind. Over a GIG worth of ATC wav files must be sittin' in my S-Combo/ATC wav directory, waiting to be played. This way, all my flights have unlimited chatter running in the background, from all over the world. I can set up the slider for lot's o' talk or very little, depending on where I am in the world. Same thing goes for the airport background sounds. And the co-pilot callouts can also be customized for various weights. Since these days I fly the Wilco 767-300 so much, I find S-Combo the icing on the cake for this ultimate heavy jet simulation. Again, you could use it when flying a Skylane too.
I am happy to report S-Combo does nothing to hurt FS performance either. In fact, I have been running several additional sound utilities and chatter programs at the same time I use S-Combo, and find no conflict or performance issues whatsoever. With such an easy program, delivering so much additional realism with no performance issues, it's easy to give S-Combo a perfect score! Yet, I can only think future versions might be able to offer hotkeys that play sound effects when requested, something where users could import their own sound effects, to be launched with a keystroke. And then, there is always room for improvement, however so slight in this case. S-Combo deserves a 98 out of 100 possible points. The highest score given to any freeware utility. Congratulations Dave!
Visit the FlightSim.Com File Library for Dave March's S-Combo program.
Visit the FlightSim.Com File Library for FSUIPC by Pete Dowson.