With the sale, I decided to pick up the Seneca. I don’t have any real world experience with it, but I did get my multi engine rating in the Seminole, which I got from them months ago.
Overall, the planes are fine. They’re both visually stunning, but I like doing single engine approaches and go-arounds in the sim. In BOTH planes, single engine performance is non-existent. I appreciate how they allow the props to feather, but it does nothing to alleviate the drag from a windmilling prop. At sea level, with the operating engine at full power, I’m getting a 500 FPM descent with a total payload of 50%. You start seeing Vmc around 5 knots below blue line…I mean…come on man. The lack of quality/realism from 3rd party developers shameful. I can forgive the Seminole (a bit) because it’s normally aspirated…but the Seneca is TURBO CHARGED! I mean, 220 HP on each engine. The Continental TSIO-360-RB engines are no slouch. With 9 passengers in a C402 with Continental VTSIO-550s, you could climb with at least 300 FPM.
Every flight with a new plane, I do standard things you’d do if you were getting checked out in the plane in real life (stalls, steep turns, short field TO/LDGs, etc.). Sadly, the most realistic performing piston twin I’ve come across in the sim is the default Baron. It’s single engine performance is excellent, it behaves as it should, and it does a perfect Vmc Demo. The reason I don’t fly that one often is because I prefer steam gauges, and that one only has a G1000.
I have no ill will towards Carenado in particular – their planes in X Plane were very, very good. Not perfect, but they were definitely worlds better than what they’re producing now. It’s the overall trend of junk that is being produced. It’s been over a year, and we have 2 worthwhile 3rd party multi-engine payware planes IMO. 1) Aerosoft CRJ 2) PMDG DC6. Special mention is the Junkers, but I don’t use that one for real flights.
Please, for the love of all things holy, start producing products to be proud of. Stop the cash grab, and start making/maintaining your reputation.
yep, I noticed the same thing. The plane is nearly good…it needs attention. A real pity.
On the other hand, single engine work is very challenging. It’s very very easy to stall in a turn
The PMDG 737, the Fenix A320, Milviz ATR72-600, Just Flight Fokker F28, and the Leonardo Softhouse Maddog should be along soon, thankfully.
You should not blame all the 3rd parties based on your Carenado-Experience.
Thats exactly what you get,a visually nice model, but copy-past default “systems”.
Theres no attention to detail when it comes to more than the very basic operating of the planes.
People don’t buy Carenado planes for realism. They buy them because they look nice and most of the features work. I like the Seneca, but I fly with both engines. There are worse planes for the price where they look terrible and don’t have the features. I think most people know what they are getting with Carenado. I like Just Flights Arrows better, but the Seneca is great and deserves its rating.
I believe the add-ons in this sim are lowering the bar and jacking up prices as a whole which is a shame.
That being said, I don’t think we should expect a perfect simulation in all aspects for products in the $10-$30 USD price range as long as the developer is putting in effort to be faithful to the source material aircraft. I think the sales prices are more in line with the value we are getting out of the Carenado lineup but I’m not going to nit pick $5-$10 as they generally do a good job representing the aircraft even if it doesn’t operate exactly per POH.
On my scale, operations under failure modes is reserved for high to ultra-high fidelity aircraft that typically demand $50-$100 price tags.
Not so much prices increasing, but tolerance of lower quality items both by the devs in the official marketplace and by the general consumers who purchase them which leads to less value in the products delivered overall except for the higher end devs who will always remain faithful to the source material (within the SDK they are given).
I’m just waiting for a $20 hot air balloon that does Mach 2 at this point.
I disagree. In X Plane, their planes worked great. Their king airs and Beech 1900 were all very nice, and flew well on a single engine. They weren’t hyper realistic, though they managed to get a lot right with them. Their 210 was also very good. There were a few things that i also really appreciated with their piston aircraft in X Plane. When you did a magneto check, you saw an RPM drop as well as an EGT rise. That was a nice touch. In most planes for flight simulators, those details are overlooked and you’d get an RPM drop with an EGT decrease. But, no, I don’t think this plane deserves its rating. Not for $30USD at normal price.
Not all 3rd party developers, but there is a trend. One can’t deny that. These ridiculously low fidelity planes are gaining traction and setting a precedent within the payware development community that this is okay. It’s becoming a gamification of a hobby that I, like many others, use to practice real world procedures and scenarios. We get the chance to fly something that we have flown, will fly, wish to fly, or are currently flying.
My point is, if folks keep accepting and buying these planes as “good enough,” that is what we’re going to keep seeing…at higher and higher price points. Generally people associate price with quality, at least that has been the case in the past. A fair price for the Seneca would be $15. A twin piston prop with high fidelity should be around $35. Glad I got it on sale. Disappointed to see the quality.
To be honest, you need to do some research before buying any aircraft for MSFS. There is to much garbage out there. I was looking at the Seneca as well, but a 5 min search in this forum revealed the flight model would be disappointing for me since it lacks realism. So I didn’t pull the trigger.
For the rest, I agree that it is a real shame Carenado doesn’t put a little more effort in the flight modeling part of their aircraft.
I fully understand, i dont like this trend either. But carenado is in the middle. They have never done „study level“. They are in the business since… forever. You could have known what you will get before you buy. You are looking for study level it seems, no idea why you buy carenado then
Bredok, captainsim, thats another story… this is just scam.
They are fully aware what to expect, so they were never looking for a full training simulation, but for a nice looking GA plane that is fun to fly. You are looking for a training tool, which carenado just isnt, and never claimed to be.
To be fair, you are approaching this as a multi-engine rated pilot, and flying it in a way that most people don’t outside of training. The deficiencies you mention will only affect a very small minority of simmers. Now, if you could abuse the engines to the point of failure then it would be more of an issue…but this is Carenado. Their aircraft let you fly from A to B just fine and look great, and that is about as far as they go. Even their X-Plane aircraft are ‘Lite’. That is their MO…they have their niche and have been successful catering to that section of the market for quite some time now.
But the OP’s point is that the Carenado twin props were much better in X-plane. So “it’s Carenado, what do you expect” is not a valid answer, since he? is asking why Carenado did better when they developed for X-plane than what they do now…
