Reviews (by Eskil)

Predictable is the word for summing up this new set of missions. Like all the previous mission packs from Perfect Flight, the missions are all very much like another, and contain no surprises - in fact they mostly resemble Free Flights from point A to point B. As usual, there are check lists to aid you in setting up for flying, a good point. However, this pack seems to have been compiled in somewhat of a hurry, and there are some out of place texts in at least one of the briefings. There is no dialogue under way, and no Mission Compass to guide you (but the GPS flight plan is adequate for that). The inclusion of an aircraft repaint is nice, too. In summary, not really worth the price, especially if you've tried Perfect Flight mission packs before.

This mission pack contains no less than 24 missions, so they're cheap at € 0.50 each, but they are very much alike, and in essence they are Free Flights, although with briefings, checklists and so on. There are no rewards. The pack has an auto-installer, but for those who (like me) dislike that, it is relatively simple to unpack at a location of your choice. So far, this could be an inexpensive way of getting to fly with minimal effort. Unfortunately the missions contain quite a few faults and glitches, some of them important. In two of the missions (Garda's Lake Windsurf Trophy, and California Dreams), an incorrect airport designator (LOPX instead of LIPX; LSJC instead of KSJC)) is used, making the missions impossible to finish. To correct this, you have to decompile the two mission files and change the designator. There is a sprinkling of typos in the briefings and elsewhere, one of whish will confuse pilots. In the descent check list, one item is "Review the Landing Gear" instead of "Review the Landing Data". The spoken comment, however, is correct. During descent, you are told to reset altimeters already when above 30,000 ft instead of at 18,000. The intro to the Curacao mission is wrong, spoken of as Belgrade to Innsbruck. In another of the missions, Brussels is said to be in Luxembourg! Also in the Curacao mission, the wrong cruising altitude is set in the Flight Plan (33,000 instead of 38,000 ft), so the "music en route" is never triggered. In summary, this mission pack is a bit of a disappointment.

This is a mission pack for all those who, like me, enjoy flying airliners. Specifically, you are a test pilot for Airbus in Toulouse, making one of the first flights with the A319, and then making a sales pitch for a potential Austrian customer. The pack thus consists of just two missions, and a nice rendition of the A319 in two Airbus house liveries is included. You are being well guided throughout the missions, so they are not especially difficult. They are, however, quite long - each has a duration of 2½ hours. There is a reward for the second mission only. The missions are made by a team headed by the talented Mathieu O’Hare, who has provided numerous missions, both freeware and payware, over the years. Sadly, there is a programming error in the mission (.XML) file for part 1, which means that the mission will never come to completion. If you want to correct it, look for SimMission.PropertyTrigger InstanceId="{655D3F1C-0476-4E1E-8246-6545FDEDBADC}". Under Conditions, "GreaterOrEqual" should be changed to read "LessOrEqual" (two instances). Whether you find the price right for two missions and a plane is up to you, but I think it is quite good.

Rescue Air 911 is good value for money - 11 missions for €17.50. The missions are in all categories from Beginner to Expert. All of them consist of flying from the hospital where you are based, to an accident site on the fictional Simville Island (which appears to be very accident-prone...), pick up casualties, and then take them to hospital. Therefore the missions are a bit monotonous, but when you go the Advanced and Expert missions, you will have to hone your flying skills some. All missions are flown in the trusty Cessna Grand Caravan, a special repaint of which is included. The mission makers (Zambian based NMG Simulations) have made a fantastic job of creating an entire island in the Indian Ocean, about 30 by 30 miles, highly detailed and complete with cities, buildings, industries, ports, terrain, and several airports! (The island does not show up on the GPS map, although the airports and navaids are there.) There are vehicles on the roads (left hand traffic!), and a lot of radio traffic. AI traffic is seen on the international airport, and static aircraft on the aprons of other airports. All missions will give you a reward on completion. A minor comment: all the missions take place on the same date, most even at the same time... This pack comes with an automatic installer, which deprives you of all control as to what is installed, and where. I prefer to install missions manually, but you may like it this way. As for rating this mission pack, the scenery would make it worth 5 stars. However, because of the way the story repeats itself, and because of the automatic installer, I will settle for 4 stars.

This is a 7 mission pack which takes you to some unusual and/or well-known places around the globe. They vary from about 10 minutes, to several hours in one case. They are well narrated, telling you a lot about these sights as you go along. The missions are simple to fly (all are labelled "Beginner", and all will gove you a reward upon completion. Installation is largely problem-free, but two of the missions (Greenland Hole, and Nazca Lines) loaded as Free Flights. After some puzzling, I found that I had to remove certain scenery elements, which apparently were missing from the package, and after that they also worked. I would normally rate this package at 2 stars, but the excellent narrations get them up to 3 stars.

This package contains no less than nine missions, so good value for money. Some of the missions are quite difficult to master, but you get rewards when you succeed. What makes this pack different from all other missions is that it comes with an e-book that gives you the story behind the missions. This is a brilliant new concept, but even if you don't care to read the stories, the missions will keep you occupied for quite some time.

This is a very good, and varied, six-pack of missions taking you all over the world. You get rewards (for most of the missions, even two!), but it isn't easy to get them. I can really recommend this mission pack!

This five-mission pack is clearly made by skilled people. The thing I don't like about them is that you can't start them the normal way (from the FSX Missions page), but have to go through a special desktop icon. Maybe this is so that the pack's unlocking function works as intended. You must fly the missions in order, and when you've finished one you'll get the key to unlock the next one. If/when you save the missions under way (always a prudent thing to do), the saves will end up just anywhere in the missions list. That said, the mission are very good and extremely varied. You fly mostly in the Piper Cub, with one Beech Baron mission. I would easily have awarded five stars, hadn't it been for the cumbersome installation and start-up process, but it still is reasonably good value for money (approx. 17€).

It is difficult not to like a free scenery add-on. This will update the FSX scenery picture in Oresund, between Copenhagen and Malmoe, a lot. Obviously it will be of interest chiefly to Scandinavian simmers, but I can see no reason not to add it to your scenery bank.

This is one essential item for every simmer. There is a free version as well, but this one gives you so much more. Never leave home without it!

The name actually says it all: the mission packs by Max Scarcia are aimed at a broad public who want manageable missions, not something utterly impossible. In this case the missions are all set in Africa, although you don't get a huge amount of local flavour. This pack contains ten missions, of which two are emergencies, one is an animal spotting flight, and the rest are airliner flights or approaches. The last group makes useful training material for the big jet fan, although obviously you could achieve the same result in free flights. A great thing is that you are given the choice of manual (which I prefer) or automatic installation - a thing very seldom seen among mission makers. The missions all use default aircraft and ditto scenery items, and have good sound files. There are some spelling errors in the captions, but that won't put you off. Unfortunately three of the missions (approaches) contain a programming glitch that makes them load as Free Flights. You can, however, e-mail Max for replacement files. All in all, value for money (14 € for ten missions), I think.

In this mission pack you get to fly final ILS approaches at six different airports, starting out some 15-20 nm from the threshold. Obviously you could set up the corresponding flights for yourself, but here you get them set up for you. At the beginning of each mission, you are on autopilot, but at a certain point (different for the six missions), the autopilot is forced off and you have to finish the landing by flying manually. In my opinion this point is often too far out, compared to reality, but at least it means that you have to show your skills at keeping on the glide slope... At a low price of EUR 6.24, this is reasonably good value for money.

This mission pack comes with a folder of programme files for manual installation, which is very good! The missions also have rewards - another plus! There is a cargo manifest (load sheet) for each flight (an elegant touch!). The aircraft aren't loaded accordingly, however, so it is mainly eye candy. Unfortunately the quality of the pack is marred by several errors: - The required flight plan is missing for flight #1, and two non-relevant flight plans are included in the pack. - The paths (in the .flt file) for all flight plans are incorrect (they point to the mission creator's own setup). - There is some sloppy spelling and punctuation. - The final sound file, and its accompanying caption, are transposed between flights #6 and #7. - In two of the missions (Honduras-Mexico and JFK-Gander), the cruising altitude in the flight plan and in the mission file do not tally, so the mission will not end unless you change one of them. Also, the altitude is set as AGL, which will result in it not triggering if you fly over high terrain (the Honduras mission). - For flight #9, the altitudes on approach are set as AMSL, which means they will not trigger and therefore the mission won't end. - In the Honduras mission, the "AirportLandingTrigger" is set for another airport than your destination (MGTK instead of MMUN), which will prevent the mission from ending. - The Mission Compass will not always indicate the take off runway that you are given by ATC. This means that you may have to taxi first to the Mission Pointer (to trigger the next mission step), and then return to the runway given by ATC. - Two of the missions load as Free Flights. If you remove the four SimObjects (ground vehicles) at the beginning of the .xml file, and the corresponding "ObjectActivationActions", the missions will work! Had it not been for the multiple errors, this pack could have been worth its prize. As it stands, however, you should get it only if you are prepared to, and know how to, spend time repair all the glitches.

These missions are what they are called, i.e. simple FSX missions, but they are quite enjoyable, varied and well thought up, with some nice scenery (using default items). No equipment failures or other catastrophic things occur. Many different aircraft are used, from the Learjet to the venerable DC-3. You get one or two rewards for finishing each mission. What I especially appreciate is that there is a folder for manual install. I personally hate automatic installers, since I can't control what they do with my system, adding files in weird places, and changing my things! On the down side, there are some spelling mistakes in the captions. Also, some of the overview files have the wrong heading, and in two missions the reference from the mission (.xml) file to the overview file is misspelled which prevents the briefing from being shown. This isn't vital, but a little irritating. One of the missions (Cargo Transport) gives you the wrong information about which airports you are flying between, but if you just follow the Mission Compass this doesn't matter. Regrettably, one of the missions (Amazon Fishing Trip) has a glitch, which makes it stop after the first minutes. In all, you get your money's worth.

Prospective buyers should note that this mission pack in part is common with Aerosoft's "BeaverX Mission Pack", so five of the missions are identical, and another couple are the same as missions in the BeaverX pack, although with different aircraft. Also note that the the makers of this pack, X1 Software, apparently have gone out of business. This is particularly frustrating since there are some problems with the missions. X1 Software's defunct homepage has an update for the mission pack, but the link is dead. The installer will make some changes to your aircraft (new textures, and a weaker engine for the Beaver), so if you don't want that you had better install the pack manually, and then change the sim.0 line in the .FLT files to your default planes. There are some major glitches in the missions. One of them (Canada Cargo II) will only load as a Free Flight, and you have to do some serious fiddling with the .xml file to make it work. Another (Kluane Tour Orion) loads as a mission, but due to faulty programming one of the goals will never be triggered, and so the mission never can end. Again, a lot of fiddling with the .xml file to make it work at least reasonably well (there is still some dialogue that never is triggered). On the positive side, the scenery and dialogues are very good. Five of the missions have rewards, but all but one are copied from other FSX missions. If you do not already have the BeaverX mission pack, and if you don't mind having to spend several hours manipulating the above-mentioned mission to function, then this pack might be an acceptable buy.

This is a compilation of ten (no eleven, there is one "bonus" mission thrown in, which normally is found in another volume of the Simple FSX Missions. They are all of about 30 minutes' duration, which is good since you can finish them in one go. The cues such as the Mission Compass, and the instructions work as they should, and you get a reward at the end of each mission. The recorded sound is of good quality. That said, this package is clearly a rush job. The spelling in the captions is absolutely abominable, and there are numerous signs of the missions not being finished and checked over before publishing. Among these is the presence of .imm files (Instant Mission Maker work files) left behind in the mission folders, along with the odd backup .cab file and more. Several of the missions also start with the Text Info line visible at the top of the screen. This probably was used during mission building, but should have been switched off before finalising. It is, however, easy to correct in the .flt file. The Boeing 747 used in one of the missions for some reason has its 2D panel vertically compressed, filling only the lower half of the screen (but this may be my installation). I for one do not like automatic installers, but would prefer to see what files there are, and to decide where they go. Normally the installer allows you to browse, and thus change the path for installation to the Desktop or wherever you want to park it before final installation. But for some reason this .exe installer programme has blocked out that option, so you end up wondering what went where and why. A minor niggle is the creation of a new mission category, making the drop down list unwieldy. You can of course change the category GUID's in the .xml files and get them where you want, but again this package decides that you are unable to manage things, and so does them for you. The rating thus is (a weak) 3 stars.