Thanks a bunch Glenn,
I came to X-pLane when Microsoft dropped the bat on Flight Simulator. It was something of a baptism of fire when I first tried to cope with blade element theory; terrible take-offs and the less said about the landings the better at first. The as I slowly learned to fly correctly, I was hooked on X-plane for it'sr realism. I spent cash on really good models; and as I was not interested in a first person shooter world, I looked for new challenges; such as trying to simulated supplying troops overseas and for humanitarian projects. The ability of the C17 to take off and land on short runways etc made it an obvious choice; and I had a lot of fun dropping and extracting Seal Teams in interesting areas. Virtavia did a nice job on the original and I was loth to lose it when I upgraded to X-plane 11. It is lovely plane to fly and very obedient if you plan carefully. There seem to be a number of things that either do not work or hang up in "11" and I am at a loss why Virtavia have not made any effort to re-write where necessary. It is a lovely plane; and again - not everyone wants to fly at multi Mach speeds shooting at everything. Believe me - you can spend hours planning a flight plan that obviously has no SIDS or STARS and where you are trying not to be seen rather than the other way round. Perhaps Virtavia feel that there is no financial mileage in the project; which would be a pity; if so I wonder if there are any other developers out there? And then! what about the Russian Tupelov - I love to get my hands on a well crafted version of that or any other similar military option. I watched the Video link and what a lot of good sense he talks.
Thanks again Glenn - noting your opening line incidentally - my wife is a Aussie - so "Good on y' mate"