ORIGINAL: bigedmustafa
I'm surprised you describe RC Plane Master as more realistic than ClearView. RC Plane Master/RC Flight Master looks to be an attempt to take the FMS source code and punch it up with a nice menu and a few new bells and whistles to sell it commercially, nothing more. I downloaded the demos for both Plane Master and Flight Master and found them to be very disappointing.
ClearView, on the other hand, I found to have surprisingly good physics. The demo version comes with the 4-channel trainer as flyable, and I found it to feel far more realistic than trainers on even more expensive flight simulators.
To be blunt, I normally fly Real Flight G3.5. I recently registered ClearView to unlock the full flight sim, and I find it superior to RealFlight G3.5 in several ways.
Trainer flight physics on ClearView feel more realistic to me. The trainer floats in very naturally and exhibits fairly accurate gliding characteristics. On RF G3.5, cutting the Nexstar to half throttle causes it to drop like a rock and it seems barely flyable.
I'm no helicopter expert, but I've found the helicopters in ClearView to be modelled as well as RealFlight G3.5. I expected that helis might be a weak point with ClearView, but it doesn't appear so.
Indoor flying physics feel much more realistic to me with ClearView. I flew the E-Flight Tribute around inside a gymnasium on ClearView for about 30 minutes and was delighted with how realistic it felt. To compare it, I loaded up RealFlight G3.5 and flew the FlatOut Cap580 inside the Athletic Club gymnasium, with both airframe and flying site on G3 Expansion Pack #1. I actually laughed out loud when I first went to take off with the Cap580 and felt how far off the physics were on RealFlight G3.5 compared to ClearView.
Clearview is a terrific flight simulator with good graphics and a wide array of accurate flying models. It is an absolute bargain at $39.99, even if you have to spend another $20 to $25 to get an ESky USB controller to fly it with. Based on my experiences with the RC Plane Master demo, it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as ClearView.
Good thing that GreatPlanes continued to work on the reported problems and bugs and regularly releases new versions and updates. It's no consolation to those stuck in the past for whatever reason, but it's a great comfort to those of us who can and wish to have 4.5 available. I think 4.0 had 8 or 10 updates, improvements and I know I've installed 2 updates to 4.5. They seem to have made the world less forgiving and from just flying the Nexstar (after seeing your observations of it) it appears to be pretty lifelike. I've got a student with one. He also has 4.5 and is using both in his development. Unfortunately, I don't have Clearview, but it's price certainly would be good for many. And from what you say about it, it appears to be a safe recommendation for beginners to try. What trainer(s) does it offer?