>This bird took 4 years of development, employing 9 persons>for a result which is a masterpiece of conding, graphics and>documentation (more than 1.500 pages!!...do you know the cost>of technical writing??)>Moreover it is the price the 744 was sold but then... the word>"recession" was far from our minds.>IMO, comparing its price with FSX is a non-sense. We are not a>all on the same market.>Just my two cents.>Very true. For what it matters I don't buy real airplanes neither and that's because they are also too expensive.Anyway I tend to agree with Ernie. I'll wait for PMDG's 737 for FSX hopefully released one day, and which I'll be much more interested to fly regularly.Dirk.

My airplane share cost less than my car does new-and the airplane keeps its value if not goes up in price...and the car tanks....food for thought.GeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

All, Everyone forgets that if we were purchasing the product in 1999 dollars we would be paying approx. $ 60 US. Because of the decreasing value of the dollar it's now our fellow European simmers that are getting the better deal as the Euro is at 1.37 at the moment. Our bad luck and their good luck.CraigLian Li PC 65B CaseCorsair HX Series CMPSU-620HX 620W Power SupplyPlextor PX-810SA/SW-BL DVD/CDGiagabyte GA-P35-DS3RCrucial Ballistix 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)Arctic Freezer 7 ProIntel E6850 Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz 4M shared L2 Cache @ 3.6 GHzEVGA 7950GT KO 512mb 169.21_forceware whqlSeagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATASeagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATAVista Ultimate SP1

>> All,>> Everyone forgets that if we were purchasing the product in>1999 dollars> we would be paying approx. $ 60 US. Because of the decreasing>value of> the dollar it's now our fellow European simmers that are>getting the > better deal as the Euro is at 1.37 at the moment. Our bad>luck and > their good luck.>>The Euro has been getting hammered lately though, that 1.37 is down from 1.59 in July.If it was released in July its current price would have converted to $95.Regards.Ernie.

Dave, No offence, but I've never read and will never read a 100 page technical manual for an FSX add-on much less a 1500 page one, so that was time wasted for my dollar. Also, you can spend 7 years with 15 folk and if you've not created an add-on that folk want, what's the point? It's too much $$ for a retro aircraft that I would spend flying less than 5% of the time because of what they chose to build, I don't care how sentimental you get. Randy Jura, KPDX

I worked around Delta MD-11's in 1994 at Hartsfield as a ramp rat. They'll always have a nostalgic spot in my heart along with the L-1011. But after the whole "Dollars to Euro pricing" by PMDG, no thanks. I'll take my money elsewhere. PMDG,Some of us aren't so quick to forget. BlakeFSX user since...last night :)

What an excellent add on!I've just downloaded and taken the aircraft for a very short trip around ESMS. No reading of any manual. A little trial and error to get familiar with the AP and FMS. ILS approach when returning to ESMS and performed an autoland. No problems! No bugs detected yet and I have to add the PMDG MD-11 to a very short list of good quality first version releases. Very good done by PMDG! Worth every Euro!Ulf BCore2Duo X6800 3.3GHz4GB RAM Corsair XMS2-8500C5BFG 8800GTX, Creative SB X-FiFSX Acc/SP2, Vista 32

> No offence, but I've never read and will never read a 100>page technical manual That's OK but these days even much smaller aircraft come with 100+ page manual when well done. What you are saying that effectively you don't care about quality, just want to hop in and fly. But then why have you been a PMDG customer all these years since their simulations by definition require a lot of reading, come with documentation well over 100 pages, something doesn't add up here.Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

>That's OK but these days even much smaller aircraft come with>100+ page manual when well done. What you are saying that>effectively you don't care about quality, just want to hop in>and fly. Sorry, the inclusion of documentation/a manual does not "make" an addon quality, just adds to the overall package. I personally rarely look at the manual and to be honest, if as Jeff points out, this hikes up the cost, I'd rather do without the manual. Make it a separate purchase or something.Don't do tubeliners, but looks like a great addon, high cost or not. Hope it does well for them.Regards, MichaelKDFW

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI-x16 / AMD

>Sorry, the inclusion of documentation/a manual does not "make">an addon quality, And I never said that, read again. I said that all "well done" simulations often come with hefty manuals.Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

I don't think we need to discuss the price of this add-on, it is a personal thing, what might be expensive for you is not expensive for me and vv. What I would like to know are more details about the plane, how does it compare to other high end add-on such as the 744-400 or Level-D's 767? How do the systems work etc??Bernd

You are absolutely right Bernd. Now, how does it compare to the Level-D and others? It's way more expensive. :)It's sad this product is outside my range. In fact, for me, it's on the same range as home flight decks. Hope those, like you, who can afford it enjoy it well. Regards,Dave Vega

I just bought it, downloaded the American Airlines livery and must say it's an impressive looking bird sitting on the runway with that beautiful buffed aluminum body. I'm not a die hard airline flyer, but really enjoy their PMDG747 and find airliners of this quality more challenging to learn than most GA offerings, so I am willing to spend more than I would for a GA aircraft. Having followed the MD-11 in the PMDG forums I sure it will be state of the art so I know it'll end up only costing me pennies per hour considering the time I will probalby spend in it. I do wish they would have put the 737NG up first though.

>Dave,> No offence, but I've never read and will never read a 100>page technical manual for an FSX add-on much less a 1500 page>one, so that was time wasted for my dollar. Also, you can>spend 7 years with 15 folk and if you've not created an add-on>that folk want, what's the point? It's too much $$ for a>retro aircraft that I would spend flying less than 5% of the>time because of what they chose to build, I don't care how>sentimental you get. Randy, you might be surprised actually at how advanced the aircraft is - the systems were way ahead of their time and it doesn't feel at all "retro". It's more automated than a 777 or an A330 in many ways. More importantly it is something *different* - no one has flown anything like this before in FS and to me that's one of the strongest things about this product - it's not just another plane that operates and flies like every other addon you have.It's obviously your choice whether to purchase it or not, but please don't make comments like that when you've obviously never looked into what the MD-11 can do. When I first got my hands on the alpha I was of a similar frame of mind, didn't really known much or care about it - it's now my favorite thing to fly and I'm not just saying that because I do support for PMDG. The plane was (and still is) an engineering marvel and it's very fun to fly.EDIT - oh and on the topic of the manual - obviously you do not have to read 1500 pages to fly it. There's a great tutorial done by our lead technical adviser that will get you up and running very quickly. The point of the manual is to give you the same resource that's there for pilots of the real airplane - anything you could possibly want to know you can look up and read about.

>Sorry, the inclusion of documentation/a manual does not "make">an addon quality, just adds to the overall package. I>personally rarely look at the manual and to be honest, if as>Jeff points out, this hikes up the cost, I'd rather do without>the manual. Make it a separate purchase or something.LOL...Please stick to landing 737's on carriers, other simmers here are actually trying to do something somewhat realistically within the limitations of FS.And I'm not even talking about the PMDG MD-11. There's some great freeware out there that has hefty manuals too. Maybe you'll get lucky enough to get them in English too.