All I am saying is what the dev told me and someone else in their discord. I haven’t bought it, but from what it sounds like, most of it was rebuilt, there are additional system stuff, etc. I agree, the upgrade price is higher than it should, but it isn’t surprising.
PC User
Although I was surprised a bit by the upgrade price (2020 Owner), I bought the 2024 upgrade.
- Because I personally wanted to be able to fly this addon again *
The upgrade was worth it to me. I stopped flying the 2020 version in 2024 because it had no fuctional brakes and you couldn’t stop unless you had almost a 10000 ft runway.
I’m a little diappointed the sounds are still default Asobo F-18 audio. This is one addon that would completely elevate the experience by porting the Echo 19 F-18 Audio to it ( if that’s possible).
Also dissappointed the RAAF and USAF gunship gray liveries are still too dark. Hopefully the flightsim.to liveries will provide a fix for this visual preference of mine (and others).
Personally, I’m glad I can fly AND land this addon again - even though it’s like paying for an entirely new addon, as it doesn’t feel like owning the 2020 version was appreciated in any way. Still worth the 2024 upgrade to me.
The engines are shared with the F-14a, so new sounds would be great!
Unlikely DC Designs or Heatblur/IFE would allow use of their audio implementation.
Since the GKS 111 continues to use the default F-18 sounds, I figure it would be easier for Echo 19 to just resell their F-18 audio or for someone to “port” the audio with some kind of mod on .to (if that were authorized).
However, I agree with you. Any new offering with improved audio would be an enormous improvement to this addon’s overall experience.
I think I might be going mad!?!!
Ever since the 2020 version released I noticed, and reported a few times, that the wing tip vapour trails seem to be wrong - the left wingtip seems to be reversed i.e. if you pull up sharp they curl in opposite directions.
I just paid over $40 aud for the upgraded version and it has the same error.
Can anyone confirm if this is a bug and I’ll report it to them again?
Lol, that was me, they said they forgot to include the fix but it will be in the next update
Ah I see. Wasn’t sure lol, different usernames. Other than that, would you say it’s worth the upgrade price?
I upgraded. (And for the record, I upgraded the MiG-25 too.) The sounds as noted are the F-18 sounds, but it is what it is. And the cockpit looks really good - I think the detail level is up from the 2020 version. I haven’t poked around much in it yet, but I think there are more usable systems in the upgrade as well. Is it worth the money? I really don’t know. I want to support these guys, because they’re making things nobody else is bothering with, so I’m okay with it… but it is pretty pricey. On the other hand, Top Mach also charged this much for their upgrade unless you bought the original F-22 on the marketplace (which I didn’t…), so I guess there’s precedent. And it does look like a good deal of work went into things.
My only nitpick, and this may be unavoidable due to under-the-hood stuff: the wing sweep is still bound to the ADF2 up/down volume controls, which works fine when there are pushbuttons or switches you can use (on my Bravo, I used the flaps tab)… but it would be more convenient if it could be bound to an axis. Also, I don’t think the speedbrake is bound to the default speedbrake axis, which is bothersome (although my issue is usually that I’m too slow, not too fast!)
I have to say that the only negative for me was the wing tip vapour trails, and same as the MIG 25 the update price, but as both products are very in depth and high fidelity, and I will rack up many hours flying them then yes, I would 100% recommend
Sweet. I’m glad to hear that its worth it.
There’s just one thing I didn’t quite understand: was it reworked using the 2024 SDKs? I’m asking because, during the external inspection, I can actually walk through the aircraft. That shouldn’t happen with native 2024 aircraft, should it? Or am I missing something?
Only if they remembered/decided to add collision meshes. The 2024 SDK doesn’t force 100% accuracy in collision meshes. Depending on how they’re done, collision meshes can be compute intensive, so they may have decided against them. If there’s a walk around function where you can remove things, it’s 2024.
No, it’s missing. I tried it, but there’s nothing interactive in the walk-around mode.
Reply from the GKS Discord channel:
“The current versions are built using the MSFS 2024 SDK for SU6. You can also verify this by checking the product tag in the MSFS Marketplace. However, the External Inspection feature is not added automatically just because an aircraft is native to MSFS 2024 — it requires additional implementation on the developer’s side.
We plan to add this feature to all of our MSFS 2024 aircraft over time.”
Model and textures still seem to be native 2020. It was the same with the Mig25. Their B52 howevere is in a different league with modelling and textures. Hopefully, they will update the model and textures on both with native 2024. I’m praying that the Mig21 will be updated in the same way the B52 was.
There’s no difference in textures or modeling necessarily between 2020 and 2024. Yes, Asobo changed to a proprietary KTX2 format for 2024, but that doesn’t change the content of the textures or how they work. It only changes, pretty much, they way they are compressed. The only differences in modeling are that 2024 adds some functionality for grouping portions of the model so it can be reused over different variants, and now creating lower resolution LOD’s of everything is required, whereas in 2020 it was a suggestion.
So what changes are you expecting, given there’s no real difference between texturing and modeling in 2024 vs 2020?
What I’m getting at is that most developers now update their models and texturing for native MSFS2024. Look at PMDG, Just Flight etc. You can tell easily when you compare the two. I fly in VR and the difference is really noticeable. Like I said compare the B52 to both the recent updates, the difference is night and day. I don’t mind if the update is free or little cost but when you’re talking about £30 I expect more.