Legacy V.2 – RealAir does it again

[graaant]

Have been waiting for someone’s views on the forum on RealAir’s revised Legacy, but finally decided to go for it myself.

 

Maybe it was the winter blahs, but this one came on slowly. After ten minutes’ flying, though, it dawned that this was a whole new level of realism compared to V.1 -- the sounds richer, more subtle, the visuals more eye-catching, the external view more distinctive, the flight dynamics more tangible and refined, side-slipping wind more full and compelling, etc. … the aircraft overall clearly more real, alive, immersive, as if, across the spectrum, a new dimension had been added to the original. A really superb upgrade.

 

A nice new feature of V.2 is oxygen and, if you don’t respond to the cockpit warning at altitude, hypoxia, indicated by the onset of heavy breathing sounds. A2A, RealAir’s only real competitor, also have this feature, but I have to say that I find it pretty weird, ghostly – as if someone had popped up to do your breathing for you, blowing the sense of immersiveness. I’ve no idea of what it would take to program, but it seems that the FSX blackout effect, coming on fairly slowly, giving one time to react, would be more realistic, less disruptive. Bottom line, though: the Legacy is a brilliant GA aircraft that climbs to above 20K without real effort.

 

To check my impressions of the new version, did a short flight in the Legacy V.1. Sure enough, a model that had always been a delight to fly seemed suddenly flatter, more abstract, less fun. In this simmer’s opinion, with its new features, upgrades and spectacular new liveries, the Legacy V.2 is a thing of much enhanced beauty and realism, in my book the finest and most fun GA aircraft out there.

 

Postcript: Finally got to reading the manual, to find that RealAir has truly done it again -- having pioneered side-slipping, inertial effects, etc. they've included the first true, rudderless spin with the model, another breakthrough. It takes some tweaking of the Aircraft Realism sliders, plus a bit of up trim, to get the spin to kick in, but there it is: a model that was very impressive goes up another notch.