Hi, a few little niggles:1. I just wondered whether you could make the undocked MFDs viewable in the VC? I do alot of flying in the VC, but the MFDs are just a little to small and unsharp in the VC to be able to read quickly. It'd be nice to have the good perspective effect on final that the VC gives but also be able to read the screens! 2. I find the GPWS and warning sounds way too loud. I have quietened the .WAVs myself but maybe others don't know how to do that.3. The MFD surrounds look too chunky. The screens are further inset into the panel than your bitmaps show.Also, maybe you've said this before somewhere else, but will you be modelling the ECAM (or whatever Boeing calls it) in the 800/900 addon?Even if you ignore these things, your plane is still great!Thanks, Mark

Oh, and a little X button to close the undocked displays would be handy.

*bump*Found some more:1.The flap indications in the panel and VC are different, and the flap handle animation is a bit weird it kind of moves forwards and backwards and sideways!2.In an instant replay of a landing, the gear and flaps raised by themselves and i could not put them down again.3.The right hand side course selector gauge in the VC seems to be back to front.4. The upper panel is too narrow, and therefore the ceiling windows too wide. According to the photos i've seen, the panel is the same with as the MCP plus the two EFIS panels each side.Please don't take these comments as whining. I love the plane. I'vej ust done a flight from gothenburg to schipol and it flies like a dream. These things are just small niggles that would be nice to see gone.Thanks, very much!

I seem to be talking to myself!

HMMM...Has it occurred to you that the VC has to be kept fairly basic just to maintain an ok framerate.You seem incredibly critical of the VC's pretty tiny details. And that's your right as a paying customer.BUT you should also take into account the fact that PMDG have somehow implemented Vector gauges into the VC. This has never been done before.I'm saying this so that you may appreciate the VC's details a bit more.Johnwww.bavirtual.co.ukSenior Captain(720 hrs)

Yeah, sure i'm being picky. If i could convey my tone of voice in text i would. I'm not trying to moan, just point out things that would bring it closer to real life. Hey, if they didn't patch it at all i wouldn't feel hard done by because it is a VERY good plane, but while they ARE doing a patch, i just thought i'd point out things i can see that could be improved.I do appreciate what they've managed to achieve with the VC so far, but i don't imagine the things i've asked for would add more than about 20 polygons. Hardly FPS crippling!

---er, i would delete this bit if i knew how to! Just ignore this reply.

We'll see if they keep those vector gauges after the patch is released, i.e., framerate solution.

The framereate problem seems to be located in the main gauge or so I'm led to believe. I'd say it's safe to bet on vector gauges in the update(I sure hope else I'm really be...disappointed)RegardsJohnhttp://www.bavirtual.co.uk 650Hours ;)P 2.53 GHZ512 RAMWINXPGFORCE 4 128MB Ti4600http://vatsim.pilotmedia.fi/statusindicato...tor=OD1&a=a.jpg

Hi John,problems experienced apart, but for the sake of accurate information, your assessment is wrong:The first VC enabled vector gauge has been the Reality XP 737 ADI back in October 2002, and the first commercial release has been the Meridian in March 2003.The latest developments of such a technology are the Jet Line Avionics.Hope this helps!

I was just about to say that the Meridian did it first Jean Luc - figures that the designer would beat me to it. ;)Are the gauges we're talking about here "vector" gauges or something different? (the whole GDI+ thing) I'd always heard stuff like the PIC displays or the PSS A320 CRTs called vector gauges, but this stuff seems like a whole new thing...Ryan

Hi Ryan,vector gauge is a generic buzz word (FS techies) when dealing with gauges which are not pre-rendered via the use of bitmaps (such as a needle rotating or an ADI card moving and rotating in regular FS SDK compliant gauges) but are "drawn" (i.e. they are made of lines, rectangles, polygons, text) at run time.Several drawing APIs (Application Programing Interfaces) are available to the developper to do such. Here is a quick overview of the ones I know about:- GDI: this is what is at the heart of anything drawn on a Windows OS screen. It has functions to draw lines, polygons, text, in different colors, and all its basic functions are the very same used to render the well known Windows GUI elements (combo box, buttons, window frames...) This is the API of choice for all pre-Reality XP (chronologicaly) vector drawn gauges. The main drawback of this API, as exhibited in several popular airliner add-ons, is the lack of precision, and due to the relative slow speed of the API, the lack of visual cues to the pilot (in terms of fluid enough a gauge to anticipate and correct the action).- GDI+: first introduced with Windows XP and later expanded to the other operating systems (Win98/Me/2K). This is an extension of GDI, supposed to use the video card hardware components (GDI is only software based, and slower then). Allows some more features such as alpha blending, anti aliasing. This really is an extension of the GDI API, and although very convenient for gauges, it lacks several of key features needed to properly recreate the look and feel of a real CRT/LCD gauge on a computer screen, such as dynamic filters to ensure the "virtual drawn line intensity" is maintained whatever the display scale factor is. EFIS in GDI+ often look like computer drawn pixels, not "photo visual accurate" CRT simulation.- True Display XP: proprietary Reality XP API specifically designed for CRT/LCD gauges simulation. Software based and faster than GDI+ (which is supposed to be hardware accelerated), true floating point coordinate system and drawing algorithm (avoid "jiggling" drawn elements such as a pair of numbers rotating on an EHSI card which are moving slightly one to the other if using GDI+ API - because of its pixel bound coordinate system), has a dynamic filtering process on the display to "render" the look and feel of a full resolution screen on a shrinked bitmap (the gauge on the computer screen), is based on a psycho-visual model, and it support rendering multiple instances of the same gauge at the same time, such as the main panel gauge and the popup window (easier to design from an FS panel perspective).- Open GL: as used by Project Magenta. Only good for a remote computer, as the video card does not like (performance wise) switching back and forth between the Direct X context of FS2002 and the OpenGL context of the application (gauge).I obviously don't know what PMDG is using for the 737NG EFIS, but it looks neat!Hope this helps!

Wow, thanks for the great explanation Jean Luc!If I wanted to look into what it takes to program this stuff, where would you start? I take it these are coded in Visual C++ or something like that. (which I'd have to learn first LOL!) Are there any examples out there of what the source looks like for these gauges or is it an "industry secret" that you guys have? If so, how would you even come up with what to do to make it work etc when there's no guidelines/SDK for these etc - it's insane what you guys do!Ryan

www.codeguru.comwww.gamedev.netand many more like the ones above.Of course, the Panel and Design forum here at avsim!Best,

Just a couple small corrections for Jean-Luc:a) GDI+ is not a GDI extension - it's a complete rewrite. It can be used interchangeably with GDI, but we don't really recommend that!:( GDI+ is not pixel-bound, it's point-bound. As such, it allows scaling, matrix transformations, coordinate system changes etc. (I could go on with buzz-words here but I won't). It provides full anti-aliasing, line smoothing with no visual loss, but using such tricks requires careful design and consideration for the end result to look optimal.c) With GDI+, there's full rescaling of the drawn bitmap (as well as multiple instantiation) with very little, if any, performance degradation.I did not participate in the creation of GDI+. I simply feel that Microsoft did a wonderful job with it - as more and more graphics cards are supporting it with hardware acceleration, its real strengths are beginning to shine. (Try resizing one of our popups to full-screen width to realize there's not an iota of quality degradation).Obviously, PMDG is not simply relying on GDI+ to offer the unsurpassed EFIS Display quality shown in our product. We've developed several techniques to boost GDI+ performance and assist where GDI+ is an underachiever. (Again, buzz words here could come in handy, but they only impress the ignorant and bore the wise ;-) ).All this said, I think Jean-Luc's efforts with RealityXP are commendable, as the end-result looks very pretty indeed.As for the Virtual Cockpit - I feel the need to thank a couple of people (they know who the are but shall remain nameless on their choosing), as they offered some key hints in making our EFIS Displays available in the Virtual Cockpit. Once one knows the truth on how to do it, it really is a simple one-line change - not much more to it (and with FS2004 out soon, it's really a dead issue).Thought I would add my .02 Euro. :-)