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Abacus's Flight Simulator WWII Try-Buy Aircraft
by Pete WaddellWhy would anyone pay good money, ($8.00 US each) for an aircraft from the Premiere Collection, by Abacus, for Microsoft's CFS or Flight Simulator 2000 when you can get free ones off the Internet? The truth is, however, I have not been able to find any good freebies out there. There are a lot of pretty looking planes available on various websites, but there are a couple of important facts you must consider.
Sure, the freebie aircraft may be pretty and have all sorts of animated parts for you to look at from the external viewpoint, but once you bring them into CFS or Microsoft FS98/2000, their flight models show their true limitations. Most notably, in CFS, poor flight models will turn you into chopped liver. A dogfighting military plane has incredible demands placed upon it, and is designed from the ground up to cope with the stresses of combat. In other words, the flight model, the aerodynamics, the wings, and fuselage components are all specifically designed for the job at hand.
A good way to weed-out imperfectly designed aircraft is to bring them into air combat situations. Most converted Flight Simulator warbirds behave badly once you start throwing them around in aerial combat at speeds over three and four hundred miles per hour. It seems that many people think that putting a P-51 Mustang paintjob, body design, and cockpit on a Cessna 172 flight model will get them a combat-ready aircraft. It’s like taking a Chevette frame, putting a Penski Cart body on it, and then running in the Indy 500. They’ll be scraping you off the concrete walls or Michael Andretti’s grill, in about two seconds.
Cockpit View of the Me262
Abacus has been making great add-ons and utilities for CFS and Microsoft Flight Simulator for a number of years. One of their new features on their FlightSimDownloads.com website is their ‘Try-Before-You-Buy’ aircraft. Of interest to us was their four World War II era aircraft for CFS and FS2000. Each demo version has a trial period that expires after seven days. Currently available are the:
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