The SimFlyer Garmin GNS v3

[pessmitty]

I noticed that this product developed gauges for GNS 430 and 530 for FS2004. FS 2004 already has this fuctionality doesn't it? What advantage does this product actually offer?

[Bruce]

the GNS 530 is a completly different animal to the GPS500 based GPS unit with FS9, it has many more functions. although i am not aware of any gauges made by Simflyer, simflyers make loads of good scenery, do you mean one by Reality XP, although their "Flight Line 530XP" is v2

http://www.garmin.com/aviation/products.html

http://www.reality-xp.com/

do you have a link to the site you mean?

[StaTik]

http://www.simflyer.net/shop/

I orderd it and will let you know.

[Bruce]

looks pretty good, there is a freeware verison, but the textures don't look as good as the one you mention and the reality XP version as well as costing more does not include the GNS 430

[Bruce]

i decided to order it, with the value of the USD compared to the British Pound and what i had in my paypal account its costing me just over a fiver :)

[pessmitty]

Thanks, I guess I will go ahead and try it out.

[Qballbandit]

Bruce, have you tried the freeware version? I have the 435/530 freeware, but for the life of me can not get it to show up in my planes! I followed direction word for word, and re-read them, and re-installed it 5 times correctly, but can not get them visible...just wondering of you tried them :-hmmm

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/Use...da5ad61e56.jpg

[jason2112]

Okay, received my package about two hours ago. Some first impressions ...

Installation of the gauge package is done by an installer. I simply agreed to the default FS9 directory because I wanted to get things working quickly ;)

There don't seem to be any pre-modified panels included in the package, nor any panel modification program, so you have to do all the editing yourself. A short readme explains which lines to add to the panel.cfg to get a GPS popup window. No problem for me because I have tweaked a number of panels by hand already.

Besides the readme in txt format there is a PDF file that shows the click spots on both GNS units.

The first panel I tweaked was FSD's Navajo panel that already contains either the default GPS 500 or RealityXP's GNS 530. No big problems after I realized that I had to turn pause off in the sim (it was automatically paused because I had switched to my editor) so the GNS 530 initializes properly when turned on (default is power off).

Keith's GNS 530 is clearly based on the default GPS 500 gauge. I normally use RealityXP's 530XP, so I'm not too familiar with the default unit. It seems that Keith has added (at least) a new surrounding bitmap, the NAV/COM unit that distinguishes the real life GNS 530 from the GPS 500, a switchable waypoint information bar at the right side of the map (or is it there in the default as well?), and a seperate waypoint information page with CDI indicator. Please correct me if I made any omissions or credited something to the new gauges that's alread there in the default! This is not a review, just a first personal impression!

The GNS 430 has about the same features as the 530, but a smaller map display area. The map is extremely crowded unless you zoom in very far or take out a lot of information by pressing "clr" several times.

Both gauges don't have built in click spots to pop up a bigger version, but there's an additional transparent gauge included that does just that. Aligning this gauge may become a bit tricky ...

Okay, that's it for now from me. I'll continue to fiddle around especially with the GNS 430. I have added this gauge to my RealAir Scout, but I have not added the transparent popup spot yet. Tomorrow I'll try to determine whether the GNS 430's small map area is still usable, and how I like flying the Scout with it.

Just my 2c (EUR),

VOlker :]