Wimpey released

[Nick C]

http://www.contact-simulations.com/acatalog/WELLINGTON_.html#a631

Sadly, here we have another product page with no bloody pictures that anybody can see. If someone (cough, Roger) purchases this product, please be so kind as to kick First Class in the backside (as a customer I think you are entitled) and then could you please post some images?

[stiz]

i'm gonna guess its along the same lines as the magister, round the world in 80 flights, hurricanes, and maybe early years of flight

[Tim-HH]

HERE ('http://www.aerosoft.de/_php_projekte/_php_screenshots2/screenshots.php?sp=fsx&p=wellington') you can find some pictures of the Wellington. But unfortunately there are no pictures of the VC...

Greetings
Tim

[Ferry_vO]

Well the outside looks pretty good! :applause:

[gera]

Very nice, I always liked the Naval one.....just a bunch of wood placed together correctly!!!....will get it.:running:
but when i is available for download (?)

[Roger]

http://www.contact-simulations.com/acatalog/WELLINGTON_.html#a631

Sadly, here we have another product page with no bloody pictures that anybody can see. If someone (cough, Roger) purchases this product, please be so kind as to kick First Class in the backside (as a customer I think you are entitled) and then could you please post some images?
If it was downloadable I might risk it but I don't usually do snail mail orders.

[Nick C]

Good point Roger, I wonder if it will become available as a download?

Thanks for the link Tim, I'd still need to see some VC shots before purchase however.

Ooooo and we have a new smiley, excellent :bs: :d

[IanP]

I was hoping it would be in Game. It wasn't (although pretty much every other FCS title is). It may appear on Friday, or the Friday after, we'll see.

I'm very tempted, for a variety of reasons, but will contact FCS directly tomorrow and express peoples' concerns. I need to phone them anyway.

Ian P.

[IanP]

A little bit of research by one of the guys at simMarket has uncovered this...

http://www.contactsales.co.uk/Wellington.htm

Ian P.

[Nick C]

Thanks Ian :ernae:

[Mithrin]

I just don't have the money anymore and that saddens me. It looks quite nice. I'm slowly drifting out of the payware market I'm afraid.

Don't want to stir up that subject again though, it looks rather nice.

[SkippyBing]

VC doesn't look too bad although IF looks a bit tricky with the control column where it is!

[Ferry_vO]

Nice VC! Great detail on the geodetic structure too. :

http://www.contactsales.co.uk/Vault/Wellington/Wellington_VC_03.jpg

:d

[noddy]

Amazon have a release date of 5/12 and Play 12/12

[Paul K]

Mentioned this over at CBFS.The model itself looks okay, but is ruined by this ludicrous wood grain effect. I just can't understand why things like this get past whatever quality control regime there may be. What on earth were they thinking of ?


http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m115/Geomitrak/Woodwelly.jpg


If comes with a paintkit, or some good repaints appear, I might get it. Otherwise, another false dawn for FSX owners.

[gajit]

It looks :bs: to me - very disappointing

[Quixoticish]

It looks :bs: to me - very disappointing

Care to elaborate? I mean admittedly the wood effect on the textures looks a bit naff, but the model itself and the VC look rather good?

[gera]

I just don't have the money anymore and that saddens me. It looks quite nice. I'm slowly drifting out of the payware market I'm afraid.

Don't want to stir up that subject again though, it looks rather nice.

Me too, it is getting pretty expensive......the world money situation is :censored:

[gajit]

Care to elaborate? I mean admittedly the wood effect on the textures looks a bit naff, but the model itself and the VC look rather good?

Need I say more - bit naff is an understatement. I am always suspicious when there is a lack of detailed screenshots of a product and have learnt the "hard" way - being optimistic with my "hard" earned case.

It would be great to have a decent Wellington but this does not show much promise at the moment.

[IanP]

Having dug a bit further, it appears that the "general" release of this one won't be until the first half of December - as has already been stated by noddy above. I wonder how many of those shots are beta models?

I guess we'll find out next month.

Ian P.

[gajit]

Having dug a bit further, it appears that the "general" release of this one won't be until the first half of December - as has already been stated by noddy above. I wonder how many of those shots are beta models?

I guess we'll find out next month.

Ian P.

I do hope it turns out better than I'm anticipating - I would honestly love to be proved wrong on this one.

[Nick C]

I thought it looked OK from the pictures Ian linked to, however as he says, we'll find out next month.

[Quixoticish]

Need I say more - bit naff is an understatement. I am always suspicious when there is a lack of detailed screenshots of a product and have learnt the "hard" way - being optimistic with my "hard" earned case.

It would be great to have a decent Wellington but this does not show much promise at the moment.

Fair enough I suppose. I just thought saying it was cow **** was a little bit harsh based on some screenshots. :wiggle:

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this one personally, I'd love a good FSX Wellington.

[Roger]

The "Wood effect" is weird but I hope these comments will reach the developers before release and perhaps the Wellie will be good.
One thing that amazes me (and undoubtedly Nick too) is the ubiquitously poor quality of shots that developers take of their projects. Anti-aliasing...who needs it? Anisotropic filtering...bah humbug!

[noddy]

Well I have placed an order for it, be good to have some more WWII stuff.

[guzler]

Looking forward to this, but some little errors, notice the texture inside the oil cooler or carb duct ontop of the nacelles, on the CC variant, one has white inners, the other black (which looks much better IMO). And agree on the texture quality, unless they sort that, I won't be buying. Hopefully, these wil be Beta'd out because the model looks great. And a short stirling to follow, or is that just dreaming ?
http://www.contactsales.co.uk/Vault/Wellington/wellington_A5_flyer_web_sml.jpg

For £25, I would expect this to be right

[noddy]

Amazon have got it for £17.99.

[IanP]

Just a quick note that I have received an e-mail from First Class Simulations to say that they have updated the product page with larger images.

http://www.contact-simulations.com/acatalog/WELLINGTON_.html#a631

Ian P.

[Nick C]

Just a quick note that I have received an e-mail from First Class Simulations to say that they have updated the product page with larger images.

http://www.contact-simulations.com/acatalog/WELLINGTON_.html#a631

Ian P.

Good news, sometimes It's nice to know people listen :applause:

[Mickey D]

If I knew how to link to Photobucket I'd show you some shots of the airfield that comes with it. RAF Driffield

I'll try uploading. There we go.

Also following release there'll be a Freeware AI Wellington traffic package by Bob Baum of Team SDB with Wellingtons painted as 104 Sqn by Frank Safranek. Youl'll find it on Flightsim.com. No fewer than 10 Wellingtons taxi and take off for a raid " somewhere in Germany".

[Lightning]

The full package is now available for purchase/download.

http://www.contact-simulations.com/acatalog/WELLINGTON_.html#a631 (http://www.contact-simulations.com/acatalog/WELLINGTON_.html#a631)

The free AI package will be up by this weekend here and on Flightsim.com

[Roger]

The full package is now available for purchase/download.

http://www.contact-simulations.com/acatalog/WELLINGTON_.html#a631

The free AI package will be up by this weekend here and on Flightsim.com

I can't see a download option. If there was I'd buy it.

[TimA]

I was looking forward to this, since I fly RW from an old Wellington base.

Externally, the model is pretty nice, although the supplied paints are awful - no geodetic structure in the wings, instead showing traditional stringers, and so overcooked that it's more like an audition for painting Warhammer miniatures! And wood grain? On a fabric-covered aircraft? No opening doors/hatches. The VC is fine, so long as you don't move. Then you discover they haven't modelled the wings, or the nose or... (the prop spinners are visible, in bizarre isolation!). There are only two views (2D/3D). The only popups are Garmin 295 and standard Sperry autopilot. There is no interior.

From my one flight so far, it taxies easily, but has lateral instability in flight (it rolled straight onto its back when I let go of the yoke! Cockpit visibility is so poor in the type that it's virtually impossible to fly without moving your head around - leaning up, sideways, forwards etc, and so the missing parts become an annoyance very quickly


http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/9049/ta690vh2.jpg

http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/1741/ta689gj3.jpg


http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/5798/ta712xy8.jpg

http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/7526/ta687ri7.jpg

Considering its high (£22) price, only 2/5

[gajit]

What a great shame - another product released that looks unfinished.

[MCDesigns]

Tim, from what I have seen in the shots, yours seemed like a pretty fair assessment of the aircraft. Pity, the VC looks nice, to bad they didn't have the foresight to include the rest of the aircraft.

[IanP]

The texture is definitely overcooked, but I disagree greatly with your assessment of the flight dynamics. I had mine trimmed to fly hands-off within seconds of taking off.

Edit: Looking at photographs, the geo structure in the wings isn't particularly visible anyway - nowhere near as clearly as it is in the fuselage.

Edit 2: Pressing ctrl-e opens the windows, so there are opening hatches, even if they're not the ones you want. I have no problems at all taxying or flying this aircraft without moving from the default seat position.

Indeed the only problems I have with the package are texture related (I like Mickey's carefully sighted screenshots to avoid the pretty poor texturing on the outside of those C-Types and in some other places! :icon_lol:) - it should also, as you said, be fabric coated, not woodgrain. We were looking around it trying to work out what the various woods were other than "wrong"! We settled on mahogany for the spinners.

Anyway. There'll be a full review in the new year. I'm hoping there'll have been enough feedback that there'll be a texture patch before then... Dan? Mickey?

Ian P.

[RCAF_Gunner]

Thanks for the review and shots TimA. The floating props look just plain silly and are enough to put me off the purchase so you've saved me from a disappointing purchase. Too bad they didn't realize how important those kind of visuals are to the immersion factor. If the engines and wings were added to the VC in an update then I would probably purchase it.

[IanP]

Again, what Tim's shot doesn't show you is that he is leaning forward on top of the instrument panel to get that shot of the floating prop. That's not entirely realistic either. Basically, what he's given there is all the bad points, without showing the good ones. "There's no interior" is also incorrect. The entire cockpit area is modelled - in places very well, in others, less so. If you leave the cockpit area, there's no remainder of the model. Most aircraft don't model the entire interior for very good reason (waste of polygons/lower frame rate).

While the package is far from perfect, the comments above aren't exactly balanced either. Having just done two more quick flights to take screenshots of the problems with the Driffield scenery, I can tell you that in the FS generated ground effect at very low level, yes, the bomber is unstable. The Tiger Moth I just flew as well was even less stable. Once out of ground effect, I trimmed it to fly easily.

Just trying to bring some balance, not talk the product up. I agree that it needs a patch.

Ian P.

[Lightning]

If I knew how to link to Photobucket I'd show you some shots of the airfield that comes with it. RAF Driffield

Also following release there'll be a Freeware AI Wellington traffic package by Bob Baum of Team SDB with Wellingtons painted as 104 Sqn by Frank Safranek. Youl'll find it on Flightsim.com. No fewer than 10 Wellingtons taxi and take off for a raid " somewhere in Germany".

The AI package has just been uploaded here and to Flightsim.com
Look for it soon.
Sorry it took so long, but the holiday season kept me too busy to mess with it.
.
.

[Lionheart]

Mentioned this over at CBFS.The model itself looks okay, but is ruined by this ludicrous wood grain effect. I just can't understand why things like this get past whatever quality control regime there may be. What on earth were they thinking of ?



LOL... I thought the textures made it..


Nice looking bird.


Bill

[IanP]

The AI package has just been uploaded here and to Flightsim.com
Look for it soon.
Sorry it took so long, but the holiday season kept me too busy to mess with it.
.
.

Having downloaded it, I see that you are using the Alphasim freeware models for the traffic. I take it you haven't recompiled them, so they're actually FS8/9 SDK models still?

Ian P.

[Mickey D]

(I like Mickey's carefully sighted screenshots to avoid the pretty poor texturing on the outside of those C-Types and in some other places! :icon_lol:)

Everyone's entitled to their opinion Ian, even you. Since you can remember I guess you got the digits of your age wrong. Shouldn't the first be an 8. Hehe.

[IanP]

I'm sorry you don't appreciate my comment, Mickey D, but seriously, flat green and brown textures with no attempt at making them look anything other than that? It doesn't look very good. Especially not in payware. Your screenshots showed the photoreal doors to the C types, which look fine - as I said, I like the carefully positioned shots because for marketing purposes, they work well. So why not show the rest of the texturing? I've attached a couple of shots below - it's interesting to compare the upper wing of the FS9 Tiger Moth model with the upper surfaces of the hangars.

I also note that you didn't answer my question regarding the version of SDK used for the AI models so I looked myself - the model says "MDL8MDLH" so the FSX version of this AI is not using FSX native models.

Ian P.

[arrowmaker]

I have to admit that the "floating props" issue does bug me. With a little hindsight it might have occurred to the developers that quite a lot of flight simmers use Track IR and are used to some varying viewpoint, due to head movement. With the Wellington, the missing parts of the model are very easily exposed, simply by nodding your head slightly.

Although the Wellington is frame rate friendly, I would rather have had it modeled more fully and take the extra frame rate hit. Don't get me wrong. I like the model, on the whole. It's just that the "floating props" are a bit of a fly in the ointment.

[d0mokun]

With a little hindsight it did indeed occur to me, and as a result the Lancaster does not suffer from the same issues.

Best
Dan.

[Cazzie]

I they are smart, the wood-like Earth paint color will be corrected before release.

I like Wimpy, but it's a big plane. If I have to pay, I have to be discriminative and pay for airplanes I truly like, which are fighters and small GA aircraft.

One reason I fly less in FSX is because I have to buy more every time I fly.

Caz

[IanP]

It's been released for about a year, Cazzie. This is an old thread that got dug up from the vault... ;)

Quite amusingly, I am doing yet another airfield at the moment that was a Wimpey base, though.

[arrowmaker]

With a little hindsight it did indeed occur to me, and as a result the Lancaster does not suffer from the same issues.

Best
Dan.

And it's all the better for it. The Lancaster is my favourite addon from First Class Simulations. :applause:

[d0mokun]

:ernae: