Reviews (by Michael)

Hrm. I thought long and hard about it before buying this. Not sure i should have. Okay, let's see, this machine does have some good points going for her: -It's a really cool idea for an aircraft. Something that's relatively big and complex, but not quite an airliner. Strictly utilitarian, almost with a military feel, but not quite that, either. It's unique and interesting. -The modeling is quite nicely done. The exterior model is decent, while the cockpit genuinely looks like a nice place to be. -She does indeed scoop and drop water as you might expect, and while her belly's full, she does feel a bit sluggish, as she should. However, there's a lot of niggles with this one that sour the whole experience, at least at the time of writing. -While the cockpit -looks- good, there's a fair few switches that don't work, some that don't have tooltips and weirdly, some inconsistencies with how switches are animated. There also seem to be a handful of bugs when it comes to switches lighting up and such. The HSI/compass on the central pillar is also just wrong, an i can't see a way to calibrate/adjust it. -The sounds have me scratching my head. They don't have enough of that turboprop "bass", yet the cockpit is fairly loud with some kind of airy "fhrrrr" sound that i suppose might be caused by the prop blades? I'm not a turboprop expert, maybe that sound's supposed to be there, but i've not encountered it in anything else. -The elevator trim axis works upside down in this. I've got a trim wheel with my setup, and it's bound properly to work with most aircraft. The only ones where it's upside down is this one and that one little ultralight flying inflatable boat. The latter gets away with it because it technically doesn't even -have- trim tabs. However, the CL415 really ought to have the elevator trim axis the right way around. -The documentation is rudimentary, which isn't -all- that bad since it's not exactly study-level, but there are some things about it, like the unusual navigation and autopilot systems that could do with a bit of explanation. -The price, the price and once more, the price. This bird, with all it's missing functions feels like an unpolished stock Asobo aircraft. Yet it's priced in the same range as say, the Kodiak 100, the Twin Otter and the HondaJet. That just doesn't feel right. With all that said, i really, really want to like it. I hope this sees some updates because a plane as unique and interesting as this deserves better. I wouldn't even mind the price too much if it at least felt polished, and had some better sounds.