A-4 Skyhawk (Virtavia)
Review October 20th, 2024
Variants
The a/c is delivered in 3 distinct variants
Object Modelling
Some of the external modelling is excellent and makes the walkaround a fun experience.
Nice to see the brakes modelled.
Undercarriage retraction is nice to watch, with the wheels retracting asymetrically and 3D hydraulic lines in the wheel wells.
Textures
External textures are quite low-res. Disappointing as one of the reasons I bought this was to have a "virtual scale model" of the Royal Australian Navy Skyhawk.
The textures don't seem to respond to different lighting conditions as well as we have come to expect the past 4 years in MSFS 2020.
Cockpit
The acid test is up close and personal on my 85" 4K monitor. Not many cockpits survive this scrutiny intact.
This may not worry those who are flying on a smaller monitor. YMMV.
Up close on my 85" 4K monitor. Not too good.
At the default distance = OK.
Mmmm... those labels...
Also, the instrument views were not assigned. View 1 was a close up of the HUD and the other views went outside the canopy.
Flight Model
The flight model had a rotation of about 900 degrees per second in the roll axis.
Computational Fluid Dynamics seemed very basic, with pretty much the same airflow in clean and dirty configuration.
It was a blast to fly low and fast as the a/c had an almost non-existent effect on frame rates, but the novelty soon wore off due to the reasons stated above.
A shame, as I really wanted to like this. Perhaps future updates will see these issues addressed?
| Aspect | Rating /5 |
|---|---|
| Variants | 5/5 |
| Object Modelling | 3/5 |
| Textures | 2/5 |
| Cockpit | 2/5 |
| Flight Model | 1/5 |
| Final score | 2.6 / 5 |