PMDG Preview Trailer Premiering Now

[hansb57 493]

4 hours ago, Chock said:

PMDG is modeling a 737NG.............. that was ten years before the very 737 first flew.

Thank very much for your elaborate explanation.

[pmplayer 9,500]

Great Vid, details seem to be stunning and Cargos with a Cargo loader - suppi !!

cheers 😉

[Lord Farringdon 495]

9 hours ago, Chock said:

 

Despite the similarities in performance, economy, capacity, range, availability and cost, they are at their hearts two quite different aeroplanes with very different operational philosophies.....

Thanks for your answer to Hans' question @Chock.  While the difference between these a/c types may be evident to some of the more experience flight simmers, it might not be so for a lot of the newer cadre attracted to MSFS and the whole flight sim thing for the first time. So your considered explanation didn't just answer the posters question. I suggest it was edifying to the whole community.

Thanks Chock! 👍👍  

 

Cheers

 

Terry

[MDFlier 2,031]

16 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

Absolutely, and that is why I won't purchase this. It's like remarrying an ex-wife. 😉

You owe me a drink just for making me ponder the thought for about 1/2 a second.

I tried to find a suitable emoji to stick at the end of my comment but as Avsim has not yet provided us with the "pregnant man" emoji that I intend to use in perpetuity as shorthand for "ridiculous" you may imagine that in place at the end of my comment. 😎

Edited February 20, 2022 by MDFlier

[tweekz 2,165]

14 hours ago, Chock said:

You could sum this up by saying it is more or less the case that you fly a 737, whereas you operate an A320, although this is to oversimplify things perhaps a little.

Nice essay. I think for a beginners understanding it's still important to mention that the Airbus mostly flies like a traditional aircraft. It just processes the inputs of the pilot and translates them into actual control-commands. So it commands roll rates rather than direct stick-to-control surface relationships or it prevents getting into dangerous flight states by overriding the pilots input completely.

That being said, that's the normal case. But there are other laws where the computer takes different influence, for example during flare or when errors occur. But I do not know enough to make solid statements about that. Maybe you can.

Edited February 20, 2022 by tweekz

[threexgreen 3,142]

14 hours ago, Chock said:

The NG airliner has been superseded by the Boeing 737-8 (previously known as the 737 MAX, but with a name change owing to the bad press it initially got from a couple of well-publicised accidents).

Who rebranded it though other than maybe a few airlines? Boeing still call it the 737 MAX as do the authorities as far as I can tell. With official sources I find you almost never come across any rebranding.

 

14 hours ago, Chock said:

but the A320 is more often than not loaded using AKH Unit Load Devices (ULDs are cargo 'cans', each of which contains approximately thirty suitcases), these 'cans' are driven out to the aeroplane and loaded, but you are actually only putting a few items in the aeroplane when you do that, rather than well over 1-200 bags individually, and so it is quicker and doesn't require you to count the bags on to ensure the correct load.

Tell this to more airlines please so I can get a break. 🙃

[honanhal 1,420]

11 hours ago, Bdub22 said:

For anyone being critical, there's literally a message before the video begins pretty much saying its a work-in-progress. PMDG doesn't and hasn't produced anything bad...ever. I'm confident they won't with the release of this plane. I know the DC-6 isn't in the same universe, but its MSFS release was flawless. 

This is fair as far as it goes, but I have to admit I've been underwhelmed by what I've seen so far. PMDG's original NGX was absolutely revolutionary when it released for FSX in 2011, setting a new standard for high-quality addon aircraft. And it wasn't just higher-res textures and modeling, although it certainly had that in spades compared to its predecessors. The NGX release was the first to introduce numerous features that later became standard, stuff like being able to control things like weight and balance/fuel from the CDU or changing configuration options for the airframe or avionics on the fly (funny seeing people cheering that particular feature in this video, since PMDG was already doing it 11 years ago!). It radically raised the bar for FSX addon aircraft. It was a gamechanger.

It's hard to imagine now, but prior to that PMDG was really just one of a handful of respected high-end aircraft developers for FSX, rather than the undisputed king they would become for several years after the NGX release. I can't help feeling like they've been resting on those laurels for a long time. With FSX/P3D, you had the likes of FS Labs (ATSU integration) and Majestic (external flight model) introducing similarly revolutionary features regularly. With MSFS, Fenix appears poised to pioneer all kinds of stuff we haven't seen before in a desktop sim. Honest question: when's the last time PMDG pioneered a genuinely revolutionary new feature, as opposed to admittedly welcome stuff like "new cockpit geometry" or "PBR texturing"? (maybe weather radar, back in 2013 or so?) I don't see anything I'd call a new feature compared to the NGX/NGXu in this video.

PMDG may still surprise me with an ace or two up their sleeve, but between the seeming lack of any discernable "wow" factor with this plane and the self-parody levels of drama from RSR we've seen lately from week to week about whether/when this will come to MSFS, I'm beginning to wonder if PMDG still have in them what made them great. And that's a shame. I'd dearly love to be wrong. 🙁

James

[F737MAX 5,623]

46 minutes ago, honanhal said:

This is fair as far as it goes, but I have to admit I've been underwhelmed by what I've seen so far. [...]

I'm beginning to wonder if PMDG still have in them what made them great. And that's a shame. I'd dearly love to be wrong.

Sacrilege, James! 🙃

Agree with your entire post. I think PMDG have been involved in 'clever' marketing of a hugely popular aircraft (lengthy drip feed of screenshots, hype and drama), yet not demonstrating anything to show it is a next-level product.

Not that RR will be bothered. The 737 is going to easily break their sales record, such is the pent-up demand for an above average rendition of a popular airliner in MSFS. One has to at least admire how they (seemingly) are going to be very successful with it.

[Jeff Nielsen 1,386]

PMDG used to be a product where you didn't question whether it would be a day one purchase.  I think this is the first time I have found myself thinking I might 'wait and see'.  We see most people still saying, day one buy, but an increasing number of others seem to be thinking they'll wait.

We still haven't seen if there are any new features over the P3D version.  Is the plane RNP capable?  Does it support RF legs?  What happened to the new LNAV or FD logic RSR was talking about?  What about all those new ACARS pages they should several years ago at FS Expo that went along with GFO?  Things like that?

I understand they might wait a bit to make sure they're working in the new sim and what not, but you'd think at this stage they'd at least be at the stage where they could tell us.

I'm sure this will be a buy, but it would be nice to have some meat on the bone also.

[Chock 17,769]

3 hours ago, threegreen said:

Who rebranded it though other than maybe a few airlines? Boeing still call it the 737 MAX as do the authorities as far as I can tell. With official sources I find you almost never come across any rebranding.

Yup true, it's more of a de-facto name change than an 'official' one although Ryanair were keen to not call it the Max for obvious reasons, in the same way as how nobody at work really calls the NG 'the NG', it's referred to as the 737-700, -800, -900 etc and that's what it says on the Safedock too. We need that info because the 900 has a risk of tail-tipping when loading and unloading. We do call the MAX by that name at work, but we'll probably end up calling it by its specific type designation eventually, which are as follows: -7, -8, -9, -10, -200 and BBJ. At the moment, we only really call it the Max for two reasons: First, we need to make sure there are nine cones on stand for it as opposed to the usual five for a 737 NG, which is because we put three cones around the lower scimitar winglet to make sure no vehicles hit that, not that we were doing that this week in the high winds. The other reason is that, because the Max has a longer landing gear strut (8 inches more than the NG), some people cannot reach the headset jack when plugging the headset in and getting it out during pushing it out! I can just about manage it.

Back with the new forthcoming PMDG 737, obviously it has to work within the somewhat moving goalposts of the base sim, which may possibly limit, or perhaps lead to a drip-feed of  the features it has in terms of navigation capabilities which replicate what the real thing does as and when these become stable capabilities for MSFS, but we can't really have a go at PMDG for that. Most people will know that this was a problem with XPlane for a few developers, whereby they were put off developing for it because of the changes which would regularly occur with the base sim, as opposed to making stuff for FSX and P3D, where the base sim was pretty much set in stone in terms of what developers had to work with. 

It's worth bearing in mind a few things however: Traditionally, PMDG has traded off a reputation of pushing the envelope in development terms, two examples of this being their implementation of a genuinely collimated HGS, which was concurrent with VRS also managing it on their F/A-18 too, so in fairness they were not alone in that, and the remarkable implementation of a B747-400 for FSX which was incredibly frugal with the 32 bit limits of the base sim which meant that it would rarely, if ever cause an out of memory error in spite of its impressive feature list for an aeroplane which would by its nature, have to be used for long periods with the obvious risk of OOM when doing that and the fact that users would also tend to use memory-hungry add-ons. Prior to this, much of PMDG's reputation was actually down to the drive, and work put in by Lefteris Kalamaras, who of course no longer works for PMDG since he went on to form Flight Sim Labs, but having said this, it also says a lot about PMDG that they were able to survive his leaving, which means they were and are, certainly more than a one-trick pony. So I think we should be aware of some pragmatic decisions which have to be made with what PMDG and other developers will, and will not be able to do with their MSFS add-on airliners, but I am sure of one thing, and that is that if PMDG can manage to pull some things off, then they absolutely will, and their support for the product will be second to none, which are certainly two very good reasons for it to be a day one purchase.

Robert Randazzo, the boss at PMDG, might not be everyone's favourite person, most flight sim developers will be aware of several reasons for that, but in fairness to him, you don't manage to be at the helm of a company like that for years without 'breaking a few eggs' and as a consequence, rubbing a few people up the wrong way. I am reminded of a quote from John Lennon when considering this and what it takes to make it: 'Things are left out, about what b*st*rds we were. You have to be a b*st*rd to make it. That's a fact. And the Beatles were the biggest b*st*rds on Earth."

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Chock

[Max Kraus 339]

I picked a good time to return to flight sim after 8 years away. (kids)

[MarkW 1,493]

9 hours ago, honanhal said:

. Honest question: when's the last time PMDG pioneered a genuinely revolutionary new feature, 

 

They also came up with the idea of updates and livery management through their Operation Center. I don’t think anyone had done this before and now many have copied the idea.  I don’t think a company needs to be revolutionary all the time to be very good at what they do (I.e Apple). 

Edited February 21, 2022 by MarkW

[Bdub22 1,612]

10 hours ago, honanhal said:

but between the seeming lack of any discernable "wow" factor with this plane and the self-parody levels of drama from RSR we've seen lately from week to week

You make some really good points and you’re right. There isn’t any truly ground-breaking features that we’ve seen yet. The NGX was remarkable and changed the game. You mentioned Fenix will likely have some new features not seen before. I’m curious as to what those are??
 

I agree with you, fully. PMDG does seem to just keep re releasing planes they’ve done forever. Heck, even their “new” 757 that is said to be on its way one day has already been done by them. Sure, 20 years ago, but still already done. I wish they’d truly innovate again with something brand new. Maybe a business jet or something new for them. 
 

Time will tell…

[Max Kraus 339]

That's their challenge as an evolving business. They really need to bring their big hitter product into the latest FS version first to capture that already huge market of 737 drivers who have upgraded into 2020. But also yes there would be pressure to deliver something new. The 747 would also need to come up too... 

[Mike S KPDX 597]

2 hours ago, Bdub22 said:

You make some really good points and you’re right. There isn’t any truly ground-breaking features that we’ve seen yet. The NGX was remarkable and changed the game. You mentioned Fenix will likely have some new features not seen before. I’m curious as to what those are??
 

I agree with you, fully. PMDG does seem to just keep re releasing planes they’ve done forever. Heck, even their “new” 757 that is said to be on its way one day has already been done by them. Sure, 20 years ago, but still already done. I wish they’d truly innovate again with something brand new. Maybe a business jet or something new for them. 
 

Time will tell…

I too wonder about this as I think the 787 would be the perfect item for PMDG.  They have not done it in the past and for that matter no one really has (not to a PMDG quality at least)