ELITE or ON TOP for IFR training?

Gotta wonder how the many thousands of purchasers of On Top have swallowed
their dismay and neglected to write letters to the editor, to ASA, to the
Better Business Bureau, to Aviation Consumer, et al, complaining about being
ripped off? Seems to me that a product so deeply flawed would have been
bad-mouthed so widely that ASA would have pulled it off the market. You seem
to be the only person unhappy with the product.

Bob Gardner

"Ron Natalie" wrote in message
...
Bruno wrote:
Dear All,

I'm following an airline pilot course in Belgium, and I'm to begin with
the IFR training next week in a FNPT2 simulator.

Don't waste your money on On Top or IP Trainer like I did. The products
don't work on any of the PC's I've tried them on and ASA
tech support is non-existant.

Bruno wrote:

Thank you very much for your answers.
I think I'll try on FS2004 for the moment.

Bruno


But what about the quality of the lessons? I like IFT because the
"CFI" speaks so that I don't have to read instructions while I'm
concentrating on the instruments.

Bob Gardner wrote:
Gotta wonder how the many thousands of purchasers of On Top have swallowed
their dismay and neglected to write letters to the editor, to ASA, to the
Better Business Bureau, to Aviation Consumer, et al, complaining about being
ripped off? Seems to me that a product so deeply flawed would have been
bad-mouthed so widely that ASA would have pulled it off the market. You seem
to be the only person unhappy with the product.

Nope, others have complained as well. Many just take their lumps and
deal with the fact that the thing was designed for Windows 95 with
a specific card in mind and doesn't work well with modern machines.
I will continue to complain until ASA either delivers me an updated
product that works or returns the money they stole from me for this
disaster product. While ASA occasionally sends mem an email in
response to my repeated complaints, they have yet to do either
one of the above mentioned remedies.

So far I've managed to pay in excess of $300 for Trevor Thom's book
(the only useful part of the whole package, but not really worth
more than about $50).

In article ,
Flying the lessons with IPT is challenging because it doesn't allow even
momentary errors. If you slip up on a minor detail right at the end of
the lesson, you must redo the entire lesson from the beginning. That
leads to boredom and little training. I have never made it through
flying "Plan A". Has anyone gotten all the way through?

I wouldn't know. It has never operated long enough for me to get
through more than the first few lessons. It's a piece of crap and
a waste of over $300 for the pair.

I've got On Top and IP Trainier (old old verisons, got them when winME
was new forget verison). I basically can't run them on my new system.
However, I have an old win98 system that I use for genlocking and they
both work fine on it.
Both programs really need to be updated to work with win32s, but they
can run under winXP/win2k. It just takes a lot of playing with the
settings.

Bob's irony aside, Jackie (the product manager at ASA) is well aware that the
application needs a rip-up and re-do. I have been a computer designer and
programmer since each computer occupied a big room of its own and IPT is
probably the buggiest piece of production software I have ever seen. ... and I
have seen a lot of software.

I participated in the IPT Version 7.0 beta and exchanged several emails with
Jackie on the subject of the bugs. Instead of fixing bugs, the version upgrade
was more to add a few features. I don't know their economics but it may be that
they can't justify the cost of the rip-up and re-do or possibly they are working
on it but can't say so for fear of killing the sales of the current version.

That being said, the training concept of the IPT software is absolutely
outstanding and I finally decided that it was worth it to me to get the benefits
-- so I would put up with the considerable number warts. YMMV.

Now in the case of On Top, which I have not used, I wouldn't see any reason to
tolerate bugginess because there are many alternatives. Including Elite.

I have Elite and run both IPT and Elite on a PCATD setup. I have never bothered
to try On Top as the Elite is a a legal PCATD and it runs properly with the PFC
console, radio stack, etc. I am not a real demanding user, just flying
approaches, etc. and am very pleased with it. The documentation is weak, but
when have you ever seen good documentation? If you want to learn to use the
latest GPSs etc. IMHO there are plenty of stand-alone trainers for those. If
you want to practice basic instrument skills, ELITE does a good job.

Regarding MSFS, I am one who does not willingly do business with a vendor whose
objective is to screw its customers. Some products, because of the de jure
monopoly, you can't avoid. But this one you can.

HTH

On 6/18/2005 8:29 AM, Ron Natalie wrote the following:
Bob Gardner wrote:

Gotta wonder how the many thousands of purchasers of On Top have
swallowed their dismay and neglected to write letters to the editor,
to ASA, to the Better Business Bureau, to Aviation Consumer, et al,
complaining about being ripped off? Seems to me that a product so
deeply flawed would have been bad-mouthed so widely that ASA would
have pulled it off the market. You seem to be the only person unhappy
with the product.

Nope, others have complained as well. Many just take their lumps and
deal with the fact that the thing was designed for Windows 95 with
a specific card in mind and doesn't work well with modern machines.
I will continue to complain until ASA either delivers me an updated
product that works or returns the money they stole from me for this
disaster product. While ASA occasionally sends mem an email in
response to my repeated complaints, they have yet to do either
one of the above mentioned remedies.

So far I've managed to pay in excess of $300 for Trevor Thom's book
(the only useful part of the whole package, but not really worth
more than about $50).

Bruno wrote:
"Stubby" wrote in message
...

Bruno wrote:


Thank you very much for your answers.
I think I'll try on FS2004 for the moment.

Bruno

But what about the quality of the lessons? I like IFT because the "CFI"
speaks so that I don't have to read instructions while I'm concentrating
on the instruments.


The quality of the lesson will be provided in an FNPT2 simulator, for about
45h, with an instructor.
I'll use flight simulator only to train before having my lesson in the fnpt2
simulator, or to practice in case of problem during the fnpt2 training.

What is "fnpt2"?

I wonder why there is no third-party lesson package for MSFS? The Rod
Machado lessons are helpful, but limited in scope.

Amore complete package of pre-configured flights would be a useful IFR
training accessory. Such a package would be like the Machado lessons in
MSFS, only much more extensive, say 40 hours worth. It would follow a
logical sequence to step you through all the various types and
configurations of procedures, with instructor voice over and some sort of
graphics in the flight analysis view. The package would come with all
required graphics, charts, and plates in printable form. The entire thing
could be sold or distributed as an internet download, and could probably be
done quite cheaply, say $30.

I know MSFS isn't the best flight model, but there are some big economic
advantages to using it. Everyone and their brother owns MSFS already, so
most folks would only have to buy the preconfigured flight package. The
developer would be free to concentrate on the lessons and documentation.
MSFS is relatively bug free, has extensive documentation and support, is
updated and upgraded every year, and interoperability with new versions of
Windows will never be an issue. There's a huge community of add-on planes
and panels out there, so it would be easy to match your mount. The
integrated ATC is well done.

Speaking as a new IFR student just starting out, I don't really want to use
a computer to learn to fly by reference to instruments. I'd rather do that
in an airplane. What I want help with is learning all the procedural stuff
and developing my situational awareness, so I'm not trying to learn how to
interpret a pair of VORs and NDB at $130 an hour. I don't think the lower
flight model quality is an issue there. The integrated Garmin GPS is
another plus.

Anyone familiar with the MSFS SDK? How hard would this be?

"'Vejita' S. Cousin" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Flying the lessons with IPT is challenging because it doesn't allow even
momentary errors. If you slip up on a minor detail right at the end of
the lesson, you must redo the entire lesson from the beginning. That
leads to boredom and little training. I have never made it through
flying "Plan A". Has anyone gotten all the way through?

I wouldn't know. It has never operated long enough for me to get
through more than the first few lessons. It's a piece of crap and
a waste of over $300 for the pair.

I've got On Top and IP Trainier (old old verisons, got them when winME
was new forget verison). I basically can't run them on my new system.
However, I have an old win98 system that I use for genlocking and they
both work fine on it.
Both programs really need to be updated to work with win32s, but they
can run under winXP/win2k. It just takes a lot of playing with the
settings.

On 6/25/2005 8:26 AM, Ed H wrote the following:

Amore complete package of pre-configured flights would be a useful IFR
training accessory. Such a package would be like the Machado lessons in
MSFS, only much more extensive, say 40 hours worth. It would follow a
logical sequence to step you through all the various types and
configurations of procedures, with instructor voice over and some sort of
graphics in the flight analysis view. The package would come with all
required graphics, charts, and plates in printable form. The entire thing
could be sold or distributed as an internet download, and could probably be
done quite cheaply, say $30.


This is exactly what IP Trainer does, except for the $30 part. At least they
don't charge extra for all the bugs that are included!


Speaking as a new IFR student just starting out, I don't really want to use
a computer to learn to fly by reference to instruments.

Don't underestimate the value of learning to fly patterns ("Alpha pattern",
etc.) on a sim. It is cheaper and more difficult than in an airplane. If you can
do it well on the sim with no physical or audio feedback you will find it fairly
easy in an airplane. My instructor just skipped me over the pattern flying
after he saw that I could already do it easily. YMMV

Speaking as a new IFR student just starting out, I don't really want to use
a computer to learn to fly by reference to instruments. I'd rather do that
in an airplane. What I want help with is learning all the procedural stuff
and developing my situational awareness, so I'm not trying to learn how to
interpret a pair of VORs and NDB at $130 an hour. I don't think the lower
flight model quality is an issue there.

You have it backwards actually. Doing it in the real airplane is
a LOT more expensive and you have a LOT more to deal with. Doing it
on the simulator, you can focus on only the basic attitude isntrument
flying and nothing else. Doing the situational awareness in the plane
is a waste. Just about anyone (well almost) can navigate from a point
to a point. Do you really want to be flying along an airway picking
out the cross-radials every 20 miles and spending $35 for each
intersection? Do that on a computer where you can jump from point
to point in a matter of seconds. In fact, online there are many
models that do this. When you get into the plane you want to
be proficient at all the very basic stuff and semi-proficient at
the more than basic stuff. The simulator is more difficult in some
ways but early on when you screw up more than other times, the simulator
makes it very convenient and far cheaper to restart. In the
airplane getting back into position to re-start a maneuver can cost
a lot of money quickly.

Gerald

G. Sylvester wrote:


Speaking as a new IFR student just starting out, I don't really want
to use a computer to learn to fly by reference to instruments. I'd
rather do that in an airplane. What I want help with is learning all
the procedural stuff
and developing my situational awareness, so I'm not trying to learn
how to interpret a pair of VORs and NDB at $130 an hour. I don't
think the lower flight model quality is an issue there.


You have it backwards actually. Doing it in the real airplane is
a LOT more expensive and you have a LOT more to deal with. Doing it
on the simulator, you can focus on only the basic attitude isntrument
flying and nothing else. Doing the situational awareness in the plane
is a waste. Just about anyone (well almost) can navigate from a point
to a point. Do you really want to be flying along an airway picking
out the cross-radials every 20 miles and spending $35 for each
intersection? Do that on a computer where you can jump from point
to point in a matter of seconds. In fact, online there are many
models that do this. When you get into the plane you want to
be proficient at all the very basic stuff and semi-proficient at
the more than basic stuff. The simulator is more difficult in some
ways but early on when you screw up more than other times, the simulator
makes it very convenient and far cheaper to restart. In the
airplane getting back into position to re-start a maneuver can cost
a lot of money quickly.

The idea is that a simulator controls the number of decisions per minute
that you, the pilot, have to make. This allows effective learning. In
a real airplane just about anything can start happening at anytime,
complicating the learning.

IPT allows the student to crank up the weather effects when he/she is
ready. I like that but I believe IPT is still too demanind on things
like when you begin the roll-out from a turn.