Iris have released the first of their T-6 Texan II planes, pretty sure this is the -B model and they also have the -C coming, and Milviz/Blackbird are getting close(ish) on their -A model.
I already have the Iris PC-21, wondering how different the T-6B II is.
With a T-6 coming from Blackbird, I see no reason to buy the one from Iris. No matter if it’s A, B or C. The differences in the version will be far less than the differences in the overall quality of the aircraft
Thats a bit harsh. Milviz/Blackbird will indeed be a good product with a price tag to match, buy dont dis Iris Simulations as a lesser product. They are a small team and so far have produced some very good products. The Grob Tutor is a great example. Good price bracket and great level of detail with a reslistic flight/performance envelope.
Just because they may not be your preferred developer is no justification to slate a product before you have tried it.
The OP was asking how it relates to the PC21 not how it compares to another Devs WIP which will be most likely twice the price.
I Hope the Iris T6 hits its target audience as they have done with previous products.
Has nothing to do with my preferred developers. I’m sorry to say that in a direct comparison everything that I have seen from Iris so far is less refined than everything I have seen from Blackbird (excluding Shrike).
Textures, flight Model, realism, details. Basically everything. And from what I see in reviews and from people the forum here, I don’t seem to be alone with this view.
THAT DOES NOT mean that Iris makes bad products. And as you said: working in a different price range can easily make a product worthwhile. However in this particular case I don’t see the point.
Even though, as a business man myself, I can appreciate the attempt to draw away customers from the upcoming competition and beating them to the punch. Especially considering the PC-21 and T-6 II are so closely related. That in itself would put me off the T6 If I had alreay bought the PC-21 though.
in cases like this I always wait to see the competitor product for comparison.
But the key factor for me isn’t necessarily total quality of the FM and visual model.
There is a baseline for that stuff for me, the developer has to at least TRY to get it right - and if one is significantly better than the other in regard to those two metrics it carries weight - however- if they are not too far apart in those two areas then it comes down to frame rates. FPS. I don’t care how pretty or how accurate the flight model is if the FPS is affected noticeably. Iris may yet get my money in this contest
I love the PC-21. It’s one of the aircraft I fly most frequently.
Still, I’m not blind to its faults. The Pilatus HUD is both incorrect (according to an image I’ve seen in a Pilatus brochure) and broken. And the moving map only moves - or indeed maps - if you’re in Australia.
IRIS has had a year to do something about these faults. Nothing’s been done.
So how keen am I to buy another Pilatus-based trainer from IRIS that is perhaps (unless it has the upgraded engine of the Wolverine) slower, has a more obstructed canopy (never a recommendation for a VR flier) , and according to this article:
also suffers HUD issues (who knows, maybe the moving map limitation has been fixed)?
Honestly, not very.
Agreed 100%. I really enjoyed the Iris PC-21 when I first got it. But I also quickly noticed a number of issues, most obviously the HUD, and the systems modelling seemed very shallow. So after the first week I hardly picked it up anymore. Not inclined to buy the T-6, it just seems too similar without any obious improvements. Now a Blackbird T-6 might get me excited …
Well, I continue to fly the PC-21 because it’s decently fast, it’s VR-friendly, and although it’s by no means a STOL aircraft, I can squeeze it into some moderately short airfields.
But much as I’d like to see IRIS do well - I’m told, though I have no personal knowledge of the matter, it’s a sole developer company, and one always cheers for the little guy - if IRIS can’t raise its game I can’t be buying its products.
The moving map can be configured to anywhere in the world. You just need the images and coordinates to set it up. A guy over iris discord as done it and shows how to do it.
I think the PC-21 improved a lot with the update.
I use it everyday since I build a cockpit around it. Great little plane.
I could - well no, I couldn’t, but I’m making a point here - make the entire plane myself, but instead I pay the developer to do it. In the case of the moving map, as in all the other bits of the aircraft, I don’t expect them to say, “Here, I’ve made a start, you finish it.”
And I agree that it’s a good plane, and though I don’t use it every day I use it more than most of the planes I have in the sim. I even use it more than the canoe. It’s just that it could be made better in ways that are important to me.
And I don’t see that happening. If IRIS, as reported, is using the same broken HUD in the Texan it doesn’t bode well for it being improved in the PC-21.
Pc21 is great fun but you have to be willing to overlook the huge amount on inop’s. Blackbird Texan is bound to be better. I’m gonna wait.
Two different developers make the Texan II and we still don’t have an original T-6 besides the sketchy version in the Reno Air Race DLC?
Oh really? Have they finally fixed the HUD or made it so that it’s not a jet engine disguised as a Turboprop?
The moving map is stored in the planes RMM and it’s updated accordingly when needed IRL…
They have it there but you can imagine they can’t provide maps for the entire globe.
Each image as 2000x2000 pixels, about 4MB, and there’s 3 ranges available, so 3 different images for the area you want to fly…
Now, tell me where do you find a central repository with the hability to get the images ready to display on the plane.
It’s like saying skyvector is unfinished and you need to do it because they only supply US charts, or saying all planes are unfinished because you need navigraph for the charts…
Except for the “moving mart” part, seems you just don’t grasp whats going on.
@Chudamaru Nice of you to ignore all the other fixes and updates they did, making the plane better to fly. I think they already said that in order to have the real life characteristics they had to choose that type of engine. As for the HUD, it’s something they need to improve as they don’t have a developer with the skills to get the hud from xml to html5. Having said that, the hud still works ok in DLAA.
Look, I understand that for someone who’s built their own cockpit to fly the plane, hunting down charts on the internet might not seem like a big deal.
But for the ninety-nine point pretty much everyone who isn’t doing that, it’s a very big deal indeed. I don’t think IRIS can just leave that overwhelmingly huge segment of their customer base with no other option.
So what is IRIS to do? Well, in their helicopters HPG offers what I take to be OpenStreetMap combined with Open AIP.
Is the result as good as IRIS’s map tiles? Probably not. Does it work everywhere? Don’t know, haven’t been everywhere, but I wasn’t impressed with what I saw of OpenAIP in Moscow.
On the other hand it’s not confined to a small corner of Australia for those of us who come to MSFS to fly aircraft without having to go looking for sets of map tiles just to fly one* of the possibly dozens or even hundreds of aircraft in their hangar (currently at 213 distinct entries myself, though probably not much more than a hundred and ten distinct aircraft - yes, it’s no doubt a different approach to simming from yours, sorry about that).
However.
HPG’s helicopters are pricy and to be honest I don’t expect that kind of option from an IRIS aircraft costing half as much.
What I would expect is to be offered the default MSFS map as an option so I don’t have to fly about with the VFR map in my virtual lap. This solution is well within IRIS’s reach: after all, we were given the F-18 HUD as an alternative to IRIS’s own unfortunate offering, I can’t see implementing the MSFS map as an option being an insuperable or unaffordable hurdle if IRIS could only understand the necessity for it.
*Unlike SkyVector and Navigraph which you can use with everything.
I know what you mean and I agree that there should be an option to have something like the VFR map when looking at the left MFD. I just find that it’s a bit unfair saying we’ve to finish the product when that’s how it works in real life. They load the map as required by the mission using the plane’s RMM(REMOVABLE MEMORY MODULE), they don’t have the world stored there…
It’s funny because I’ve been thinking a lot about that in the past few weeks and I’ve been delaying talking to them about that, other issues IRL moving me away from that.
Since I fly VR, I can adjust my layout everytime I fly by putting the VFR map on the left display. Something like this:
That’s a clever idea with the VFR map, I’ll have to try it.
The other thing I really miss on the PC-21 is a RADALT in the HUD. Frustratingly, there is one on the F-18 HUD, but to use it you need a cockpit switch to toggle the HUD between BARO and RADALT.
The PC-21 doesn’t have this switch. But there is an INOP button at the top of the left column of buttons on the PFD that isn’t currently doing anything.
If you do happen to find yourself talking to the devs… 
What about this?
Not sure if it works in VR though.
It was originally designed as a VR product because there wasn’t any easy way to do what it does in VR. it has evolved and expanded a lot since then but the fact that it’s awesome in 2D as well as 3D is a happy bonus.
Oh cool! I use it all the time (flatscreen) so there is your map solution for Iris (or anything 
)
And it’s free.
