I 100% agree that they’re just seeing what they can get away with. It’s a complete lack of respect for the simming community on this particular platform. They know if they can put a C130 in the Marketplace and on Xbox, then people will buy it without reading the fine print…and they don’t even have to bother with refunds. It’s almost as if CaptainSim heard MSFS is a sim for casuals so they made it their business model.
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Obviously, they just bought an exterior 3D model once at something like turbosquid, sketchfab, or paid for a freelance 3D artist one single cheap price, and then slapped a few CFG files to make it fly like a generic plane, used stock MSFS sound, no cockpit and see how much they could multiply revenues and easily surpass initial very very cheap investment.
My 2 cents: Captain SIM is probably on the verge of bankruptcy and will try anything with the least possible amount of investment to keep itself afloat or to make a quick cash before closing doors. They clearly don’t care about ruining what little reputation they have left at this point.
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I mean… I am not even surprised at this point.
Captain Sim of Prepar3D days was actually good. I still have their Lockheed 1011 Tristar, 757, 767, and 737-300 installed in P3D and they are VERY satisfying experiences. While not as deep as PMDG and not AS precise, everything works as intended and has unique sounds etc…
From my understanding, the people that were responsible for those aircraft in P3D are long gone from Capt Sim. All that’s left is basically 1-2 people who don’t really possess any sort of coding background required to make aircraft. They are OK with graphical modeling… That’s about it. So even if they WANTED to make a legit aircraft, I don’t think they CAN.
Also, when MSFS was released they shot down any discussion of it because it was a game and not a real sim etc… They never thought it’s a valid platform, so at first they released those 777s to mock MSFS and cash in on the casual crowd. Guess what? It worked! Microsoft was only too happy to accept them into Marketplace as a partner and they saw the green come in for a minimal amount of work.
Here’s the math for 777s… Prepar3D products were around $80 for the 757, 767, etc… Those were proper planes. Then they could release expansions for other variants etc. NOW? They can just release 4 variants of the 777, gradually, each for $20 and VOILA! Same revenue for a lot less work. People keep buying their lackluster “new” planes. No one cares. XBoxers that want to zoom around are completely FINE with this C-130 as well, I assure you, they WILL make money and they WILL sell.
That doesn’t make them any less scavengers of inexperience, that just makes them cognizant of their ways to make money from fools.
Can I blame them? On one hand, I look for quality and effort and never stood for quick cashgrab products, so I can’t help but despise them for their lack of ethics and integrity and effort. On the other? They are like (insert the latest pop sensation flash in the pan boy/girl act that puts out a couple of albums, makes their millions and goes away having never contributed anything worthy)… Is it a valid way to make money? Sure… They aren’t CHEATING, they emote “We are selling you BS. It’s quick, it doesn’t work anything like the real deal, but if you will buy, we will gladly take your money”. So they are also not that dumb.
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Its hard to get too mad about a thing you don’t have to buy. But this genuinely does get me mad. The reason this product makes me mad is because it is a clear attempt to make money off of something which is worth waaaay below its cost. And if this were a one off, maybe I wouldn’t say anything, but it isn’t. This company has shown repeatedly that they either don’t care about wasting peoples money, or they have no market assessment skills what so ever. It’s not that you have a lacking plane. That’s perfectly fine. It’s that you are disrespecting both potential customers and peer developers by charging the same price as airplanes which are FAR more feature complete. And no, I’m not being unfair by comparing it to outliers. The majority of addon planes at this price point offer leaps and bounds more. Not to mention that every single one priced at $15 ACTUALLY HAS A COCKPIT lol.
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That was a spicy entertaining read!
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Theres a free c130j mod for DCS. It’s actually really good and includes a mid fidelity cockpit (most buttons work, some have no function), decent flight model and attachable JATO rockets. I have been able to recreate the USS Forrestal Landing and Take off with it in DCS.
There’s also loadouts for Gunship and dropping GBUs and a MOAB as well as the ability to load relevant supplies (troops, trucks, ammo, pallets of this and that etc). It’s a pretty well done mod and is actively being worked on last i checked
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So why say anything?
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It’s the truth as I see it. Some things are simply what they are.
I just continue to see the old CaptainSim products as something that came from an entirely different entity. I DO enjoy them in Prepar3D and only wish that the knowledge of what CS is NOW could somehow be… unlearned. 
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It’s a shame. I had a lot of their planes for FSX and P3D and they were good quality for the money, and were plenty accurate enough for someone with mid-level demands.
But this is just… Dumb. It’s marked “exterior model” and the page clearly states no 3D cockpit, so it’s not a con except for those who don’t read before clicking (and that’s just caveat emptor). But still, it’s half a product. (Maybe 1/3?) And the shame is, the exterior looks great and and the interior 3D model is super-detailed, so they really couldn’t spend the money to hire some guy who knows how to do MSFS instruments to do some steam gauges for them?
I mean, even a Bredok-level “we’ll make up a 3D cockpit and throw in the Garmins” glass cockpit would be better than this.
For the most part, I get frustrated with the “If it’s not perfect, it shouldn’t exist” attitude I see too frequently around here. But this really… shouldn’t exist. Hire a freeware guy to create a basic, simple port over of the P3D cockpit, CS. Jeez.
I know MS doesn’t quality gate Marketplace products, but hopefully the minimum test standards at least specify “includes a cockpit of some sort.”
I bought the 777 when it dropped to $9.99 out of curiousity, and I got my money’s worth for that. I would even argue that the 777 isn’t the travesty it’s made out to be here when it comes to more casual fliers who just want to try the plane they flew home on. But this one’s an insult even to the most arcade-oriented folks out there.
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It is disappointing to see this. The CS Hercules was brilliant in earlier sims. I flew it a lot and bought it several times as new platforms were released and necessary updated versions of the aircraft hit the market. But this? I hope they care enough about their past legacy to up their skills and thus their product. If not, they are a shadow of their former business glory.
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They clearly do not. The quality/effort level of their releases has only gone down, not up, and this is a new low. Either they can’t do better or they don’t care.
They are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of MSFS as a dumbed-down sim for people who don’t know any better.
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I guess they must have taken it off the Marketplace. I went to look to see what the description for it said, but I can’t find it.
I thought the Marketplace did some kind of quality control on products and that’s why it can take weeks to months for updates to real products to get posted. Yet, ■■■■ like this is allowed in at all?
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The marketplace lead time has nothing to do with quality. There are no quality standards for the marketplace, short of making sure the addon isn’t literally a computer virus I guess. This has been discussed to death.
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CS is in freefall - they must have some new shot caller to be going in this direction…
Hopefully someone will throw that guy’s stuff in the alley and change the locks on the office door soon -
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I don’t think there is a “shot caller” and I don’t think there is an “office”… this is probably 1-2 guys who do this from home. This isn’t a “company” by any stretch of imagination based on what I have seen in the last year or so.
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Captain Sim quality is getting better every week!
But have no worry! Soon the vanilla 747 cockpit will be patched to the C-130.
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It hasn’t reached the Marketplace yet. It’s only available on CS website. They call it the “C-130 Captain Exterior”, then under Exterior it states “Highly detailed and accurate digital replica of the C-130E Hercules” and “Cockpit and cabin with 3D windows and pilots”. Further down the page under Cockpit, it states “No virtual cockpit, exterior model only”.
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What they mean by that is that there is an actual cockpit visible from the exterior… you just can’t go in there.
Basically, this product has just as much to do with flight simulation as GTA5.
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Yeah, I know what they mean, but there will definitely be people who read that first part and buy the plane without reading down to the bottom. They made it just confusing enough to get some extra sales.
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