MD11 Observations

[Guest PPSFA]

I call em like I see em, your milage may vary.Initially I was skeptical of this plane because I have the 747 and its a FPS hog so I never fly it. I also have just about every other payware airliner made and fly most of them regularly. I mention that because they give me something to compare the MD11 to.FPS wise, this plane is fine, but it does have me scratching my head once in a while. The 2D cockpit gives me between 30-70 FPS and in my normal 'at altitude' view (external-zoomed out) I get from 20-40. In both views the FPS constantly varies, jumping all over the place. I run with unlimited FPS.From another thread, I have VC font problem, as many others seem to, and hats off to PMDG for the great support. It's not a big deal for me since I normally only use the VC for landing. In this plane the 2D gives enough visibility over the nose that it's fime for me for landing.I am dissapointed in a few things. The exterior model would have been much better served IMHO if the windows were actual windows, not painted on. I fly a lot at night and it's much more realistic to see them lighted up, unless I have missed a switch.I also noticed that the default planes were mitmapped but the addons weren't. Mitmapping them did improve their appearance and gives a bit better performance.Also the fact that the plane wasn't designed to take advantage of the multiplayer shared cockpit feature. I fly multiplayer with a group and this planes crys for 2 pilots.For a 'heavy', it seems to taxi too easy, especially the 'break away' thrust seems low, but since I have never flown the real thing, I cant say one way or the other.I never, and I do mean NEVER, will get used to that fourth landing gear!!! I have been flying for over 35 years and up until I got this plane, had no idea it had 4 gears! Ya learn something new everyday!Now for the biggy! I dont fly Scarebuses, I dont like them, I dont like their FMC's. Everytime I think of them I see the one at the Paris airshow going into the trees. The big reason I dont like them is the programming of the computers, they are too automated and take too much control from the pilot.Now having said that, I also had assumed the 11 was just an upgrade of the 10. I'll be the first to admit I don't know sqaut about either of them, although I do fly yhe 80/82. On EVERY other plane I fly, at the TD I always use the 'trend indicator' and manually fly the rest of the descent and approach because none of them ever compute the descent correctly. They also 'chase' the numbers, airspeed, descent rate etc.When I flew the first test flight in the 11, I was a bit dismayed to find that my trend indicator was MIA but I wanted to see what the 11 would do, so I let the FMC fly the entire profile. Man was I surprised!!!It flew it perfectly! From 'flaps up' to touchdown, I never touched the controls. An extremely smooth descent, captured the ILS, touched down and flared, then rolled to a stop.So here are my major complaint's on this plane. It's making me LAZY!! I am eating too many snacks on long flights. I am getting too little sleep. And my electric bill is going sky high cause I cant bring myself to shut the durn thing off! Good job PMDG!JayXPPro SP2FSX SP2AMD64 FX-60 Dual Core 2.61 GHz8800GTS-640 megs2 Gigs Kingston RAMFEX-GEX-UTUSA-FSGenesis-and a bunch of other stuffComputer optimized by www.fs-gs.com

[Guest XM DUDE]

The MD-11 was designed to greatly reduce pilot workload, in fact when I flew the real MD-11 sim, I joked with all systems working a monkey could fly this thing, but when when things go wrong the flight crew really earn their paychecks as it can become a handful.Michael Pare.

[Guest PPSFA]

You got that right when things go wrong! I got this plane for one reason, Al Haynes. I know he was driving a DC10, but even so, he's one of my heros.

[Guest XM DUDE]

>You got that right when things go wrong! I got this plane for>one reason, Al Haynes. I know he was driving a DC10, but even>so, he's one of my heros.That is an awesome pilot,he would have made it too except a gust of wind caused a wing to drop and he couldn't correct for it, funny you mentioned that I installed some Sioux city city valves on the MD-11 designed to stop fluid loss in case that ever happened again.Michael Pare.

[virtualstuff 757]

Jay just convert your DDS files from the DXT1 to DXT5 far better quality + better alpha can compare it to 32 bit.+ mipmaps hence every texture should have mipmaps because that is what hardware want to do without a lot of calculation and performance and quality loss...(it was for the old days FS9 non mipmaps because we ended up with blurries, FSX has the correct behaviour for hardware)As for the windows to light up map a key via the PMDG option menu Yep indeed it's separately controlled :-) I use ctrl +IHave fun :-)http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y156/awf1/sign.jpg

[Guest PPSFA]

tks for the tip on the cabin lights, that worked perfectly.My DDS files are already converted to DXT5 but tks