Aerosim Dash 6-300

The de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter is a STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) turboprop utility aircraft and with more than 800 built, the most successful aircraft program in Canada's history. Development of the aircraft began in 1964, with the construction of a prototype in November 1964. The first flight was on 20 May 1965. The DHC-6 can carry 19-20 passengers over a distance of 920 nm (1,705 km) and is powered by two Pratt & Whitney PT6A-27 turboprop engines.

Aerosim is a Japanese developer of various MS Flight Simulator products. Many classic aircraft are available in special packages. However, not all their products are classic aircraft, their Dash 6-300 Twin Otter is part of the Prop-Liners Collections package. Besides the Twin Otter, the package also contains the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 and the Saab 340B.

Like their other products, Aerosim's Prop-Liners Collections package can be considered 'light' payware, because their aircraft doesn't have advanced systems programming. Their Twin Otter is a frame rate friendly model that looks very good actually. Only three liveries are included: Aeropelican, Malaysia and Winair. The panel and the virtual cockpit is simple. All the basic functions are present, but expect nothing more. The textures in the virtual cockpit are low resolution and look a bit blurry, especially on high resolution monitors. Also, only a few handles and switches are clickable.

Nice thing though is the fact that the passenger cabin and wings/engines are modeled in the virtual cockpit. There are also nice animations like moving window wipers (tailhook command) that are visible in the vc and on the exterior and many doors that can be opened. The landing gear suspension looks very realistic, especially with bumpy landings. Unfortunately, the rudder yaw effect is insufficient, so beware of windy conditions. The engine sound inside the aircraft is nice, but the exterior sound is not that good. Also, it's like the recorded engine sound is repeating itself every few seconds with a awful skip. Perhaps it's better to use one of the default sounds or download a sound package for this aircraft.


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