The Just Flight Constellation Professional is
my favourite prop-liner for FSX, there isn't anything else I've
found yet that comes close to it. It allows us to fly in a
classic aircraft from a by-gone era when pilots did the flying
and the planes had character. I have previously reviewed the
Constellation Professional for Mutley's Hangar
This is not a re-visit of that review, but a follow up now that
Just Flight have released some expansion packs
Over the last 12 months or so Just Flight have taken the step to
release the initial add-on and then follow it up with expansion
packs. Whilst this is not popular with some people as they feel
that they are being short changed, it is something I am happy to
see as it provides another source of revenue for the developers,
and it allows the end user to only install the liveries that
they really want.
As an exercise, count up how many different
liveries you have in your hangar, and then count up how many you
actually fly with on a regular basis. Can you see my point now?
Admittedly if you buy all 3 base packs this will take your total
investment to just under £45, but there are developers who
charge more than this just for their base packs. By splitting
the base pack and expansion packs up, Just Flight can keep the
costs down for the end user.
Just Flight have recently released 3 expansion packs for the
Constellation Professional: A, B & C. This review focuses on
Expansion Pack C, but for reference the liveries included in the
other two packs are below.
Expansion Pack A Liveries |
Expansion Pack B Liveries |
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| • Air France • Eastern Airlines • Royal Air Maroc • Lufthansa • Flying Tiger Line • Sabena • Irish International Airlines |
• US Navy (Antarctic) • MATS • Blue Angels • USN AEW Earlybird • USAF AEW Earlybird AEW (radar nose) • Air Ceylon – long nose • KLM • Qantas – long nose • Varig – long nose |
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All 3 expansion packs are available as a
download from the Just Flight website, priced at
£7.99/€9.95/$11.99 and comes as a 103mb download, which doesn't
take too long thanks to Just Flight's fast servers. For what you
are getting I think that this represents excellent value for
money. When you have made your purchase and downloaded the
installer, installation only takes a matter of minutes using
Just Flight's on-line activation procedure.
What's Included in Pack C?
You get a total of 6 liveries covering 4 variants of the
Constellation. These are:
| L049A • Capital Airlines L749 • Western Airlines • Delta |
L749 with Speedpack • Western Airlines L1049H with tip tanks • Northwest • Real |
My personal favourite is the Delta livery, closely followed by the Real livery. Whilst there aren't as many liveries included in Pack C are there are in Pack's A & B, rest assured that they are all of a very high quality. The pack also includes modifications to the existing add-on, now giving you the L749, L749 with Speedpack and L1049H models. So where you loose out on liveries, you gain on models.
Each new livery is not only applied to the aircraft, but also to
the mobile passenger steps to give that really authentic feel.
All the new textures have been developed specifically for FSX
and have bump mapping to create ultra realistic airframe skins,
specular material effects replicate the signature metal
airframes and the high definition DDS textures are very frame
rate friendly. The package is also DX10 compatible.
If anything I think that the bare metal textures are a little
too reflective and can look unrealistic when you get close up to
them. But for normal screen shots they look just fine.
The attention to detail on the liveries is superb, right down to
the dirty marks on the wings left by the exhaust gases as they
exit the engines. It's nice to see these old liveries looking
old and weathered. I don't think the effect would be the same if
the aircraft looked like it had just left the factory. Although
the paint work isn't scuffed and scratched (that would have been
even better) the weathered look of the airframe still comes
across well.
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During flight there is no different in FPS compared to flying
the original Constellation Professional Base Pack, but I
wouldn't expect to see any adverse effect on performance as the
liveries have been designed in the same way as the base pack
liveries.
The liveries look fantastic from all angles and are a welcome
change from the all too common Lufthansa, BA, AAL, Air France
etc... liveries that seem to dominate airports no matter which
add-on AI pack you buy. The nostalgia just oozes from this
aircraft, combine it with some 'golden-oldie' liveries and
you're all set for a trip down memory lane.
Verdict
A welcome addition to a fantastic airliner. The
price is very reasonable and the included liveries are all
very high in detail and have no affect on FPS when compared
to the base pack liveries. I like that fact that the
textures all have the weather beaten effect which only adds
to the realism.
My only criticism would be that the reflectivity of the
textures seems to be a little too much.
You will need to own the base pack in order for the
expansion packs to work, if drive space is not an issue and
you enjoy having as many variations as possible then
this add-on is for you.
I'm please to award this expansion pack a Mutley's Hangar score of 8.5/10
Rob Scott
Review machine Spec: Intel Core2 Quad 2.40ghz |
4gb DDR2 RAM |Nvidia GForce 880GTX |Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
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System Requirements
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