Well thought out post, Al.I'm waiting on the sidelines to see which flavour suits best, post-PMDG737NGX and iFly737NGX, which as Zach has rightfully stated, are at the top of the pile. I also have the feelThere PIC737 which is also as you have observed, fairly good in its own way if not quite in the same class as the aforementioned.I do have some CS products like the 707, and the C-130 for FSX, and admittedly have not had any issues with them in that they satisfy me for what they do within FSX but from what I have been able to garner herein, it seems they may have dropped the ball, so will await to see what MilViz come out with, and then there will inevitably be a consensus of opinions/reviews, and then it'll be a matter of 'you-pays-your-money-you.......'This Forum is blessed to have Reviewers and end-users like you and Zach, and a few others, for rest of us 'fence-sitters' to take a gauge off.

For the price, this add-on is by far the bottom of the pile.

I'd say that the Ariane is on the bottom of everyone's list. Not just for 737 preference. :(

Everytime I hear the name "Ariane", I puke just a little. The Wilco Evo was a dissapointment to say the least, I think they found all of the perfect angles in their screenshots to make the plane look good, because everything that they didn't show, not good. In a nutshell, it flies great, but looks like......

A great and comprehensive summary of the newly expanded 737 FSX market, Alan. Me says they should sort of pin that thread to allow all the folks looking for the weekly renewed answer on 'the best 737' to catch more than a glimpse.On a side topic, I'm now looking for the Airbus chapter to evolve that nicely. You've mentioned the Simcheck, which truly is amazing and well priced, but, unfortunately, the only serious and current Airbus in FSX so far.

Tried the JF737 demo did not work for me it gave me a smart assembly error.Then my pmdg J41 started it had to replace the UIAutomationCore.dll seems likereplacing that when problems pop up fixes a lot of things.I did pickup the pmdg 737 just got it in the mail yesterday nice plane had a problem with a repaint thoughmade my VC disappear.

Definitely a fine overview by Al. So far I have had no issues with the iFly package for FSX. I just downloaded and installed the latest update for CS 737-200 ver. .50 with sounds and about 45 other fixes. Until recently I was trying hard to avoid spending the big bucks on Ariane, but when they released the C-40 in US Navy repaints I couldn't refuse. I'm sure there will be plenty of discussions on this with the pending Milviz 737.I have not flown the various 737s long enough make a decent comparison.

Good to see you back Al. I was missing my 'Chock-ipedia' articles.... B)Let's hope this time next year you're doing a 'You wait ten years for a bus then ???? come along at once..' type piece celebrating the end of the great A320 dust bowl drought. Ian

Al, that was an excellent and objective summary and should be seen as a great aid to fence sitters. I picked up the NGX and haven't regretted it for one second.This needs to be in some sort of vetted reader's recommendations forum. I say vetted, to filter out obvious ###### or trash the developer "recommendations". Good to see you back on avsim, you have been missed. Andrew

I think the CS 737 is the only one that got the VC dimensions right. they've had some practice with their 727 and 707 series. PMDG's cockpit windows are too big. People say it's a zoom matter, I don't think so. So I use the default 738 VC(call me crazy), microsoft also got the blueprints from boeing. It seems to resemble the photos that I see more. If only PMDG and CS would team up...dream on.

Funnily enough, you bringing up the dimensions of various FS 737 cockpits, reminds me of something which I noticed was missing from both the Just Flight and the Captain Sim 200 series cockpits, and that's the seat height adjustment guide, which should be on the central windscreen pillar. Classics and NGs have never had this, but Original 737s certainly did, so it is one of the things which identifies a cockpit as definitely being a 100 or 200 series variant.If you've never noticed that item on pictures of Original 737s, it consists of two small balls mounted near the bottom of the central windscreen pillar, with a third ball in between them mounted on a little stanchion which comes off the glareshield top. When your seat is in the recommended position height-wise, the three balls will appear to be in line with one another, and since it is in the middle window stanchion, it works for both the pilot and the co-pilot's seats.Boeing changed the recommended seat height position on later Classic and NG 737s, to take into account the fact that if you wanted to see all the necessary instruments on these later versions without the control yoke and the top of the glareshield preventing you from doing so, then you'd have to be in a slightly different position, so they nowadays tend to recommend moving the seat so that you can see certain instruments, rather than lining you up on a point on the windscreen, since that method would only really work if all pilots were the same height and could all reach the pedals from the same seat position.The reason I mention this, is that it sort of highlights a bit of a problem for developers where virtual cockpit modeling is concerned too; one which artists will be familiar with, in that sometimes one has to draw things a bit incorrectly in order to make them seem correct. I think this is true of VCs too, whereby developers are trying to convert what in reality is a three dimensional space, into something which looks right on a 2D computer screen. Opinions will differ on how best to do this, and I suspect that's a catalyst for at least some of the 'the VC looks wrong' comments. Of course if the dimensions and positioning of certain cockpit equipment is demonstrably incorrect, then that's another matter, but there you go.Al

Check our vc pics. We have the "balls"!

 

Check our vc pics. We have the "balls"!

Good attention to detail, and of course there's your advertising slogan right there - 'The Milviz 737-200, the only one with balls!'Al

Doesn't surprise me that someone mentioned CS doing a better job of getting the cockpit dimension right either, since they have already made a 707 and a 727, and the 737 basically uses the same shell as those two other Boeings, to the extent that it's only the instrumentation on the panels which would tell you which Boeing you were actually in, so CS have effectively had three stabs at doing it, and were probably able to use some of the three dimensional modeling which was already done for the preceding models as a result of that.Al

I love it. Good one and I will sure as heck use it!

The Wilco PIC Classic 737 (original non-native FSX version): This was the first serious stab at an FSX 737, even though it is a ported over FS9 model.

I have been doing a lot of Google searches on the Wilco Pilot-in-Command 737 because, as I recall, this was considered 'the' aircraft to buy back way before FS2K4. In fact, I believe it first came out in FS2K or maybe even FS98 but searches just don't go back that far and I could find no information prior to FS2K4. I sort of remember that 737 PIC was the aircraft that really made Wilco the developer they are today. I remember its virtual cockpit and the sounds of the aircraft were second to none and very realistic and got all the other commercial developers on the bandwagon to produce better aircraft. You could hear the rattling and creaking of the cockpit as the aircraft went down the runway and the "Pilot-in-Command" feature first came into being. Porting it over to later versions of FS kind of ruined the greatness of this aircraft (at least for me). I'm glad they eventually developed the "Evolution" that is fully FSX compatible. Anyway, I just had to comment even though my memory is probably way off base (as usual). Great summary of all the 737 products Al!Best regards,Jim