F-16 Viper (Block 70) by DeimoS Inc

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Looks like it just released on SimMarket: simMarket: DEIMOS INC - F-16V VIPER MSFS

Kind of weary about this, no systems or real aircraft information and I’m sure we’ll see absolute glowing reviews as per normal SimMarket procedure. But hey, I’ll do you all some justice by spending $20 to review it and let you go from there. :wink:
Will also be keeping an eye out for you, @BostonJeremy77 ! :sweat_smile:

So, as a disclaimer, I fully appreciate that many addons consume a lot of time, effort, and money when developing them. Many addons are also developed for free, with very high fidelity. That being said, from the outset, in its’ current state this F-16 addon is certainly not worth the 20 Euros charged.

Cockpit: It looks okay. It’s not terrible by any means, of course, this is excluding the fact that it’s got 3 garmin screens copy pasted into it. The texture quality is also not terrible. It’s also not great. The HUD is barely readable, but there’s no use in trying to read it as it’s woefully incomplete. Animations are nearly non-existent, the flight stick doesn’t even move. The throttle moves but is inaccurately modeled in terms of its mechanical movement and detent.

Exterior: Actually looks pretty decent. It ships with the USAF 77th FS “Gamblers” livery. Textures are not bad, they look high enough quality for my eyes. Some of the geometry however looks pretty incomplete, like the wingtip pylons. Jet exhaust nozzle animations are off.

Sounds: Not great. Definitely not done by one of the flight sim sound composers. Not the worst thing I’ve heard though!

Flight characteristics: So I’m not sure if the developer was trying to emulate some sort of fly-by-wire system of the F-16, but whatever they did isn’t fun. The smallest movements of the joystick will allow you to do full aileron rolls. You’ll need to really tone down your reactivity in settings to get this feeling like something decent. There’s some bug or issue with taking off because my wheels were stuck to the ground up until about 170kts when she nearly went vertical. I was full aft stick at 150kts and the plane wasn’t pitching what so ever.

Overall meh. It’s 20 euros but represents a product that, in my opinion and experience, would be seen at 10 - maybe. Quite honestly, I think the Typhoon may have been worth more - and that’s saying something. I can see the “fun factor” this type of addon could provide, though with the current flight dynamics it would be nearly impossible to properly do formation flying with friends… so you’ll need to settle with friendly dogfights and pulling 15g’s.

I truly hope this addon receives updates, it can be made much better I believe. Probably a project for @CodenameJack447 to vastly improve. However I feel, much like the typhoon, it will be a “one and done” sort of cash grab until talented third parties like Jack come along to fix it up. With no curation we’ll see this unfortunate mess on the official marketplace, I’m sure, and with no added commenting or rating features coming any time soon it seems, many will end up wasting their money. Right now, my opinion is to wait for a sale. Will gladly update this if and when the product receives any updates!

Happy flying :slight_smile:

Update: video to illustrate some of the current flight dynamics :slight_smile: F-16 by DeimoS Inc - MSFS - Star Wars flight dynamics - YouTube

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Bredok3d reincarnated.

Another hideous frankensteins monster.

Thanks for taking the bullet mate, hopefully saves others some cash!

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The view from the Lawn Dart’s front office is always spectacular. Perhaps someday, a proper conversion will do General Dynamic’s masterpiece justice.

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20 euros you said ? IT’S 24 !!!
Enough with these garbage !
MFS is filled now with all sorts of @@
Someone made a boat,another a car.,an x wing etc etc/ But also charging for it as well ?
At least Bredok has the decency to post videos of his creations.That one has only pics who already look awful !

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This is literally a carbon copy of Bredok3d’s modus operandi, from the avionics that have nothing to do with the real aircraft (a fighter jet with a Garmin, really?) to the legal disclaimer using the “microsoft partner id blahblahblah” to give themselves credibility. I expect fake reviews to start popping up soon to complete the scenario.

Deimos was already infamous for really bad airports, and now they’ve sniffed the business and moved into really bad aircraft, after Bredok3d paved the way.

This is what I meant when I was warning people defending Bredok3d (for reasons that will remain mysterious). This kind of cr*p doesn’t end there. When other people with no scruples or professional ethics see how it works, they’ll follow suit, and we’ll find ourselves flooded with bad-quality add-ons that wouldn’t even qualify as decent freeware, designed to prey on newbies that don’t know better.

I’m opening another Zendesk ticket to try and get Microsoft to understand how damaging this trend is, and that this stuff shouldn’t be on the marketplace (and their “developers” should get their partner status removed, since they’re using Microsoft’s name to sell bad products). I don’t have much hope, but at least I’ll have tried.

I would strongly encourage everyone not to purchase this, on sale or otherwise. Don’t give it money. If you want military jets, there’s plenty good and decent products out there, from developers who try hard to deliver something workable instead of doing the bare minimum to grab the cash of those who don’t know better.

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Sounds very poor.

Appreciate Angernerve taking a bullet for the squad - that’s normally my job at Avsim lol.

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Fully agreed, Sir. Enough of this.

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no mods on my part or on our team’s part about this product. It would be supporting bad practices. and I was just going to tell you the same thing, don’t buy

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Glad to see you won’t waste money on this kind of crap anymore. Any dollar they don’t make is less encouragement they get to make more of this kind of stuff.

It’s literally better and healtier to spend the money for two lunches at McDonalds.

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Yeah, it was also a question I had to ask myself: “what is there to review?”… Everything is in those screenshots they have. I already know what I am gonna think of this thing if I did buy it. I already know I can’t take this seriously. I already know I will never want to fly it. And I already know I would slam it hard in my review. So why even bother with this?

It’s also thinking about this. Say… tomorrow Joe Blow Studios releases something else. Airbus 350… controlled entirely by a single Garmin GNS430. They price it at $100 and release on SimMarket. At what point are you gonna say NO? At what point do you step away from your commitment to give every payware aircraft a chance? If you know it’s overpriced garbage, there has to be a point at which you say “I am gonna do the best thing I can right now and NOT reward any more outings like this!”

So, I simply hit that point. I don’t want to see any more of this ■■■■ available. Unfortunately, I know there will be plenty. Watch this thing sell as much as Bredok.

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Looks like a money grab again.

Own the MD-339, F-15, T-45, and Euro. The first three have pros and cons for each but all in all are pretty decent and since modified and updated all a lot of fun to simulate flying. I’m not looking for real life buttons and avionics here, those are left for DCS which does a very good job. But looking for a fun to fly jet.

If this is another EuroFighter, — I’m out… Being a bit more prudent with my purchases now. Felt ripped off on a few purchases not all of them jets too. Buyer pay attention. Thanks for the quick reviews.

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Unfortunately the marketplace will continue to accept these products until the suits say so. We, the market, get to determine that. Say it with your wallets. I’m not one to tell people when or what to buy something, but I will give my opinion on whether I’d buy something again or if I think it’s worth its money. The only way these low, bottom of the barrel-tier PAID addon developers will stop is if the market picket against it - with our wallets. A good thought to keep in mind is if the marketplace isn’t going to make much or any money off a product, it’ll likely not be admitted. This is not all about “we want everyone to be involved in the marketplace because we have great community developers!”. That’s a half-truth. Yes, we have super super awesome community developers. Buuuut then there’s thing.

The developer is already a microsoft partnered developer, that much is stated in the product page as well as the Business file in the addon. So, chances are, this will be seen in the coming thursday product update. If the focus was so much so on “community developers” in terms of Jorg et al philosophy for not curating it, why was there no support for freeware developers? “awesome community developers” are not all for profit. Many do it as a hobby, and as a result, their creations can be leagues ahead of any payware. I’m all for making a profit, it is a marketplace after all, but don’t put a wolf in sheepsclothing. Some sort of curation is what the community want, that should have been evident from the backlash from the MAX and Typhoon. No further comment has been made except in the dev twitch update that followed the release of the typhoon. Speak up.

Edit: oh by the way, SimMarket already has its 4 star review on the product. Wonder if my 1 star will show up. :innocent:

(6) F-16 by DeimoS Inc - MSFS - Star Wars flight dynamics - YouTube

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Thanks for taking one for the team.

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I’m amazed someone could give more than 2 stars (being charitable) to this trash.

I’m sure many reviews are fake, initiated by the developer. If you’re given a product for free, you still get the “verified purchase” tag, which is ludicrous. Others are simply trying to self-validate their choice to buy trash.

That being said, I opened a zendesk ticket about this. Hope more will. No “partner status” is granted forever if enough customers complain.

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Jorg mentioned in one of the livestreams that it is not their job to curate the marketplace and it is upto the users to decide whether they would like to purchase the product or not. Check out the livestream (51:00 minute mark for marketplace discussion)

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I’m aware of that, but there has to be a limit in letting unscrupulous “developers” trick customers into believing they’re buying something that isn’t that something at all.

This is in no shape or form an F-16V. It’s a fantasy aircraft made to look vaguely similar to an F-16.

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it would be great if they would maybe do some polling on this decision they’ve made…

They could either poll to see whether they should A) take control of their own marketplace and set some criteria - or B) set no criteria (as it is now) but review each product at 90 days and delete any laggards that don’t sell. And again at this point I say they should have a rating system in the marketplace -if not on everything, at least on the aircraft. They could restrict voting to those who ‘own’ the products they are rating to prevent abuse or whatnot - but we need to be able to rate that stuff if they wont do any QA.

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I am not surprised at what we are seeing. Let’s face it, for decades Flight Simulation has been a niche market. It appealed to those who either flew in real life, or who at least had an interest in aviation. During that era the third-party development typically consisted of those who shared the ethos of that market.

We now have a very different situation. This product has been opened up from aiming at a small niche to targeting a large group. It is now unashamedly a game, being marketed on gaming platforms, and most certainly appealing to a wider audience many of whom may only have a passing interest in aviation to begin with.

We are therefore more likely to see a growth in the casual third party industry than we are a reduction of it. I do not define casual as being the differentiation between people who design products full-time and those who design products in spare time. I define that division in terms of quality, fidelity, intent, and affinity with the aviation industry.

I firmly expect to see more fantasy products becoming payware. Those of us who identify more with the original market demographic will gravitate to the more serious products. And, as the good doctor has found, will be more discerning with our financial choices.

There will be a growing market for the poor quality we are seeing. And make no mistake, neither Asobo nor Microsoft are going to stop it because they know they opened the door to it the moment they left the niche.

Easy as it is to judge and pontificate on it, we must accept it as part of the new era for the title.

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I keep hearing this from some and I keep facepalming.

This isn’t any more a “game” than any other flight simulator before. Previous simulators had absolutely no scarcity of crap “fantasy” products.

Simulators are what every single user makes of them.

There’s nothing positive being stuck in an unwelcoming niche in which people take themselves and their entertainment way too seriously for their own good. Having a wider audience doesn’t in any shape or form make MSFS more of a game. It just makes it not a failed product in which most third-party developers struggle to put food on the table, regardless of the quality of their products.

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You totally missed the point of everything I was trying to say. And as one of the very first developers for this franchise more than a quarter of a century ago, I can assure you that back then we did not think of it as a game at least my company did not.

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