Immerman, there's no reason to diss the add-on if you haven't tried it just because it's for a sim you don't like.
You're free not to like FSX and it does have it's drawbacks (many of them serious), but having spent time with it on a friend's PC (i don't own a copy myself) and getting to grips with some payware add-ons like this one, my personal experience was that
a) well done payware models like this one are in a completely different league compared to the stock aircraft in FSX so i can't really judge them by saying "stock FSX is bad so this will be too" and
b) products like this one gave me a much more fulfilled sense of operating the aircraft in the way a real pilot would than any combat sim around, even IL2.
I didn't say "fly" or "fight" for which IL2 is great, i said "operate" because let's be honest, in reality the plane doesn't operate itself just like it doesn't fly itself
I've tried a couple of birds made by these guys and i can honestly say it's the closest i've ever felt to piloting a real aircraft and yes, just because the FM/DM is better and i can shoot the guns in IL2 doesn't mean it comes any closer than this add-on to flying the real thing. I think they are just different sides of the same coin modeling a different part of the whole experience.
It's this realisation of the distinction between actual flying and the rest of what a pilot does that struck the first few times flying warbirds in FSX which explains the reason most online flying in IL2 is nothing like the way they used to really do it back then: the pilot couldn't just point and shoot, he had to waste time fiddling with other controls too.
This necessitated having pre-planned as much of the combat sequence as possible, including contingencies in the event of things going bad, that's why in most memoirs you'll read it's usually a case of "see, decide if i have the advantage or not-->engage and then run away/disengage altogether". The workload was a bitch and none of our combat sims (apart from modern/jet titles like Falcon4 and DCS) reflected that, especially if they were prop era sims...until now.
This is one of the main reasons i've been advocating improved engine/systems management and pilot workload for CoD and i'm very happy we'll be getting it, because it has a very real tactical impact. There's far too many people thinking that if one flies combat sims then he has nothing to learn from civilian ones. I know because i used to think the same.
However, that can't be further from the truth really. I've learned an enormous amount of stuff on navigation and engines just from flying FSX add-ons when visiting that buddy of mine and i can't wait to see how it will affect my combat simming and tactics to have to fly in an environment where these things actually matter for a change
