Hello fellow pilots!
With there being a discount for the Aerosoft CRJ family right now I wanted to see if I could get some feedback on the state of the aircraft now. How is it now that it has been out for a while? Enjoyable to fly? Any deal breaking bugs left? Is it worth the money for those that own it?
Any insight you can share is appreciated.
Hi. As an experienced Challenger 604 simulator instructor and pilot (the airplane on which the CRJ is based), I find its performance to be fairly realistic aerodynamically (8 out of 10), its systems very highly functional (9/10), its visual appearance to be stunning (10/10) and the cockpit to be highly realistic and functional (9/10). At the time of its release, it was the single most expensive add on available for the sim. And it came with bugs. One bug in the installer caused some users with slower processors to be unable to run the CRJ for three months before it got fixed. But we are now about a year along. It’s had several successful updates. A new add on makes a total of four different versions available. If it’s on sale, I would add this to your hangar in a heartbeat. Once the bugs were out of it, it quickly became my favorite airplane. If you can get it on sale and its an airplane you want, I would do it.
I agree with the previous poster. The CRJ is excellent if you like airliners and IFR. It has some minor quirks but nothing too horrid. Sometimes it squirms a bit on LNAV and occasionally busts through the speed you have set during climb (it stops pitching the nose up and continues to accelerate). Those are the two main issues I have with it neither of which happen very often. Other minor issues with some Very specific functions like radial cross function on the fix page. However It’s incredibly fun to fly and is more hands on then an a320 or 737, that may be a plus or minus for you. It’s incredibly rewarding to fly in my opinion. Also highly recommend the sound mod for it from FTsim+ patreon.
The other thing that I would add is that holds still aren’t working reliably. Since that was a feature that was promised to be working at release, I’m personally somewhat cool on recommending the CRJ. It should be noted that holds work very well in the latest version of A32NX, so it is fairly irritating that Aerosoft hasn’t addressed this.
Excellent, thanks for taking the time to reply.
Good to hear. I had seen some early reviews and there were reports that the A/P had a number of bugs and that the FMC was prone to duplicating waypoints. Sounds like perhaps those things have been addressed.
As far as the sounds are concerned I’m admittedly having a hard time understanding what they will cost me. Different levels have access to different things and it’s unclear to me as to what you really get at those levels.
OMG Is that correct!!! I have always wondered what I was doing wrong when I tried doing missed approaches and holding at designated points it would do all of these half turns and I couldn’t delete them and had all of these double ups OMG there were times of seeing that red mist and thinking it was something I was doing wrong…
So glad that it’s not just be abut an actual bug…
Regarding the CRJ…
Apart from that annoying weather/terrain radar not functioning…
I’ve said this before but I got it on the pretense that if I can fly the A320 then this would be a piece of cake…
One flight and having no understanding of the fms and not knowing that it wasn’t auto-throttle… I got truely frustrated and it ended up being a very expensive ornament in my hanger…
YOU really need to go on YOUTUBE and learn… flyfilbert with a real world CRJ is the first start…
With a few tries having that YOUTUBE video as trainer wheels it wasn’t long before I was flying solo and…
It’s real good I love it!!! It’s got that modern aspect but a manual aspect to which makes it a fun jet to fly, landings is one thing that can be hit and miss and I think it’s a actual real aspect in the plane that’s unforgiving … loose to much airspeed on an ILS with full flaps a little too early and your pretty much… basically it won’t be the kind of landing you will be proud of.
Agreed, patreon is pretty confusing. I purchased the basic level for 2 dollars. It allows you to access a number of sound packs to download for the rest of the month that you subscribe. If the mod ever needs an update for compatibility or if I were to lose the file I would need to purchase another month subscription to redownload. At least I think thats how it works, lol. The sounds are very good if you are up for the trouble.
Great, thanks again.
The AP and FMC are still fairly buggy, a lot of which supposedly dates back to the P3D version since it is based on the same code.
The default sounds are perfectly adequate, no standout feature but also not detracting from the experience.
I would however refrain from giving Aerosoft any more business given their recent behaviour towards the community, between copyright takedowns on mods and just general arrogant and downright scummy behaviour from their product manager i just cannot in good faith recommend it.
CRJ is a must buy tbh. I fly it most of the time. A320 with auto throttle and other automated systems I find a bit boring now. CRJ minus an autothrottle means you are flying hands on most of the time outside of cruising alt. You probably want to calibrate your throttle for it in the options tablet as the default range is very small for me with detents very close together.
There are a few bugs, eg. FMS when I use it manually to change/alter stars say can occasionally result in completely hung avionics requiring a restart.
You also really need to use SimBrief for flightplans, as it doesn’t use flightplans from FS world map, but using simbrief is free and nice and easy to use once set up. You can also load same simbrief flightplan into FS to get ATC on same route.
You can of course just take off and use FMS to enter destination & route on the fly. It’s a very easy system to do this manually.
It’s also a bit soft on holding the G/S right now (post SU8) but it does still lock on if you approach at correct angle for LOC and under the GS to intercept. Very hands on throttle for landing though, as it can quickly drop speed on approach. The challenge with this aircraft is manual throttle control at takeoff (so as not to overspeed) and landing (so as not to underspeed).
I love the CRJ though, the FMS is way more intuitive than the A320 IMO.
It is also has one of the nicest cockpits in FS IMO. Top notch aircraft, but with one or two quirks.
Absolutely love it though. Have flown it solidly since purchase in Dec. I fly the 900 version most of the time.
fully agree here also, the default sounds are definitely good enough. the mod was a little cherry on top for an aircraft that has given me countless hours of fun. Also I’ve noticed as long as I am around vref+5-10 by the faf it will hold the glide just fine down to minimums. (not doubting your issues with the glideslope as I’ve also had the same problem in the past however it has been working nicely for me for the routes I fly for some time now).
That’s because it doesn’t have autothrottle. Which actually is what I really like about it. The speed as it were is in your right hand at all times.
Yes when it works it works, lose a bit too much speed and drop a bit of elevation and increase throttle to regain G/S and it will not capture, pushes straight on through. Had to do one or two manual descents to recapture it. Approaches do require watching though, but that is part of the fun with the CRJ.
I too am happy with default sounds, nothing wrong with them at all. Considering it’s been around a while it still has one of the best done cockpits in FS. Much better than A320NX IMO.
It will do that, just like the real thing. If you know how to properly operate it, it’s not a problem. If you expect MSFS to handle all that for you, it will be a problem.
I’m by no means any expert, but editing flight plans is a breeze for me on the FMS. Very intuitive unlike the A320.
My only problem with it is you can’t create a flight plan while in the game. This is fine for more hard core simmers, but that’s not me. Had I’d known before, I would not have bought.
I can appreciate that POV, but you can
Make up flightplan on the fly in FMS quite easily but admittedly no IFR ATC available that way.
Use simbrief which itself can generate a real world flightplan quickly after just 4 bits of info are entered. Which can then be used directly in CRJ and loaded into world map to generate IFR ATC (if that’s important to you in the bugged state that sim ATC is in).
Both processes are quite straight forward, but yes if you are coming from a world map only background for flight planning it may seem a bit daunting at first.
You do have to get used to manually entering (or changing) your star quite frequently, and editing out discontinuities as you go, but again all a very straight forward process.
Its not about not having auto throttle. The aircraft when set to climb in speed mode at 175 for example (or any speed) occasionally will stop pitching the nose for that speed and continue to accelerate. Its a bug that rarely happens and sometimes fixes itself when it does. Easy work around would be to switch to v/s instead of speed mode for the rest of the climb. Most of the time it works fine and pitches the nose properly to hold speed.
And I agree, I love not having auto throttle! Very rewarding, especially paired with something like the honeycomb bravo.
I’ve just remembered one slight irritation I have with CRJ is that I have realism set in sim options to have stress/damaage on as I have all assists off / realistic or whatever the setting is.
Now with every aircraft I’ve flown other than the CRJ you can get audible warnings in good time for an overspeed and have time to react. The CRJ does an audible warning too, but if you don’t immediately go to min throttle and hit speed brakes to instantly slow down a bit and get out of the red zone, it seems to give you about what feels like just 5 seconds ‘in the red zone’ of over speed before it crashes with stress to the airframe. It might just be me, but I do find this mildly irritating and it seems way worse in the CRJ because of the need to constantly monitor throttle when you approach the desired altitude when SPEED (pitch) climb mode turns itself off.
You will of course never see this if you limit the stress and damage settings in FS options.