Anyone have Flight 1 Cessna 441 Conquest?

[anthony31]

I am looking for a new aircraft and the Flight 1 Cessna 441 Conquest has caught my eye, however, as I have a slow computer I would like to know what sort of frame rates I can expect (especially in the virtual cockpit). I've checked the Flight 1 website but I couldn't find any minimum specs.

Just for reference I have the Just Flight flying club and the Flight 1 Piper Meridian which I find have acceptable frame rates in the VC (only a bit slower than the default aircraft) so I would be interested to know if the Conquest is faster, the same or slower than these aircraft.

Thanking you in advance for any help you can provide.

[alastairmonk]

Hi !

If you can fly the Flight1 Meridian you should see similar frame rates for the C441 Conquest.

As with all Flight1 products, if you don't like the results there is the 30-day Refund as an option, however most customers for the C441 are very happy with it ! I certainly enjoyed my time Beta testing it !

Alastair

[klemenz]

Hi-

I purchased the Flight 1 Cessna 441 Conquest. It's a nice plane.

I'm not computer knowledgeable enough to comment on frame rates performance and such. My machine "bogs" down when I approach major air centers or highly detailed scenery. I can't say how much is attributable to the plane and how much is due to the scenery. I just "live" with it.

I felt the landing gear was a little "skimpy" in appearance, but the designer probably knows better than me. He/she probably had technical specs and drawings available.

If I could modify the plane, that's the only thing I'd change.

Regards...

[anthony31]

thanks for the info Klemenz and Alastair. It sounds like it should be okay on my system. Just for a bit of info here is a comparison of a few aircraft I have and the frame rates I achieve in the VC with position and zoom optimised for the best viewing (these were done on the runway at Biggs AAF with no weather or traffic to interfere with the CPU).

Default Beech Baron 58: 36-38 fps
Just Flight Flying Club Piper Seneca: 36-37 fps
Kust Flight Flying Club Cessna 152: 33-34 fps
Just Flight Spitfire: 26-27 fps
Flight1 Piper Meridian: 28-30 fps
freeware Aero Design AC52: 35-36 fps (occasionally drops to 27)
freeware Socata TBM700: 30-31 fps

[Soundwhiz]

Minimum reqs are never accurate.

[zfehr]

>Minimum reqs are never accurate.

Actually "minimum requirements" falls into a category of a legal term which is quite accurate. It means what is the minimum computer requirements to open the program itself, has nothing to do with how the program will run once open. Manufacturers suggested or recommended requirements will give a better picture of how your system will perform with the software in question.

[Soundwhiz]

Yes, true. Regardless, most people read that as how it will perform. It's nasty little trick, but as you say, legal.

If I was a developer I would base my system reqs on what it would take to run it at, say, a modest 24 fps. But, hey, "this ain't Burger King" as they said in boot camp.

[Garrovick]

I have three of Flight1's aircraft. I find the Cessna 441 Conquest's minimum requirements to be quite accurate, as are the 172r's and the PC-12's staying within the 2-D cockpit using the keyboard instead of the pop up windows and the virtual cockpit.

As an experienced flight simmer, I realize that when we start using virtual cockpits and pop up windows we are actually running additional software that takes up additional CPU/GPU power.

I don't see any inaccuracies. (even in MS's fantasy world of minimal system requirements for FSX.)

[Soundwhiz]

Yes, but this is of course something that varies from product to product, system to system. One could certainly pull back on the sliders and end up with satisfactory performance. But nobody wants to do that. Maxed out no matter what seems to be the melody of most on the forums, and people want their products to look exactly like the screen shots at Simmarket. And after the purchase comes the inevitable griping about performance. Take as an example Aerosoft's Seahawk and Boxer package, maybe the most resource hungry addon developed. People bought that because they had read that all that was required to run, sorry, start the product was an ordinary P4 at 2,5 GHz, 512 MB RAM and, my favorite, a 64 mb graphics card. One comment about the Seahawk was;

"The seahawk doesn't only kill terrorists or drug loaded speedboats, it also kills frame rates. I have a p4 3.2 GHz HTT machine with a 128 MB graphics card 1 GB of RAM but flying near the boxer is 6-7 FPS only."

A developer wouldn't tolerate that kind of performance from a product he has laboured over. He would want the user to experience it the way it was intended. He would list realistic sys reqs. They would not list what is required to start the product, but to run it with fairly decent graphics settings in FS. People don't want to run their sims without anti-aliasing, anistropic filtering, 3d clouds and so forth. Why post sys reqs that reflect such settings?

Come to think of it, I would probably also put a super low spec computer in the sys reqs of my product. After all, one wants to make a sale right? Of course one does. And it's legal!
:+

[alastairmonk]

The biggest "problem" is that what qualifies as "acceptable" will vary from user to user. Some are happy to stay mostly in the 2D Cockpit at around 20-25fps, others will not be satisfied unless they have smooth frame rates in the VC.

Given that each system will be unique, in terms of, principally, processor power, system RAM, graphics card and "slider settings", ultimately, the only real way to check is to get the plane, fly in the surroundings that are "normal" to you and see for yourself.

Minimum specifications are just that - the minimum needed to run. Most experienced simmers realise that these are quite different to "acceptable" specifications. However "acceptable" is a highly fluid, subjective criteria. At best, others can only report how it behaves on their system and by their standards.

In most cases there is not any intention to deceive, either by developers or other users, but it is next to impossible to second-guess what all the varied users are going to be satisfied with. In most cases I suspect that the benchmark will be whether it does reasonably well on their own system and that of the Beta Testers. If all reports are essentially favourable, and given that no product can ever be perfect, at some point the decision has to be made to stop development and release the product. If, after release, a systematic shortfall is found most of the better developers will release a patch. For most products with over a year since any updates you can safely assume that most users find it "acceptable". For those that don't, there is the refund.

Alastair