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Aircraft Review: Tecnam P2002 by DMAX


Joe

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Aircraft Review: Tecnam P2002 by DMAX

Route: VFR Circuits at Pilot Plus EGTR London Elstree

The Tecnam P2002 is a small light weight aircraft manufactured by Tecnam in Italy and brought to X-Plane with DMAX's latest release. The tecnam is a two seat low winged aircraft perfect for cross country flying, especially with its very large canopy which can even be opened in flight. The tecnam p2002 is powered by a single Rotax 912 S2 engine, built with aluminium and has tricycle fixed gear.

During this review I will be using a Saitek Pro Flight Yoke and X-Mapper Pro on an IPad. If your unsure, X-Mapper Pro is a live map for x-plane which tracks your movements across the globe! From the app you can also control your aircraft and vital things like radios and Autopilot. I think it's a great add-on to enhance your sim, all for £1.99!

So how does the DMAX model compare to the real world equivalent? 

DMAX are most commonly known for their Blackshape prime model which claims to be a replica within X-Plane! DMAX have also developed the Tecnam P92, and now with their latest release the P2002.

To fully test the DMAX Tecnam P2002 I decided to take a trip to the beautiful British countryside, more specifically EGTR London Elstree by Pilot Plus.

I found myself on the ramp at EGTR with a cold and dark Tecnam P2002 at approximately 10:20AM, the weather report wished a favourable day for flying, 12 degrees celsius and a cloud base of 3500ft, so I did't waste any time and walked over to the aircraft.

 

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Features:
  • Accurate flightmodel of a P2002 JF - fixed prop - 100hp
  • Detailed cockpit and exterior with animations, manipulators, normal map, ambient occlusion, specular map.
  • Garmin GNS530
  • Knots anemometer as well as Kmh
  • Propeller RMP as well as engine RPM
  • Removable wheel fairings
  • 4 liveries plus a white one for custom painting
  • Customizable round instruments (the empty "T": expert users)
  • Customizable switches (expert users)
  • Effects on the windshield: rain (just fixed drops), ice, birdstrike (need activation in Failures window)
  • Girl passenger (she comes by increasing the payload weight)

First I start with a walk around inspection.

Externally the textures are quite good, every nut and bolt is present however I wouldn’t class this as extremely high resolution, however, the lower resolution does help to retain frame rates which can be an issue for many when flying on a demanding programme such as XP. The 3D modelling of the exterior is very good, no issues there, every part is in proportion.

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The wheel fairings can be removed, so you can configure the aircraft to your liking, a nice feature here would be chocks and pitot 'remove before flight' covers. After a quick check the aircraft is ready to fly, all control surfaces are connected and moving freely and the aircraft is airworthy. 

Stepping into the 3D cockpit.

The 3D cockpit on any payware aircraft has to be great as this is where you will spend most of your time. The cabin is great, I specifically love the detail in the seat modelling, the seat belts are 3D and look just right and you feel a sense of spacial awareness within the cabin. The modelling on all of the gauges is 3D and looks very good, in general the panel has been created to a very high standard. In this aircraft you get the pilots standard six (instruments), all have been modelled and texture to a high level of detail and also at a high resolution. The Tecnam also comes with the default GNS 530, fantastic for navigation and enables you to take your little Tecnam on a very long trip!


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To control the Tecnam you get a stick in between your legs, the control stick has been modelled very well although I think the textures on the stick could have a little more detail. Although when flying commonly you will not even see the stick and therefore that doesn't matter.

A nice touch would be a side menu of which holds options to turn on/ off wheel fairings, on/ off for showing the passenger and on/ off static elements etc... It would make it easier to configure the aircraft to how you want.


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The textures within the cockpit are actually quite dark, however this is good as I think it makes it look much more realistic. The textures blend very well and match variants of the real aircraft, some dirt and grime would be a nice feature in places as the aircraft does look very new. The window texture is very hard to notice, if it was less transparent I think it would look better as then whilst in the cockpit you would feel as though you are looking through glass and not an empty space. Every edit I have suggested so far though are minor and could be added within an update.

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A feature I really like within the cabin is the sliding canopy, it looks fantastic and has a very smooth transition.

Liveries

You get a few liveries to choose from, all look fantastic and I can't pick a favourite! All are of a high resolution and can be selected from the X-Plane aircraft selection menu. The liveries also have a weathered look on the undercarriage of the aircraft, this looks great as you can see oil leaks streaked across the paintwork from the wind. I have to admit that there are not lots of liveries to pick from however there is a whit livery for custom painting, so you can just copy and paste the white livery and play around in photoshop! Of course if those liveries are not enough its best you head over to the x-plane.org download manager and many people make paints and upload them there.

Frame Rates

If you are worried about frame rates there is no need to be regarding this aircraft by DMAX. I have not suffered any frame rate issues and I have been running cloud plugins, custom scenery etc... As I have described previously some of the exterior textures are of a slightly lower resolution which helps.


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As the aircraft is small and agile it will bank very fast and hard, this in most cases is where your frame rate will plummet. However, I did not suffer any issues and during my VFR circuits I completed a few hard turns!

Night Lighting

Night lighting on this aircraft is very good and resembles how it looks in reality. The lights are very basic both inside and out, but this is not bad but in fact good as the real aircraft is also very basic. The main lighting inside the cockpit is the panel and gauge lighting. Both lights look really good and light up the area perfectly, although the lights didn't cast a spill anywhere else in the cockpit for example on the side walls.

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Mostly you will find yourself flying around in this little plane in the day undergoing cross country, like me! Therefore the only time you will most likely ever see the night lighting is when it starts to get dark and you are considering finding somewhere to land.

Sound

The sound of the aircraft are good, although I would prefer the sounds to be a little more crisp. Apart from the dullness of the sounds generally the sound is more than acceptable. There is no volume control of such like you get from the Carenado options menu although I suppose thats an extra feature which to be honest isn't needed. I noticed that there is no sound for the sliding canopy, that would be a great feature but unfortunately not included.

 

Conclusion

Overall this is a great small aircraft, its configurable to your liking however its tricky to configure. It's possible to turn on/ off wheel fairings and on/ off the passenger, who even shows in the 3D cockpit view, however a menu to turn on and off these features is most certainly needed as currently its very difficult to configure. Aside from that the aircraft is very light and very fun to fly, and also frame rates are really not an issue with this aircraft which I was very surprised about. The Tecnam has many instruments for you to carefully monitor, so if you are using X-Plane as a training sim it will help you to practise multitasking! It is possible to add your own custom instruments into the cockpit which is an interesting feature and one of which I have never encountered before flying this aircraft. If you do wish to add your own instruments there are two slots of which you can chose, however you have to have previous experience in plane maker to achieve this as it's not a straight forward task if you don't know what to do.

I would most certainly recommend adding this aircraft to your X-Plane hangar, its light weight and manoeuvrability makes it great for training and for having fun, especially when flying circuits around a small VFR airfield in the British Countryside! 

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You can get the Tecnam P2002 on the X-Plane.org store for the small fee of $22.00

Review by Joe.

© Copyright 2015 : X-Plane Reviews

Payware Scenery Used: EGTR - London Elstree by Pilot Plus.

Requirements:

Windows Vista or Windows 7 (32 or 64 bits) or MAC OS 10.6 (or higher) or Linux

XPlane 10.40

Pentium 2 GHz - 4GB RAM/1GB VRAM

250MB available hard disk space

Review System Specifications:

- Intel Core i5 3330 @ 3.00GHz

- 4.00gb of RAM

- Geforce GTX 650

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  • Stephen unfeatured this topic
  • 4 years later...

This is a plane I wanted to love. I'm training in an LSA and wanted something Rotax based. Sigh, this - for me - is just not flyable.  Now, I've never flown the P2002 but I have flown an RV-12, Bristell, and AT-4.  In real life, they are all a little different but similar enough.  This is just way too unwieldy.  I'm back to the C172 for now because this is as unstable (aerodynamically) as they get.  Hopefully some updates will make it more usable.

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