The Asobo planes are so well modelled visually. I think they look better than anything the third parties are doing, including detail, lighting, and textures in the cockpit. They’re not perfect of course, but they’re gorgeous.
However, I think third parties put in so much more attention to detail on how they fly and operate. I wish we could have both, where Asobo just did the visual and sound modeling. And then handed it over to a dedicated third party team that was passionate about making it realistic.
The flight models need work, particularly the ground handling on the Mustang is super quirky. The FI Spitfire definitely had its fair share of ground handling quirk to it too though, and that might be an underlying Flight Simulator issue involving surface friction, the effects of the relative wind during the transition from ground roll to flying, lack of left turning tendencies initially, etc…
The T-6 is actually remarkably easy to fly. I suspect it’s in fact too easy to fly in the sim. But it cruises nicely and is great for touring flights.
They’re probably basic after that. You can mistreat all of these planes pretty badly with no consequence. Run the engines full out, slam them down hard, and they’re fine. There are several bugs in them. For example Miss America’s fuel selector is all wrong, and I think it’s backwards on the other Mustangs as well. One of the T-6’s has a gap in the cockpit model that you can see if you move your head around with TrackIR (it’s not visible in the default view). Others have pointed out numerous other little issues, but most people can still fly just fine with them. These are all things a third party would be scrambling to patch, however. I worry that these planes will be abandoned as Asobo has to focus on other areas of the simulator.
And then there are some missed opportunities. The biggest one is that the canopies don’t open. A third party would never neglect this. But they’re all welded shut on the Reno Racers. It’s such a shame because you taxi and even fly them with the canopies open IRL and the engine sounds come to life on startup and runup so much more when you do. It really adds to the experience to work the canopy in the FI Spit and Milviz Corsair.
They’ve definitely used real sound recordings, and the quality is there in places, but I’m still not convinced on the audio either. The T-6 has such a distinct sound as it flies by, a really piercing whine, and it’s so much weaker in the sim than even YouTube videos of them, and sounds almost too quiet in the cockpit. The Milviz Corsair shines here again in comparison I think.
Still, the docile nature of the simulator T-6 and it’s beautiful aesthetics make it great for casual sight seeing flights. It’s one of my favorite aircraft in real life, and 've had a ton of fun with it lately in the sim:
Overall, mixed feelings on the $60 40 planes buy. They’re all gorgeous and fun to try out. The canopies should open, they should get continued love from the devs and the community but probably won’t, they have their own fair share of issues, and I’m probably only going to fly a couple of planes regularly out of the entire pack. I’d probably just buy a single T-6 and P-51 if I did it again, but I still don’t know which ones I’d get.
There’s an unflyable version of some of these planes that’s included with the base sim, so the sim might draw that for multiplayer. I don’t know, haven’t tested it as I almost always have MP off.
Stick forces (P-51D) also do not reverse in the sim as acceleration exceeds 4G like it was on some of those planes - with the fuselage tank aft the cockpit, and so on.