I just visited the Abacus site and left with a somewhat puzzled look on my face.

They have a "Custom Paneldesigner" product with a 7 day free trial. "Ah great!" I thought. I was thinking that if it waa comparable to FS Panel Studio, and that I'd be able to edit those two gauges with it. So I downloaded it. (Unfortunately, FS Panel Studio offers no free trial.)

Bear in mind that this is their latest version 2.5, and costs $39, I suddenly realised that it's only for products up to FS2000! It can't edit gauges, and it can't read .cab files. What's more, when I tried to insert a standard gauge on a panel, it gave me an error and shut down. It may not be XP compatible either by the looks of it?

With my interest aroused, I then went to their aircraft download section, again free 7 day trials. I downloaded the "FS2002" Baron. Nice looking aircraft, but it's not GMax or FSDS2 - no landing light views from the cockpit, no damage modelling etc. It's only qualification as an FS2002 product that I could see was that the aircraft.cfg was set up for ATC. Other than that, it looked like it would be much more at home in FS2000.

I left there honestly wondering how they make any money? I applaud them for giving people a week to try their products out before buying, but I can't help thinking that it's just as well that they do.

Without being over critical, I just couldn't see anything that would persuade me (or anyone else) to pay for what they had on offer. Cfgedit appears to have all the functions of their panel editor and is free.

Really strange...

I just took a closer look at the Baron.....

Not only can't you see the landing lights from the interior (no V.C. or views at all other than straight forward btw) but you can't see them fom the outside either.

The strobes are the size of balloons and clearly, all the lighting is from FS2000.

They charge $10 for that. I bet it's been a while since they pocketed one of those...


Besides Arrestor Cables, I'd imagine their only source of revenue right now must be FSDS2, which they publish. It's a pity they don't use it to update their payware aircraft....

I've always been unimpressed by abacus & their ways. I agree - I don't know how they get by & I think FSDS would be better off with another distributor.
& they - like some others - scrounge around the freeware developers trying to steel our freeware..... like they have done with arrcab.

FSDS is a great program - ----- another example of their attitude is that many software companies would give away old versions free in order to promote the new version. If they gave FSDS1 away free I reckon everyone who got into it would upgrade to the payware version ......