PMDG (again)

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

I didn't have any issues the last 7 flights or so. I was being more careful and not "toggling" stuff as much. Even though, I believe the most likely culprit to the brake bug (for me) is slew mode related, and probably the FMC issue as well. Dev mode may cause something too, but slew and pausing seems to trip this plane up a bit. 

 

[WestAir 2,522]

You guys are being way too Avsimish to Alpine. His blunder wasn't that serious..

[Stearmandriver 2,296]

17 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

Look closely at the APP compared to the PFD, can you spot the issue?

Yup.  A lack of systems understanding.  ;).

If you're referring to the APP button not being illuminated, remember that those buttons on the MCP do NOT indicate what mode you are in; only what you have selected.  The FMA indicates the modes you're actually in. In this case, VOR/LOC and GS, as you requested when pressing the approach button. The light in the button itself extinguishes at capture, indicating that APP mode is no longer de-selectable. This is correct behavior.  In the real airplane, you need to de-tune both nav radios or turn off both flight directors to exit approach mode. 

I can't tell, but if you were actually attempting to autoland, the reason you did not is that you never selected the second autopilot.  You were simply flying a single channel approach; it was never going to flare.  Your clue is the big amber Single Channel autopilot annunciation ;).  If you were set to autoland, that would be a green CMD and you'd see a white Flare annunciation under the green GS, indicating flare mode was armed.  (For a fail passive system; fail operational indications are different but still not this, which is the standard single channel approach.)

You've posted evidence of a properly simulated 737.  But yes, those darn "state bugs."  😉

[Ricardo41 5,949]

3 hours ago, WestAir said:

You guys are being way too Avsimish to Alpine. His blunder wasn't that serious..

This is avsim. 

A small mistake - and you would think he single-handedly exterminated the world's population of kittens. 😄

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

53 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

Yup.  A lack of systems understanding.  ;).

But yes, those darn "state bugs."  😉

What does this have to do with a stuck brake?

Strawman argument, one has nothing to do with the other. A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one.

I'm not sure what not knowing the state of a button staying lit has to do with anything, that said I'm also not claiming to be an expert at aviation systems, but I know enough to land and get by. I do however know enough to know when a brake is stuck or an FMC will not accept an input, lol.

I've built several airports and setup things like custom ILS, coms, custom stars, and had to test everything, so yah not a newb, but you just want to keep going on about this for some reason. I'm very very aware that the indicator lights are what to go by. I just thought it was odd that the button blinked on-off-on-off, but I now know it was probably because I hit it so late and it just grabbed the G/S + LOC right after I pushed it turning itself off. I normally do that a few miles out, so I don't even look at the button color, but since I was having issues prior I guess I was paying attention to things a bit more than usual. Since a lot of other planes I fly the button does stay lit, well once I looked and thought about it, I realized it probably does go off (but I had already posted). If you are a pilot, all I would say is you missed your true calling. You should look into "mud slinging politics" or possibly becoming an author about "recovering from addiction", because I'm sure over the years you've caused plenty of people to reach for a bottle.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Alpine Scenery

[Holdit 551]

5 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

This is avsim. 

A small mistake - and you would think he single-handedly exterminated the world's population of kittens. 😄

It's not just AVSIM; it's AVSIM discussing PMDG.  

 

[JaneRachel 528]

12 hours ago, threegreen said:

It's supposed to behave like a real plane though. If it autolands even though it's not configured for an autoland that would be a huge bug. I can't imagine that went unnoticed until now. Maybe you can upload a short clip of what happens at around 100 feet RA.

Again, not a bug, some versions of the system software on the 737 will effectively autoland the aircraft on a single channel. It is just a quirk of the real aircraft. It is however, entirely prohibited to autoland this way. There was a big discussion on this in the PMDG tech/beta group some years ago on this, which led to advice being sought from some very senior Boeing engineers. I need to check which Boeing software the current PMDG is running and also dig out the revisions of the real aircraft which supported this.

The upshot though is that some real NG aircraft would follow this exact same behaviour as it is a software quirk. A quirk that is prohibited to be relied on by flight crews.

Stearman here on the forum (who knows his stuff and flies this aircraft) is giving good advice on the FMA annunciations and how autoland should work. As he mentions though, there are 2 types of autoland modelled, Fail Passive and Fail Operational, both of which display differently, dependent on the autopilot options you have chosen in the PMDG settings. Again, a real aircraft thing.As an airline you can get the cheap and cheerful autoland or pay some more and get the fancy autoland with centreline tracking etc. With the PMDG its all in the options menus of the CDU.

Jane

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

Was never trying to auto-land as I made it very clear from the beginning that it was a fake auto-landing. The only way to interpret "fake" is that you let the plane land on its own (hands off) when you are not in an actual auto-land procedure, what else could it mean... I am now aware of the fact that some people said you can auto-land "illegally" without engaging CMD-B, but I actually have no idea if it works on this plane or not, nor do I have any idea if I do a real auto-landing will it look similar to my fake auto-landings where I let the flare happen randomly according to the luck of the draw. Whether or not the plane flared, the landing angle was a bit too steep I believe at just below 7 degrees when it needed to be just above 3 degrees from my limited understanding (maybe 4.5 would be optimal, not sure). Perhaps 4-7 degrees is within an acceptable range (not sure, but think I read that somewhere).

I often wonder how many tail strikes I would have on my belt if the simulator recorded it. That is what MSFS is missing, statistics and reporting of all the landings. This should be built-in, forget add-ons we need this built-in. I want to know how many people parished in the landings, total repair costs, etc... This needs to be modeled to a very realistic degree. As far as my other issues, well I've had this plane since the day it was released, and the number of bugs I originally experienced was very bad. There were multiple reasons for this. It works better now, but apparently still has issues if you go in and out of slew mode. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Alpine Scenery

[threexgreen 3,139]

7 hours ago, JaneRachel said:

The upshot though is that some real NG aircraft would follow this exact same behaviour as it is a software quirk. A quirk that is prohibited to be relied on by flight crews.

Stearman here on the forum (who knows his stuff and flies this aircraft) is giving good advice on the FMA annunciations and how autoland should work. As he mentions though, there are 2 types of autoland modelled, Fail Passive and Fail Operational, both of which display differently, dependent on the autopilot options you have chosen in the PMDG settings. Again, a real aircraft thing.As an airline you can get the cheap and cheerful autoland or pay some more and get the fancy autoland with centreline tracking etc. With the PMDG its all in the options menus of the CDU.

That's interesting. Actually, it's amazing that something like this is simulated in the addon. I've followed some discussions previously on autolands in the NG on pprune and it turns out a fair share of pilots were unaware of that particular software version as it was quickly concluded autolands aren't possible on a single channel (barring the legal aspect of it).

I've only ever flown fail passive autolands in the sim as per airline config. What are the fail ops annunciations?

[JaneRachel 528]

2 minutes ago, threegreen said:

That's interesting. Actually, it's amazing that something like this is simulated in the addon. I've followed some discussions previously on autolands in the NG on pprune and it turns out a fair share of pilots were unaware of that particular software version as it was quickly concluded autolands aren't possible on a single channel (barring the legal aspect of it).

I've only ever flown fail passive autolands in the sim as per airline config. What are the fail ops annunciations?

What tends to happen at PMDG is that when they talk about tech/beta team, its not just simmers saying they like this or that. They actually recruit some crazy smart people. Experienced pilots, engineers and even designers of some of the aircraft and equipment. I had the pleasure to be involved in some pretty deep conversations with huge amounts of research from some top dollar experts. Everything is checked out in incredible detail by the team. I learnt more in a week than in the previous 20 years! I am a software developer in my day job and I have never seen such attention to detail elsewhere. I wish I could name just some of the people who have answered questions. It is like a who's who of the aviation business. When I was on the 744 group for example we had the pleasure of being around the most experienced 747 pilot in the world! (that was official - they have quite the job finding someone to do his checkrides with more knowledge!)

On the autoland modes, rather than write copiously (one of my faults I inherited at PC Pilot Magazine 🙂 ), if you look upthread Stearman describes the differences pretty well.

 

all the best

Jane

[NismoRR 191]

So this thread has me interested in trying airlines all of a sudden. I’m a GA guy exclusively now flying the C414, Kodiak, Hjet and Turbo Arrow. Lately I’ve been flying the Hjet a ton (great plane all around!) and may want to try something new. Never had a PMDG and want to try it out. The 737-600 for $35 seems like a perfect entry for me. Alpine, are all/most of your issues related to slew mode? What do you guys think of starting in a -600? 
Looking for something trouble free with minimal bugs. Appreciate your opinions. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,652]

Been following this thread and just need to do some venting. Been away from airliners for a few months. Flew the Zibo mod -800 in XP11 for a few years and got quite proficient with it. 

Now back in the -700 cockpit and man, it's so hard handling the FMC in terms of setting up some default values (cold and dark, empty fuel and payload each flight). And then there's the unusual mouse logic which is different to MSFS default. And I can't set the elevator trim with the mouse. I've tried, can't work it out. Just going to leave it for now. 

I guess I've been spoiled with the EFB in the A32NX and the Fenix. Not giving up though - I'm going to at least get airborne 🙂

Edited November 3, 2022 by Cpt_Piett

[Gazzareth 808]

4 minutes ago, NismoRR said:

So this thread has me interested in trying airlines all of a sudden. I’m a GA guy exclusively now flying the C414, Kodiak, Hjet and Turbo Arrow. Lately I’ve been flying the Hjet a ton (great plane all around!) and may want to try something new. Never had a PMDG and want to try it out. The 737-600 for $35 seems like a perfect entry for me. Alpine, are all/most of your issues related to slew mode? What do you guys think of starting in a -600? 
Looking for something trouble free with minimal bugs. Appreciate your opinions. 

I know of plenty flying the 600 with no issues, and even if there are PMDG are not a release and run away company, so you would expect multiple patches.

The only reason I can see to avoid the 600 would be if you want cargo/bizjet as well - then it's 700/800..

 

G

[Stearmandriver 2,296]

13 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

What does this have to do with a stuck brake?

Huh? Nothing, it was a response to your original post (as quoted), which doesn't even contain the word "brake."  Why would a response be expected to reference brakes? 

13 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

I'm not sure what not knowing the state of a button staying lit has to do with anything,

You directly asked people to look at the button and find the problem. Turns out there isn't one. 

My response stems from your rather abrasive comms in the other thread where you claimed the FMC was extremely buggy. I stated that most bug reports I've seen for the plane stem from folks not understanding something about it. This isn't an insult, it makes perfect sense. Why would people experienced with home software be particularly aware of the idiosyncrasies of a plane they've never actually flown? I offered to help, if you'd provide an example. You were unable to, you reacted angrily... and then with this thread you proved my entire point.  I'm still glad to help if you want to point out a specific bug or pain point. 

14 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

If you are a pilot, all I would say is you missed your true calling. You should look into "mud slinging politics" or possibly becoming an author about "recovering from addiction", because I'm sure over the years you've caused plenty of people to reach for a bottle.

Attack me for using a strawman (which I never did,) and then segue right into your own ad hominem?  😁But really, this is a ridiculous and frankly embarrassing statement... but I don't guess I need to tell you that. If you want to edit your post, I'll edit mine to remove the reference. 

[threexgreen 3,139]

1 hour ago, JaneRachel said:

On the autoland modes, rather than write copiously (one of my faults I inherited at PC Pilot Magazine 🙂 ), if you look upthread Stearman describes the differences pretty well.

What he described are the fail passive annunciations that I also described before. I'm interested in the difference between this and the fail ops annunciations as I've never selected that in the PMDG.

Edit: Since he who is spoken of appears not to be afar - @Stearmandriver Care to chime in? 😁

Edited November 3, 2022 by threegreen