Dear Team,as to myself i am a very pleased customer. But here comes the point;One of my best friends works as an FO on the A320 at one of the better known german carriers. He will switch to long haul in autumn and since his company will have no A380

Well, there is this semi-professional PS1 747-400 desktop simulation available from Aerowinx (located in Germany ?). Your friend surely must have heard about it. If you go to their website it offers a very good description what the features and capabilities are. It has been remarked on this forum over the past months that PMDG's product will be no worse and possibly better than PS1. Your friend being a professional pilot can figure out the rest ...Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpg

sorry to tell you that he was not aware abouot PC-based-sims. I introduced him into that area, he is a Mac-user and became a Pilot "accidently".CheersHolger

I'm still trying to figure how your friend could be come a pilot by accident?!To answer your question, yes I think he will be able to learn from the PMDG 747. My reasoning is this: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search Check out Brad Marsh's signature, he's a real life pilot and says the NG is good enough to train for real life ops and since the 747 will be better I see no reason why the same shouldn't apply!

Holger,before stating my opinion let me start by saying that I am not a real world pilot but a user of Aerowinx' PS1 747-400 simulator for 6 years. I have also been able to use professional CBT software and to spend some time in the full flight simulator.Learning the systems, charateristics and philosophy of a new airplane is crucial when transitionig to a new type of aircraft. However, it is usually pretty hard to unlearn thing that were taught incorrectly. Therefore, in aviation, it should be a fundamental principle to use the tools provided by the airline or the school to avoid learning incorrect procedures and incorrect understanding of systems.Hence, your claim that you friend should be able to LEARN something about the 747-400 is probably a gross exaggeration. He must rather rely on the company documentation.Surely, there are professional pilots using the Aerowinx PS1 simulator and there airlines using PS1 as tool in training. However, in the latter case you have a trained instructor available who has a detailed knowledge of the real aircraft and the curriculum while in the former case the pilots usually already have their type rating and use it as an additional tool.From experience I know that even PS1 has simplifications in some systems and serious bugs in other systems which are not obvious. There is NO reason to assume that the PMDG744 will be 100% free of bugs and simplifications. Please consider that different airlines have different system options on MANY systems and there might be deviations between the PMDG744 and the 744 of your friend's airline.Just my 0.02