Overview:
A PILOT'S LIFE application has the aim of giving purpose to flight simulation enthusiasts. It is a simulation of a commercial pilot career, taking you from the first steps of a junior first officer employed at a local small company, to a senior captain at a world-renowned airline. In the beginning you will be offered a job at an airline and you will generate your schedule. As you progress and complete the flights that were assigned to you, you will earn money and experience (XP) based on flight time and number of flights completed, advance in pilot rankings, receive offers from other airlines and most importantly, you will have fun doing this.
The development:
The software was developed from the ground up, with some clear ideas in mind: simple, stable, automated, secure (SSAS for short). One of its most important features is the auto-update mechanism, which relieves you from the burden of downloading and installing the application each time we make changes to it (we still have a lot of ideas to implement, so expect plenty of updates in the months to come).
Features:
- dashboard with an overview of your situation as a pilot (flight hours, XP, current bank account status)
- realistic salary based on your rating and current employer
- job market with auto generated offers and realistic job application mechanism
- real flight schedules generator based on your current employer
- real airline fleets with possibility to choose real or fictive aircraft for your flights
- flight logging and flight landing rate recorder (that impacts your XP gain)
- ability to advance in pilot rankings and get employed at prestigious airlines
- safe login mechanism with encrypted password
- serial number validation
- settings for your convenience
- embedded manual
- ticketing system (for feature suggestion and reporting bugs)
I will admit the visuals leave much to be desired but I am hoping they improve that as updates are released. All in all, I am enjoying this product.
This is a simple to use program of being a pilot, rather than a business manager.
You apply for a job, sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't. The company tells you where to fly, you fly it, you take home a "salary"
It reminds me a lot of airliner pilot for FS9
All it does right now is to create a list of destinations you have to fly and tracks that. There are freeware online services that do exactly that already, partly way better and with more data, graphs, records, options.
But I hope the devs will continue & expand the features to make this tool more than just a destination-generator. Passengers, loading, routing, fuel, etc... all of this is unfortunatley missing. In my optinion, that's insufficient for a 20,- Euro add on.
You start out unemployed, and are offered several jobs with various airlines. Once you accept a job, you are given a schedule to fly. You can re-generate a schedule if you wish. You go into a setup screen to check what planes you have in your simulator. I believe these planes show up when you select an airline and start flying. I'm not sure, but I think you can simply ignore that and fly whatever plane you want to. I could be wrong and I didn't test it, but I was able to load up a Mooney Bravo and start a flight. It did not complain. The only reason I bring this up is because I'm not sure what restrictions are in place for different aircraft.
Once you've chosen your flight, you go into your simulator and just fly it. You can alt-tab out if you want, but the program automatically sees that you are flying and begins tracking (I think you can turn this feature off). The live moving map appears to re-draw very slowly.. not sure why, but this does not affect the simulator. There is no FPS hit whatsoever. I think the database is stored at their website, because moving from tab to tab sometimes takes a few seconds, as the form is filled in with information. My guess is this is a live database somewhere remote. Not sure what this means if the network goes down.
After the flight you simply have a log and you can fly your next flight. You can also apply for different jobs available, or even try to apply at any airline. Beware they may not want you unless you've gained experience.
The interface is very well done, clean, and the information is laid out in a very organized manner. The author did a good job of not cluttering up the interface.
If you've been looking for a "career" type of add-on that does not require you to join a Virtual Airline (you don't have to meet # flights criteria, or VATSIM, etc..), this is the one you want.
The user manual is a little weak but should get you going. Initial setup was a bit confusing but the tech support was excellent, and I was up and running in no time. If you're running Windows 7, make sure you don't install into the Program Files (X86) folder (use a root folder), and you may need to exempt the installation folder from your anti-virus. Also, run as administrator. These things were causing issues for me before I changed them. I'm not sure if this applies in Windows 10.
Overall, I am close to giving this a 5 star. I want to see where the author takes it in the future.
Jeff
This product has really enticed me to fly regularly as the generated schedules make you fly to places you might never go and this in itself has helped as i have always been struggling on where to fly.
The auto start and finish of a flight is a little bit buggy but nothing a hot fix can't fix which this app is always being updated and it is built into the software so you don't have top keep re downloading updates.
Overall a really good product and i would recommend to anyone. Only 4 star because of the current bugs as this is a relatively new product.
The app delivers on job acceptance, schedules and flight tracking. It encourages me to fly more and with different airlines.
Indeed, there are some features that are missing at the moment but hopefully they will be implemented soon. The community page and shop sound interesting. Can’t wait to see what those bring to the table.
But I must say that the completion of the application is not enough. It can be seen that it will provide some new features one after another, hoping to complete it soon.
In addition, the application and the simulator are also relatively simple, and the user-customizable functions are basically not available. You know, a career is more than just a job and a talent market. Also, there was a decision that made me unacceptable. When I landed at the destination airport, it showed 1 nautical mile from the destination. So when I clicked "End Flight", the program did not admit that the flight arrived successfully.
This type of application is not much on the market, so it is especially hoped that it will become a boutique.
SIMULATOR : FSX / P3D / X-PLANE
ADD-ONS : FSUIPC / XPUIPC ( FREE VERSION )
OTHER : ADOBE ACROBAT READER ( FREE VERSION )
OS : WINDOWS
PERMANENT INTERNET CONNECTION IS REQUIRED