Absolutely... futile

FSX. Just tested yesterday, the FSX Flight Log from Clear Sky Simulation. Well... We will wait for something better..or a version 2 !

 

This is  from my knowledge the first product ever from Clear Sky Simulation, distributed by Simmarket. We are accustomed to these small companies who are created and then disappeared a few weeks later, just like that.

 

Lets just hope that this new developer will stay and improve this promising tool.

 

I have tested FSX Flight Log under FSX with 3 different flights.

1) The good point is that this utility is indeed launched automatically with FSX.
2) Another good point is the possibility to keep its datas even if you uninstall FSX. And we know that happens...
3) It is recognizing your aircraft and your callsign. And it shurely detects day or night time (which is not really so important since 90 % of virtual flights are VFR or IFR).

But, frankly i am disappointed. Of course, FSX defaut flight log is really unsufficient. But it's never-failing to detect flight times, departure and end.
In FSX Flight Log, you will have to complete these informations...

Another concern is about the "comments" item.

Personaly, i like to take some short notes, a de-briefing sort of, of my flight, and what went wrong :
For instance ? Bad landing, wrong handling, winds, errors in my checklist...
But in this "comments" item, you cannot even fullfill anything at the end of your flight !
It's only there to write some pre-flights info like conditions of flights.. I really don't get it.

Once you start your flight, the Flight Log cannot even detect the airport departure. So that's a lot of datas you have to enter manually yourself.

Eventually, when i have finished and closed my flight plan (and returned in FSX main page),
i checked at the Flight Log utility to discover that it did not record much things. It just adding some cumulative datas like your daytime or night time flights.
Is there a right thing to do ? Frankly i don't care. If i buy a 9 euros / 13 dollars utility,
it's certainly not to spend hours on a manual or i will do that when i will be retired.


Conclusion ?

The idea of a flight log is really interesting and this feature is actually not offered in most of flightplan utilities.
We will just have to wait for something better...  This one is quite expensive for what it is offering.


Airdailyx
January 2013
Dom Mason