[19APR22] PMDG 737 Development Update: Let's talk about Earl

[WestAir 2,530]

1 hour ago, OzWhitey said:

I think I started this whole conversation replying to straw man arguments from another poster about 6 pages back. 

I think you have outdone him, sir. There is really not a lot of point responding to that.

Having read your post and reflected, I'm afraid I have to say: I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Wait, really? I've read your posts and thought I hit all the bullet points. On reflection, I think I owe you an apology. I genuinely intended to lighten your workload here and help get your point across, but obviously I failed. Sorry for missing your point and speaking on your behalf.

I'm middle aged now, and since it's unlikely I'll ever improve my reading comprehension (shame there are no pills to make one smarter), I think it's time I just spoke a little less and listened a little more. You may have awarded me no points, but you did award me a pretty deep introspective here.

Cheers.

Edited April 20, 2022 by WestAir

[Stearmandriver 2,335]

2 hours ago, threegreen said:

If I recall correctly, the major shortcoming is that P3D WX radars read where precipitation is from ActiveSky and display that as is on the ND, but this is not how it would appear on the real radar screen. In the sim it's basically a map viewed from above like someone standing over it and looking down on it

Yup, this is about right.  Wx radar in FSX and P3d works just like the nexrad radar display in the non-WASM planes in MSFS: it just shows a top-down view of precip.

In reality, that IS what the nexrad display should look like because it's a product assembled from numerous, powerful, large-antennaed ground radar stations. (In MSFS it's clearly assembled from known areas of rendered precip rather than any real-world product since it matches precip exactly and exists where there are no real-world radar products, like PNG.)

But airborne weather radar can't paint the same type of picture, because you're dealing with a low-powered transmitter using a very small dish, mounted on a moving platform, and only looking at weather from one very narrow aspect.  You're transmitting one narrow beam which is easily attenuated (the beam runs out of energy to see through to the other side of a strong storm, so you have blind spots).  

The advantage of airborne weather radar is that it's really, truly live (any datalinked product is 5-10 mins old).  The general workflow is to use the big-picture datalink for strategic decisions: "I see on my ipad's WSI app that there's an area of supercells popping west of Waco... if after HRV we deviate down towards SAT and then cut back towards ELP when able, that would keep us clear."  Then you'd use your airborne radar to pick your way through anything that happened to pop in front of you. 

The thing was, weather never worked correctly in previous sims, convection especially.  The sim would just draw a random-shaped blob of rain, and so that's what the airborne radar would show.  But in reality, using airborne radar requires a little more knowledge than just "stay out of the red".  You have to know a bit about the life cycle of a thunderstorm and thus where the hazards are likely to be: certainly severe up-and-downdrafts in the precip core, but also mid-level inflow jets, hail and downdrafts well downwind under the anvil, even rear-flank downdraft if you get to close to the upwind side... etc.  But none of this stuff existed in old sims. Thunderstorms weren't shaped correctly and didn't have life cycles.  So even if the airborne radar had been simulated properly, it wouldn't have mattered, because the weather wasn't simulated properly either. 

In MSFS, weather works much better. I mean there's limits of course; in reality it takes literal supercomputers to accurately model the energy exchange that occurs inside a single supercell thunderstorm (you're talking the equivalent of multiple nuclear weapons detonations every second).  But convective cells DO seem to have life cycles. Turbulence does seem to extend farther downwind than upwind.  I've seen RFD, visually apparent by its affect on the precip core.  So, more realistic wx-avoidance tactics might apply. 

Now, how realistically can an airborne radar simulation model things like attenuation and the other limitations of a low-power, narrow beam from a single aspect? I'm not a programmer so I have no idea ;).  I would imagine anything CAN be done, but again - how much available performance resources will it consume? 

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out. 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

7 minutes ago, WestAir said:

I apologize if I completely missed all your points. I was legitimately trying to defend you but it looks like I did nothing of the sort. I'm middle aged, now, so there's really no hope I'll ever improve my reading comprehension. Oh well... I can't make myself smarter, I guess.

Meh, obvious troll attempt is obvious. 

If you disagree with something I posted why don’t you just respond directly to it with some sort of meaningful comment?

Rather than these lame and juvenile attempts at hyperbole and sarcasm. 

[icewater5 181]

lol lighten up

I think around one week the 737 will be getting positive reviews. These initial release periods are borderline subjective in my thinking anyway

Edited April 20, 2022 by icewater5

[DaWu 779]

Blablabla. Ok so they release it in early access and it’s unfinished. Critical stuff like simbrief is missing and we still have no price. It gets boring. Gonna look into the actual state in Q4 and see how finished it is

[DaWu 779]

12 hours ago, rutra said:

Quick video about SimBrief 

 

https://clips.twitch.tv/FunRelatedOpossumBuddhaBar-OrULEQy0m0DwgqwC

2015 called and want his plane back 

[Stearmandriver 2,335]

21 minutes ago, DaWu said:

Critical stuff like simbrief

"Critical stuff."  Yes, clearly lift cannot be produced if you must enter your own flight plan.   😁

It may surprise you to learn that many airlines in the world do not use any datalink options for route and perf init.  Mine does, but I mean... manual entries aren't too hard, if dropping a file in folder is too rough...

[Cpt_Piett 4,921]

2 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

may God have mercy on your soul

🤣😂

[JRBarrett 3,207]

42 minutes ago, DaWu said:

Blablabla. Ok so they release it in early access and it’s unfinished. Critical stuff like simbrief is missing and we still have no price. It gets boring. Gonna look into the actual state in Q4 and see how finished it is

And again it needs to be stated that Simbrief integration is dependent on Asobo adding functionality to the SDK allowing WASM aircraft to access the internet from within MSFS. At the moment that is impossible no matter who the developer is. The Leonardo Maddog, Fenix A320 and other upcoming WASM add-on aircraft will not have direct Simbrief access or in-game Navigraph charts access either, until such time that Asobo makes it possible.

The same holds true for weather radar, but at least we have a time frame for that to be opened up - but it will not be before July when SU10 is scheduled to release. I assume the PMDG 737 will be out before then, so no radar at first. Nothing that PMDG can do about that.

And, as the early release streamers have demonstrated, Simbrief flight plans can be imported into the 737 FMS even in its current beta form. It just requires downloading it externally outside the sim and putting it into the PMDG “work” folder.

[WestAir 2,530]

1 hour ago, OzWhitey said:

Meh, obvious troll attempt is obvious. 

If you disagree with something I posted why don’t you just respond directly to it with some sort of meaningful comment?

Rather than these lame and juvenile attempts at hyperbole and sarcasm. 

I was at no point being sarcastic. Jr4 had asked you what more you wanted from the NG3, and my mistake was answering for you with opinions you didn't have. You were well within your rights to call me out on that (though I didn't expect it in the voice of Billy Madison), and I wanted to make a clear apology.

EDIT: As an aside, I didn't respond directly to you prior to Jr4's comments because there was nothing to reply to; At the time I thought you made your points very obvious. In fact the reason I felt the need to respond to Jr4 on your behalf is because you had answered that question so many times already and I know what it's like to have to repeat myself. I guess I just felt bad, Rob. In any case, I won't do it again, and I shouldn't have done it (so ridiculously poorly) the first time. Mea culpa.

Edited April 20, 2022 by WestAir

[craigeaglefire 197]

2 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Meh, obvious troll attempt is obvious.

why so serious, Oz?

it’s a game - no need for psycho analysis 🙂

[Bdub22 1,652]

3 hours ago, bendead said:

From what I am seeing, it could be above PMDG and close to FENIX

How do we know FENIX is so good? It hasn't even been released yet. I've seen a number of people comparing X or Y to FENIX and I'm always at a loss because the product isn't even for sale yet. 

[ahsmatt7 1,213]

I honestly dont understand all this talk about the 737. The title of this thread said we were going to talk about Earl. Where is he and when are we gonna talk about him???

[simon747 185]

1 hour ago, JRBarrett said:

 

And, as the early release streamers have demonstrated, Simbrief flight plans can be imported into the 737 FMS even in its current beta form. It just requires downloading it externally outside the sim and putting it into the PMDG “work” folder.

Fine by me...

[Bdub22 1,652]

4 minutes ago, simon747 said:

Fine by me...

Agreed. I think a lot of people, maybe they're newcomers or just forget. But, in FSX, if you wanted to do upload a flight plan, you had to drag and drop into the flight plan folder for which ever plane you were flying. It really wasn't a big deal at all back then.