Carenado. Itâs fine. Great value, great experience.
SWS PC-12 is still a WIP, check back on it in 6 months to a year.
Also, you canât directly compare them.
Carenado donât aim to provide âstudy levelâ aircraft (ie: typically you wonât get working circuit breakers), but they provide high quality experiences (and modelling/textures) targeted at general users, providing decent flight models and âgood enoughâ functionality to capture the essence of a specific aircraftâs experience. They do this really well, and a bunch of their aircraft really shine in this market segment eg: Waco, C170, Beech 18 (+mod), PC-12 and others. They provide basic tablets too, for easy configuration.
They do update their aircraft, and do accept bug reports/feedback (personal experience here) but there is no need to keep updating an aircraft once itâs âstableâ and meets the targeted released objective. Only if a SU breaks something radically does it need a new update beyond that, or perhaps to update core improvements in Flight modelling.
SWS, otoh, see themselves as a âstudy levelâ provider (generally), and their flight models seem attuned towards a very particular type of user with very specific control devices and higher level cockpit setups. As such, this can result in a less than optimal flight experience if you are using lower level control setups and may not have the skills required to finesse their flight model. They also attempt to model complex flight systems that are very susceptible to breaking or may not quite be 100% at the current time. The Kodiak 100 is a case in point here (personal experience and bug reporting here), and they are currently working through related issues in the PC-12 as well. They will get there, at some point. Kudoâs for trying though, itâs not an easy thing to do.
Their main issue here, however, is they seem to market it to general users but in practice it seems really designed for specialist users (unless you have the skills to finesse it). I wager they donât do any flight testing with XBox controller or single twist stick setups to make it user friendly for those types of users, especially the ones still upskilling. PC-12 is not known to be a difficult plane to fly, but it also has a few gotchaâs a like any aircraft has. See this reddit thread on rl pc-12, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/zg2i6y/pc12/
Modelling, texture, sound wise I donât see much difference between the two tbh.
Plenty of developers nail this aspect, but itâs the Flight Modelling and systems modeling/depth where the real quality shines, and Carenadoâs are more than âgood enoughâ. Unless you like pressing circuit breakers perhaps!
So it really depends on what experience you are after, and your tolerance for pain working through current issues that might exist for your particular setup. Carendo had these once (and fixed for me), SWS it seems is still working through some issues here. From my experience there is also no difference between Carenado update/fix tempo and SWS update/fix tempo.
Up to you!
PS
Difficult to fly does not mean ârealisticâ, especially in a commercial level flight sim where people are âflyingâ with a wide range of user contexts, from couch/xbox to PC/Stick to yoke/pedals to VR combos to full motion platforms.
Also, ârealismâ is in the mind in simulators like this. There are multiple key channels of information and experience (kinaesthetic/proprioceptive/risk ++) central to ârealismâ that cannot be recreated in a sim like this. If a product is of a good quality level theyâre great for education, mental, and procedural training, but no matter how much someone markets something as ârealisticâ, itâs not , by a long shot. Itâs ârealisticâ only in very narrow ways when it comes to actually flying.
Enjoy the experience for what it is though, and itâs fantastic.
