Customer Reviews

Pro Flight Instrument Panel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have purchased three of the Saitek Panel Guages. All of the devices work well and are in sync with MS FSX. They are somewhat CPU intensive, so one needs lots of CPU speed and memory. Their number one benefit is that they free the user to use the entre gaming screen for scenery. The gauges improve the feeling of realism considerably. Last point, they seem to be happiest using a single dedicated USB port.

I have the yoke and 3 lever throttle, the rudder pedals and 3 of the saitek Flight instrument panels and the Pro Flight Switch Panel. They work GREAT!

They are HIGHLY recommended.

I only have 2 complaints..sometimes all the panels don't get started at the same time (probably due to the USB power requirement) so I have to unplug them and replug them...but it's usually just 1 of the 6 devices.....mostly the yoke itself.

The other complaint is that there is no HSI option on the flight instrument panel...maybe in a driver upgrade.

These change the usablity of FSX from tedious to truly enjoyable!

First a little bit about the unit itself:

OVERALL - 3 3/4" wide, 3 3/8" high, 3/4" deep. The plastic mount adds more depth, of course.
SCREEN - 3 3/8" diagonal. 2 3/4" wide, 2 1/16" high
INSTRUMENT BEING DISPLAYED - varies. Mostly about 2" in diameter, or less.

With the above dimensions you can find a few full-face pictures on the internet, shrink them down to the proper size, fold/cut to size, and see how they'll look.

The biggest difference is that THIS is a, full color, light emitting display. They can make a big difference in learning to fly.

My big concern, before buying one, was that the instrument images looked too small. Because the image is bright, though, I find the displays more than adequate. And I have poor eyesight.

There really is only one problem, and that's the price.

A complaint about Amazon - All reviews seem to start with those that have the most points. The problem with that system is that quit often those reviews are old and no longer accurate.

A case in point - the newest driver has ALL of the instruments shown on the Amazon web page. You don't have to search for, and download, anything more (officially).

Also of note is that some opinions in older reviews is misleading or based on misconceptions. Most good games will require fast computers and faster video cards. That's a given. But some people have no idea how airplane instruments work. The Pro Flight Instrument Panel IS NOT LAGGY! That's the way aircraft indicators work. Remember this - They tell you where the aircraft WAS and what it WAS doing, NOT what is happening NOW. Civilian stuff is like that. So if you want the very best, join the military.

If you run out of USB connections on your computer and don't have a powered hub to plug these things into DON'T BUY IT. Plug a lot of power hungry equipment into the back of the Saitek yoke (with power supply) and you can expect problems too.

Finally, you don't have to be a professional pilot, or licensed private pilot, to KNOW how to use this stuff. Does anyone really expect Saitek to make a manual comparable to The Instrument Flight Manual: The Instrument Rating & Beyond (The Flight Manuals Series), or actual flight school text books? True, some real pilots buy this stuff for many different reasons, and they DO know how to use it. But most of us buy these things for greater realism, and the simple fun of learning. That's part of the fun for me.

The point is that you need to understand, and learn, how to use the equipment that you buy.

REVIEW
(finally)

This item is almost all PRO (no pun intended). As I said the newest drivers have 12 instruments included, not 6 as on the web page. Some are for older aircraft, most are for modern aircraft, and one is almost a "glass" panel. The last (PFD: Primary Flight Display) is the only one close to being for commercial jets.

The main point of the instrument panels is that they are easy to read and always in the same place. When you're coming out of a turn and heading for the landing strip you don't really want to zoom in on the cockpit and try to read the altimeter and speed as you check on your glide slope. Are all of the adjustments made? Ok. NOW you can zoom out so you can look out the cockpit window.

Some on-screen instrument panels such as the Attitude Indicator, or the Turn/Slip Indicator have no numbers to read. A simple, short, glance tells the story.

A search online will provide a few more gauges as well as show you how to make modifications to the ones provided.

Did I say that the buttons on the left side are easy to re-program? Well they are.

I gave this item 5 stars because it really is good. If Saitek were to drop the price down to around $75 or $85 I think that they would sell thousands more than they're doing now.

This is the list of what I would like in descending order. But don't forget that you can switch the display if one or another looks more important to you.

1) 7 Instruments - Attitude Indicator, Heading Indicator, Turn/Slip Indicator, Vertical Speed Indicator, Altimeter, Airspeed Indicator, and Horizontal Situation Indicator. (Cost about $910)

2) 4 Instruments - Vertical Speed Indicator, Altimeter, Airspeed Indicator, and Horizontal Situation Indicator. (Cost about $520)

3) 2 Instruments - Horizontal Situation Indicator and PFD: Primary Flight Display. (Cost about $260)

Knowing that I want ALL of them, I have to say that the "Southern Cross Flight Panel" is a MUCH MUCH better deal at $999.

My intention is to get only one more Pro Flight Instrument Panel. But I'll probably order a Southern Cross Flight Panel after I can read some objective reviews. And who knows, with luck Amazon will be selling them by then.

The only problem that I ran into was about 30 - 40 minutes after loading the driver/software on to my Windows 7 (64bit) computer. The instrument display died. I restarted the computer and it hasn't had ANY more problems. It used to be almost mandatory for you to restart after loading drivers/software. That rule may still apply, it seems.

END NOTE
One complaint that I've seen is that it displays ads for Saitek stuff like yokes, throttles, and peddles. All stuff that you would buy long before you would buy one of these. An interesting side note is that you can delete all of the ads (except for the serial number screen which I think is hard wired in) and put in your own pictures. The actual display is 320 X 240. But if you just dump any size JPG into the folder it'll display properly. Almost, that is. Some pictures don't look their best unless you crop & resize it yourself. So right now I have it doing a slide show of various aircraft that I downloaded. When you start up FSX and switch to an instrument it'll stop doing the slide show.

When I first received 2 of these last week, I agreed with the other reviews, especially the airspeed gauge going to 360 knots. Doesn't work for the planes I fly. After a little research, I discovered that most of the complaints are easily fixed. The UK site for Saitek has 4 new gauges in the Blog section that can be downloaded. Why they have not updated the drivers and advertised these is beyond me.

After looking over the driver files, it became apparent that these gauges are easily programmable. A person with a little programming and graphics experience can do whatever they want with these gauges. The six buttons are easily changed to other commands in fsx, and the new gauges have some useful examples. Even the advertisements can be changed to pictures of your choice.

I generated a new airspeed background in ACAD using the original as a template and changed the numbers to go from 40 to 200 knots. Plotted to jpeg and converted to bmp and resized. Comparing the two backgrounds, I then edited the Airspeed.xml file to put the correct scale into it (the 40 remained the same). I now have an airspeed indicator that works for a 172. I will probably build a full size RPM and Manifold gauge down the road, as the small ones Saitek made are too small for my eyes.

I would have given this product 5 stars if the price went down a bit, but the quality of build is there so I can't really gripe about it. I would recommend this product to anyone if the drivers improved. Right now you need some computer expertise to fully utilize the capabilities of these displays.

While the Saitek Pro Flight Information Panels are quite expensive, they add a whole new level of detail and immersion into the Flight Sim world. And now that there are more than the original 6 selectable panels available with the latest software download from Saitek, they are even better still. I use a three screen, wideview setup and now that I have three FIP's I put nothing up on the monitors other than just the outside view - fantastic. I would dearly love to add more FIP's - eight would be ideal - but as already indicated, they are expensive little suckers. Only downside to the FIP is the rather large scale Airspeed Indicator (40 - 360 knots) which is just hopeless for things like the Baron or a 172 - I had to make my own with a much lower scale and that took a graphics amateur like me several hours!. I have read reviews of sluggish behaviour - those reviewers must have been flying the F16!! - on GA Aircraft they are just fine - no perceivable lag to speak of. If you're a serious Flight Simmer then give the FIP serious consideration.

Just so you are sure, you only get ONE of the gauges, NOT four as shown in the listing photo.
The four gauge picture is a bit confusing.

Four of the gauges would run you about $520.

I purchased the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke, Power supply for the yoke, PRO Flight Switch Panel, and the Pro Flight Instrument Panel. I installed them in the order: Yoke, switch panel, and finally the instrument panel. All the accessories are connected to the yoke. I have everything working on a Windows 7 64 bit system I built. It is running an Intel i7-970 processor, 12 GB memory, 1Gb video, and a velociraptor 300GB drive system drive/mirrored 2Gb data drives. I'm flying with MS FSX. I have connected, reconnected, restarted, and turned off the system without any problems. I'm cautiously optimistic after seeing a few bad reviews. Over the next few months I'll be adding more instrument panels. I think having the yoke power supply and as much as possible plugged into the same USB port helps. Having a clean home built system without the vendor's and your kid's crap on it probably doesn't hurt either. The product is just one panel. They show four so you can see the variety of options I guess.

They all work OK kind of laggy, the attitude indicator is very laggy. I got all 6 of these. I ran it off of my regular pc, and it drains your main cpu. The attitude indicator dosn't always match up, i ran it in the recommended client/server mode and it ran a little faster but not much. Wish it had some navaid stuff built into it.

I got this to use on FSX. It is a nice idea but mine kept losing connection to the PC. The USB was there but the display did not respond correctly. I could start a simulation and in the middle it would stop working. I guess that is great if you are practicing partial panel. Some of the knob functions were odd or not implemented. I returned it due to the connection issues.

This product is nice, however the installation and use instructions have alot to be desired. Luckily I have aviation experience so using this instrument was not as difficult as I am sure alot of buyers have had. I would not have stopped my purchase because of this but inexperienced individuals may want to do some research before purchasing.