FSX - Majestic Dash 8 Q400
A while ago I did a review on the Majestic Dash 8 Q400 Pro Edition (Majestic Dash 8 Q400 Pro Edition review). At that moment the FS2Crew Majestic Dash 8 Q400 Voice Control was available, so I decided to use that at the same time to do a review on this piece of software as well. Downloading, installing and the manual. Majestic Software Dash 8-Q400, N/A. The Majestic Software Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 addon for MS Flight Simulator X/Steam and Lockheed Martin. The Home of FlyInside Flight Simulator FFS FSX P3D and X-PLANE Message Board. Discuss FlyInside, be friendly and courteous! Skip to content. Majestic Dash 8 Q400. By Tezza » Sat Nov 25, 2017 4:57 pm. Same here, no issues, runs really well in P3d V4.1 and Q400 Pro.
The Dash 8 Q400 is a turbo prop airliner designed by Bombardier for short and medium flights. The Dash 8 is in use as a passenger aircraft, a water bomber and a freighter since 1983. Around 98 companies operate the Dash 8 all over the world and about twelve countries use the Dash 8 for military or coast guard services. With a maximum range of 1,114 NM or 2.063 km you can fly anywhere you like in every continent. On the Bombardier website you’ll find some examples of the range from different airports.
Flight range from Frankfurt. (source: The Dash 8 Q400 can take up to 78 passengers on a flight and has room for some cargo. Want to learn more about the Dash 8 Q400? Check out the or the. Majestic Software developed a Dash 8 Q400 Pilot Edition for FSX and Prepar3D and recently released the Pro Edition. It is the Pro Edition we will take a closer look at in this review.
I didn’t own the Pilot Edition, so this was an all new plane for me to learn to fly. The difference between the Pilot Edition and the Pro Edition you can read on the Majestic website, where they give you a long list of features. Installation Majestic delivers a 497 Mb download file at your harddrive and after installation you will loose 2.63 Gb of hard drive space. For P3D v3.1 user an additional update is needed. This file has a size of only 10 Mb. The installation is easy and without any problems you will get this bird added to your sim. The installer doesn’t only install the airplane but will get you several programs to manage the airplane settings and failures.
We will get back to that later on in the review. Manual(s) Everything you need to learn to fly this aircraft is supplied. A systems manual, checklists, speed tables and a tutorial flight will get you up and flying in no time. That doesn’t mean it won’t take some time to study and get used to all the systems.
For the additional programs, documents are provided to set the plane up as desired and to install the failure program on a network computer a manual is provided. So much for the installation and documentation.
Let’s start the sim and take a look at this airplane. Exterior model The airplane model looks great from a distance, but when you get closer you will see the textures are not crisp. Small texts on the outside of the plane are not readable and lines look a bit jagged. Compared to other designers this might not be the best plane, but low resolution textures comes with the advantage of better performance in the sim.
More on that later. All the details the real aircraft has, you will find in the sim. The details on the gears, the wings and the bottom of the fuselage look good.
All animations of gear and flaps look smooth and accurate. Cockpit The place where you will be spending most of the time in this aircraft is (obviously) the cockpit. Compared to the outside this is beautiful! The cockpit textures are crisp and clear. The screens reflect the surroundings and the lighting is great.
Every button and switch is simulated and has it’s own sound. If you like so, the cockpit provides you with some back ground music.
Starting this plane in Austria with a Wiener Walz in the back ground gives something extra. During flight you will hear passenger announcements. When you get into the cockpit don’t forget to move your seat forward. Stow the gear pins because your gear won’t retract when you forget and check the escape hatch over the co-pilots head. The displays will show information about navigation and several systems. The displays are operated from the center console, where you also find the radio and the flight management computer.
All switsches and knobs function great. I didn’t have any problem finding the right clickspots and the knobs work with the scroll button on the mouse. All displays are clear and texts on radio and navigation systems are very readable. In front of you, you will find the Headup Guidance System. Flip it down, set it up on the center console and let it guide you to the runway in IMC conditions.
You will still have to fly the plane yourself (it’s not an autoland system), but it will help you get to the runway. For using the HGS it is important to set your cockpit view the right way. At the centre of the front cockpit window you’ll see a black and two grey balls.
Line them up for the best view. The displays, the radio and the FMC can be opened in a separate window to make it easier to enter the required data. Compared to other developers Majestic did a very good job on the cockpit.
I can’t think of anything negative about it. Control panels As mentioned before, the Dash comes with several extra programs to setup the airplane and to control failures. Let’s start with the Control panel.
The control panel gives you the option to do a shared cockpit flight. You no longer have to be alone flying this plane and you can devide the work load with your co-pilot.
I didn’t test it because I’m not an online flyer. The next screen makes you choose between kg and lbs, mPa and In, Pause on TOD. The availability of the HGS and the state you like the plane to start in. The third screen gives you options to improve performance. These kind of pages I always leave as default when everything works fine The next two pages are used to set the controls, but for that you need to change a file.
Majestic Dash 8 Liveries
It’s all in the documents, but I didn’t use it. My controls are working fine with FSUIPC and I don’t like to take the risk of messing things up.
If you have problems with the precision of the controls in the Dash 8 I would recommend to use the Control panel to set the controls. The sixt page let’s you set up the sound system.
When you use a 7.1 system on your computer you are able to let the sound come from all the right directions. This is a very nice feature. It makes me wish I had a 7.1 sound system to fly this plane The last page I see as the most important.
This is where you load your plane with passengers and fuel. You have start the control panel everytime you like to fly the Dash and load it with this page. The graph on the right shows whether you loaded the plane within the envelop.
For the balance it is important to put the passengers on the right places. This weight and balance page is easy to use and gives you a quick option to set it all up for a flight. The Pro Edition of the Dash comes with a failure system in a separate program. You can choose to install this on your main Sim computer or to put it on a remote computer in the network. This control panel has three pages that controles failures in the electrical, hydraulic and navigation systems. The systems have several options of failure like a total fail, a leak or non stop running. The failure system works great and some failures take time to be noticed.
It’s fun to put this on a remote computer and let someone else select the failure. It’s up to you to solve the problem. Taking off The Dash 8 Q400 was a new plane for me so I looked for some quick tutorials to get me up in the air.
Actualy starting this aircraft is pretty easy, but configuring the FMS for a flight is totally different from a boeing or an airbus. On youtube you will find several tutorials and Airline2Sim has a Cadet Training video available where you learn to fly this aircraft from an actual Dash 8 pilot. SimMarket provided me with a copy of the Airline2Sim Cadet Training video which I can recommend to you. Following the checklist procided by Majestic it’not difficult to get the plane up in the air. Programming the FMS took me a while and I still struggle with it. That is more a problem of the Dash then it is a Majestic problem. Actualy Majestic did a great job on simulating all these systems.
Starting the plane you will see the cockpit come to life. The displays show system tests before displaying the needed information.
As mentioned before all buttons, switches and knobs work without a problem. Not following the checklists will get you in trouble. The simulation is very accurate.
Forget your gear pins and the gear won’t come up and you are forced to return to the airport and start again. In cold and icing conditions the cockpit windows will fogg up and icing will occur on the wings, windows and propellors. The aircraft will warn you so you can switch on the deicing systems. Before start you can choose to use the GPU provided by Majestic or to start the APU.
Simple things like starting the APU is a joy to look. Switch on the power and you will see some flashing lights as a self test. Starting the APU will take some time like in real life and after that you can switch on the generator and the bleed. The real world pilots fly this plane mostly on the auto pilot. The auto pilot is very well simulated and requires some study to use.
Let me tell you this: The ‘AltSel’ button is important! You can choose several navigation systems for the autopilot to follow. Before landing you should set up the HGS. This will draw the runway in the headup display and will help you land the plane.
On short runways you sometimes come in hard and land a bit rough. Landing to rough will blow a tire. You have to wait for 20 minutes for the tire to be repaired so you better prevent this from happening. The airplan is a joy to fly. Climbing very rappit you’ll be on cruise altitude in no time. Using the VNAV on your descent is a special thing you realy need to study on.
Again it’s the Dash 8 system. Majestic just did a great job in simulating it. Weather, terrain and traffic radars shows you where you shouldn’t go. The aircraft flies like you would expect from it.
All systems do what you expect and it all looks and feels like you’re in the real thing. Radio on Performance Complex airplanes tend to draw on the framerate in FSX and P3D. Not this plane. Majestic advertises with the fact that you don’t need a super computer to fly this aircraft.
I didn’t notice any drop in performance flying this plane in cockpit or outside view. The low resolution textures on the outside ofcourse help with this performance. I think it is important for an aircraft to have limitied impact on performance and have a good looking cockpit. The lowres textures on the outside I take for granted on this one. The Dash 8 comes with 2D panels to use with extra displays on your computer. I didn’t try those, because I only have one screen and use a trackir.
Compatibility I used this aircraft with the Trackir, FSDreamteam GSX an FS2Crew Voice control (A review on that you will see later on our site). All soft and hardware worked great with the Dash 8. Conclusion Although the outside could look a bit better overall this aircraft is a must have. It fills the gap between GA aircraft and the jet engine airliners. It’s a very accurate simulation that will give you the feeling you are in the real thing. Not following checklists has consequenses.
Q400 X Plane 11
With EUR 76,21 in Europe and over EUR 90,- for international sales this is not a cheap simulation. When you don’t have time to take up studying this aircraft, don’t spent the money on it. The Pro Edition gives some extra’s like failures, the HGS, Shared cockpit etc. Is it worth speding EUR 26,- more?
I think it is when you will be flying this airplane often. For the occasional simmer I would recommend buying the Pilot Edition. Test System Processor (CPU): Intel Core i7 CPU 3770k @ 3.4 GHz Memory (RAM): 16 GB Graphics: MSI GeForce GTX 960 2Gb System type: 64-bit operating system Operating system: Windows 10 Professional Primary monitor resolution: 1920×1080 Prepar3D v3.1.