This is the heaviest and the biggest Carenado aircraft yet the – Carenado C208B Grand Caravan
Where as most of Carenedo products are usually firmly set in the General Aviation market, this large Cessna is used more in the commercial arena – as in the Australian outback in station to station flying, Island hopping, remote-area mail deliveries and other assorted workhorse environments – and very good it is at doing this as well.
It is a powerful aircraft for its weight and has great STOL ability – so all round it is a very versatile machine.
My Carenado office is at Lakeland, Florida, so let’s go and see what the newest Carenado delivery looks like in the flesh…
Say “Hi” to Mike and Joe….
…They are on their way delivering the C208B to some French Caribbean Island and have dropped in on the way for a bit of fuel and an overnight sleep – which gives us an hour or so to look it over.
Very impressive, oh the detail.
“can you open the doors please”…
A bit extreme there boys – but a lot of doors do open, ladders drop down, compartments open and the upper doors go up and lower doors swing out…
The other side as well.
Lets pop inside.
Wide single aisle….or
Three abreast, look at the great stitching on the seats, Cessna do great work here don’t they.
Now if you think it would be hard opening and closing all this – well it isn’t because we have a few aids to help us.
They can be accessed by clicking along the glare shield just above the annunciator lights.
Everything is here, opening and closing doors, viewpoints, seat arrangements, if you want that Cargo pod “On” or “Off”, only one small note is the big one there had to be pulled close to left window to close it.
Now let’s get along to the business section.
Very nice panel isn’t it, If you bought the Carenado Seneca II and know it quite well then the move upwards is not that big a stretch, certainly there is a lot more here but you soon find your way around the items.
Everything is absolutely perfection, it is so well done.
Side electrics and starting switches, look at the perfect wear on the control column – which does disappear by the way.
Throttles, RPM lever and fuel condition with trim wheel are all on the centre pedestal the throttle has Beta and Reverse pitch modes, all are accessed by pulling them down through the notches that really work.
The Beta-range on the throttle lever is very small, and may take some careful adjustments to reach. Reverse mode is attained simply by pulling the throttle all the way back.
The prop RPM lever and the fuel condition lever as well as the flap control lever also contain notches and I found I was required to pull the fuel condition lever down to the middle notch to get a decent idle, if not you power forward when releasing the brakes.
Fuel switches and oxygen are mounted on the roof.
Panel night lighting is odd, there is a note that the XP10 version doesn’t have yet working lighting behind the dials, and you really miss that and they can be quite dark in the day and certainly harder at night – you can turn on the overhead lighting to make it better – but it moves with the daytime shadows, I hope this will be fixed.
The lighting is good from the outside, but I couldn’t get the rear cabin lighting to work or find the switches.
Back outside and the detail is astounding.
Flaps are a work of art, and they deliver a great hydraulic sound when moving.
Finished flying for the day then you can cover all the static items, put down some chocks and have a pull on the tow-tractor.
This is of course the Go Tropical livery – others are:
Executive Red
Executive Blue
Brazil
E Arab
And the default White…
There is a feature to reduce the window reflections, I didn’t find them an issue, but you can do that from the pop up menu if you want to.
Mike and Joe ask me if I want to take a little ride around the neighbourhood, “Why not!”.
They watch me as I walk around to the rear door, all the way round…freaky.
Power up and away we go, the sounds are excellent and all in 3d – and they pan around in your head as you move around the aircraft.
very effective they are as well.
Taxiing needs a little practice, and remember to keep that fuel condition lever down as it can be a handful if you don’t.
You have so much power so make sure you watch that torque steer when putting the throttle up, almost as bad as taking off in a helicopter as it twists you quickly.
The wheels still turn for a while after leaving Terra Firma – and in the air the angled rear struts pull in and the front strut stretches downwards during flight.
In the air it is wonderful to fly, the Autopilot is a standard version but you do have a separate V/S function that is more exact than the usual A/P version.
She turns very nicely and Mike and Joe tilt their heads as well to the turn.
They keep in perfect time with the machine.
Night lighting is very good but very minimal, with no cabin lights it looks quite dark.
Being a STOL aircraft you can get the speed right down, this helps on lining up for landing simply a breeze.
It has a three-phase prop that looks very realistic and works very well with those 3d sounds, a small opening window on the front doors can make the prop sound quite loud if you don’t close it.
I just looks perfect in detail.
“Park it where”?
Mike and Joe will grab a drink then head down towards Miami before heading out over the water…
And downsides?
This is a big file at 289.30 compressed and 379.70 in your Aircraft folder and that is a huge file.
The Caravan has very big Hi-Resolution graphics and mountains of detail and it all costs.
Where? – well your framerate.
It is strange to use as you can have a framerate of 28-30 frames and if then get your view wrong and then you are quickly are sitting on 7-8 frames, get the view wrong on landing and it is stutter hell.
And this is with no clouds and well most at minimum settings, If I put my texture setting on “Very high” then my world simply stops at 0.3 frames!
I found I could work around the bad framerate drop with a little practise and I can keep it around 28-30 frames – but it is annoying, this of course only an XP10 issue and on a medium speed iMac computer.
It is no reflection on the product from Carenado as the product is well refined, however you have to realise that as these files get more higher in their detail and with these higher quality textures there is going to be some sort of tradeoff.
Another small issue I have to fix is that I couldn’t find in how to put in the VOR 1 freq (VOR 2 is easy and works fine).
In the package you get these helpful documents…
. C208B General Information
. C208B Normal & Emergency Checklist
. C208B Reference
. C208B VC Instruments
. KFC150 Autopilot
. Recommended Settings X-Plane
All should be read and used as references for using the Grand Caravan to its maximum .
No doubt this is a very fine product and you have to admire Caranado and our own very talented Daniel Klaue for creating such an outstanding aircraft, Daniel has had to here implement the SASL plugin to a windows product and has achieved again with skill a very high standard.
Carenado C208B Grand Caravan – USD29.95
Review by Flightime56
FT56©2012
Hi,
Why don’t you fly Caravan in XP9? I have zero problems (with framerate, lighting works fine, REX clouds looks gorgeous). I really don’t want to torment and loose the nerves using unfinished XPX.
Congratulations Carenado, it’s a good product!
regards arti
Because the blog’s name is XP+10+Reviews. It is definitely focused on v10. Even the airport reviews are very critical when it does not support XP10 well… especially those that are just conversions from MSFS and even the ones made by Aerosoft.
I also wonder why you don’t give a little purchasing help on this plane to those of us still using XP9, which must still be a large number of your readers. Or are we supposed to not come in now because of the name over the door? After all you were reviewing XP9 stuff for more than a year with this name, and I’ve read with interest everything said here about all the other sims not called XP10 that you all have been trying. It just seems odd that you’ll report with some enthusiasm on Microsoft Flight but slam the door curtly on someone respectfully wanting to talk about this plane’s performance in XP9. Especially odd because what Arti said was exactly what I was wondering about while reading your review.
Good point greatNW. I think it’s the Laminar “clever” politics. You know: XP9 is the old-fashioned unsupported platform
But it looks good & it works! I’ll stay away from XP10 until 64bit and resolved AMD and other serious bugs.
I understand that many of you are still using XP9 (god knows why) but it is not now supported by Laminar, there is certainly a few of you out there that would like to know how the Caravan even flies in XP8!.
But as our masthead shows, I work in XP10 because that is where we are right now and it does highlight the issues if they are Laminar related and of which most reviews do and that is part of the point of what we are trying to do, give solid feedback not only to the developer, but to Laminar as well.
I also would like to point out that I feel I run a computer in the middle range, my points are if I am getting these issues then you will as well, these sort of things can be sometimes masked by the heavy grunt metal of Chipster and Simon W and I have to be creative to get around issues and get the best set up, the plus points is that if there is an improvement from Laminar or the developers I again will notice that margin more than the others and I think that has been born out in this blog…
If I see a gain then you will certainly will too! FT56
God know why many of us still use XP9? Don’t know about others, but my reason is I don’t spend $80 for a Beta. I can wait for the finished software. You seem to think we are living in the past along with the XP8 throw-backs, ha-ha. So your masthead now means you are totally in XP10 (and I assume the half dozen or so other flight sims that get attention here including videos)? It seems to me you are getting ahead of yourself, and maybe even doing yourself no good with this dismissive attitude towards a large part of your readership. Even developers aren’t where you seem to want to take things in this blog. For instance, I hope you saw this notice at Carenado for the Caravan you are insisting on reviewing exclusively in XP10? ” ***WARNING: This aircraft was NOT developed for X-Plane 10. It works in that platform, but it doesn t take advantage of all the new features. We will provide a patch in the future which will make it 100% compatible” I wonder just who is out of step here.
If you read my reviews greatNW I have never ever used another flight sim in my reviews (I don’t even have any installed) and the idea that Simon/Simon W does is that we don’t get blinkered in our Laminar viewpoints and is able to compare different platforms, Yes I read the warning..but again it is to highlight the differences between the versions is the point of the idea.
also to note is that Xplane10 WILL always be a beta version so any of you wanting to wait for a final version will be waiting years (and years) till X-Plane11 comes out!….which is sort of where XP9 is now.
Now you are just blowing smoke. I didn’t say you used other flight sims, but you know that other flight sims are talked about here. The point of course is that it is odd that you are saying the masthead says xplane10 so we aren’t going to deal with XP9 anymore, while at the same time there’s room for Microsoft Flight and all the others. The masthead isn’t “xplane10 and Microsoft Flight” but there is room for Flight reviews here (which by the way is fine by me, the more the better, everything here is interesting to read, even your XP10 review of a non-XP10 plane). So if there’s room for other companies’ sims, seems bizarre and arbitrary to say there can be nothing said about XP9 anymore. As for Simon using other sims so he doesn’t get ‘blinkered’, I got the impression he was doing it cause he was having fun.
Sorry, I have no idea what you mean by “Yes I read the warning..but again it is to highlight the differences between the versions is the point of the idea.” but it still looks like blowing smoke. You read the warning that the Caravan wasn’t designed for XP10, you had trouble with how the Caravan ran in XP10, Arti says he didn’t have those problems in XP9, and you still put me to the rubbish heap of history with those still flying XP8 (which I’ve read a few still prefer)? You don’t see something a little odd here? How hard would it have been to fire up the version of XPlane the Caravan was designed for and done some of your readers a service? “By the way, I had none of these issues in XP9.”
As for XPlane always being a Beta, more smoke. We both know how things evolve with this sim. And you know there was a point when things settled down in XP9, and developers could rely on the stability of the software and start committing to products. And that will probably happen with XP10. I think you know that’s what I meant about waiting for XP10 to be out of Beta. It’ll be when Carenado doesn’t have to put that warning on their newest plane for XPlane.
Flightime56, maybe the way I said things was more aggressive than necessary, but I want you to know that I respect the quality of work that’s done here. My issue with your Caravan review is that because evidently XP10 is now the only version you want to cover, I don’t get a clear view of how the plane performs in XP9. The problems you report might just be because you aren’t using the version of XPlane Carenado says it works in. What Arti said about the Caravan running fine in XP9 indicates that is the case, but I’m not sure.
But after thinking about it for a while I see that the reason for my disappointment is that over the last year and more I’ve come to rely on your site for in-depth information on these new files in order to make my purchasing decisions. You and the guys will take this site in whatever direction you think best, this is a big transition period, and I’ll just have to adjust.
It’s intellectually and morally dishonest IMO to write a review for an explicitly X-Plane 9 aircraft and criticize it because it does not work in a sim that it’s not designed to be used in (X-Plane 10) regardless of your personal preference. If you are going to be in the review business you have to review products on it’s own merits and using it the way it was designed and doccumented. What you are doing now is the equivilent of taking some mac software and saying “but.. but it does not work on WINDOWS!!” and then calling that a review.
Anonymous, well said. You get right to the point, while I wander around it, revising and restating. For instance, I’d like to make clear that when I left it with “I’ll just have to adjust” I didn’t mean it in an accepting, passive way, but more along the lines of “If this site is now going to be reviewing XP9 files exclusively in XP10, and I’m going to be mocked by the reviewer for still using XP9, my judgement of the integrity and worth of this site will naturally change for the worse.” It seems like some sort of malpractice to not even mention in the review the warning Carenado put up about the Caravan not being written for XP10 yet, while at the same time talking about performance issues.
A security program I’m trying blocked my name when posting the above, it was by me.
GNW, sorry not to make more of it, but I flew the file in v9.70 while working on my first look (the night panel shot is from v9.70, BTW). v9.70 coverage is getting to be an issue for us sometimes. I do it – usually – but unless something glaringly obvious between the two arises I tend to keep my comments focused on v10.
Thanks for all the feedback here. I’ll try to keep a little closer look on matters related to v9 OPS in the future.
– Chip
Understood, Chip, and appreciate your reply. I really don’t mind the transition underway here, I’m ready to catch up with you guys when things seem a little more polished in XP10. It’s getting close, maybe with the new update that’s coming soon.
Really my only problem after all the words typed is does the Caravan have the performance issue in XP9 that fllightime56 had in XP10. He says in a recent post below that he tried it in both, but I’m still not clear if the problem was because of running the Caravan in a version of XP it’s not optimized for, or because his computer just isn’t fast enough to handle it. I have a fast computer, so all I would like to know is does the Caravan run okay in XP9? Arti said he had no issues in 9, so I’m guessing flightime’s problem was because he ran it in XP10, and if that’s the case, I don’t think the review was fairly done. You have a good computer, did you have any frame rate or stuttering problems in 9 with the Caravan?
@greatNW I’ve tested Caravan on quad MBP 2.2GHz, MacPro 2.97 on 2560×1600 monitors and 4.2GHz i7 930 with 5HD monitors. All I can say average framerate is solid, no slow downs, fps depends much more on scenery than acf. Even on MBP I get approx 30fps on 30inch screen (maxed XP9). Hope it helps.
That’s what I needed to know. My set-up is about in the middle of your two, and my four other Carenada planes run smoothly, so there shouldn’t be a problem. Thanks. Been looking forward to the Caravan for a while to use for the short hauls in the Inside Passage.
Great review!
I really loved this plane in FSX and in Xp10 its even better! Great job Carenado!
BTW, I wonder if you guys could do an interview with Daniel sometime about how he goes about converting a plane from FSX to XP. Im sure its a ot of work but Id love to hear a rough idea of what is involved. Does Carendo give him all the data from the FSX model and then he builds off that? Im not an aircraft builder, but Im just curious how its done when your trying to match an existing product on a different plateform. I imagine its like start from scratch since the platforms are so different.
Rob
Basically Daniel just get the 3D model and sounds, the rest is all his work, the only thing you can actually port from one to another platform is those two items.
Animations, Flight model, systems, etc all need to be done from scratch including some changes in model may be done too.
Actually, I totally re-worked all the sounds for this plane as well. There were some sounds I was able to use, but for instance, in FSX there is no separation between the prop sound and the turbine whine. In X-Plane, the turbine sound follows the Ng needle, while the prop sound follows the prop RPM needle in terms of pitch and volume.
Also, programming sound for X-Plane turns out to be a HUGE deal. One has to completely re-write everything that has to do with sound inside the plug-in. Doppler effect, volume with distance, sound reset messages, etc. are all re-done from scratch. Stereo sounds are arrived at by panning mono sounds left and right, and telling the plug-in which side to play when. Same thing for frontal/rear sounds.
Lots of math involved, because X-Plane does not have inherent “Left-Right Speaker” datarefs… they have to be calculated based on the camera’s position relative to the plane… using trigonometry.
SASL’s support for sound is still somewhat rudimentary as well. No support for stereo panning, for instance. Also, volumes are quite difficult to manage, since when they go out of bounds, they stay there until something tells them to get back into range. That still produces some weird effects that are difficult to completely stomp out.
There’s your interview, Robert. No need for an official interview, I can answer your questions personally!
What else do you want to know? Ah yes: what’s involved in conversions.
As Fred said, I get the 3D model and the textures. But I have to re-work all the textures, and I have to animate the 3D model, and in many cases re-model entire sections of the plane to conform to X-Plane’s standards. But I get lots of good support from Carenado… I’m in touch with the guys in Chile every day, and they’re great to work with. (We work in Spanish). They have loads of experience and they’re extremely professional at what they do.
But it’s worth working as a team. You’ll find that more and more payware authors will seek to work as a team, since it’s becoming increasingly difficult to meet the challenge of creating a competitive payware plane as a one-man show.
Thanks for the info Dan. You do really magnificent work, as does the Carenado Team. My hats off to all of you!
Wow .. that looks magnifiscient, I’ll tale it as soon as it’s on the org.
Thanks guys for delivering such great planes
Is there any WX working radar like FSX?
This is a must-have for me, since I do almost all my flying now in FSEconomy and the C208 is one of the big workhorses there.
One thing worries me a little:
“Reverse mode is attained simply by pulling the throttle all the way back.”
Is that just for the 3D cockpit’s throttle control when pulled by the mouse, or is it mapped that way to the assigned joystick throttle axis?
I hope the joystick/throttle axis works in the conventional way, and we can just use an assigned button for beta range, as usual. I’m not a big fan of having to learn different UI conventions for different plane models.
Also, it’s sad to see the instrument lighting won’t be as good as on the F33 Bonanza, but I can wait for an update if that’s a planned improvement. I’m glad to see that beige-colored panel. The earlier screen shots had a gray-colored panel that didn’t look as good (IMO).
Parrafin, to be honest, I don’t know if the reviewer missed something in this article, or mis-understood something… the lighting in the Caravan is, in my opinion, executed way better than in the Bonanza. The instruments are lit in much the same way as the Bonanza, and this plane does not feature “back lighting” in real life… those little lamps that you can see, even in the screenshot above, are what illuminate the gauges in real life as well, and they look very much the same.
I can’t really make sense of what FlightTime56 is pointing out about the night panel… but the setting he has it on is only the overhead, and a tiny bit of instrument lights. If you turn the instrument lights up fully, it looks quite bright hand visible. The one thing I’ve done is, dampen the effect of the lights when it’s daylight outside… this looks more realistic, and it avoids a glaring light layer during daytime lighting operation.
If cabin lights are turned on, the rear of the instruments should illuminate somewhat… true, it’s only the “reflection” of the VC in the glass, but still, it does allow for better instrument legibility.
The reverse mode is implemented in the same way as other X-Plane aircraft… but the 3D manipulator region includes “notches” (just like the real thing), that require clearing in order to get it from forward to beta or reverse thrust settings. (This is not affecting any joystick, keyboard, or hardware settings… the 3D object follows whatever outside inputs are given.)
No Daniel I got confused with the separate cabin light switch (lighting panel) as the main panel is flood lit and not from behind the instruments you get a sort of double flood really, once I switched that off I was able to adjust the main panel more finely and then it looks far better.
I’m sorry if my previous comments stirred up some emotions. I exclusively use XP10 and rely on this blog for info on compatibility. Regards.
Hi guys,
For me X-Plane 9 is still my sim of choice. As its stopped being developed now, you are now preffy safe in knowing you have a stable sim. Flying through clouds doesn’t bring me to stutter vision and frustration. Yeah it doesn’t look at pretty as 10, but it still impresses in buckets and it doesn’t cook my 2011 iMac’s GPU.
You know, it wad a really nice review, I love Carenado files, and you covered it in great detail, so thanks, but maybe next time, run the ACF in a sim it was designed for because then we get an idea on the performance.
One final thought; dismissing version 9 makes those users feel sub standard. To run X-Plane 10 you need a powerful machine. Not everybody has the means or the desire to purchase one. Let’s leave the unintentional elitist attitude at home.
On my review of the Cessna Caravan some people have noted that the Carenado product was created for X-Plane9 and I reviewed it wrongly in X-Plane10, If you read the Carenado notes it states:
“Although this plane will work in X-Plane v10, it is not optimized for X-Plane 10, nor does it make full use of X-Plane10′s new features. However, great care has been taken to make this plane as compatible as possible with X-Planev10, so that it will look correct in a wide variety of settings available in X-Plane 10. Once X-Plane 10′s visual parameters have reached a point that can be considered “stable”, Carenado will work towards bringing this plane and other previously published planes in line with X-Plane 10′s feature set.”
First off I did check this file in both XP9 and XP10 and I found base product was the same (Chip noted that he didn’t see any differences either), the differences are as noted above in the “new features” not yet refined by Laminar Research are related to X-Plane10 users and not X-Plane9 users, If they were then I (we) would have noted that…
There is an issue with X-Plane10 in the way that it processes 3d cockpits with Custom Scenery, this is not an issue in X-Plane9 so why note it!, but I did so for users of X-Plane10 in the review and that is noted in the Carenado notes as well.
Another point is that every single review I have done for XP+10+Reviews is in X-Plane10 and I have always noted that, If there is a difference with XP9 then I will note that but only on major reviews.
The issue is that XP9 is now like the old computer system that has been upgraded to another level, and the bigger problem is that the gap will soon widen enough that the differences between the two versions will become significant very wide and certainly when the aircraft and scenery developers start to really make their product very X-Plane10 compatible and we are pushing them hard to do that.
To do scenery reviews even now in both versions is not really possible as the X-Plane10 engine is so very different to X-Plane9…and soon after ver10.10 comes out then the aircraft files will then also certainly become quickly far more X-Plane10 compatible than X-Plane9.
The development speed at this moment is simply astounding as the feature sets are coming at a immense rate of change, in that change like in life if you stay where you are then you are going to be left behind, that is given with anything or any application that is computer based.
Did Steve Jobs care when he moved forward to another system, no – “progress, get with it or be left behind”, that is not being elitist and dismissing an audience because really you are in a different place and state of mind and looking at an issue that is different than the one you are seeing.
You are noting that we are not relating to you anymore in X-Plane9 but soon we won’t be able to relate to you even if we wanted to – in the past the rate of change was in “years” – now it is “months”.
Another point that is noted was the framerate, I stated only a few days ago that my system is average, bang-smack in the middle between very powerful fast machines and very slow outdated machines, The idea here is to give a benchmark of where we are in terms of speed and performance, that is why Chip does his version of a review and I do mine on my slower machine.
If I had a superquick machine like the other chaos members then how could you relate to that, If I go slow then you go slow, If I go quick then you do so to.
And I note that difference, these margins of speed don’t really have any relevance in X-Plane9 because most machines today are fast enough to cope with the X-Plane9 engine and if you are slow in X-Plane9 then you really need a new computer!
As for X-Plane10 being stable and waiting for the “Stable” version then like I said a few days ago in that “you will be waiting a very long time”…but as a platform I don’t see “beta” in the latest version “X-Plane 10.05 Release Candidate 1″ in fact I have found that since ver10.04r3 there have been very few “if any” crashes or issues.
There are some “bugs” to be addressed but not platform issues that would count the version “Unstable”.
We at this blog certainly want to relate to everyone in X-Plane, It is not X-Plane10 against X-Plane9 but there are significant differences between the two versions, Xplane10 was a complete rewrite of X-Plane from the ground up and it shows, our aim is to be at the coalface and bring you the best news and information you need, at this point X-Plane9 is still relevant as many of you have not changed to X-Plane10, but how soon will it be before the gap is big enough that the same feelings was noted between VerXP9 and VerXP8, there had to be a line drawn in the fact that at some point the simulator has moved on to another level, maybe we have already passed that line but certainly it will be soon if not by early next year.
FT56
Point taken and well said. Sorry if I came across as abrupt, that wasn’t my intention.
You know, when using X-Plane 10, I’ve found that working from the ground up in rendering settings has a greater chance of increasing your frame-rates than going down. I now have reasonable frame-rates on my mac, so maybe things are improving. Hell, I reckon that maybe I’m just too romantic when it comes to X-Plane 9. So many fond memories; it’s just hard to let her go!!
I think one of the reasons I stayed with X-Plane 9 was because of Tom’s amazing scenery, Inside Passage, Final Frontier and Canadian Rockies. Now that he has released Inside Passage for X-Plane 10, I think I might be spending more time in that version. So far it’s pretty amazing. He’s going to update the others too, so it’s one to watch.
Again, thanks for your review. Now I just have one dilemma to sort out; which do I purchase, the Carenado Caravan (which you reviewed), or the STMA Otter? Hmmm……help? LOL
Cheers
Dom
Yes I found that on my Mac, and my point is that you can get around most framerate issues if you tweak it to suit, I had also some brilliant times in XP9, but nothing was like last night when I followed the highways right across Florida in a helicopter at a 300ft at dusk…XP9 can never deliver that experience.
On choosing between the Caravan and the Otter, It is like choosing between your children, both are excellent but for different roles and worse both are well suited for that sort of scenery, it really comes down to wanting a runway aircraft (Caravan) or a float aircraft (Otter).
VC on those airplanes it’s like day&night so check it out before you buy.
I have the new Otter and some Carenados, and can confirm that Arti gives you good advice, Dom.