Ifly has released its expansion pack for their new 737.  For those of you who own both, I’m curious about the pros and cons of each (PMDG and iFly) and your preference as to a favorite?  I look forward to learning your thoughts.

Edited February 20, 20224 yr by Chuck Dreier

Personally, I much prefer PMDG's NGXu. What the iFly does better I think is tracking the magenta line, flight director guidance is more accurate and reliable and, as far as I'm aware, it flies RF legs properly without having to resort to pseudo-waypoints to build the arc. PMDG are working an LNAV and flight director update and to simulate proper RF legs for the entire fleet, this however has been a long wait although they've indicated it's close to being rolled out for 747 first and then the others.

What's unfortunately a complete deal breaker for me with the iFly is that they are not using external processes to simulate things like custom physics, engine behavior, etc. This means the aircraft, while very good in other aspects, is restricted to using P3D's core models which aren't very realistic and thus the iFly lacks realism in these systems. The most prominent example of this is the taxi behavior which is using P3D's internal ground friction model, which means you have to apply more thrust than you should have to and have to keep adding thrust or maintaining constant thrust above idle to keep the airplane rolling and prevent it from slowing down, which is not how a real 737 or any airliner like it behaves at all. In real aircraft, you only need very little breakaway thrust above idle, if any at all, and the engine are kept at idle (unless going uphill for example) with the airplane rolling about nicely. This also results in unrealistic fuel burn during taxi as a side effect. Most developers these days simulate this outside of P3D with custom models in accordance with real aircraft behavior, so I personally find this rather disappointing that iFly don't use external coding to overcome P3D limitations. Another example is of this is engine spooling speed and other engine behavior which isn't realistic because it relies on P3D's unrealistic models for this too.

I also prefer the NGXu because of the displays which exactly match the real ones, whereas those in the iFly (while of course correctly depicting all the information) differ slightly in design such as fonts used, spaces between information or size of text/numbers. This is perhaps not so important for others but it bothers me quite a bit when you know what the real ones look like. What the iFly has going for it in terms of VC is that is was designed specifically for P3D v5 and so the cockpit isn't affected by the dark cockpits bug in P3D like many aircraft (even P3D's default aircraft 🙄) as well as the NGXu. I'm not sure though if this might change when LM update the lighting and shaders again.

You can't really go wrong with either one at the end of the day however and both are tons of quality for your money. If you're not too bothered about realistic behavior (see above) and your decision is an economical one, the iFly with its expansion packs is cheaper.

Just a reminder to those who aren’t interested in this debate. Don’t post daft comments. I’ve hidden one. It’s a reasonable comparison. Debate it if you wish.

I wholeheartedly agree with Ray.  I don’t want a debate - only critical observations.  

Edited February 20, 20224 yr by Chuck Dreier

@threegreen it's right on the money, an excellent and true comparison between the two products.

Regarding systems wise both have different issues (discrepancies). Navigation wise IFly managed very well LNAV IAN tracking behavior plus accurate VSD depiction where PMDG neglected those issues for years.

PMDG FMC is more complete in certain aspects and accurate.  

For me, the most problematic issues are engine spool time and that the engine reverse is only limited to about 67% to 70%. PMDG is accurate on engine spool up/downtime but also suffers from the same unrealistic issue regarding reverse being limited to only about 70%.

On iFly landing gear animation is not as smooth as the PMDG, nosewheel steering is much better than PMDG (with a tiller or without), ground friction on PMDG is more realistic in terms of idle power (as mentioned).

In the end, it depends on what do you know, understand about the airplane and what matters the most for you.

Has there been any mention of an update for the ifly 747 to P3D v5 ?

I remember comparing the PMDG & ifly 747s a few years back and although the PMDG was the obvious winner there wasn't a lot in it. As has been mentioned with the 737 above I actually found the ifly 747 LNAV the better of the two.

I think threegreen nailed it. Regardless of how you feel personally about Papa Mike Delta Golf the NGXu is definitely the better. One other thing if it matters, as of now there is a limited number of paints available for IFly.

2 minutes ago, jon b said:

Has there been any mention of an update for the ifly 747 to P3D v5 ?

I remember comparing the PMDG & ifly 747s a few years back and although the PMDG was the obvious winner there wasn't a lot in it. As has been mentioned with the 737 above I actually found the ifly 747 LNAV the better of the two.

Seems I read they have no plans to bring the 47 to V5.

Thanks Vic. That's a shame, it looks like everything hangs on the PMDG update keeping the 747 going then.

Flying the iFly right now.  So there's my two cents.  I enjoy the visuals of the iFly cockpit more and especially the sounds.  Regardless, I have both, and you can't go wrong either way.

Where you spend 98% of your time using the add-on : 

* (iFly)…tracking the magenta line, flight director guidance is more accurate and reliable….it flies RF legs properly without having to resort to pseudo-waypoints to build the arc. 
…What the iFly has going for it in terms of VC is that is was designed specifically for P3D v5 and so the cockpit isn't affected by the dark cockpits bug in P3D like many aircraft.

… I enjoy the visuals of the iFly cockpit more and especially the sounds

Where you spend 2% of your time using the add-on : 

Taxing and spooling the engines up. 

None of them are perfect, but based on that above, I’d take the iFly every day of the year. 
Unfortunately, too many broken promises by PMDG to fix the issues I’ve been waiting on since the FSX NGX days. The price is a turn off as well. 

I have both and enjoy them. I’m flying a lot of the iFly 737 recently, though, and I bought the expansion. I find the sounds to be somewhat better in the iFly, and the cockpit to me just seems sharper.

One major difference between the two is that the PMDG 737 has rain effects on the windshield, whereas the iFly doesn’t model any rain. That’s not a dealbreaker for me, but it is for some people.

I was always curious since I’ve never owned any iFly products if you can change the equipment configuration around via the menu in the FMC in the PMDG 737 without having to quit the sim and reload. I always thought that was a cool feature as well as being able to set the fuel, payload and maintenance stuff from the FMC in the PMDG option.

I have both of them and the truth is - as most people know - they both have pros and cons. In the end it's up to which of these matter most to you personally which will determine your own favoured one. But, if one declares these various feature pros and cons of the two, to make them about equal, then for me the iFly is the winner since it is undeniably a lot more bang for your bucks in pretty much giving you every 737 NG variant for a price similar to one or two in the 737 package.

Beyond this however, I think the more accurate navigation tracking in the air with the iFly makes it a better choice; it's true the PMDG one taxies more realistically, and I'm not discounting that as something which does not score it some points, but frankly this would only trump better behaviour in the air if I wanted a taxying simulator more than I wanted a flight simulator, and particularly one where operating the nav systems and what they do when flying an airliner was the primary point of loading the thing up in the first place.

One other thing which is worth noting, is that the PMDG one is a slightly better and more complex 3D model than the iFly, so if taking screenshots is your thing, this might be of more importance to you, but of course the downside of that is the sim is using a bit more in resources, which will affect the frame rate a little. 

10 hours ago, Doug47 said:

Where you spend 2% of your time using the add-on : 

Taxing and spooling the engines up.

I had to say, the "ESP limitation" @threegreen talked about not just apply to these 2% of the time

One very noticeable effect is in-flight engine performance (N1, FF on certain wight/altitude etc), PMDG is right on the spot align with realwolrd data by it's costume dataset, while due to ESP limitation, iFly suffers higher fuel consumption on low FL, and too low fuel burn on high FL

While this is observed on old version (FS9-P3Dv4), if they still relay on P3D's own engine and aerodynamic model, they couldn't get around it, as it's also on many mid-range add-ons like CS757/767, FTEjet etc.....

And BTW I had made aerodynamic tweaks on old ifly737s, to make it at least match data to my normal flight range like FL340, however they decline me to share these modification (not just files, but also "how to" modify these files)