Gents-I haven't posted in this forum in a dog's-age, but I thought i'd offer some information that might help you guys understand what you are seeing.(FWIW: This is one of my personal pet annoyances with the airplane- drives me completely batty...)I'll break this into a couple of pieces:-> "Nosewheel Doesn't Turn": When the aircraft is stationary, you should not be able to turn the nose gear steering mechanism. On most transport category aircraft, the hydraulic steering actuators cannot exert enough force to rotate the nose wheel carriage without a small amount of forward motion. (this is not true in ALL cases and at all weights, but is generally true on most fleet types...) We try very hard NOT to rotate the carriage until achieving some forward motion as it is very hard on the entire mechanism and tires. We modeled this on the -400... Get a SLIGHT forward roll going and the wheels will turn.-> "Nosewheel appears to slide across the ground": We have had numerous discussions with our friends up in Redmond regarding the ground contact model. We love those guys- but the ground contact model in FS9 is a horrible handicap in our efforts to model the airplane's ground handling. In the FS world, there is excessive friction resistance to forward roll, and almost no resistance to lateral skid.The example that I like to use because it is illustrative: Picture taxiing the airplane around in a world where the taxiways are covered with about 6" peanut butter (or marmelade if that suits your taste!)In order to move the airplane forward, more thrust is needed than you would require in the real world. However, when you turn the tiller, the nose gear loses it's lateral "grip" and rather than steering, it has a tendency to slide.We have found that the larger the airplane is (ie: the further the point of turn friction is from the center of rotation of the airplane) the more likely you are to "lose grip." We have also found that the greater the angle of deflection of the nose gear, the great the likelihood that you will lose grip. There are a couple of ways we can fix this- but they all have trade offs that negatively impact other areas of the sim:1) We can increase the friction component of the nose gear, which will cause the airplane to steer perfectly on the ground, but have the side effect of requiring SIGNIFICANT thrust to keep the airplane moving at taxi speeds. (our tests resulted in nearly 7500lbs of fuel burn in excess of real world fuel burn on SHORT taxi-outs....)2) We can limit the nose gear travel as a ratio of speed to ensure that it never appears to slide across the ground, but this would have the undesireable effect of making the airplane understeer BADLY at speeds that would be considered normal taxi speeds....In the end, we look for balance, because that is how the game is played with addon development. Sometimes we wind up sacrificing in areas that are important to some users in order to keep things working correctly in other areas of the sim. The ground steering model on this airplane was kicked back to Vangelis so many times by me, that it took a few MONTHS longer than it should have before he could finally educate me on what the limitations were....So yes- there are times when even we don't get what we want. :-)NOTE TO THE ORIGINAL POSTER: I didn't see you post in our forum or I would have answered it, because we both share frustration with this little item.... i wish i could fix it for both of us. :-) And boy do i wish people were as defferential to us as you say they are... We must be hanging out in different forums.... hahahah.....Anyway- hope that helps you guys understand what/why/how. If you have other questions that are similar- don't hesitate to post them in our forum. The more we can help you guys understand the sim, the more enjoyment I think you can get from it!

That's a very honest and straightfoward explanation. It seems a pity that the original poster wasn't given it earlier - it would have avoided a lot of unnecessary heat.

Dear Robert S. RandazzoThat explains it perfectly!!I apologise for anything i said earlier that may have offended.I did say I thought it was a fantastic addon and that it was just a little niggle of mine.It explains why I notice it happening only on the larger jets. I always thought it may be something to do with modeling large objects in flightsim.Hopfully the next version of flightsim may make it easier on you developers.JamesOh yes and it's very cool how if you stop during a turn your nose wheel stays pointing in that direction - just like real life. Other addons just bounce back at the last minute which isn't as good.And I wasn't going mad! Well not regarding this item anyway...:-)

To Mr Randazzo,"We can increase the friction component of the nose gear,"Now is this something i can do myself by changing values?I realy don't mind buring extra fuel.I understand if you can't start doing this with it being a finishedproduct and you being PMDG etc, although it would help me to enjoy an excelent addon.Anyway, thanks againJames

Hi ChanRak,Work has and still does prevent me from spending more time on my leisure interests but I'm never far away. Maybe around the middle of next year that will change as I retire from my main line of work and just concentrate on everything else, including work in other areas.I don't think I want to be seen to hijack this thread so I won't dwell on the subject, particularly as the original question has now been satisfactorily answered.As for DFD gauges I have tried a few but not all in FS9 and those I tried seemed to work OK. I think they were designed to work on earlier sim versions. I don't know any answers that would help you I'm afraid, other than to only use the ones that do work.Maybe posting a new thread would produce some answers from people much more knowledgeable than myself.I have the CH yoke and pedals and they work fine, but only recently I noticed a problem with the brakes sticking partly on. Calibrating in FSUIPC fixed it.My son gets on very well with the set up.

search the forums for sim1.dll I think its called, it gets rid of most of the ground friction by replacing the default ms .dll file

Thanks "big Al" will try that.Just hope MS get this issue sorted in the next version.James (much calmer now)

Hi Mike:1) Is it that when turning and viewing the plane from spot view that the nose wheel doesn't actually turn on the model?>> This is the problem. From the external view the nosewheel does not rotate, but the airplane does change direction.

Apart from doing both;Turning auto rudder OFF in the fs menu andTurning yaw dampers OFF while not in the airThere is no other thing I can think of.If you're still having problems, always start up your flight with the default cessna and then load the 747, and If you have a none USB joystick it might be worth thnking about investing in one. I started to get rudder problems when I moved from 2002 to 2004 and once I bought a USB mouse everything was fine. Crazy!Borrowing a friends would be a good cheap test. :-)