It’s more than one thing, really, but in a word it is fidelity – fidelity to the real world systems it’s designed to simulate.
Like others here I was a big fan of Virgin’s
Shuttle back several years ago and also enjoy reading all I can find on both the STS and ISS programs. I was not aware of SSM until I stumbled across a review on AVSIM a couple of weeks ago but knew right away I had to have it. As with many such purchases, however, I mentally prepared myself for the big let-down the first time I started the program up. What a happy surprise it was, and still is, to find that SSM lived up to nearly everything I hoped for, and then some.
What is really great, though, is that so many of the buttons, switches, displays and systems not only work, but work just like their real world counterparts. For example the
Shuttle Crew Operations Manual says that the SPEC 20 DAP CONFIG display shows the configuration parameters for the Digital Autopilot, so I key in SPEC 20 PRO and voila, I am rewarded with the DAP configuration screen, all nicely populated with the RCS settings I was looking for – beautiful! (Now if only I could enter ITEM 13 EXEC and edit the rotation pulse duration I’d probably lose my job because I’d be home playing SSM all the time, but I’ll put that in the Suggestions topic. Maybe in a future patch?
)
I’ve “invested” a lot of $$$ in flight simulations over the years since my Apple ][+ days and one thing I’ve learned is that the best ones are those for which a manual doesn’t need to be written because the manufacturers of the real world counterparts have already done so. For example some excellent third party avionics systems have become available for use with MS Flight Simulator recently whose “manual” consists only of installation instructions and links to where to download pages of the real world manufacturer of the systems. SSM is that kind of sim; the “Commander’s Reference Manual” is an interesting animal in this regard. It is an interesting compromise between the need to include enough information to get new customers going and not requiring one to read a 1000+ page manual. This is NOT intended to be a criticism of the manual in any way – in fact I think it does a good job of explaining how to approach a couple of the more difficult skills a new player must develop. It would be a shame, though, if someone were to elect not to purchase based on a read of the necessarily incomplete manual, since so much of this excellent sim cannot be captured there, even at nearly 100 pages.
Please keep up the good work, Exciting Sims, this is one great product! (and if you want help let me know – I write programs for a living, including everything from embedded systems to DirectX and Windows® - if you would like somebody to code more depth to the GPC’s, for example, I’d love to contribute!)
Zen
