Phoenix, Give me your opinion please

[Twism]

Hello all.

I'm starting this thread because I'm becoming more and more dissapointed with phoenix. I think they had some really good marketing techniques that built up a lot of hype for a product that is quite under developed.

I bought it after keeping an eye on it over a few weeks, there seemed to be regular updates, new models and senaries popping up and a lot of people were claiming an outright new king of the hill for rc flight simulators.

I bought my copy just about two months ago and up untill now there has been one new model released. There have been one or two other items released from them but most are pretty useless. There are a lot of things that could be added/changed to fine tune the sim, but, for one, I cant believe that they havn't added a Trex SE V2 model, honestly, it has to be one of the most popular helicopters on the market, how could they not have it.

Small issues aside, I must have done something wrong when installing the game, it feels nothing like my trex 450, I have played with the various settings for hours on end and can't get it to fly right. It really takes me some time to get used to phoenix before I can fly properly in it and then again, it takes a lot of time to get used to the real thing, the constant back and forth isn't working out for me to the point that I stretch for 2-3 weeks before touching the sim.

Sorry to go on and on, I know this has been longer than it could have been, but I had a trial run with realflight and felt a much smaller gap between the sim and the real thing. I'm thinking of selling phoenix and trying something else.

To the point then.. does everyone feel that pheonix is as good as it gets, or do you just deal with any short comings?

Last note: I'm really not trying to bash phoenix, so please dont post here with a phoenix fanboy attitude doing nothing more than causing trouble.

[Wrench69]

Do you own any other simulators?

I tried clearviwe and g3 and aerofly and this is the best one so far. If you are complaining about lack of updates try Reflex which has even less.

Its the least expensive and by far the best heli sim imho.

[vetterick]

I think your missing the big picture, when you learn anything on a simulator its never going to be exactly like the real thing, but you can gain valuable experience.

The 450 in the sim is very fast reacting, it flys much like a V2 (fully tuned) would, if you have more of a beginners setup (the flybar weights on, detuned cyclic and less pitch) the sim will feel completely wrong, these items can be detuned from Phoenix as well for a more realistic feel.

I've spent a little time with other sims, they felt weird at first to, even flying someone elses 450 seems strange at first, but you can adapt, kinda like driving different cars, the controls are the same but they feel different.

Anyway, I believe Phoenix is as good as I need, and yes I can fly it much better than the Rex, and yes I've flown it way more too, if it wern't for Phoenix I know my skills would be at a much, much lower level.

So have fun with it, try to setup as close as your model is and git-er-done.

[uluaz]

Ever since I got the Phoenix sim I have been practicing more and more. I had a G3 previously. The models fly more realistic and you can fine tune them to your liking. Graphics is the best yet. And plus, now the mulitplayer is way, way better than G3.

[Raven_darkcloud]

Yup Hands down phoenix is best heli sim so far. I have flown most of them.and many real helis from cheap to spendy. Yes it is of on a few parts but all the others are more off. G3 is so far off its not funny, makes it seem easier then it really is.

You can make the 450 more tame and the heading hold is really good. I wish they had a way to just use my dx7's signal to fly. Damn cord gets in the way and kids pull on it. that my come as more 2.4 txes are used. Oh and to play with the water. thats so sweet.

[hookmaker]

Twism!
I have Phoenix and have had Reflex. Phoenix is superior I think. Since I only fly heli and it has the most "common" birds in there, I feel it´s quite adequate.
Although I've used it for quite a while now, only recently did I find out/bother to adjust it right. I found out that I actually had to program a bird on the radio with VERY different settings to get something that is "close" to my birds.

For instance on my Rappy Titan I fly with - 10% cyclic expo all around. I had to set a bird up in Phoenix with +35% expo to get something that looked close to how the real bird flies.

And so on. Don´t know if its the right way to do it, but at least there are many options and features. I REALY like the joint sessions, I tape a lot of guys every night and check their flights out at 1/4 speed - gives good learning.

Keep it up!

/Henrik

[Twism]

Ok, I understand what you guys are saying, and dont get me wrong, when I get going on pheonix I do learn a lot. I have tweaked and tweaked at the settings and have gotten the controls to feel quite similar, but there are just a few areas of flying where the heli does not react or behave at all like it would in real life.

I'm going to try and explain what I mean. When I fly my trex, it flies nice and stable with good forward speed, as soon as I slow down and try and do an figure of eight it gets far more tricky, as if the heli becomes very top heavy and just wants to topple over. In phoenix the heli feels like this all the time for me. It's very hard to explain :o

Another thing I am dissapointed in is, once again, the trex 450. It really feels as if they rushed it off just to get it in for the final release. I dont know if I was imagining things but when flying the trex600 you can almost hear the engine going through the paces, when you bank hard, or punch the collective up and down really hear the blades pumping. With the trex 450 I feel like im flying a little remote control toy..... bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ... till the end of time.

I dont know what everyone elses 450 sounds like, but mine can kick up quite a racket when throwing it around.

I had a "copy" of realflight that I hoped was a ligitimate copy when I bought it, but turned out not to be the case. I used it for a week or two while trying to figure out which sim to buy and honestly felt a smaller gap. I could learn to do something in realflight, then go outside and pull it off straight away and it would feel completly natural, as if I had done it a thousand times. With pheonix, I have to fly quite some time before getting used to it and then I have to fly maybe 4 packs to get used to my heli again.

My heli has no flybar weights +- 12 deg, 6 deg cyclic.

It is so different that I now fly the 600 in pheonix just because, if I'm going to fly with something that is completly different from the real thing, it might aswell look and sound better.

Oh, and than you for all the mature responses :D

[Pinecone]

I have flown full motion multi million dollar flight sims, adn trust me, they ALL have areas where they aren't quite like the real thing. There are limits to the computing power available, and the physics you can actually do in real time. So for under $200, it is GREAT. :)

As for the Trex V2, from a flight sim point of view, the only difference is the look. Flying is the same, as the sim doesn't model the grip bearings being a bit sticky at high headspeeds without the thrust bearings. Go to their website, look at the directions for taking picutres, and do it, send to them, and they will add it.

They are also a fairly small company, so they put a lot of their effort into getting 1.04 out, and also they are working on the model builder, so we can do our own models and start sharing them.

Yes, it is a work in progress, but at least the upgrades are free. I bought Real Flight a few years ago. They are now on their 2nd PAID upgrade. The first one had a $50 rebate for upgrading, the second I understand is full price.

[Twism]

Good points pinecone :D

I have now been practising on phoenix for the past couple of days and I'm finally getting used ti it and having some fun.

I would love to take pictures and send them in, but my stock canopy is pretty busted up. Model builder would really be cool.


I dont know if there is a document available, but I would love to see some details on what exactly certain settings change, so that it might be a bit easier to tweak a perticular model to your liking. At the moment I'm kinda blindly tweaking at settings. From a development and usability perspective they did good and bad, there are explanation captions, but they are pretty useless... i.e. a setting called "blade inertia" will have a caption of "adjusts the blade inertia"... not very helpfull.

Anyway, I really cant wait for an update, one that might fix any of a number of issues I have with it. Even if it would allow you to add your own recorded sounds for specific models... I dont know :D

Anyways, thanks for your opinions, I will stick it out :D

[hookmaker]

Twism!

As I said earlier, eg. adding + or - expo will give big changes (on some models). Just try and give some of your radio parameters a good kick to one or the other side and see the differences.

/Henrik

[HFG]

I find Phoenix hard to fly than my real rex so i get allot out of it. I use to have G3.5 and it held back my flying considerably. Depending on which variant of the 450 you are flying its not surprising they don't fly similar. Your +-6 cyclic is really slow (i use +-9) so on the sim the heli is going to be allot more twitchy. Personally i fly the knight 3D standard as its the fastest heli on the sim and really puts my thumbs to the test, when i get the real rex flying it seems like flying in slow motion.

[vetterick]

If you download the manual, it describes the different settings and what they do.

[BarnOwl]

Also if you add some wind, random gusts etc. the reality of flying will improve a lot I found out. Just turn off the wind sound, as they still have not improved that eery sound.....

[LJS]

Man, I’m not sure I agree with your issues with the Phoenix sim. I think it is VERY realistic. The Phoenix 600N flies just like my real 600N. Two of the things that makes me say that are:

- I have the same problems in the sim that I have in real life. For example in my inverted hovering, my real 600N gets away from me if I try hovering for extended periods. I have found the exact same tendency with the sim – although I’m already getting much better at it through simulator practice.
- I tried a funnel on the sim. When I went to try it in real life, the heli performed exactly the same way. It was a funnel, but my altitude control was less than perfect – just like in the sim.

There’s such a huge difference between Phoenix and RealFlight. RealFlight messed up my real life flying so much so that I didn’t fly G3.5 all summer long. Phoenix definitely helps real life flying. And it’s cheaper than RF to boot. Plus it’s easy to sit down and fly it for extended periods.

I’m not saying it’s perfect, but for $159 it’s scary close. What a great value.:lol:

Keep ‘em flying.
LJS