April 2009 Unedited Screenshot Contest Winners

[Ludo62]

Aerosoft’s FDC Live Cockpit
Reviewed by Ludo Lambrechts



Once again, after many times of doing so Aerosoft has proven to the Flight Simulator community that they are capable of making quality products. FDC Live Cockpit is a great enhancement to your Flight Simulator experiences. FDC Live Cockpit will bring your cockpit alive and will become your new best friend.



FDC Live Cockpit is a great tool, to make your cockpit seem more “alive”. The way that FDC Live Cockpit makes your cockpit seem more alive is it “creates” a captain, co-pilot, engineer, and flight attendant. Their voices will be heard such as whenever you hit 80 knots an hour. These voices make you feel as though you are working with a team. This team will work along with your aircraft and will read out accurate information. This great program also will take you through aircraft checklists which change according to phases. These phases will be determined by the pilot’s actions.

FDC Live Cockpit is more geared towards the airline pilots, not the general aviation pilots. Even though FDC Live Cockpit can be used for general aviation planes, it is not as realistic as with an airliner. In a small general aviation aircraft you wouldn’t expect cabin calls, or a flight attendant addressing many passengers over a PA system.



FDC Live Cockpit gives the user configuration possibilities. FDC Live Cockpit does come with limited aircraft that have been preset and there are many aircraft that are not included. Luckily for us there are options which can be changed to suit the aircraft we’re choosing to fly. These options include which checklist, how many flap settings there are, pilot voices, and when phase changes can occur. There are also a lot of other settings that can be changed besides the ones I listed. Changing these settings is a lot of work, and does take about five to ten minutes to do, that’s why Aerosoft included a setting called “save profile” which allows you to save settings for different planes and can be accessed at a later date.

FDC Live Cockpit is also great with its voice options. There are a couple of different languages included and other languages that can be downloaded. You have the power although to have any language spoken in your cabin. This is done through the creation of a voice pack for FDC Live Cockpit. It is not very hard to make a voice pack for FDC Live Cockpit and all you’ll need is a microphone and a recording program on your computer. If you don’t have the time to make your own voice pack, but would like a different voice in your cockpit there are many other voices which you can choose from in the FDC Live Cockpit options. FDC Live Cockpit also gives you an option to include its ATC chatter along with the local ATC. The FDC Live Cockpit ATC is extremely more realistic than the default ATC, and contributes greatly to making the Cockpit seem more “alive”.

The other great quality of FDC Live Cockpit is the fact that it does not affect performance of your game. You can play with or without FDC Live Cockpit engaged and you’ll get the same amount of FPS. The other great thing is the ability to choose when FDC Live Cockpit is engaged as you won’t always want to fly an airliner, and might want to fly a smaller, lighter aircraft that doesn’t require co-pilots, engineers, and flight attendants.

FDC Live Cockpit is a great utility for people to use, despite the fact that it is more for the big airliners and cargo haulers it is a great add-on to your flight simulator experience and is a must have. FDC Live Cockpit’s realism make Flight Simulator 2004 seem less of a “simulation” and more of a “reality”. I would recommend this to every person who enjoys the challenge of flying a bigger plane once in a while. I would give the Aerosoft team 9.7 out of 10 for their excellent work on FDC Live Cockpit.

Written by Ludo Lambrechts
Administrator of Canadian Pilots.

[George]

Nice review, You'd be a good advertiser

[Anthony]

nice review ludo

it is a great little program to use

anthony