Product Review Just Flight RevolutionX

[mutley 4,498]

  

 

Just published is Kevin Firth's review of Just Flight RevolutionX

 

Kevin takes us on a tour of his local area to see what a difference RevolutionX makes.  Read on...

[Christopher Low 63]

I hate to be blunt, but I think that it looks rubbish. The buildings look rather ugly to me, and some of them (as Kevin has pointed out) would struggle to house a family of doormice. Then there is the rather poor match with the base photoscenery, churches that seem to have been "plonked down" rather haphazardly, and the serious lack of vegetation. If those screenshots show the tree autogen at maximum density, then clearly "every tree and hedgerow" in England has been removed since I last checked. ES Treescapes does a far better job of depicting forests and thickly wooded areas.

 

Of course, this is only based on the screenshots in Kevin's review (and other screenshots and video clips that I have seen elsewhere), but they are enough to leave me feeling less than impressed.

[britfrog 180]

I agree Chris , I am guessing here , but i suppose a program like this takes a year or two to produce, and in that time we the buyer have moved on and expect something better now, personally I havent see anybody produce realistic autogen, even those that have made HD cities, look naff,

Being a simple simon, what I fail to understand is why devs dont get photographs of areas and create a program which gives them a stereo depth (3d) like they did with a pair of glasses in the last war (constance babbingtoon smith style) for a computer geek it has got to be a no brainer.

 

if you look at any big city in google earth from 1000 feet everything looks real and in 3d why cant we get that for our sim?

[MyPC8MyBrain 273]

nice review Kevin, spot on!

i have to agree with my colleagues post above me

(also spotted an early implementation i shared; of my night splash technique)

i think the question we need to ask is

does the author intend to replicate real world with his product

or simply compliment missing autogen data with additional real world info

[Christopher Low 63]

Yes, I should probably make it clear here that I am extremely fussy where graphics are concerned, and I don't tend to use stuff unless it is visually "comfortable to the eye". Revolution X may not be good enough for me, but it almost certainly will be for many people who just want to see autogen buildings rather than flat photographs. I am looking forward to seeing what ES can deliver with their Autogenesis project, because the screenshots that I have seen so far look a lot more realistic (to me) than Revolution X. Of course, the downside is that complete coverage of the UK will cost a lot more money and hard disk space, but there can be no compromises where I am concerned

[HiflyUK 0]

Kevin:  Thanks for the interesting review.  Something that might be worth clarifying for those who may not realise, the (glowing) whole 'Introduction' is I think a copy of the developer's description, rather than necessarily your own conclusions!  My first impressions after installing the product were very good, seeing trees and buildings in the distance, and it has some merit.  But then getting closer to the buildings, it's obvious that many of them are of the wrong type for the location, far too large, and mis-placed.  For example, I see many of the large flat-topped buildings with their roof half red / half grey (like I see in the some of the review pics) haphazardly placed over underlying residential estates.

 

I sent pics of this to JF who forwarded them to the developers, and the last I heard was that no response had been received, so JF offered me a full refund, fortunately.

 

So basically, I generally support your conclusions.  If we buy the product based on the developer's description (as I did), then one has to be prepared for possibly some disapointment, as parts of the description are simply 'misleading', as you state in the review.  I've really perservered and tried to like this one, and there's good intentions behind it,  but I've come to the conclusion that for me, on balance, it simply detracts from the underlying photo scenery.

[dogtrack 346]

A fair Review. I do wonder though, have we reached a point where we expect too much from our addons. Here for instance, at around the same cost as a medium sized airport. We are given AG and Lighting for the whole of England, Wales and Scotland and at around 3000ft it works very well. OK, it's not perfect but is any scenery package ? I certainly haven't found one yet that is and I have been looking since FS98.

[Christopher Low 63]

That's a fair point, Arnie. It's just that I am not usually interested in "halfway measures". I prefer to pay more money for a product that delivers the goods to a level of quality that matches my expectations