I agree that their business model is flawed and their staff is self centric and uptight, but we as a community have created them that way. For christ sake, people in their forums open their topics with apologies for asking about upcoming products or such. In a normally operating business model, customers dictate what products are being made, but not in FS community, especially PMDG. Because our choices are little to none, we eventually have to accept with what they decide to do. Until there is some acceptable competition at this level of addons or we stop buying their products as a protest, we all just have to deal with it.

But when we look at their products objectively and discard our prejudices - they are worth it, no two ways about it. Systems are excellent and unless you use them very little, you will get your money's worth out of them.

Edited October 2, 20196 yr by Evros

Full Names in The Forum please😂

I flew the 777 last night, keeping a close eye on the textures. They looked fine to me. Much better than the 737. The interior textures were almost as good as the 747. The exterior textures still looked very good. So I concur with some of the others, OP, that you might have a problem with your install.

 

 

Guys.  I looked at some youtube upload videos for this plane and see they are the same quality as mine.  So i have a good install.  I most notice the quality on the wings and engines.  Usually I'm not as nitpicky, but I'm still finding this to be less enjoyable than the 747 and 737.  Mainly because of the textures.  Either way from what I read they will have a 737 NG3 coming out which will likely further improve the 737.  As far as long haul/wide body I'll just stick with the 747/QW787.  

I recently got a try for tomato-shade, It can bring PBR-style material to PMDG737 and 777 (and many more), that looks phenomenon

Although it DIDN'T change the texture qulity, the light,reflection things are definite close to P747\Q787 level

This is how engines look from my end. Reasonably good looking for me to enjoy every flight with this well made addon.

Edited October 16, 20196 yr by Evros

There is certainly nothing vastly different about the texture quality of the 777 VC on my PC when compared to the 737 or 747. I have not noticed anything obvious in external mode either, but then I rarely see my planes from this position.

Edited October 16, 20196 yr by Christopher Low

I agree with Christopher. There doesn't seem to be a massive difference in visual quality between the 777 and 747. What bothers me with the 777 is the animation of the gear, spoilers and engine spin which all look fairly 'jittery' compared to the QW787 which is all super smooth. 

For the price we pay, the very least PMDG could do is provide an update to improve the visuals, such as adding PBR and smoothing animations..

As Rhett has already indirectly indicated, PMDG fully intend to release a significant update to the 777. I guess that they have just been side tracked by lots of other things (NG3/747-8/GFO etc).

11 minutes ago, aaronkia said:

I agree with Christopher. There doesn't seem to be a massive difference in visual quality between the 777 and 747. What bothers me with the 777 is the animation of the gear, spoilers and engine spin which all look fairly 'jittery' compared to the QW787 which is all super smooth. 

For the price we pay, the very least PMDG could do is provide an update to improve the visuals, such as adding PBR and smoothing animations..

Agreed!  

"For the price" you get one of the best addons currently available, still feeling better after all these years than the QW 787.

But ok, maybe I am just a satisfied PMDG sheep, who knows. I just can't understand the whining about the 777.

 

For me the 777, well knowing that it didnt receive any major updates in some time, is still well above the QW 787 in almost all areas.

 

Oh and "the price" is ~130€. That's around 3 hours pay for a "normal" developer" (or about 0,5 hours for a SAP consultant). But yeah - I know people want 20$-Addons with all features, and updates for 20 years.

I'm happy you are satisfied.  I feel the same way about the rest of their products.  Maybe if your display was larger you would feel the same way, I don't know.  I realize most have chimed in and said they notice it's not the same quality, but accept it.  I was a little surprised that's all when I first opened the airplane for the first time in P3D.  I was expecting that PMDG are supposed to be better than any other in every category.  Or most.  The fact that quite a few have seen my original point in this thread validates my opinion.  At the very least they should give the airplane PBR treatment.  Innovators should never stop innovating.  

 

PS: I'm a big fan of PMDG.  I've bought two airplanes and two expansion packs.  People naturally want to think I'm attacking their first born.  I'm not.  

I understand where you're coming from in your opinion. If I were that put-off by the textures I'd be disappointed in the 777 too. That they don't look bad to me (and btw, I'm running on a 32 inch monitor about 3 feet from my face) indicates that either you're a lot more picky than I am (nothing wrong with that) or that perhaps there's something wonky in your setup that's making the graphics on your end display less favorably than on other systems.

Either way, I do agree that PMDG should strive to be the best, but I don't think old products should be expected to be supported indefinitely. The 737 looks pretty creaky these days, but it's also old, and I knew that when I bought it. I don't expect them to bring it up to the level of the 747. Be nice if they did, but it wouldn't be reasonable of me to have that expectation.

 

My setup is fine.  Compared to others images/videos and looks fine with other aircraft.  Not to mention my 777 looks like the others.  So not even a bad install.  Either way I'm not going to get a refund.  Odds are I buy the airplane when they do a proper redo on it.  For now it's 747 or QW787.  I could just be very picky with certain things.  I'm not trying to suggest I should dictate PMDG's pricing.  I don't have their sales stats.  But to me it's a product that should be under 100 bucks.  Not 130 or whatever it is

I’m really on the fence with buying another PMDG heavy after buying them for FSX only to have another updated version come out next year and potentially have to pay full price yet again.  
 

At the price point PMDG charges buying each AC twice within a years time is just too much for me!