I'm not sure you are a rarity in caring about the flight model! I have never actually flown an F-5 but have spent a lot of time around them, photographing them on the ground and shooting them air-to-air at places like Key West, Miramar and Fallon. As a layman I can't tell whether a flight model accurately depicts the real aircraft or not although I do notice when the controls are obviously unrealistic in a 'simming sense'. I'm not a pilot but I have always found it hard to be convinced that it's actually even possible to fully replicate a real flight model in a desk based simulator game. Again I bow to the expertise of the real pilots here who sim as well. To me though for a level of immersion that will get me to use a product regularly (or even simply more than once) it absolutely has to look right and sound right. In MSFS for a Payware product today that means, as a minimum, that the sounds are top notch, the internal and external modelling is accurate (e.g. with properly formed curves on canopy frames etc ...) and the texturing and paint finish is at least a quality of what the freeware community can achieve. I don't consider the latter as "eye candy". When you see the finish that likes of Fly-by-wire and others can achieve on freeware products there is now a very high bar in terms of the texture and paint finish now demanded/expected. I also appreciate that some people have no requirement for any external views as they just fly the thing but personally an accurate and relevant pilot figure is also a big 'realism' factor for me although I appreciate others are less bothered on this aspect.
Anyways I agree that once Dean has got some updates out and our painters have got busy this will be a useful addition to my hanger.
Fellow old fogey
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