Reviews (by Ruston)

A solid product - certainly a significant step above default scenery or typical freeware. There are some issues to note: 1) The photoscenery is low definition. It doesn't look genuinely good until about 5000 ft AGL. Though it makes for a nice initial stage to approach in a passenger jet, maintaining immersion into the lower stages of the approach would require much more in the way of hand-placed 3D buildings and vegetation. Some is included, but not enough to dispel the "flying over a blurry carpet" sense that photoscenery produces at low altitude. 2) The photoscenery has some clouds and "sunken" cruise ships in it. Those familiar with photoscenery know that this is not uncommon with Caribbean locations. 3) The lawn surrounding the main terminal flickers noticeably when taxiing or overflying it. 4) Hand-placed trees ended up in the water in several places south of runway 26. In spite of these issues, there are also some nice touches, such as the animated flags and dolphins. The 3D objects are well-crafted for the most part. They took the trouble of creating a night-lighting effect on the photoscenery for evening flying, and the tarmac water and night-lighting effects look quite nice as well. Though I'd probably have felt a bit disappointed had I spent the 17 Euro full price on this purchase, the sale price is very reasonable. I'll be watching to see how this developer progresses, as there is definitely promise here.

The sounds themselves are excellent - certainly the best I've encountered for the simulator. That said, there is a noticeable hiccup every time the loop resets which I found irritating and impossible to ignore. The hiccup is caused by a fraction of a second of silence before the rain sound begins right at the start of each .wav file. It can be fixed if you have decent sound editing software - just delete the silence. One file has a fade-in effect - you have to get rid of that, too. I did this and the hiccups are gone in all the rain sounds (both internal and external) that I've managed to coax out of P3D thus far. If you're going to try this yourself, be sure you first back up your original VielCon files before starting. The recordings are worth the price (to me at least), but the developer really should have paid more attention to the editing. Users shouldn't have to edit sound files in a payware product to eliminate such an obvious immersion breaker. Many don't even have the means to do so. Perhaps VielCon will fix the files for future buyers. If so, I hope a future purchaser will post a review indicating the hiccups are no longer present in the unedited product. In that event, you may consider this a 5-star review. In summary, if you have the software and willingness to edit sound files I fully recommend the product. The editing should take you less than half an hour. If you don't, then these will still be a highly significant upgrade to the default sounds provided loop hiccups don't bother you.