Reminded me of some quotes from Dart while he was getting his pilots license.
The graphics of the Real World could use an upgrade. While the cockpits were rendered beautifully, my first flight was set to Summer Haze, reducing the draw distance considerably, desaturating colors, and was generally disappointing in appearance. Objects on the ground tended to “pop up” in clearings of the forest as we approached; in fact the Shelby County Airport itself did this, suddenly appearing as we approached from the west. Today was much better since we had some wind to make things crystal clear and the vibrant greens and browns came out, but the light scattered clouds had an obvious repetitive shape, especially a low layer that looked like the teeth of a saw blade pointed upwards.
Draw distance for other aircraft needs to be improved. While I spotted a helicopter at five miles, it started out as a small black dot above the horizon and was very slow to resolve to a recognizable shape. A white Citation was invisible to both the instructor and me even though we were told where it was until less than a quarter mile away — and it was only 1000 feet lower than us! Something is screwy when you can’t see a white plane over green forests at one o’clock in the afternoon in clear skies.
Flight Modeling is suspect in the Cessna and control response likely wrong in CTLS. To be blunt, the Cessna 172 flies like it is on rails! Just about everything is under done, from adverse yaw to entering and exiting turns. In the CTLS, the elevator response to control input is exaggerated; one need only apply the slightest back pressure to induce noticeable pitch either way, and there is no menu to adjust input curves. While it is much livelier than the Cessna, it remains in many ways much easier to control and keep flying than anything in a combat flight simulation.
Flight Sim to Flight Line: http://www.simhq.com/_air13/air_451a.html
Wheels