26JUL12 - PMDG 777 for FSX: Let the previews begin!

[JB3DG 225]

Hmm something not seen in FSX before....this makes me ask....do the some of the HGS displays on the NGX and T7 have synthetic vision systems?

[Tabs 2,790]

You have to remember this is still FSX with a old light engine.

 

It's effectively *no* lighting engine when it comes to things like aircraft textures - everything is "faked" in a sense in FSX with special textures that blend in at night. This is a very stark contrast to virtually any other modern game engine where there's only one set of textures and the game engine uses the GPU to actually simulate light interacting with the environment. (see Crysis, BF3, etc)

[Clem Wu 28]

Stunning!

[japascoe 98]

Speaking of short hops, are there any real world flights of around 2 hours that are flown in the T7?

 

Joel Murray

 

My VA simulates a whole bunch of real world airlines. A quick search in the database turned up 600-700 B772 and 300-400 B773 flights of under 3 hours. All of those are from real world schedules (two years old or younger). Of course some of those are duplicates, but still plenty of choice. A lot of domestic Japan flights, as well as some domestic China and intra-Asia hops. There are also airlines that tag a short hop on to a long haul. E.g. PIA flies a 772 from Rome to Paris and KLM flies a 773 from Singapore to Bali and back.

[phoenixphire 50]

Well I guess I have to chime in on the excitement here. I can hardly wait. All of my long haul routes have been unflown since the NGX came out. I am starting to miss them. Looking forward to some oversea trips again.

 

 

[VIPERGTSR01 22]

Looking good, sounding great.

 

Look forward to further previews (and finding out what this exciting thing Robert was talking about).

[Chris001 0]

thank's a lot....I have been waiting patiently for a good 777, with perfectly working systems ...and that PMDG is developing this one, is the best news, right after announcing the 737NGX for FSX ^_^

[Chris001 0]

Japan is well known for using wide bodies on short hops, they need the seating density that no RJ can hope to provide.

 

You are absolutely right...All Nippon Airways, eg. is using the 772ER (NH886) for the route Toyama - Tokyo (RJNT - RJTT) and vice versa.

Just an one hour hop. Japan is also famous for its B744 domestic routes.

[aceridgey 330]

Our screenshot depicts the 777 with the sun in front of it (it was a sun set that day when we were coming in from our test flight), the other two images you reference to have the sun to the side of it (as depicted in the BA shot) and behind (as in the ANA shot). Besides, those images are underexposed so things are darker than they appear. I have personally spent hours at YVR airport watching the 777s come in at all times of the day, the effect we have done here is what I saw in real life.

 

There are many shots of the 777 with the fan reflecting a little bit of the sunlight off of the blades when the sun is in front of the aircraft, that is what we have done here. When the sun is beind our 777, the intake and fan blades are pitch black (not necessarily solid but it is black - just like you wanted)

 

We - CANNOT - please everybody so it seems but we all have to understand that FSX is 7 years old, the lighting engine is terrible and we do a ton of shadow baking on our textures to compensate for the terrible FSX lighting. What we have achieved here is a good balance between FSX and real life. Don't forget - everybody's video cards are different, monitors have different gamma levels and so on.

 

Anyway, I need to get some dinner here, spent a good chunk of the day here modeling reverser blocker doors and a whole bunch of other things that I'll refrain from saying because we're gonna do another round of screenshots later.

 

Regards,

 

 

 

 

Oh come on dude, lighten up, I was being sarcastic.... Perhaps I should have looked for a tongue-in-cheek smiley instead of a smiley.

 

Its all good mate, no harm no foul...

For those complaining about the engines - please try doing some photography and learning about metering and exposure levels before you use real life pics as an example of what things should look like.

 

Even the best cameras see only a fraction of the dynamic range the human eye sees. Most cameras by default meter on a specific area near the center of the field (called center weighted-average metering) - on most of the shots you find the metering is being done on the fuselage or cockpit area, not on the dark shadow areas inside the engine nacelles. When the metering is done on those bright areas, the darker areas are necessarily going to be underexposed vs. what the eye would see. The only approximate ways around this are to do 3 or more exposures at say -1EV, normal, and +1EV and combine them into a high dynamic range (HDR) photo or else spot meter (a different mode high end cameras have) directly on the engine - if you do that however, you're going to necessarily overexpose the bright highlight areas of the image that you'd normally want to be able to see in detail. It really is the truth that no photo can really fully accurately show an entire scene with a lot of dynamic range the way the eye really sees it. For this reason trying to use photos to prove the relative brightness/darkness of different parts of the airplane is really difficult - you would have to set up the exact same shot multiple times but with each one metering on a different part of the airplane to even begin to approximate it.

 

I appreciate both of your replies, thank you.

 

I have recieved a lot of private messages since that post about it.

 

May I just be rude and ask, what is wrong with the Captain sim's engine blades? I think they look superb, what in your opinion is wrong with them?

 

Alex

[Evan Banalian 5]

For those complaining about the engines - please try doing some photography and learning about metering and exposure levels before you use real life pics as an example of what things should look like.

 

Even the best cameras see only a fraction of the dynamic range the human eye sees. Most cameras by default meter on a specific area near the center of the field (called center weighted-average metering) - on most of the shots you find the metering is being done on the fuselage or cockpit area, not on the dark shadow areas inside the engine nacelles. When the metering is done on those bright areas, the darker areas are necessarily going to be underexposed vs. what the eye would see. The only approximate ways around this are to do 3 or more exposures at say -1EV, normal, and +1EV and combine them into a high dynamic range (HDR) photo or else spot meter (a different mode high end cameras have) directly on the engine - if you do that however, you're going to necessarily overexpose the bright highlight areas of the image that you'd normally want to be able to see in detail. It really is the truth that no photo can really fully accurately show an entire scene with a lot of dynamic range the way the eye really sees it. For this reason trying to use photos to prove the relative brightness/darkness of different parts of the airplane is really difficult - you would have to set up the exact same shot multiple times but with each one metering on a different part of the airplane to even begin to approximate it.

 

 

Hi Ryan,

 

Thanks for your detailed information, Yes it's all about metering and Exposure vs Human Eye vision. I'm a photographer so I totally understand and I agree with what you said. I hope other understand as well but you know you can't please everyone.

 

Thanks

 

Evan Banalian.

[Jeroen Doorman 29]

It looks great! Now time to read...

It looks swag

[JakobF 19]

Nice guys! Beautiful job on this magnificent aircraft! Big bows to you guys, you're nailing it! ;-)

 

Simply guys you are untouchable! :-) and Jason just simply WOW on your work!

 

Flying the 737 on a daily basis, I'm looking forward to fly the big mother bird soon! :-)

 

Best regards

Jakob

 

[Jude Bradley 660]

The sad thing for me, is that I'll not be flying this for a long while after it's released. I know for a fact that it's going to be a couple of years at least until I get the funds for a medium-sized PC for FSX rather than my FS9 laptop.

 

And yet, I feel happy looking at these images. The detail is astounding and it really is a nice aircraft to just "look" at!

 

Great job!

 

Why not have a look here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=i5-2500K&x=0&y=0

 

Maybe cheaper than you think :)

[UAE77W 16]

wow. i love the GE90 closeup.

the T7 is such an amazing aircraft. again: thank you so much pmdg.

[Jude Bradley 660]

The sad thing for me, is that I'll not be flying this for a long while after it's released. I know for a fact that it's going to be a couple of years at least until I get the funds for a medium-sized PC for FSX rather than my FS9 laptop.

 

And yet, I feel happy looking at these images. The detail is astounding and it really is a nice aircraft to just "look" at!

 

Great job!

 

Why not have a look here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=i5-2500K&x=0&y=0

 

Maybe cheaper than you think :)