G3.5 disappoints

[brokenspar]

After almost 6 years of flying an ancient version of Realflight, I made the plunge and bought V3.5 today. Pretty disappointing: lots of silly features, pretty lights and other eye candy, but the flight physics seemed to have been dumbed down. Fer instance, what would have been a certain crash now turns into a hard landing, and what should have been a hard landing is now a smooth landing. Tail draggers are no longer demanding; they almost have to be forced to ground loop or dig in a wingtip. Seems kinda strange, as this sim is supposed to prepare a guy for the real world. Or has Knife-Edge Software just caved into marketing pressures and made an arcade-type sim that will appeal to the masses by being too easy to fly?

This reminds me a lot of going from Microsoft's Flight Simulator 9 to version 10. Pretty graphics, but the whole thing was dumbed down to the point where a raw newbie could fly a heli practically hands-off. Sorry for the rant, but after waiting so long to upgrade, this is a big let-down. :confused:

[Harry D]

You're not alone in your disappointment. See the thread at http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=726959 (and quite a few others on this and other forums). You're absolutely correct in everything you say - it is indeed now just another videogame.

I got tired of waiting for RealFlight to do something about the mess they created with 3.5, and have reverted to G3. It's not perfect but is a lot better than 3.5.

[brokenspar]

What's really aggravating is that I gave away the old RF this morning, and bought V3.5 about an hour later!

Here's an example of what a joke V3.5 is: I learned to fly helis in V2.0 and it was a challenge. I spent many hours learning the required skills. In V3.5, you can make a horrendous landing, with a lot of side slip and the heli simply plops down and rights itself as though it's a normal arrival. Try that in a model heli and you'll have pieces of rotor blade flying all over the place. Not a very good training/practice tool, IMO. :(