The folks at Got Friends have a reputation for creating some impressive content. Sometimes that content is of the conventional add-on aircraft variety and sometimes they go and do something a little bit different. Today I’m doing a mini-review of what the company is offering with their Avitar series with special emphasis on the paid Valor series but we’ll also look at some of the other options.

Disclaimer

Got Friends sent me the Avitar: Valor pack in exchange for a review of the product. As always, my thoughts are my own and Got Friends gets to read this review at the same time that you do.

Pilots, Mavericks, Dogs and Cats

Got Friends Avitar series adds several packages of themed pilots to Microsoft Flight Simulator. Not a lot of developers focus on this sort of thing but Got Friends has zigged when others have zagged and here we’ve got some interesting content. Most of its free and some of it is paid.

There’s currently five Avitar packages available. Avitar: Skeleton, Top Gun, Streamer and Man’s Best Friend are all free and available for download on the Got Friends website. Skeleton is self explanatory with a single skeleton for Halloween escapades, Top Gun represents Maverick from Top Gun with a fighter pilot scheme as well as a Darkstar scheme, Streamers picks six MSFS streamers and recreates their likeness in the sim, and finally we have Man’s Best Friend which includes dozens of dogs and cats to ride as your co-pilot (or pilot if you want!).

Those are the free options. Avitar: Valor is $4.99 USD which adds six WWII era pilots to the roster. These are not based on any specific person and are instead fictional, though realistically realized, characters with American style pilot gear.

Visuals

The whole of the Avitar series offers some pretty impressive visuals. There are limits to what you can do with a flight sim engine that is aimed at machines rather than people but the results are still at a level that just a few years ago would have been considered good in a first person action or adventure title.

The Avitar: Valor series are probably the most impressive overall with animations and texture detailing on the leather jackets, headsets, oxygen masks and more. There are one or two rough edges with the pilot holding the joystick not always matching up with the stick itself. Not perfect but likely not possible to do within the sim at this point either I would imagine.

The Avitar: Valor models work well not only in Got Friends own F4F Wildcat but in a large selection of other aircraft. I tried it out in the CAP-10 aerobatic airplane and the pilot models look fine there, if a bit out of place, and then turns around and looks absolutely epic on an airplane like the Curtiss Jenny.

Even the freely available ones such as Mans Best Friend features over a dozen cats and dogs that are reasonably well detailed, have good textures, and they are all animated. There are even animated tongues and breathing effects. I’m kind of blown away by how good it is.

The Top Gun Maverick option is another one that I tried and came away impressed. Having the regular pilot model in the Darkstar just didn’t seem right and this solves that problem.

Same with the Maverick fighter pilot model. Looks good in the F/A-18E and it would fit in other jet fighters just fine too.

The only place where these don’t work are on aircraft that have their own custom pilot model. Its few and far between but there are some out there that won’t work. Some aircraft also don’t display co-pilot models so you won’t see any of these appear in those instances either. On aircraft like Just Flight’s PA-28 you have the option of turning the co-pilot model on and off and of course you’ll need to set it to on there for this to work.

Worth it?

If you fly a lot of 1940s era warbirds and you want the immersion to go up a notch when looking at your plane (or at your co-pilot), these new pilot models are excellently done. For $4.99 USD they aren’t expensive and I’d consider it a fun addition. If you aren’t into that era, these will probably hold less value to you. I’m sure that GotFriends have plans to release future updates as well and some of those may very well be up your alley so look for those to come out if none of these specifically appeal.

The free options are great too with the Maverick and Mans Best Friend pack offering a serious and a slightly goofy experience depending on what you like. Or you could put a skeleton in charge of the airplane too. Its kind of up to you on what you want to experience.

Fun, sometimes serious, sometimes goofy, and mostly free. The Avitar series by Got Friends is well worth checking out and if you really want your warbirds to look the part…a few dollars might just be money well worth spent for a little extra immersion. You can purchase the Avitar: Valor series on the Got Friends website and download the rest of the currently available series for free right over here.

Let me know what you think in the comments!