FSX-MS QW 787 FSX Feedback/First Impressions Only Thread

[adam wackawski 6]

summary of the things that drive me mad about that thing. im only listing the negs. plenty of people will give it vague praise as is.

visuals:

displays are not pleasant to look at. there are no effects on them - it's literally computer font on black blackground. it looks exactly the same if you draw lines yourself in MSPAINT. that's exactly how they look inside the sim. if you didn't know it, you would never think there are screens there!

 even 2014's aerosoft airbuses did miles better in simulating the LCDs, in 2014 with code that at that point was 5 years old. also antialias seems to really not work on them. always jagged no matter what. it aint no pmdg and for the size of those screens, no excuse either. also no brightness adjustment at all. nada. zip.

vc textures are ok but look cartoony in spots. the color of the boeing is a tough one to capture, i'll give them that but they didn't put much effort to make it less drawn.  carpet is too grainy. but im mostly concerned with glareshield.

systems:

VNAV only works if you don't change anything during flight. 

LNAV cannot follow the line. sharp turns and curves confuse it. it generally doesn't like to  turn period. major issues changing between lnav and heading modes. lnav is  as bad as the CRJ when it came out basically....  totally frustrating inexcusable issue to sell this with.

funny things:

the click zones for the window shades are too huge. everything is a click zone for those. WHY??????

the windows do not open. no you didn't run out of animations. so why not model that? you (qw) never do those on your planes but the first few times I could give you a pass given it was 30$. again for that price point on this beta, no excuse. yes I like my windows opening. especially when there's so many other things that are off.

trim has a delay limit. you can only change it so fast. quick trimming the plane is impossible. it will only click once per second no matter what you do. and  you have to release the button to reset the counter before it will trim again. way more annoying than the 777 (which has the same horrible digital trim gizmo logic). 

tldr: needs patches bad and fast.  but they don't care.

 

[sanh 823]

8 hours ago, adam wackawski said:

 

the windows do not open. no you didn't run out of animations. so why not model that? you (qw) never do those on your planes but the first few times I could give you a pass given it was 30$. again for that price point on this beta, no excuse. yes I like my windows opening. especially when there's so many other things that are off.

 

 

I have never really understood why people want windows opening, seats reclining, arm rest bars rising and tables sliding. I can imagine people clicking the object a couple of times and then not using it again. I agree though the glass screens don't look right for some reason.

[Chock 17,769]

10 minutes ago, sanh said:

I have never really understood why people want windows opening, seats reclining, arm rest bars rising and tables sliding. I can imagine people clicking the object a couple of times and then not using it again. I agree though the glass screens don't look right for some reason.

Yup, it's kind of fun to click on the cockpit seats and see them motor backwards out of the way as they do on the real thing, but we don't actually need that at all in a sim version since it's not like we can bang our virtual knees and shins on the pedestal when climbing into the seats like you do (especially) on a Boeing 737. So although that kind of stuff is cool, it's not really gonna get used that much, if at all.

Theoretically it might be useful to open the windows if the P3D version implements the rain on the windows effect, since it might help with visibility when parking or pushing back, but then again, in the sim we can hit S and go to an external view, so again it isn't a showstopper to not have opening windows.

I do agree that the QW 787 doesn't appear to be the best at tracking LNAV if a turn is tight, but it's not terrible, just could be a bit better. Actually the sim aeroplane in which I've seen this done best is, coincidentally, the 787's rival; the Airbus A350 for XPlane by Flight Factors. That one tracks LNAV turns in the way the real Airbus actually does in terms of how the calculations are worked out by its systems, i.e. not all turns are calculated in the same way, it will make different control inputs depending upon the type of turn, and you can tell it does that when you fly it because it is way better at it than any other flight sim aeroplane I've come across.

As far as the displays and cockpit texturing is concerned, whilst I do think it is indeed a bit flat and computerish in comparison to some VC efforts, this is something which I think bothers me less than it does some others. Sure, I like nice looking VCs, but it's less important to me than the displays being clear to read, so I personally don't regard that as too much of a minus point. I also suspect that with the FSX version being already up on 3.0Gb of VAS just parked at the gate and rising to 3.5Gb on flights, it may very well have been a sensible design decision to not go too fancy with the cockpit display rendering. This is something PMDG do too, where you can drop the display refresh rate to 15fps on their aeroplanes in order to assist performance, and it is certainly something designers have to consider when working within the limitations of FSX. Again, yes it is nice initially to  see PFDs which appear to have greasy fingerprints on them, but after a while I wish I could reach for a virtual cloth and wipe the things down lol.

Of course there are limits to how far I want to see designers going a bit more low-fi on VC design choices, and a good example of that would be the iFly 737s in comparison to the PMDG ones. I really like the iFly NG, but it is right on the ragged edge of being too low fidelity visually in comparison to the PMDG one. Any lower and I'd not be a fan of it.

Maybe we will see the P3D version of the 787, take advantage of more VAS room in this visual regard, although I for one will not be too concerned if it remains the same. I would hope that QW can have a look at the LNAV tracking and see if it can be tweaked a bit, although not at the expense of how it hand flies, since it undeniably is a lovely thing to hand fly.

[HighBypass 2,339]

It might be useful to move an armrest out of the way of something on the centre pedestal rather than messing with the view - Some of us don't have chaseplane and panning with the hat switch only goes so far before I may have to think about using Ctrl-Shift Enter backspace and their combinations.

Note that I don't yet have the 787 so just generalising.

I would sooner see animations for more "important" stuff accurate control surface & gear motions. I don't even need to see the cabin - hearing the cabin and the cabin crew on the other hand is more immersive IMHO, especially when the days of sparking up a Chesterfield and wandering back to chat to passengers is long gone :) 

[adam wackawski 6]

5 hours ago, sanh said:

I have never really understood why people want windows opening, seats reclining, arm rest bars rising and tables sliding. I can imagine people clicking the object a couple of times and then not using it again. I agree though the glass screens don't look right for some reason.

well tbh the seats make sense because when you adjust your view position, if you jam your "camera" into the seat/headrest it prevents your mouse from engaging buttons. so moving the seat when its in the way is desired vs moving the view to a compromise position or zoom. so that at least has functional use.

 

the windows yes are completely cosmetic but I love opening them up after a flight and hearing those ambient sounds rumble around especially if on a tropical airport. I also like to look around with the contrast between clear view and glass through view.. its a personal thing.. I do it almost every flight with the a320. does plenty for the immersion. some people also like to do virtual  walk around their plane. I don't do that but I can certainly understand why they would do that.

I remember QW promising an actual CABIN for this plane. they even showed us the cabin fully modeled! that is gone too (makes sense cause of vas). but a lot of the preview features were nixed. you can go back to 2015 and still see those images

[adam wackawski 6]

4 hours ago, Chock said:

Yup, it's kind of fun to click on the cockpit seats and see them motor backwards out of the way as they do on the real thing, but we don't actually need that at all in a sim version since it's not like we can bang our virtual knees and shins on the pedestal when climbing into the seats like you do (especially) on a Boeing 737. So although that kind of stuff is cool, it's not really gonna get used that much, if at all.

Theoretically it might be useful to open the windows if the P3D version implements the rain on the windows effect, since it might help with visibility when parking or pushing back, but then again, in the sim we can hit S and go to an external view, so again it isn't a showstopper to not have opening windows.

I do agree that the QW 787 doesn't appear to be the best at tracking LNAV if a turn is tight, but it's not terrible, just could be a bit better. Actually the sim aeroplane in which I've seen this done best is, coincidentally, the 787's rival; the Airbus A350 for XPlane by Flight Factors. That one tracks LNAV turns in the way the real Airbus actually does in terms of how the calculations are worked out by its systems, i.e. not all turns are calculated in the same way, it will make different control inputs depending upon the type of turn, and you can tell it does that when you fly it because it is way better at it than any other flight sim aeroplane I've come across.

As far as the displays and cockpit texturing is concerned, whilst I do think it is indeed a bit flat and computerish in comparison to some VC efforts, this is something which I think bothers me less than it does some others. Sure, I like nice looking VCs, but it's less important to me than the displays being clear to read, so I personally don't regard that as too much of a minus point. I also suspect that with the FSX version being already up on 3.0Gb of VAS just parked at the gate and rising to 3.5Gb on flights, it may very well have been a sensible design decision to not go too fancy with the cockpit display rendering. This is something PMDG do too, where you can drop the display refresh rate to 15fps on their aeroplanes in order to assist performance, and it is certainly something designers have to consider when working within the limitations of FSX. Again, yes it is nice initially to  see PFDs which appear to have greasy fingerprints on them, but after a while I wish I could reach for a virtual cloth and wipe the things down lol.

Of course there are limits to how far I want to see designers going a bit more low-fi on VC design choices, and a good example of that would be the iFly 737s in comparison to the PMDG ones. I really like the iFly NG, but it is right on the ragged edge of being too low fidelity visually in comparison to the PMDG one. Any lower and I'd not be a fan of it.

Maybe we will see the P3D version of the 787, take advantage of more VAS room in this visual regard, although I for one will not be too concerned if it remains the same. I would hope that QW can have a look at the LNAV tracking and see if it can be tweaked a bit, although not at the expense of how it hand flies, since it undeniably is a lovely thing to hand fly.

I too am looking towards upcoming patches. What im not looking forward to is how long it historically takes them to make those. But we shall see, since they have a lot riding on this they might expedite. Oddly enough the refresh rate on the displays is perfect which I think is whatever your actual fps are. PMDG's I think I keep them all on 20fps.basically anything over 20 on a lcd will provide pretty fluid view. you will never come close to the fluidity of the leveld tho but that thing is literally too resource efficient to not be smooth as it gets.

 

Due to vas im seeing Africa a lot in this planes fsx future.. long flights over empty barren water and nothing on the land itself should keep it happy. pretty much same as with the 777. no KLAX to EHAM (at least not with aftermarket on those airports and regions).

 

I am cautiously excited about this adding features near the end of the prepar 4 life cycle when the sim itself is stable. It appears they might time that version in time for that not on purpose but just due to how long it takes them.  Should be pretty awesome by then if they capitalize on all that will be possible (like weather effects that are finally being worked on by Lockheed)

[Kyle Schurb 89]

14 hours ago, adam wackawski said:

 displays are not pleasant to look at. there are no effects on them - it's literally computer font on black blackground. it looks exactly the same if you draw lines yourself in MSPAINT. that's exactly how they look inside the sim. if you didn't know it, you would never think there are screens

the windows do not open. no you didn't run out of animations. so why not model that? you (qw) never do those on your planes but the first few times I could give you a pass given it was 30$. again for that price point on this beta, no excuse. yes I like my windows opening. especially when there's so many other things that are off. 

tldr: needs patches bad and fast.  but they don't care.

 

- There are material effects on the displays, including subtle/blurred reflections and dust. 

- Odd thing to complain about, given the fact that the actual 787 flight deck windows do not open. (There is an escape hatch in the ceiling)

- A hotfix was released today, barely over a week after release. But like you said, we don't care. 

[Skywolf 992]

Fantastic Posts everyone.  Great feedback.  So easy to read info about this bird.

 

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

1 hour ago, anthonyg96 said:

 

Anthony, you quoted scianoir and forgot to add a reply? Or did you reply inside his quote?

[adam wackawski 6]

3 hours ago, Kyle Schurb said:

- There are material effects on the displays, including subtle/blurred reflections and dust. 

- Odd thing to complain about, given the fact that the actual 787 flight deck windows do not open. (There is an escape hatch in the ceiling)

- A hotfix was released today, barely over a week after release. But like you said, we don't care. 

oooh ooooh I got a dev to read this and comment. my mission in life is achieved. seriously tho, keep the current level of not caring. I can live with that. wink

[MadDog 353]

18 hours ago, adam wackawski said:

oooh ooooh I got a dev to read this and comment. my mission in life is achieved. seriously tho, keep the current level of not caring. I can live with that. wink

Does the "Shift" key not work correctly on your keyboard?  Just curious.

[scianoir 610]

For those who were hesitant about buying this on the basis that they might have to pay the full price again for the P3D version, QW have just announced that there will be 50% off the price of the P3D version for those who have already purchased the FSX version, but this offer will only be vailable for the first two months after release.

Bill

[Chock 17,769]

Basically the same discount percentage as for the iFly 737 NG. Seems fair enough to me.

[scianoir 610]

Yes it's a fair deal. The only difference is the the iFly discount isn't time limited.

Bill

[warbirds 555]

12 hours ago, scianoir said:

For those who were hesitant about buying this on the basis that they might have to pay the full price again for the P3D version, QW have just announced that there will be 50% off the price of the P3D version for those who have already purchased the FSX version, but this offer will only be vailable for the first two months after release.

Bill

After release of the aircraft or after release of the P3D version?