Just a follow-up on this for those of you who are simmers but have not yet downloaded this freebie. I have put a couple of hours of circuits and bumps on it in P3Dv4, and have some thoughts.
Broadly, it's a really good plane, and a legit $50 giveaway, so you should get it if you have P3Dv4. It's detailed, good-looking, and challenging to fly. A2A's philosophy is to give you very little in terms of automated options. You will be forced to learn quite a bit about P-40 systems and procedures in order to fly it.
The handling is demanding relative to other warbirds I have for P3D. They have chosen to model strong torque effects and require very gentle touchdowns to not break the plane. I don't know if this is "accurate" or not, it's always somewhat subjective, but most other fighters in the sim will feel like J-3s once you have learned to handle this plane well. There is no tailwheel lock, which appears to be authentic, and makes for some pretty hairy crosswind takeoffs and landings.
The plane comes with A2A's Accu-Sim feature which is new to me, and although it has a slightly gimmicky quality, I do like it. Part of it is just that it models all the internal systems and forces you to pay attention to them. The other thing is that it gives you a "persistent" airplane from session to session. That means you get one P-40, and the state of it is saved when you quit the sim, and when you play it again days or weeks later, it will still be in that state. If you didn't top up the fuel and fluids, they won't be topped up. If you fouled the plugs, they'll start fouled and maybe get worse. If you bent something on the last landing, it will still be bent. There is a maintenance hangar where you can inspect and fix what's wrong and zero-time the engine, and if you have gone straight in and wadded it up beyond repair, it will basically rebuild it for you, but it's still the same airplane, with a running tally of logged hours. Luckily, the maint window doesn't charge you for the repairs. My P-40 is certainly now a data-plate restoration after some hard crashes, and I'd hate to see what the rebuild invoice would look like. There should be a cutscene of a guy who looks like Matt Nightingale handing you the bill.
To be more exact, you get 6 different P-40s, because each color scheme is a different entry in your airplane list, and each has its own history and status. Over time, each may start to behave a little differently from the others as systems get worn or just randomly wander out of spec. This helps give you a feeling of familiarity and a duty of care toward your airplane, and it even partly transfers into your attitude toward your other P3D airplanes that always start brand new no matter how you abused them last session.
The one drawback with the aircraft so far is that it introduces a whole new set of key mappings for the new control features it needs to model. Some of these are not customizable, at least not through the UI, and likely step on your preferred key assignments. There is a toggle to switch them all off, but they are needed to operate the plane, so you have to keep switching between your usual P3D key assignments and A2A's within a flight.
Anyhow, if A2A's ultimate goal here was to get me interested in actually buying their Accu-sim P-51D, they succeeded. There's no good freeware P-51 for P3Dv4 yet, and I'm sure this is a good one as well.
August
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