Well lads, it's happened!

MSFS is now finally a viable airline simulation platform. Sure, it's a small step, but it's in the right direction. I feel like, with the MD80 and 737, the flood gates have been opened. The quality that we have grown to expect can exist in this beautiful next-gen platform. But...where do we go from here?

Let's look at what has gone on in the mean time, leading up to now:
Payware Developers making poor products to scalp our need for a high fidelity aircraft.
Payware Developers making better products that are middle of the road (which I think is a good thing, it gets more folks involved in the hobby).
Payware Developers making fantastic General Aviation airplanes.
---All of this has been fairly routine throughout the history of flight sims---    

                      BUT THERE'S A HUGE DIFFERENCE NOW...

The proliferation of high quality, high fidelity freeware aircraft and mods in the community.

In our time waiting for these high quality payware airliners to release, the freeware community has grown immensely. I'll use the FBW Airbus as an example, but there are tons of awesome planes (Working Title, Gravel, Airbus Helicopter, etc).

This begs the question....Where do we expect PMDG (and other payware devs) to go from here?

I've gotten quite used to the ease of use while using the FBW A320. The "massive" world of simulation has shrunk considerably, thanks to that plane. Being able to import, use, and rely on Navigraph, Simbrief, weather, Vatsim/IVAO CPDLC, all in the sim, while sitting in the flight deck has been a game changer. No more opening 53 different windows and ALT+TABbing through all them. Everything is RIGHT THERE. This has been extremely useful in VR (which I'm new to, but you should totally try if you get the chance). 

This was one of the complaints I have with the MadDog. Firstly, I absolutely love that plane, it is amazingly well done. BUT, it is still using the "old school" way of forcing integration. Dropping your route into a hard to find folder, for every flight...with FSX and P3D, sure, that was a different time. But after experiencing what a FREEWARE product can do, I must admit, the bar has actually been raised.
I'm not downplaying the great amount of time and engineering it took to get these planes into the sim, but, this is a new generation of flight simulation, and I don't think the old way is going to cut it anymore. The ability to integrate all of these different tools we use, on each and every flight should be readily available in the sim. I think that adding these features to these high fidelity, high quality payware products will elevate them to a whole new level.

I'm curious to see what you all think.

The PMDG 737 can input flight plans and wind data from SimBrief right from the FMC, and they are adding a tablet in a not-too-distant update which IIRC will have Navigraph charts functionality among other things.

The Aerosoft CRJ can also import flight plans that are created by SimBrief. In fact, the setup of that aircraft is so simple that I'm usually left twiddling my thumbs for a few minutes while the IRS aligns, lol.

Additionally, I highly recommend the Navigraph Charts in-game panel, as it brings a lot of the EFB-like functionality to any plane you might be flying.

The Leonardo MD80 is definitely old school and its clunky nature steers my interest elsewhere. Thankfully I think it is (and will remain) a standout in clunkiness as far as the future of payware airliners for MSFS is concerned.

Edited May 10, 20224 yr by molleh

I might argue that at least some of the clunkiness is intentional. It was, after all, not exactly uncommon for pilots to have to enter waypoints manually when the MDs were still flying.

 

People that lazy they cant enter a flightplan in an FMC? These are medium range aircraft and it isn't that difficult or time consuming to manually enter a flight plan. In fact, I find in more immersive. Now if you fly in Europe I somewhat understand it with their somewhat ridiculous 50 airport procedures and 25 million routes. Simbrief, like many things in life today has led to laziness, no thinking involved IMO. Take the quick and easy route! I still use it to generate routes, fuel and passenger loads but manually enter the data. Great TOOL.

Edited May 11, 20224 yr by Adrian123

15 minutes ago, Adrian123 said:

People that lazy they cant enter a flightplan in an FMC? These are medium range aircraft and it isn't that difficult or time consuming to manually enter a flight plan. In fact, I find in more immersive. Now if you fly in Europe I somewhat understand it with their somewhat ridiculous 50 airport procedures and 25 million routes. Simbrief, like many things in life today has led to laziness, no thinking involved IMO. Take the quick and easy route! I still use it to generate routes, fuel and passenger loads but manually enter the data. Great TOOL.

Sometimes I want to manually enter my flight plan too, but it's nice to have the option. There's no reason to rail against having options.

Edited May 11, 20224 yr by molleh

38 minutes ago, Adrian123 said:

People that lazy they cant enter a flightplan in an FMC? These are medium range aircraft and it isn't that difficult or time consuming to manually enter a flight plan.

I completely disagree. Most, if not, all airlines have some form of route uplink and ACARS. I find it more immersive staying inside the actual flight simulator instead of flipping through windows on my computer screen.

Next I want the 777 and then the 747. then whatever...they want

It should fall one by one,...I think. They should have used all this time wafting for the shoe to fall, while other developers to build the other two aircraft. I hope they are not going to start the 777 and 747 ..now onwards.

Edited May 11, 20224 yr by Manny

2 hours ago, Adrian123 said:

People that lazy they cant enter a flightplan in an FMC? These are medium range aircraft and it isn't that difficult or time consuming to manually enter a flight plan. In fact, I find in more immersive. Now if you fly in Europe I somewhat understand it with their somewhat ridiculous 50 airport procedures and 25 million routes. Simbrief, like many things in life today has led to laziness, no thinking involved IMO. Take the quick and easy route! I still use it to generate routes, fuel and passenger loads but manually enter the data. Great TOOL.

It is nice to have some options but I prefer to load into the sim, start the traffic AI, then start feeding the fmc/garmin etc. I will say that with Navigraph/Simbrief really helps find a good route, airways etc. I can copy and paste this into Pilot2ATC, add the sid/stars and then input into the plane. Tedious? Sometimes. Fun? Always.

6 hours ago, molleh said:

The PMDG 737 can input flight plans and wind data from SimBrief right from the FMC

How is this done? 

Edit: I've figured out the simbrief downloader and how to get a flight plan into the FMC. Super easy. I am still trying to figure out the uploading the winds. 

Edited May 11, 20224 yr by Bdub22

3 hours ago, Bdub22 said:

I am still trying to figure out the uploading the winds. 

You export the winds into the WX folder, then once you set up your PERF data, you'll be able to request winds. You do this by going into LEGS>RTE DATA>REQUEST WIND. For the descent page, press the DES button then FORECAST and from there you can request descent winds.

31 minutes ago, V1ROTA7E said:

You export the winds into the WX folder, then once you set up your PERF data, you'll be able to request winds. You do this by going into LEGS>RTE DATA>REQUEST WIND. For the descent page, press the DES button then FORECAST and from there you can request descent winds.

Awesome. Many thanks!

8 hours ago, V1ROTA7E said:

This begs the question....Where do we expect PMDG (and other payware devs) to go from here?

To the bank….. that’s where I’d be heading now..! 

Lol... the bank was my guess as well.  

For me,  I think the good news is that they seem to have found a way to get their old code ported to MSFS. Some quirks I've noticed in previous versions are in this one.  RTA arrivals, working sometimes,  but not others is one of them. There are a few small things that they've mentioned that they were going to fix in the past that are still in it. I think that this is a good thing because it seems as though they would be able to get the rest of their product line into msfs no problem. The most difficult thing about moving to a new platform is learning how to work with it. I think that this release proves that they are there. I hope that they manage to do that and get their whole product line into the sim so they can go back and start adding the new stuff that they couldn't add in the past because they were limited by the platform.

So... I guess I am saying that I expect them to focus on getting a full product lineup into MSFS, and then they will be able to focus on adding fun stuff. They still have much more hard work to do, but I expect that to end and give them a chance to be a little more creative in the future.

Edited May 11, 20224 yr by MDFlier

So OP's point is how he wants Simbrief integration, something PMDG has announced is coming? Ok. Not sure why this needed a thread.

One thing is certain now. If Asobo’s updates and patches break anything in the 737, you know who’s going to be in Jorg’s ear about it, especially with such large market presence, so I have a slight hope that Asobo will be forced to up their regression testing quality because of it.