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)

 

Interesting.. did not know that.

I cant wait to do kIAH to EGLL on this thing ......

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.

 

Nice to see a few camera junkies around here other than me!

Gents-

 

I can't give you much detail here- because it is something that you haven't seen done yet in FSX... however...

 

We just had a breakthrough on something that is a huge technology advance for simmers who wish to fly the 777...

 

Can't tell you what it is yet- but we will show it to you in a video- and I think you will be quite excited.

 

I just had to tell someone. B)

 

Sounds like a fully functioning lavatory. Haven't seen one of those in FSX.

Fingers still crossed for a -200ER and regular old -200 variant.

Sounds like a fully functioning lavatory. Haven't seen one of those in FSX.

Oh goodie, gives me something to do on long flights, see how many rolls of toilet paper I can get sucked in in one flush!

 

Hey, what's the green stuff inside the engine? moss??

 

The green stuff is a exposed special primer coat. Its normal wear and tear, because of the high speed of the fan blades, basically the same effect as sand blasting.

 

You would never ever see moss( or any other substance) growing inside the cowl of a 24-30 million dollar engine ...

This jet looks absolutely amazing!

I've spent good 3 years flying with those babies and look forward to spend some more flying around our virtual world.

Outside - interesting, but I want to see what's in the flight deck pipeline for us..

Over the years from the day's of FS2004 I have waited with bated breath with the news of a release from PMDG, due to the excellent work they produce items.

 

Such as the B1900C & D , 747-400/400X/LCF/747-8X,most recently the 737-800NGX, and being a pilot with over 10 000 hours of flying and having flown the J41 Jet stream, B1900D/C, B737-100/200....B737-300/400...B737-800NG and now for the last year with Emirates Airlines On the B777-200/200ER/200LR/200F....B777-300/300ER/ULR and with Possibilities of the Purchase of The 747-8XFreighter and the new upcoming 777-8X/9X in the future.

 

I was lucky enough to help with Captain Sims B737-200/100 Series Aircraft, so I extend my assistance in any way that I can to the PMDG team if test pilots are required for the Beta testing.

I congratulate you on your work and ask that you keep up the high standard, just a question when will the flight deck for the Model of the 747-8X be updated to the original, and would there be a possibility that you would ever be interested in making the B737-100/200/300/400/500 series ?

 

Regards

 

Paul

Boeing has chooses longest wingspan for the 777X.

 

 

 

As Chicago-based aircraft manufacturer Boeing heads into the future following a better-than-expected 2012 second-quarter net profit of US$967 million, or US$1.27 per share versus the Wall Street consensus of US$1.12 per share, it continues to map out its future widebody strategy that will see new members being added to its popular large twin-engine, long-haul 777 as well as the carbon composite 787 Dreamliner aircraft families.

Running ahead in these in-house evaluations is the 323-seat Boeing 787-10X, which will be 5.49m (18ft) longer than the 787-9 variant while burning 25% less fuel than an Airbus A330-300 on a 6,700nm-6,750nm (nautical miles) trip (“Airbus is right on A330 improvement strategy“, 10th Jul, 12). Another study into revamping the highly popular 777 jets which sold a record 200 examples to airlines last year, in the meantime, is understood to be less advanced and whose authority to offer (ATO) from Boeing’s board of directors will not come as early as the one for the 787-10X, which Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney put at “end of this year” or “beginning of next year” for the “perfect next step on the [7]87″ during an earnings conference call with analysts.

Nevertheless Boeing is making some progress in the development of 777X, including opting for the largest-even wingspan for the 777X’s supercritical carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) wings.

Image Courtesy of Jon Ostrower

Largest ever wing

According to Aspire Aviation‘s sources at the world’s second-largest airframer, Boeing has in recent weeks chosen the largest wingspan option for the 777-9X, a 407-seat successor to the 365-seat 777-300ER, at 71.1m (233.4ft).

While cautioning that the decision to put a largest-ever carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) wing on the 777X is “not final”, these sources say Boeing has declared the 71.1m (233.4ft) wingspan as the “baseline” in presentations and private discussions with potential airline customers, while adding 30m² (322.9ft²) to the 777-300ER’s wing area of 436.8m².

This will lead to the largest wing ever produced by Boeing, of which the 71.1m (233.4ft) wingspan is longer than the 747-8′s 68.5m (224.7ft) wingspan, the 777-300ER/-200LR’s 64.8m (212.7ft), the 777-200/-200ER/-300′s 60.9m (199.11ft) and the 787-8/-9/-10X’s 60.1m (197.3ft). In comparison, only the Airbus A380 superjumbo has a larger wing with a wingspan at 79.75m (261.1ft).

Boeing was previously studying 4 wingspan options for the 777-9X – 65m (213.3ft) with winglets, 68.6m (225ft) with winglets, 71.1m (233.4ft) with 787-styled raked wingtip, and a 233.4ft option featuring a folding wingtip before settling on the largest one.

In doing so, the 407-seat Boeing 777-9X will creep into the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Code F category, which features airplanes with a wingspan between 65m (213.3ft) and 80m (262.5ft) whereas the ICAO Code E category to which today’s 777-300ER belongs includes planes with wingspans 52m (170.6ft) and 65m (213.3ft) and will require costly airport modifications such as runway and taxiway widening and larger aircraft stands similar to those seen before the A380 superjumbo’s entry into service (EIS) in October 2007.

Furthermore, building such a large carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) wing very likely leads to increased investment should Boeing opt to construct the largest composite wing ever built at its Everett facilities, although Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) does have a giant 700 metric tonnes autoclave that is 40m long and 8m wide at its Nagoya facility. People familiar with the situation said Boeing has yet to determine a site for constructing the CFRP wing.

Separately, Boeing is mulling to eliminate the overwing exit of the 777-300ER which will save 1,000lbs (453.6kg) in weight, the same sources say. This would stretch the separation between the 4 Type A doors on each side of the fuselage to a maximum of 60ft, thereby meeting the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) requirement to evacuate 407 passengers within 90 seconds with half of its doors blocked or being unavailable while saving weight.

 

More great aircraft from my fav manufacturer!!!! I foune this article on flight aware, But don't know how to post the url!

think the Engine fan blades need to be pitch black [check the difference below between the center of the engine and the fans, black to grey, where you shouldn't be able to see the difference.

 

Maybe you should watch this video. It shows a good closeup of the engine fan blades starting at 3:24!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jxSSceaS4I8

All this talk about photography and exposure. You kids have it easy, when I was a professional photographer, for the photographic department of a well known advertising agency, it was grab the Western Master exposure meter, walk over to the subject and take an incident light reading.

 

Try that with your fan blades though and I'd recommend the engines are OFF!!!

 

When I was a pro it was agitate the film in a dev tank and slosh the prints around in a dish, all the time hoping to god that the damn things would turn out okay.

 

 

Easy peezy these days. Just make sure it looks okay in the LCD screen, then cheat with photoshop. :P

All of this is giving me ideas! Lufthansa fans rejoice, I'm going to repaint this baby as soon as she's out!

I'm going to apply the A380 naming convention and give her names of non german origin, to exemplify the insane range that this jet has!

 

Not sure about the rest, but the first LR will be named "Chidori 千鳥 D-ABZA" Chidori is, unless i'm wrong, Japanese for "a thousand birds" and I think that name is perfect!

 

CANNOT. WAIT.

 

Go PMDG!

Maybe you should watch this video. It shows a good closeup of the engine fan blades starting at 3:24!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jxSSceaS4I8

Yeah,

 

The engines are off

A little rain don't hurt us wet coasters eh? Nice and cool today.

 

Now get back to work!! Lol.

 

Of course this is why we sim! ;)