Anyone got Captainsim 757?

[TSR2]

Anyone got the Captainsim 757... ideally in FSX? I was talking to EricT earlier about Justflight 757 and much as I fancy it (albeit not the price) its not for FSX... however, the captainsim one is. I'm also curious as to if you need to buy their configorator utility to add repaints, or if you can add them manually in the normal way.

I'm not loosing my marbles and going all Boeing, but the 757 was the first cockpit I flew in as an 11 year old boy and holds a special place in my heart.... and (IMHO) its the best looking jet Boeing ever made.

Any advice greatly recieved.

[Techy111]

PM me Ben....

Tony

[johnsmithe15]

Personally I wouldn't touch another product of Captain Sims, this is the 727 I received for FSX.




Forget customer service. No refund because I had used the activation code........erm yes well of course I used it find this pile of crap!

Went round in circles for about 2 weeks trying to get a refund but nothing. I have heard a lot of similar tales about CaptainSim, I have told them in email that I intend to try and put as many customers off their products as possible because they treat them so badly.

Here is picture proof.

Johnny

[TSR2]

Hi Chaps,

I recieved 4 PM's, 2 positive and 2 negative.

To be fair to all, I had £16 burning a hole in my paypal account so I bought the 757-200 base back for FSX.

Download was fine and purchase was painless.

Installed without problem on my Vista x64 with SP1.

Now for the fun bit..... well, let me start by mentioning my machine spec...

Vista Ultimate x64 SP1
Intel Core2 Quad Etreem (4 x 2.66GHz)
4 GB RAM (800MHz DDR2)
NVidia GeForce 880GTX (768MB RAM)
HP Smart Array 642 Ultra 320 SCSI RAID controller with 256MB Cache
5 x HP 300GB 15k Ultra 320 SCSI Disks.

Now I'd say that was a pretty decent spec. So I fired up my FSX Acceleration. Where should I start... umm, I'll go to Aldergrove. My home Airport from when I was a lad, and where I flew to on my first 757 flight back in '87.

Now my Aldergrove is default and at the time of take off there was no AI at the airport.

So how many frames did I get.... 30?.... 20? .... 10 maybe?

7.2, jumping to the dizzy height of 8 in the VC.

I took off undetered, out over the atlantic, climbing to 37000ft, nothing in sight only sky and a few clouds. Still 7.8 FPS.

So Yep, I'm very disapointed, and the two chaps who said the framerates were appauling, you were right.

I then spotted this, on the Captain Sim support.....

Q: I am experiencing low frame rates in 757 Captain FSX version. Will there be a patch?

A: 1. Actually, there is nothing to 'fix' in the 757 in terms of 'performance hit' because there's nothing wrong with the 757. It's a top quality (read the best) 757 model available on the market, obviously it should take some more resources and provides less performance than default 737.

2. Our tests show that there's no need to release set of mipmapped textures for 757 because DXT3 (that included in the package), DXT3+mipmap, DDS textures provide pretty much same FPS.

3. FSX itself has 'performance issues' so please do not blame the 757 if your system is unable to run FSX decently.


From: 757 Captain (FS9/FSX) / General (QID 550)

Now anyone who has been using or modeling in FSX over the past 18 months (yes, its been that long) will know that although it supports DXT3, they are less than optimal and make a hell of a dent in frame rates. Also the models need to be compiled with XToMdl rather than Makemdl. It would appear Captain Sim couldn't be arsed doing it properly, so what is probably an OK (if very resource intensive) model in FS9 has been ported to FSX by adding the thumbnails to the selection screen. Very poor indeed.

Thankfully, it was money I had slushing about in paypal, but I will never buy another CS product... that was my first and last. So close to being excellent, but lazyness in not producing a proper FSX model, yet selling it as such (its more expensive than the FS9 one) is the work of the common con man.

[Chris_UKMIL]

Thanks for the info Ben, I'll stick with the Project Opensky model in FSX then!

[Techy111]

Bit shocked by all your experiences here....

I get 30 to 40 FPS with the 757 FSX version loaded and my specs are well below Bens.....?

At work now but will post some screenies later....

Tony

[johnsmithe15]

Sorry for your disappointment.

It's not OK to be done out of £16. Its not OK to release FSX when it is beyond the abilities of most people to get it running properly (but weve been there and done that in an FSX thread already).

The blurb you posted with the 757 excuses, because lets face it, thats exactly what they are, is sickening. Some little toad is sitting rubbing his hands together with your money and hiding behind rubbish like that.

If I buy a product that does not work, is damaged, does not fulfill its requirements, I take it back where I bought it and get a refund or at least a credit note. Unfortunately when you purchase online from a company they can hide behind the annonymity that the internet provides, they can send you round and round in circles trying this that or the other fix or battling your way through an endless customer service system.

I wish the flight-simming community would be more proactive in exposing these company's for what they are, money-grubbing cheats.

Anyone can sit and write an amazing sales pitch on what a product is 'meant to do' and throw in a few screenshots of 'what it's supposed to look like'.

I'm not generalizing, I have had good payware (although it was way back when I started out on X-Plane)

I appreciate that you don't feel too badly because as you say the money was 'burning a hole' but YOU earned that money and better it still burning that hole in your pocket than someone elses who doesn't deserve it.

Sorry to rant but I feel passionately about rip-offs.

Johnny

Oh and by the way they will probably add insult to injury now by emailing you sales pitches for their other products.

[TSR2]

Understand mate. Rant at your leisure.

Techy, its a weird one mate. I get lower FPS in say the 748 than I do when I'm Beta testing Rick's hawk, but thats because the Hawk is purpose built for FSX. I get 60 - 80 in the Valleys with VFR Scenery at 400 knots. With the 757 I get 8 just looking at it sitting on a default runway. I'd be curious to see how you've got FSX setup matey, as I may be missing a trick here.

[Techy111]

I'll send you my CFG file mate.....I finish at 7 tonight...

Tony

[rpjkw11]

I bought the 757 'A' Block for $5 or $10 just to see the quality level of Capt. Sim. At first I had problems swapping panels. The 'original' panel was a FS9 default of some sort (I can't remember and too lazy to check) that had been coded by Capt. Sim to cause headaches when swapping: Install a different panel and the spot view shows the 757 without landing gear, all doors open, and red safety flags all over the aircraft. I managed to solve the problem after weeks of fiddling around, but with a recent HDD crash, I have the old problems back and I can't remember what I did to fix them. Same with the stand alone C-130J, but that was easier to fix, though it's on the outs right now. Help in solving the problems would be appreciated, but I haven't been able to stir myself to solve the problems again.

Capt. Sim quality is pretty good, but only slightly better than POSKY's 757s, unless one is a systems minutia freak (which I'm not). What little customer service I've requested has been provided within 24-36 hours, EXCEPT for questions concerning the different panel problems (never got any kind of an answer), but I don't hold that against them.

I also bought their 707 on sale and, while she's a frame rate hog, she's a beautiful model and flies quite nicely. She's 'long in the tooth' now, so I lean heavily towards HJG's awesome products.

My advice is this: Don't rule out Capt. Sim products, but be sure to look at other products, including and especially freeware.

Sorry for the long-winded post.

Bob