Background:

I have been flying a Firebird Freedom for about six months (first plane, never flown before that), and I have never owned a sim (only spent a few hours on a a buddies' G2 and a little time at the LHS). I was given a Typhoon 3D for my birthday, but am scared to death to fly it, so I went to the LHS to purchase a sim to get some "stick time" in before I took my Ty3D for its maiden flight. At my LHS, I looked at G3 and was ready to buy it, when the owner told me about a new product he just got called FSOne. After looking at them both, he told me that he would sell the FSOne to me at a $30 discount, because it was going on sale soon (to help spur interest in the new product). After noticing that FSOne had many planes from the same company as my planes, I bought it. My computer is a 2.8GHz P4, 4 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 w/ 128 MB running WinXP MCE 2005.

Reactions:

Out of the box, I had no problems installing the product. I think it would have been nicer to put the product on 1 DVD instead of 4 CDs. Anyone who is going to have the requirements to run this sim is going to have a DVD drive, or can spring for the $10 to get one. This may help with the install times, as you won't have to worry about disc swapping, and maybe not have to compress install files so much. Anyway, it took about 45 minutes to install. I followed the instructions on the card for setting up the TacCon controller which was a piece of cake.

I first started off with a little freestyle with the AeroBird Extreme, as this was the plane that closely resembled my Freedom. It felt very much the same, and flew very much the same. The only thing is that I can never hand launch that smoothly in my life, and the plane goes almost strait in the air, which, if I did that in real life, it would crash just as fast.

I then moved to the training. I thought the beginning lessons were great, but I would like to have been able to jump to practicing the moves right away, set up with the same equipment as the instructor. Instead, I had to back out, set it up manually, and then practice. I did find, however, that I was able to handle the trainer aircraft really easily after a few tries, and could take off, perform turns, and land sucessfully. The landing lessons were the best. I was even able to do torque rolls fairly smoothly after only an hour! I was looking through the advanced lessons, and noticed there was nothing about hovering. That is a shame, as I know that it a basic 3D maneuver.

I like the graphics very much. Of course, I have a 5 foot screen with my projector, so it felt VERY life like. I even stand up and move around a little, just like when I fly my real plane. I didn't think, however, that they were no better (or worse) than what I saw with G3 at the LHS. I think, perhaps, this may be a limit of OS / Graphics availabilty with today's machines, and I assume this will improve quickly.

It seems that the only things that break when you crash are the propeller and wings. The wheels, fuselage, and tail alway remain in tact, which I'm sure is not the case in real life. Maybe some work can be done in this area, but I guess a crash is a crash.

Overall, I really liked the experience with FSOne, and I am really glade I purchased it. It has given me a lot more confidence to fly my Ty3D soon. I wish there was a Ty3D model in the sim, so there is my feature request. It is a really popular plane, also made by Horrizon, so it should be in there.

Thanks for putting out a really great product right out of the gate! I have been reading the threads here about FSOne, and it seems the developers are really intent on helping as quickly as possible. If there are any questions you want to ask me, from my newbie prospective, please feel free to ask!

Thanks,

MacBoyRules in SLC

(Yes, bummed that I have to have a PC to run this. I guess if you made everything available on the Mac, who would buy PC's anymore?