14 hours ago, fogboundturtle said:

 

 

If you have to pay VAT, it's around 90 Euros

Hard pass.

Getting this one for sure! The release date is exactly my birthday lol, so is going to be my birthday gift.

I think this year we will be need some budget for release lineup lol.

7 hours ago, Wise87 said:

I know you have one in Delta colors. Any chance that there is a World Atlanta repaint also? They are still flying in the US and I enjoy flying their routes. 

This is the only one I've seen so far....but not to worry, the number of freeware painters in the previous flightsim world could all ride to the conference in a mini van....with the introduction of MSFS....you'd need several Greyhounds to get the whole crew to the event!  I feel that folks like me are becoming dinosaurs and will be extinct soon, hehe.

 

8 hours ago, sd_flyer said:

 

Hehe.....you shouldn't be jealous.   I've said it a few times how the amount of work doing actual beta testing overrides most of the giddy excitement we feel installing a new product on our machines....LOL, I installed what we hope was the final release candidate, and only had time to open it in the sim last night to make sure it installed ok.  I've lost count of the builds for this project, but imagine installing, uninstalling configuring, then testing all the new updates....20-30 times!  And that's if you only tested each build one time! 

Stefano: OK guys we have a new build....please uninstall the previous build and install and test thoroughly. 

Beta testers: 

Speaking of beta builds....testing another much-anticipated bird at the same time (its in the home stretch also...at least we hope, so super-focused on her as well) ...yeah, I did this to myself. 🥴  But when you're asked onto a beta team from a top-tier flightsim dev, its hard to say no!   But believe it or not, I was also invited to be on the iFly 737 MAX (P3D) beta team, and I did turn it down! 

Jannie (the PM for that fantastic project) told me that being on 3 betas at the same time would not be a good idea and I agreed, LOL.  Its pretty early for that project anyway, and I'm sure I'll join it when its time to start adding liveries to the 32 I already painted for their 737-6/7/800 series for P3dv5. 😉 

Steve after these 2 beta programs are finished:

 

Edited April 26, 20224 yr by Steve Dra
added content

2 hours ago, Tim-HH said:

So I had hoped they would completely redo the sounds for the MSFS version. It's a bit odd for an addon in this league to not come with a high-quality sound set. We can only hope that they will improve the sound in the future.

In fairness to Leonardo and every top-tier dev out there, the main problem is finding a good (great) sound coder for MSFS and is fluent in the new methods.  We have so many projects out there from major Devs that I'm sure the pool of sound coders is pretty thin.  I would bet that when a good one can be secured by Leonardo and they can find an MD80 to record, they'll be updating the sounds. 🙂 

1 hour ago, omarsmak30 said:

Getting this one for sure! The release date is exactly my birthday lol, so is going to be my birthday gift.

I think this year we will be need some budget for release lineup lol.

Have a wonderfull Birthday!

1 hour ago, Steve Dra said:

In fairness to Leonardo and every top-tier dev out there, the main problem is finding a good (great) sound coder for MSFS and is fluent in the new methods.  We have so many projects out there from major Devs that I'm sure the pool of sound coders is pretty thin.  I would bet that when a good one can be secured by Leonardo and they can find an MD80 to record, they'll be updating the sounds. 🙂 

You are right that Wwise is a challenge for every developer. But I think the issue with the Maddog is not the lack of a good coder but the inferior quality of the oid (FS9 times?) source files for the current sound set. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to find a MD-80 to record new sound files these days.

In my opinion, the best option would be if Leonardo would try to get a deal with Turbine Sound Studios to license their MD-80 sound set. The TSS sound set for the FSX/P3D MD-80 is excellent and was more or less the default sound set in the past years. I'm sure the person who is responsible for the sound set of the MSFS version would be able to create a very good sound set with these source files 

2 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

In fairness to Leonardo and every top-tier dev out there, the main problem is finding a good (great) sound coder for MSFS and is fluent in the new methods.  We have so many projects out there from major Devs that I'm sure the pool of sound coders is pretty thin.  I would bet that when a good one can be secured by Leonardo and they can find an MD80 to record, they'll be updating the sounds. 🙂 

Thanks for the info!

On the subject of sounds, now that it has a virtual cabin; does it have internal sounds in it; not external...lol?  Also, if it does, are the engines louder near the rear from the vc such as in reality?

Cheers for any help.

Simon

1 minute ago, simon747 said:

Thanks for the info!

On the subject of sounds, now that it has a virtual cabin; does it have internal sounds in it; not external...lol?  Also, if it does, are the engines louder near the rear from the vc such as in reality?

Cheers for any help.

Simon

I'll have to check.  (think so...not sure about the sound volume at the rear...and I know what you mean as I've flown in many an MD in the last row!) Right now I've flipped to this project...I fear by the time I can get back to the MD...you can answer the question yourself.  Just remember what I said about the sounds....LH could have held the release until they got a sound engineer for MSFS who could do the work...but I'm sure nobody wants to wait longer to get her in their hands 😉

DISCLAIMER: This is a screenshot of the PMDG beta 737, you guys know the spiel. 🙂

Did I mention that it's a pretty good time to be a simmer and favoring large, commercial aircraft? 🙂 

28 minutes ago, Tim-HH said:

In my opinion, the best option would be if Leonardo would try to get a deal with Turbine Sound Studios to license their MD-80 sound set.

This would make a ton of sense, it’s a great sound set and perhaps the source recordings for it could be worked into a proper WWise soundset.

Or maybe TSS will see the business opportunity and do it themselves.

Edited April 26, 20224 yr by regis9

5 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

I'll have to check.  (think so...not sure about the sound volume at the rear...and I know what you mean as I've flown in many an MD in the last row!) Right now I've flipped to this project...I fear by the time I can get back to the MD...you can answer the question yourself.  Just remember what I said about the sounds....LH could have held the release until they got a sound engineer for MSFS who could do the work...but I'm sure nobody wants to wait longer to get her in their hands 😉

 

Did I mention that it's a pretty good time to be a simmer and favoring large, commercial aircraft? 🙂 

Thanks for letting me know.  Are the FPS on the LH Maddog the same as the PMDG and similar; better or worse even?

Cheers,

Simon 

Just now, simon747 said:

Thanks for letting me know.  Are the FPS on the LH Maddog the same as the PMDG and similar; better or worse even?

Cheers,

Simon 

About the same....both these devs are professionals (I don't need to tell you guys that), and performance is always a major factor in determining what goes in and what just can't be done (now)....Rob mentioned several times that this platform has enabled much more flexibility in what can be included with minimal performance impact, so the more they learn, the more they add. It will be a continuous journey for the entire community as our Devs get comfortable with the new technology. 

There is a lot misconceptions and wild speculation on what can and can't be done, and being on the other side of the curtain for both these devs, I chuckle and feel sad at the same time on how wrong just some of the speculators are in their opinions.  I always hold the opinion that the Devs are passionate about their products and will do everything in their power to bring you the best simming experience they can.  If all simmers leave it at that, and put a little trust in them, we'd all be a little less triggered when we think the worst of a situation. 😉

That long winded statement is to tell you I feel the performance is "fine" for both aircraft if you've tuned your machine to balance performance with graphical wonderment properly.  Max out your sliders, run it at 4k on a 65 inch screen with a 8700k, 1060 and 8gb of slow ram and an HDD...and...well....you get it.

36 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

About the same....both these devs are professionals (I don't need to tell you guys that), and performance is always a major factor in determining what goes in and what just can't be done (now)....Rob mentioned several times that this platform has enabled much more flexibility in what can be included with minimal performance impact, so the more they learn, the more they add. It will be a continuous journey for the entire community as our Devs get comfortable with the new technology. 

There is a lot misconceptions and wild speculation on what can and can't be done, and being on the other side of the curtain for both these devs, I chuckle and feel sad at the same time on how wrong just some of the speculators are in their opinions.  I always hold the opinion that the Devs are passionate about their products and will do everything in their power to bring you the best simming experience they can.  If all simmers leave it at that, and put a little trust in them, we'd all be a little less triggered when we think the worst of a situation. 😉

That long winded statement is to tell you I feel the performance is "fine" for both aircraft if you've tuned your machine to balance performance with graphical wonderment properly.  Max out your sliders, run it at 4k on a 65 inch screen with a 8700k, 1060 and 8gb of slow ram and an HDD...and...well....you get it.

Thanks for the all the info regarding fps Steve.

_________________________________________________________ 

Does anyone know (Beta Testers etc:) if the internal cabin; or looking out at the wing from the cabin through the window have internal or external sounds of the engine etc?  I know FSX/PSD used outside sounds for wingview (cabin) views.  MSFS seems to have addressed this issue and now can have internal sounds in the cabin; just wanted to check the maddog can do this now it has a virtual cabin etc.

Thanks for any help!

 

mmmm... no new sounds (for understandable reasons, but still) and hardly any changes to the 3d model, especially the VC, and most importantly the texturing techniques from the P3D version. All of this but striking to be the highest priced payware for MSFS... although I won't argue that to a certain extent graphics are less important than system fidelity, MSFS have certainly set a new level of expectation in that department in which you ALSO have to reach an absolute top notch degree if you want to charge 70+ IMO. It is obvious when you have a look at the PMDG marketing material so far that they seem to have raised the bar a lot compared to their previous releases on visual grounds, because MSFS is now in an entire different league than previous sims regarding this.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for the Maddog, and it certainly will be a vast improvement regarding the rotate md-80 I used back in X-Plane, according to everyone here. However, despite the utter lack of hype material (why not after all), they just pretty much reused everything in the visual department. It is apparent if you look at some comparison shots between MSFS/P3D versions. I find it a bit deceiving for such a highly regarded dev that they didn't find a way to fully embrace the MSFS rendering engine capabilities (there's some nasty textures here and there for example, the PBR texturing is also kinda lackluster). However, the VC still being certainly of high quality in the P3D version, it still manages to look even better in MSFS.

But still, it's supposed to be the Porsche of MSFS according to some, at this price tag vs the rest of the market, and given the apparent reputation of the dev team, I expected a level of visual fidelity to be no less than stellar through and through, which it is not as far as I can see...

That being said, it seems to be a extremely highly regarded product and I'm super glad it comes to MSFS. So many people hold Leonardo's MD80 in such a high esteem that it can't be wrong obviously. However, given there's not much material to get a grasp of the product compared to PMDG, I'd be curious to know why people here say that it is 2 level above PMDG. I can't see exactly how far it goes beyond a PMDG 737 just by looking at the material.

Could people here be kind enough to elaborate with actual examples what makes this plane so much above the rest? Just saying "Fidelity is even better" just doesn't mean anything. When I looked at HotStart CL650 videos, I could tell right away everything that was ground breaking and which has raised the bar compared to other payware. With Leonardo's MD-80, I can't do the same as obviously and easily. But seeing how you praise this plane, there definitely has to be some things that clearly blows everything out of the water and that is going to be apparent in a single glance to any newcomer. Thanks in advance 🙂