PMDG 737 - flight planning not great, otherwise seems good

[Bill Griffith 160]

1 hour ago, CarlosF said:

"otherwise seems good" are you kidding me.

Just took it for a spin and all I can say is WOW!!!! 

In the years I have been simming, this is the first aircraft that on its initial release, I did not have to change any of my visual settings, the performance of this aircraft is AMAZING. Hats off to PMDG for such dedication to performance and visual quality. Hard to believe why some find this masterpiece to be just "good", that, is beyond me.

I was stunned by the FPS.  It is better then either the 414 or the 310.  😃

[Cpt_Piett 4,664]

I’m using the simbrief downloader which puts the PMDG flight plan and wind info as well as the MSFS flight plan in the respective directories. Not quite as elegant as the simbrief integration of FBW, but it’s not a hassle.

Tried to do a turnaround today and it doesn’t seem possible to use the flight plan for ATC. Anyone know what I mean? When I start a new flight I first import the MSFS flight plan, then once in the 737 I request the PMDG flight plan from the MCDU.

With the FBW it can automatically copy the simbrief flight plan to MSFS so that you can request IFR clearance.

By the way @Bill A the fuel truck cannot remove fuel from the aircraft - can only add. Need to remove fuel first then refuel. Just go to the fuel part of the menu and set empty.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Cpt_Piett

[VBHB 298]

7 hours ago, eslader said:

Were you expecting it to go supersonic or something? I mean, yeah it's the same plane. It's a 737. The P3d one was a very faithful representation of the type, so I don't understand why some people seem to think there should be major changes to the MSFS version. It's still a 737. 

Ok?

[CaptainNick 575]

Having an “easy” method of importing from simbrief would be nice and hopefully coming from PMDG when they get the new EFB going.

For those complaining it takes a little bit to get it to upload into the FMC, or complaining about the time to manually put the waypoints in…you should be spending time going waypoint by waypoint anyways to double check it is right vs blindly trusting in what simbrief dumped in your lap.

At the end of the day it’s a desire not a need. As Rob Young said, it does everything an airliner needs to do in the game pretty darn well so far. The rest of these little complaints are just quality of life features that should come in time.
 

Until then I have more important stuff in my life to complain about like my wife not having dinner ready, or the neighborhood kids walking on my lawn again. How about the price of gas? At least my beloved stogies are at the same price from the cigar shop as they always have been.

[harrry 322]

16 hours ago, psychedelic_tortilla said:

They do, and a tutorial flight as well (altough for that, go to 737NG Driver on Youtube).

No longer.  It used to be the go to feature of PMDG that they provided full documentation, QRH FCOMS etc in original form.  Ten they sneakily removed them from all users without any warning later saying that Boeing made them.  It did not stop them putting up the prices though.  We were told search the internet.    If we believed in Piracy we would not have bought the aircraft.  

It is still I believe the best aircraft availible but a lot of the feel good feeling has gone from the whole product line.

[pmplayer 9,469]

It is just an easy task to set up a SB Flightplan within the FMC, and the Plane works beautiful.

I don't like the hype that PMDG makes around the release but the Plane itself is made very professionell .

cheers 😉

 

 

Edited May 11, 2022 by pmplayer

[flying_carpet 657]

19 hours ago, robert young said:

What are the most important elements of any sim aircraft? That it flies well manually and under a/p, that it looks decent and its core functions work. While most MSFS default and addons aircraft look good, very few of them in my opinion fly at all well without tweaks. I'm pretty certain that the PMDG 737 will fly extremely well, act very competently under autopilot and will have authentic core functions. To me that is worth the price and over-rides any other consideration.

Extras such as integrated simbrief are fun to use but not always. For example I cannot find a way to load up the FBW A320 with passengers unless I start at the gate and use simbrief. Perhaps I have missed something.

The most important facet of "immersion" is how an aircraft flies and whether its characteristics are believable, absorbing and have authenticity. Everything else - virtual coffee machines, atm cash dispensers (I wouldn't be surprised one day!), virtual printers, and other peripheral devices, aids and gizmos are nice to have but nothing, nothing is more important than the fundamentals and very few sim aircraft achieve that.

As so many people have upvoted this, it seems that more and more people understand (and want to have) what is really important. I second that. It's "nice" to have virtual coffee machines etc., and imagine this aircraft had a virtual coffee machine, skydivers in the cabin, a golden yoke 😉, .... However - possibly the coffee of the coffee machine would taste stale and the skydivers would vomit their coffe with the shown takeoff behaviour. Even if the FMC (altthough in this case the plane doesn't have one) would have implemented EVERY page and subpage, what's the primary purpose of a plane? To fly (correctly).

 

[Nyxx 6,993]

7 hours ago, MDFlier said:

Wow. I watched that video and I feel like its time to retire from flight simulation. Full of information for sure, but I've been flying RW flights forever and its never taken me that many steps to find a flight.

In the US, Flightaware is the way to go. If you know where you are coming from and going to, use the link in the last sentence. If you know where you want to depart from, go to the main Flightaware page and put the departure airport in the search bar. Select "Scheduled Departures" to find flights in the future. If you want to fly to that airport, pick "Scheduled Arrivals" to see what will be arriving and from where. Click a flight, and you get everything you need to input into Simbrief except for the passenger and cargo load. I just wing those.

There is no need for me to to verify that the flight plans are valid for scheduled flights because an actual, paid, professional airline dispatcher already did that before they put them into the system. For previously flown flights, I know that they are valid because an airline already flew it. 

Yer, its full on I agree but like you, you can cut out some steps but its still a great leason into how to use Simbrief to the full.

[pete_auau 1,159]

here is  another  utube  on how  to use  simbrief to get  your  flight  plan into the  737

 

[Bdub22 1,612]

With the simbrief downloader, it's honestly just as easy as the FBW to get flight plans and wind data into the FMC. I don't understand the frustration that is being had by a few people on this issue. 

[DaWu 779]

The simbrief downloader does nothing if u want to fly shared cockpit in the future. Sending files to your co for him to manually copy them somewhere is a joke. I don’t care why there is no efb or automatical simbrief import. It’s a 75€ plane and is crushed by a free product in this matter. That’s embarrassing 

[Zangoose 1,631]

32 minutes ago, DaWu said:

The simbrief downloader does nothing if u want to fly shared cockpit in the future. Sending files to your co for him to manually copy them somewhere is a joke. I don’t care why there is no efb or automatical simbrief import. It’s a 75€ plane and is crushed by a free product in this matter. That’s embarrassing 

Bit OTT but ok - Maybe they will add it down the line but if you're doing shared cockpit then you can always get your co pilot to type in the route manually like they may do in the real world for that extra realism. 

[pstrub 998]

Has anyone tried Little Navmap with the PMDG 737? So far I've tried it once, and overall it worked well after setting it up to write an .rte flight plan to the 737 flight plans folder. The waypoints were there in my FMC, but the departure and arrival procedures didn't make it, I had to add them again manually inside the cockpit. 

[CaptainNick 575]

1 hour ago, pstrub said:

Has anyone tried Little Navmap with the PMDG 737? So far I've tried it once, and overall it worked well after setting it up to write an .rte flight plan to the 737 flight plans folder. The waypoints were there in my FMC, but the departure and arrival procedures didn't make it, I had to add them again manually inside the cockpit. 

I think the msfs user manual in the docs talks about importing a plan won’t import a dep/arr since they can quickly change on the tarmac with the whims of atc and winds, traffic etc.

Edited May 11, 2022 by CaptainNick

[tfm 169]

3 hours ago, DaWu said:

The simbrief downloader does nothing if u want to fly shared cockpit in the future. Sending files to your co for him to manually copy them somewhere is a joke. I don’t care why there is no efb or automatical simbrief import. It’s a 75€ plane and is crushed by a free product in this matter. That’s embarrassing 

Lol that’s a bit strong but “embarrassing” is right 🙂

 

Also I just found from one of their long-winded videos that PMDG has in fact given us a way to use the right-hand mouse button to turn dials etc clockwise.
 

Great!

 

But then … they’ve spoiled it by leaving it as a clunky “find this file in one directory, find another directory, copy it over” piece of nonsense. Manually copying files is just a recipe for disaster: anyone who has been around as long as PMDG knows this full well. I get it that they couldn’t make it an option in the FMC, but why not an option in their “Operations Centre” or whatever they call it? This sits outside the sim so what’s the issue? Even a batch file would have been better than nothing. It seems odd to me that they didn’t go the extra mile (inch). It shows a surprising lack of polish.

Sorry PMDG but you need to up your game these days.

Edited May 11, 2022 by tfm