QW 787 final thoughts ?

[warbirds 555]

Really want to get this bird but still would like to know a few things from those that have the updated version.

Is the banding in the cockpit at night still there? This really turned me off this aircraft when I found that out.

Does it now have rain effects on windscreen?

Does it have dynamic lighting inside and out?

Your general opinion please.

[charlie130 196]

11 minutes ago, warbirds said:

Really want to get this bird but still would like to know a few things from those that have the updated version.

Is the banding in the cockpit at night still there? This really turned me off this aircraft when I found that out.

Does it now have rain effects on windscreen?

Does it have dynamic lighting inside and out?

Your general opinion please.

Hi Paul.

I have never seen any "banding" in the flight deck. 

Truglass rain effects on the windshield...check.

Dynamic lighting in flight deck...check.

It has many super features that are not well publicised. The "jump Ahead" is amazing and makes transatlantic flights a sensible proposition. The "jump" feature, simulates time passage, fuel use and places you exactly at the selected waypoint. I did a video demonstrating it's use.

Best of all, MCE fully supports it.

Best P3d aircraft with the A2A Connie and VRS Superbug close runners up!

Best regards

David.

 

[nas123 160]

It is a very fine airplane that has many new features not found in the PMDG airplanes. It is still behing PMDG when it comes to the Autopilot system, but updates will improve that. 

It is my #1 at the moment.

Simmers that have the Opencockpits hardware modules can soon use them to fly the QW787 in P3Dv4.

Edited October 11, 2018 by nas123

[Guest]

No banding (but I never experience this anyway) … are you sure you have your MAX_VC_TEXTURE_RESOLUTION set correctly?

Yes to TrueGlass (rain effects)

Yes to DL inside VC.

After the latest QW 787 update I was very impressed with the aircraft especially in this price point and its performance is very good in P3D V4.x.

Cheers, Rob.

[Dreamflight767 312]

I'm having issues (CTD) after the latest updates.  I didn't have CTD prior to the updates.  It's fun to fly, just aggravating when you're half way through a long haul and you get a CTD.

[DavidP 1,410]

I got a refund on the original release, but would dearly love a 787 - if PMDG produced one I'd buy at an instant, however even if they did I fear I may not be alive to see it 😂.

Seeing the comments here is making me seriously consider re-purchasing.

[Jim Young 2,356]

This is one of my favorite aircraft but wasn't until I figured you had to configure the load settings via the Load Manager in the Dispatcher or else you'll have issues on landing using the AP.  Love the jump feature!

The FPS are definitely acceptable.  For instance, on a flight from KORD to KIAD with ASP4, UTLive, and lots of MSE scenery, I get an average of 40 FPS using the FSUIPC.log:

Minimum frame rate was 16.0 fps, Maximum was 89.7 fps
Average frame rate for running time of 2756 secs = 40.6 fps
Maximum AI traffic for session was 301 aircraft

For the PMDG 747-8, with the same scenario as above, I got a little better but anything over 30 fps is really unnecessary -

Minimum frame rate was 11.0 fps, Maximum was 82.8 fps
Average frame rate for running time of 3720 secs = 53.7 fps
Maximum AI traffic for session was 280 aircraft

[honanhal 1,420]

All around it’s a solid aircraft (bought it after the last patch release a few weeks ago). Haven’t had a single CTD, knock on wood. No banding, as others have said. Cockpit looks great, frames are acceptable-to-good (I’d compare performance to the FSL Airbus with latest updates or the PMDG 747 v2 — i.e. worse than the 737 or 777 but still mostly fine). I’m happy with my purchase and have never considered getting the refund. I’ve really enjoyed flying it around quite a bit. It captures the Dreamliner feel very well in terms of atmosphere. It’s a beautifully modeled plane both on the exterior and on the flight deck. Sound modeling is particularly excellent. Lots of attention to detail. As others have said, the “jump ahead” feature is revolutionary. I expect competitors to adopt it in the future.

Given the price point, some things have not gotten the full-on treatment that you’d expect from a more expensive product: cockpit lighting doesn’t have as many gradations available as PMDG (though it’s not all-on or all-off either), some switches and CDU functions aren’t modeled. No failures, etc. I certainly don’t hold any of that against QW.

Then there are the things that still don’t quite work that you would expect at this price point. The autopilot, while it hasn’t yet taken me in completely the wrong direction, is more than a little wonky. It misses even moderately tight turns, and sometimes the TOD goes permanently missing.

The most problematic part is that the auto throttle logic seems to be pretty broken: normally, if you’re above the VNAV path you’d expect throwing on the spoilers would increase your rate of descent to get back on path. In this plane, that will actually cause your rate of descent to stay constant while speed decays, until the auto throttle eventually puts on more power (!). Perhaps even more surprisingly, the only solution I’ve found is to descend in VS and intervene to constantly lower the airspeed, which keeps the autothrottle from moving the throttles up from idle. I’m not sure I’m explaining this very well, but if you’re used to operating a PMDG aircraft I promise you’ll immediately notice how off the descent logic is. It’s just not right, and to be honest it seems like it would need a total overhaul to fix. (Disclaimer: I’m not a RW pilot or a Dreamliner expert, so it’s possible this is all true to the way the real thing works. I doubt it.)

The other fly in the ointment is when you save a flight midway, getting it to reopen with the panel state is extremely hit or miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. One time I had no displays on the captain’s side. Another time the engines were dead and the battery off (though the plane happily steered in the glide until I got things started again). This they may be able to fix at some point. (And the jump-ahead feature makes this less of a dealbreaker anyway, since long flights can be shortened.)

Ultimately, I’m still enjoying the plane. That said, I’d feel better if the autothrottle/descent and panel save issues got ironed out. It’s not PMDG pricing, but it’s still a $70 addon and those seem like features buyers could reasonably expect.

James

[Riah069 157]

I had light banding when i first bought it 1.10 version i think. But now that is gone because they added Real Light into the cockpit. But beware if you are using SLI it will flicker and carry on. There is an option to tick in the dispatcher in regards to wether or not you are using SLI.

 

Regards

[MarkW 1,491]

Jim, I noticed with the new update you can load fuel and pax/cargo from the EFB  and it dynamically changed in the aircraft.  Major improvement. 

[Chock 17,769]

It's a great add-on, well worth the money since, let's not forget you get two variants (800/900) and two engine fit choices for each variant too (RR/GE), so that's four aeroplanes really. Hopefully they'll make a -10 variant as an add-on/expansion.

I do wish they'd make the nav/anti-collision lights brighter, the weedy exterior lighting is about my only gripe with the thing as it looks nothing like the lights on the real 787.

On the plus side, I've never had the P3D version crash the sim or my PC ever since I've bought it (and even the FSX version which I also bought only did this if I really pushed things graphically). It can be a little bit heavy on frames in comparison to some other add-on airliners, which I'd put down to the big glass avionics in the VC, but it's not terrible in this regard, it's just worth noting this has a bit of an impact on FPS since it is such a feature of the 787.

 

Edited October 12, 2018 by Chock

[F737MAX 5,579]

37 minutes ago, honanhal said:

[...]
Ultimately, I’m still enjoying the plane. That said, I’d feel better if the autothrottle/descent and panel save issues got ironed out. It’s not PMDG pricing, but it’s still a $70 addon and those seem like features buyers could reasonably expect.

17 minutes ago, Chock said:

[...]
On the plus side, I've never had the P3D version crash the sim or my PC ever since I've bought it (and even the FSX version which I also bought only did this if I really pushed things graphically). It can be a little bit heavy on frames in comparison to some other add-on airliners, which I'd put down to the big glass avionics in the VC, but it's not terrible in this regard, it's just worth noting this has a bit of an impact on FPS.

Completely sums up my experience too!

I have had issues on a few occasions where I couldn't disengage VNAV and LNAV to change to HDG SEL, V/S or LVL CHG on autopilot. Ended up having to hand fly the last few points of a STAR and approach.

Also, it's a little heavy on my PC resources. I end up loosing a few FPS, autogen can disappear quite often and I can get blurry ground textures which doesn't happen with any of the Dash 8-400, 737 NGX or Aerosoft Airbuses.

It's fun to fly by hand, I like the moving airport maps on the ND, and I adore the jump ahead feature. 
Still a mixed experience for me, but overall since the recent updates, it has been worth getting.

[Guest]

You can also add the OldProp 787 Immersions package which steps the visuals up another notch.

All around great aircraft, wish I had time to fly it more instead of testing.

Cheers, Rob

[Benjamin J 751]

5 hours ago, charlie130 said:

It has many super features that are not well publicised. The "jump Ahead" is amazing and makes transatlantic flights a sensible proposition. The "jump" feature, simulates time passage, fuel use and places you exactly at the selected waypoint. I did a video demonstrating it's use.

To me this would be a very big deal. The 787 is become more and more important on transatlantic flights but I have no time to actually fly any of those flights, so this "jump ahead" is very intriguing. I'd like to know, though, how default ATC is dealt with? If you use it, and jump ahead, does default ATC realize you jumped ahead, or will it try to vector you back to where it think you should be? Also, when do people normally engage the jump ahead? Does it matter at all?

[Christopher Low 5,352]

Quote

Then there are the things that still don’t quite work that you would expect at this price point. The autopilot, while it hasn’t yet taken me in completely the wrong direction, is more than a little wonky. It misses even moderately tight turns, and sometimes the TOD goes permanently missing

That sounds a lot like the rather "flimsy" autopilot in the QW Avro RJ/BAe 146. I would like to think that QW will correct that (and the lack of a complete panel state save option) for the P3D v4 version, but I am not optimistic.