Airline options

[VHOJT 160]

Hi there,

 

Do you guys at PMDG have a rough idea of which airlines you have realistic configurations for the 744 with at this stage (if any of course)?

 

Cheers,

Rudy

 

 

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Do you guys at PMDG have a rough idea of which airlines you have realistic configurations for the 744 with at this stage (if any of course)?

 

Not sure. We try to get all of them set up to be reflective of the livery on the outside. If that comes down to looking at pictures of flight decks for that operator, we at least do that to get it close. The "verified" thing only gets shown when it gets verified by someone who knows setup for that operator (works there, worked there, etc.), so sometimes we can have it near spot on, but if someone can't verify it, we won't slap the "verified" icon on it.

 

So, they'll all be as realistic as possible. Some will just be verified as accurate (keeping in mind that certain fleets are mixed as their 744s have traded hands quite a lot).

[VHOJT 160]

Great - nice to know the process you guys go by.  You're right about mixed fleets - by some digging around on a few forums, I think that out of only 11 744s that Qantas has, there are at least 4 different configurations!  Their new ones, their old ones, ex-Malaysian ones, and their ERs...

 

Thanks for the detailed answer.

 

Also - nice work with the video (especially seeing as you were keen to hit the road for your day off).  You were very thorough explaining the options.  Even if some were obvious to current PMDG users, anyone new to PMDG/the 747 won't have to go back to other videos or searching around for want of a better explanation.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Great - nice to know the process you guys go by.  You're right about mixed fleets - by some digging around on a few forums, I think that out of only 11 744s that Qantas has, there are at least 4 different configurations!

 

Yep!

 

4 were picked up directly as -400s. 1 was picked up from Asiana secondhand. With the secondhand aircraft and the 9 years between initial delivery and final -400 delivery, there's bound to be some differences. They then were the launch customer for the -400ER, so they got the test article (N747ER which is now VH-OEE), which was configured to their standards (thus the 438ER designator), along with the other ERs (some of which were initially either delayed or simply carried US regs for some other reason: 60659 and 5020K).

 

 

Also - nice work with the video (especially seeing as you were keen to hit the road for your day off).  You were very thorough explaining the options.  Even if some were obvious to current PMDG users, anyone new to PMDG/the 747 won't have to go back to other videos or searching around for want of a better explanation.

 

Thanks. And yeah - as soon as I finished that video, I pressed "upload" and let it upload while I got ready to run out the door.

[thannyd 4]

I can ask a schoolmate of mine for the KLM options, he just recently transferred from 747 to 777/787.

[Boeing or not going 578]

There were minor mistakes in a few official configurations for the 737 and 777 but giving us the ability to change almost anything is perfect for insane perfectionists like myself. - David Lee

[RKOines 0]

What video?  You are dealing with a knuckle head here, but I can't find the video mentioned above.

 

Ron Oines

[harvester21 34]

Hi Ron, have a look here if you haven't found it yet.

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/498489-pmdg-747-400v3-preview-video-by-kyle/

 

Have a nice day.

[RKOines 0]

Thank you very much for the help Sander.  I hope I will know where to look next time. :smile:

[G-CIVA 62]

Unless I missed something I saw no option to simulate differing Instrument Source Select options ... namely Air Data Source Selection & IRS Source Selection the ability to faithfully recreate various airline customisable options is unavailable ... with reference to the Qantas fleet this would affect VH-OEB which is an ex Asiana Airlines aircraft, indeed any Asiana Airlines Aircraft will not be correctly simulated.

 

Certain failures will be thus limited within the Flight Instrument & Flight Flight Control Systems Logic.

 

I also did not see an option for four individual Autostart Switches ... also a customer option most often seen on PW engined aircraft, Korean Air, Air India & China Airlines early PAX models will all be affected, I may have missed the additional option as I say.

 

Perhaps these 'simulations' are limited by the FSX simulations options? Perhaps we may see them in the p3D iteration?

[Copper. 78]

Why wouldn't the source select switches be operational? They're there - pmdg aren't of the habit in not modelling critical switches like the source selects, which appear to be there, but not confirmed as working... Unless a beta informs us so and am pretty sure the source selects would be - because, well, we're dealing with PMDG here.

 

I'd like to see a picture of a PW with four individual auto start push buttons! I'm genuinely intrigued that such an option might exist. Why would you have four, and not just one, and select/de-select the single auto start switch as needed per engine start?

[G-CIVA 62]

Re read my last post more thoroughly.

 

I did NOT discuss whether the Instrument Source Select Panel WAS working, I simply discussed the observation that the Air Data Source Selector (ADCs) & IRS Source Selector Switches did not have the various customer selectable options that the manufacturer - Boeing made available.

 

Some 744s are only equipped with two individual ADCs L & R, some with three L, C & R, & some with the three & an AUTO Select option.

 

In the same way some 744s are only equipped with the three IRS Selections L, C & R, whilst others are equipped with the same & an additional AUTO Selection. Failures occur differently & in different sequences with the different equipment/switch options.

 

Boeing along with the engine manufacturer has indeed offered individual Engine Autostart Switches on the PW engined aircraft for as long as I can remember.

 

Many of the early PW & RR engined aircraft came with no Autostart option at all.

 

Four individual Engine Autostart Switches can be observed on the overhead panel of this early PW engined China Airlines 744 above the EEC Switches in lieu of a single Autostart Switch on the Engine Start Panel at 1m 35s ...

 

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

We have reached the phase of every project that I hate the most:

 

That phase when the forum starts to seethe with posts from all manner of folks professing to understand and/or know how we ruined our product by not including some obscure detail that they picked up by digging through the menu of some other product or looking at lots of photos on Airliners.net.  (But which is probably not even thoroughly understood by the folks who maintain and fly the thing for a living.  )

 

Steve: I haven't done the actual math on it- but I think we have about 1800 possible configuration variations that you can make out of the available option packages we have simulated.  Given our track record- over the first couple of service updates we will probably add a few hundred more....

 

We have deliberately chosen to discard some- because we have a few times now run into the actual hard limit of animation resources available to us in FSX.  This being the case we have had to make a few tough decisions on certain aspects of the simulation- but in most cases they will be totally irrelevant to 99.99999% of users.

 

If we miss your (or that of anyone else) favorite - please be assured we did it for a reason.  Might be that we ran out of animation resources in FSX... might be that we felt it wasn't significant in the global fleet... might be that we just didn't find it to be interesting or we couldn't not obtain sufficient documentation on it's operation.

 

Oh- and those autostart switches:  They aren't as you described.  Those switches are there for maintenance use in the event of an EEC fault that requires a manual start of a PW engine equipped with autostart.  It will be tied to an MEL procedure...  I can get you a list of the specific msns that carry those switches too, if you'd like.

 

Did I mention that we have a ton of data and expertise at work on this project?  Oh yeah...  We do. 

[sosuflyer 30]

*Drops Mic*

[Copper. 78]

Thanks Steve. I learnt new things and yes, I did misread your comment about the source selects.

 

RR comments sum things up. I doubt it'd be overly useful/practical modelling them. Sounds like they've hit the animation limit anyway.