I have been flying the MilViz Beaver this morning. I've also been looking at the config files for it. There are some issues that have me wondering why this plane was $35. It is a $15 plane, at the most. What's up with the flaps indicator? It barely moves past the climb flaps mark at landing flaps position, then sweeps all the way across to the left for full flaps. Strange! Why can't I taxi and make turns with the rudder pedals? I must use diff. brakes to turn corners, like a DC-3 or something. Is that right? The fuel switch points in the wrong positions. I changed the autopilot module in the instrument panel, but MilViz has a permanent faceplate on the panel which covers my replacement AP gauge so it's unreadable. There is only one popup panel for the plane (panel 1). If you pop it up, it is just a black rectangle at the bottom of the screen. No gauges at all on it. No popup GPS or radio stack? No aircraft configuration panels either. What took so damned long for them to produce this plane. It is a piece of junk! But at least I am able to cancel the "wing leveler" function now that I swapped the AP.
edit: I forgot - No gear sounds! I have to look between the seats to see if they went down or not.
A little disappointed
I've been looking forward to this plane for a while, and I've been testing it out as able the last few days. Couple observations:
1. Flap indicator - I'm not seeing this behavior, but I think it may be related to the fact that this plane models the manual hydraulic "pump down" type flaps instead of an electric system. This is plenty realistic for a Beaver. What it means is, every click of the "lower flaps a notch" button gives you one pump of flaps. It takes several pumps - so several clicks - to move the flaps to each position, which you can see if you watch the flap indicator.
2. Requiring differential braking for ground maneuvering - are you referring to the wheeled or amphib model? Wheeled model has a steerable (though non-castoring, boo) tailwheel and should steer easily with rudder pedals. Amphib model should require diff braking, this is realistic (the Aerosoft bird was unrealistic in this regard).
Fuel selector seems to point correctly for me, though I have the starter animation issue. I know they're actively squashing bugs so I expect that'll be fixed. I agree about no pop-up gps, though of course it's easy to add one. I do like MV's configuration utility that lets you swap between different radio configs, passenger or cargo interior etc.
Also agree about the gear sounds. I don't know how obvious gear sounds would be in flight - amphib wheels are pretty small, don't usually make much noise - but I cannot believe there's no gear indicator! You're apparently supposed to look at the handle... Well, I don't so much need to know where I commanded the gear to go, I need to know where it IS. I doubt there's ever been a retract plane ever built that didn't have at least a mechanical gear INDICATOR.
Those things said, I'm liking how she flies more and more. I always enjoyed the Aerosoft flight model, but it always struck me as too forgiving. This feels much better, especially on the back side of the power curve, and in stalls / spins. I really like takeoff and landing performance in this thing too; the Aerosoft always seemed too sprightly, especially loaded at a high density altitude strip. This thing claws into the air in a very cushion-sucking "are we gonna make it" feeling that I have no desire to ever experience again in real life, but that sure makes this plane feel real.
I made a Youtube video reviewing the flight performance, if anyone wants to see. It doesn't focus on visuals or systems, it's all about flying - wheel and 3 point takeoffs and landings, max performance takeoffs and landings, stalls, spins, slips, and water and ski operations. (Skis had a bug that I think has already been corrected).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nbQBogMgLUAI was pretty critical in the beginning about wheel landings, and I retract that as the video progresses - she wheelies ok as long as you're in a low, negative energy state. She doesn't like the power - on, try to brush on the mains type of wheel landing, goes porpoising down the runway banging the tail... for all I know that's realistic, though it doesn't feel it. But those types of landings aren't applicable in Misty's world anyway ;-), and she does the tail low, power off, full flaps, stick the edge of a gravel bar wheel landing really well.
Anyway, just my thoughts. In almost all phases of flight, this feels more realistic than the Aerosoft. I still have a beef with the way the tail comes up on takeoff, but if you're primarily a floats flier this won't apply. Water operations feel much better than Aerosoft. So, overall I like this thing... I just hope the improvements keep coming.