Personal Review of Payware Lancaster!!

[Aharon]

Interesting panel comparison between real world Lancaster and payware FCS Lancaster

Here is real world World War 2 photo of Lancaster's panel



Here is First Class Simulation Lancaster



Although both show exact same gauges in realistic manner, I do not know why FCS did not use color coded gauges.

Regards,

Aharon

[cstorey]

Balanced field lengths etc and most other performance criteria had not been thought of until the advent of the jet era when runway lengths became critical in some circumstances . In the Lancaster era because lift off speeds were relatively low, the headwind component would affect the take off run required quite significantly, as would the all-up weight of the aircraft and indeed the varying gradient of runways. In WW2 there were other things to do than create voluminous tables to cover all these eventualities !

[Airspeed]

....."Although both show exact same gauges in realistic manner, I do not know why FCS did not use color coded gauges."

Hi Aharon,
I'll stick my neck out and say that the colour photograph is probably recent, and not from the 1940s.
Yes, some fuel and oil gauges were yellow and red, but from an actual example in my "AFV Museum", Not ALL were coloured that way.
I can't answer for the producers of the model, but I would not necessarily say that they were wrong.

EDIT: In fact, looking closely at the type of gauges, I'm having even more doubt regarding the period authenticity of those colours in the photo.

[Aharon]

Airspeed,

It is actually black and white photo converted to color by editing software. I got it from Lancaster Group. I dunno about authenticity but I cannot question Lancaster Group. LOL

Thanks to others for explanations

Regards,

Aharon

[DaveB]

Not that it matters but I'm sure the Plane design Lancaster has coloured surrounds on the fuel panel

EDIT: That colour shot shows the top row yellow and the next row down blue. Looking at the B&W shot in the Lancaster PN's.. it looks like the top row is blue and the next row down is yellow. The second row in the B&W shot is much much lighter than the top row and I can't imagine for one minute that blue would look lighter than yellow even in a B&W phot

ATB
DaveB

[AllanL]

The FCS panel looks like a shot of the currently installed Canadian Lancaster VR-A engineers panel.

The colour photo seems to match the engineer's panel in the Plane Design and Just Flight Lancasters.

As for merging panels between different models of Lancaster/Lancastrian, that can lead to issues with the instruments which may not register correctly with a different designer's model. They may work, but don't be surprised if they don't.

[Aharon]

Thanks all for more interesting explanations

The FCS panel looks like a shot of the currently installed Canadian Lancaster VR-A engineers panel.

Why would FirstClass Simulations use Canadian panel for Lancaster bombers??????? Are you saying that PlaneDesign and JustFlight Lancasters have more realistic panels than FCS???

Regards,

Aharon

[DaveB]

Believe it or not.. Ed Walters.. the Plane Design Lancaster developer has actually been in and flown in the Canadian Lancaster V-RA (lucky sod!!) and has a very good working knowledge of the type. Access to the BBMF Lancaster by Joe Public is verboten However.. colour phots and videos from inside the BBMF Lanc can be found all over the web. Ed sold his gauges to Aeroplane Heaven for the Just Flight release hence the similarity

I don't think anyone here would disagree that the Plane Design Lancaster is more accurate. The only major downside is that he never made it FSX native

ATB
DaveB

[AllanL]

The Mynarski Lancaster was built in Canada as part of the production run of 430 Mk x Lancasters.

Among other differences the Mk X had Canadian or American instruments and Packard built engines. So the different panels are equally accurate, depending on the model of Lancaster they are attached to.