Just Flight Rescue Pilot Mission Pack for FSX
At the crash site |
Organ successfully delivered to Manchester |
Conclusion
Firstly, let me say, I loved it, it has provided me hours of fun, don’t forget
some of the scenarios will take an hour or so to complete, it is real time
after all, many missions are presented in a lot less time to complete.
The missions in the main are great fun to fly and rewarding for all your
efforts, OK, some of the situations are a little unbelievable, eg, rescuing
a person form a village on fire, I made a direct approach and landed in
what can best be described as fire maelstrom, in real life, you and the helo would be cinders. It was down to the flame graphics, well being just
too excessive.
Also, one mission I found very difficult to complete, (finished it by luck,
more than precession flying) was a rescue in very bad weather conditions
with a
person stranded in a mountain lake, you had to hover over him for a set time period,
to affect the rescue. I opted to ‘hop’ outside the helo to get a better
visual perspective over the person to be rescued.
Boy, the driving rain/snow had a very odd visual effect which rendered the
visual reference useless. OK, in real life one may encounter such extreme
conditions, but I felt the limitations of flight simulator generated
weather effects detracted from the mission experience.
I experienced some other minor issues within some of the missions, but I got
around them. Again, I would advocate reading the instructions.
Hours of fun with Rescue Pilot!
The co-pilot was excellent, he was clear in verbal information and
his actions
taken by way of setting the Nav/Comms is of great value. A squawk code
was confirmed by the co-pilot, as well as other comms instructions, but the
code was not evident in the aircraft it remained at the default setting.
(1200 and did not alter despite the co-pilot confirming the change to 7000)
As with the demo there is German narrator who offers ‘pearls’ of wisdom
in-flight, my view is the same when I reviewed the demo, this offers no
value to the program at all. If anything, the co-pilot should offer
conversational addictions not this other person, after all, who is he
supposed to be? There can only be one co-pilot.
On this co-pilot issue, I would have been very impressed if all the aircraft
actually had the co-pilot sitting in the cockpit, because when looking at
the aircraft on an external view, only one pilot is seen in the cockpit, a very
small point but would be more accurate.
For whatever reason, I could not get the anti-collision beacons to function
on the aircraft, OK, once selected, you could detect a flash of red on the
fuselage, but the beacon did not flash at all. Also, you could see the
red
and green reflections but no light source. Interestingly, you could see the
front wheel olio mounted landing light.
This could be a unique issue to my computer? But I think not. Obviously I
checked the switches were indicated ON, and they were.
Also, for some reason, I found it very difficult to start the engines on the
Learjet, form cold. The Ctrl+E function did not work.
Perhaps I really should appreciate this is not a stand alone program, but a
mission expansion, so Just Flight have to work with the program parameters
within FSX. But the ‘issues’ I experienced were frustrating.
Landed at the mountain rescue centre |
Parked at Manchester with ambulance waiting |
I have had and continue to have, great fun with this offering, I will
complete all the missions and will revisit many of them, because they are
FUN to fly!
On one mission you have to land on a motorway, the vehicles on show are
excellent, I love the emergency vehicles very accurately executed. I did not
however, detect any flashing lights on the emergency vehicles. In the
demo,
they had the US colour combination flashing, ie red and blue. I have flown
this mission twice and on both occasions I have not seen any blue lights.
A bit of
a shame, how about some moving police, ambulances or fire engines? Now that
would have been really nice!
In this mission expansion I experienced some issues, but do they rein the
enjoyment? A resounding NO! I really hope there will more additions to the
Rescue Pack. I think this offering could go from strength to strength,
improving the visual audible and available missions, in fact it has the
hallmark of a ‘classic’ about it.
The cost is not excessive, in fact, in my opinion Rescue Pilot Mission
Expansion offers great value, considering the hours of fun you will have
flying any one of the 12 missions.
A real quality product and possible accolade of excellence within reach, but
still needs tweaking.
I have to say, I would LOVE to fly some RAF Rescue aircraft, and not based
on a civil service; now that would offer SO many incredibly interesting
mission options! Just a thought?
Now, who needs to be rescued!
Onwards and Upwards..
Nigel C Martin
System Requirements
• Flight Simulator X (Requires FSX Service Pack 2 or Acceleration to be
installed)
• PC with 2.5GHz+ processor
• 1Gb RAM
• 128Mb+ 3D graphics card
• Windows XP/Vista
• 1Gb hard drive space
Links
Download version |
Boxed version |
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