Steve Dra

9 minutes ago, Georgleboui said:

How is it with sim rate? I heard not so great things.

See my reply on page 3

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/673274-ifly-max-is-ready-to-try-in-2024/page/3/#findComment-5492009

50 minutes ago, Farlis said:

That being said: To scratch my 737 itch I finally jumped in and bought the IFly. I like it, only downside so far is that accelerated sim time is a no-no with this aircraft. It will drift of course even in 4x. And since the MAX is often used on routes that are over 2hours I'd like to have a way to speed things up.

 

Also not really a fan of the design decision to use Boeing's clunkly inhouse EFB. That's something I really don't like and I much prefer what other developers did with their EFB's.

iFly integrated a 2x feature into the EFB that works well....I prefer 4x too, but like you said, its not that stable, which is why I imagine that after testing, iFly determined that 2x is the best that can be done for stability (and you should activate it this way vs through the MSFS interface as I imagine it tells the internal iFly code that you're in 2x and will desensitize the things that would otherwise make the flight unstable in accelerated flight).

I VERY MUCH disliked the default Boeing EFB when I first started flying the plane....but like all things when you must use them, you grow accustomed to using them, then they are not as bad as you once thought as you get to know how to use it.  Much like the mental gymnastics you play when you switch from a Boeing to an Airbus and back. 🙂

iFly is very aware of the many customer's who've expressed their distaste for this EFB, and they have considered (and may eventually add) a tablet-like EFB that all the other vendors are using.  However, when they were developing the plane, they had to make a decision to keep the old one and release the plane on the schedule they announced, or take an additional bulk of time... holding the release until they developed and tested a new EFB.

Based on historical data of the flightsim community on whether they'd rather wait to get their hands on a new plane with an older EFB, or get it now and possibly have a new EFB added later....well, I don't have to tell you what 99.999% of the sim community would pick. 😁

2 minutes ago, Farlis said:

I never understand this tribalism. Having all the options is what makes it so enjoyable. No reason to restrict oneself to one manufacturer in the flightsim world.

Was really just poking fun at the same tribalism you mention.  Its not that I'd never step into an Airbus cockpit (I have many times, and have all the excellent Fenix's)....its just that I'm so comfortable in a Boeing cockpit that I prefer to fly them when I have a choice.   And with 2024 at the moment....if you need a Boeing medium-range fix, you either hop in a huge PMDG 777-200, or the more common 737....the Asobo MAX....or the iFly MAX.  We're all hoping that  PMDG will release their expansive 737NG line in 2024..... soon. 

49 minutes ago, Tom Wright said:

Do you recommend the iFly 737MAX? I've been on the fence for a while but really missing a decent 737 in 2024 having previously had the PMDG 738. It does look rather good.

I'm a bit biased on this question, but I've enjoyed it immensely in 2024 as a Boeing guy who really didn't want to go to the dark side (Airbus) for his medium range, bread-n-butter 2 hour flights.  The 737 is the plane for daily flying for me, and the iFly MAX has been a joy to fly (and test) the last few months in 2024.

I've also painted a few. 🤔

I put some good grime on the bottom of the fuse and especially the engines as she is a true workhorse for most airlines, and is too busy flying to be pampered with frequent washes. 🙂

I've been flying it a few months in 2024, and have really enjoyed it...I think you guys will too.

My paints on flightsim.to are not updated to 2024 yet, but all of them are updated on the iFly livery manager...so just grab them there(way faster than .to as well).

The 2020 liveries will work for 2024...they just won't have thumbnails...the painters have to update them to the 2024 format.

20 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

I'm one of those who still don't know they need it. 

If you have a significant "library" of addons and your sim takes forever to load, Addon Linker will change your life if you don't particularly like waiting for MSFS to load.

In the example below, you can see that I've organized my scenery into geographical sections of the world.   If for example, I'm doing flights in the EU and I'm lazy (or doing many of them at a time and just want to load all of them), I just check the box by "EU" and all my EU sceneries are going to load in MSFS.  Since I'm not flying anywhere else in the world today, I just turn off all the other sceneries and I save minutes of wasted loading time and memory loading all the scenery I'm NOT flying to or near.

But today I'm ONLY flying from Boston to Miami.  So, you can see that I only have those 2 airports checked (and further see how I've sub-divided the USA scenery)...so no other scenery is loading, saving so much loading time and memory!

And this just scratches the surface of what Addon Linker can do.  You can create sets of scenery to preload with a click, and pretty much revolutionize how you "manage" your Addon loads.

And its not JUST for scenery....you can manage ANY Addon that loads into MSFS.   Here you can see that I have my aircraft... and lets say I'm flying the Fenix Delta A320 on my KBOS-KMIA trip.  Yep....ALL other aircraft will not be loading...saving again tons of time and memory. 

And at the bottom I have a "3Utilities" section for...well...you know.   The 1,2,3 in the front of the folders allow the 1Scenery to flow to the top (because I alter it the most), the 2Aircraft, and finally 3Utilities.

That is how I organize my addons...of course there are a thousand ways to do it, this just works for me.

I agree with others that this is by far the BEST freeware-should be payware application out there, hands down.

4 hours ago, rmeier said:

Wow...pleasant to see so many simmers that still recall the Dreamfleet 727 and the Level-D (PIC) 767. Yup, I've been around long enough to fly the (you know what) out of both of those aircraft "back in the day".

Many fond memories of both of those aircraft. I do smile at the comments here of the Level D 767...yes, it was undeniably the best available (with the caveat) at the time. With the port to P3D (32 bit), the graphics were getting very dated...today, it wouldn't stand a chance. I do recall their FMS was very comprehensive.

I hope that everyone's enthusiasm for a quality 767 translates into a ballpark success for Bluebird.

I had been a painter for SGA, FFG and a few other freeware groups "Back in the day".  The LevelD 767 was my 1st commercial paint project.  Still to this day...I show these screens to demonstrate how good the models were back then (and were very easy to paint compared to today's complex models).  (I played with the Dreamfleet 727 textures as well...but it had a "challenging" texture map layout) 🤔

She was a joy to fly and paint, and the 767 is my favorite airliner, so I'm anxiously waiting for BlueBird @sherv_BBS to get theirs' to market! 🙂 

Fantastic pics Ryan!

Substance is an absolute game-changer in the painting community.  I'm still learning it, but see the incredible possibilities with 3d painting.

Regarding the TBM paint....glad I could help you bring it to the community...the TBM is by far the best looking propeller driven aircraft IMO....an your livery is one of the finest. 🙂

14 hours ago, Peter Z KCLE_EDDN said:

I’ve had this happen on my second flight last night. The aircraft was not responding upon load to anything at all, so I shut down MSFS, went into task manager and killed the ifly app, restarted MSFS and it was fixed. I’m sure this will get fixed as it is quite annoying 😎.

It's been my experience that you don't have to shut down MSFS when this happens....just kill the iFly plugin in task manager, then restart the plugin, and it's worked for me.  I know it would be annoying to restart MSFS each time.

They are working to resolve the issue.

28 minutes ago, Zangoose said:

You can now buy a pre-release version (early access If you want to call it that) of the iFly 737 MAX 8

 

Hehe....and when I told you guys sometimes beta testers are the last to know things...I just found this out a minute ago. 🤔 

17 hours ago, regis9 said:

Awesome work as always Steve! 

Thanks Dave.   Between me and Jviation, Canada is very well represented.  The only ones we didn't make are Sunwing (although I did the TUI seasonal), and Lynx...otherwise...

In addition to ACA Swoop....

2 hours ago, SN737 said:

not just flaps, look at the under body of the fuselage and engines, outstanding work, love it.

Here is a closeup of the subtle dirt...

Just a few preview pics of my latest paint and a few others to break up all the text.  Won't be long now guys.

1 hour ago, Abriael said:

absolutely massive work developers

I "develop" liveries...and yes....development at the level we're at these days is a massive undertaking. I've been working non-stop trying to finalize and upload all my liveries.

This is an older spreadsheet I kept track of items completed and new things to get as the beta cycle progressed and changed things for the painters.  The current version of this is much more complete...with new liveries I've done since I started the list.  I don't want to even estimate how much time I've put into this project. 🤔

The big text were the things I was forgetting after a long day of putting a livery(s) together, and came late in the beta cycle, LOL.  Some of the update versions we up to 0.1.5 because I'd miss little things, then had to repackage, upload and mark it ready for the livery manager.

Add to that I had to evacuate to Atlanta right in the middle of my busiest time prepping for release because I live here:  (Sad to see a hurricane in MSFS barreling down on your city. 😞

On 10/7/2024 at 12:12 AM, SN737 said:

 

 

Very nice job indeed, as always. Please consider painting Aerolineas Argentinas. There are 2 cool liveries for the max.

I've already painted Aerolineas Argentinas 🙂

I know there are videos and screenshots of her now everywhere...but not any of this livery (because it's not available just yet to the streamers or beta team) 🙂

She is going to be nice to fly to Cancun.  I've really enjoyed painting her...and she is a blast to fly.  There will be a bunch of liveries included in the livery manager on release * Steve does NOT know the release date, and couldn't say if he did. 😉 

NDA lifted for screenshots....here are a "few" of the paints I've done.  Streamers seem to be very impressed with the plane (I like it too).

"IFly could drop soon"....

Says the title of this thread.   With every tick of the second hand....it is technically sooner than the last time someone uttered this phrase, but let's say that its now "sooner'er"🤣

There has been a limited NDA lift where the beta team can now post screens only on their discord channel, so if you want to see what they are posting, head on over there.

There are also streamers streaming it.

Another great plane by Raul!   Not that he's ever not made a great plane 🙂

1 hour ago, UrgentSiesta said:

No, this is wrong.

Asobo have set out - explicitly - to avoid developers from facing mandatory updates to their addons in v2020 to v2024.

This is especially the case with the flight modeling, where they new features are essentially an extra, and optional, layer that devs can implement as they see fit.

This is simply a continuation of exactly what has been transpiring in v2020 for the last several years (e.g., the intro of CFD, etc.).

The place to watch out, at least using other flight sims as examples, is the new photometric lighting. That caused no end of trouble for 3PDs in X-Plane v12, as well as in P3D v6.

"The place to watch out, at least using other flight sims as examples, is the new photometric lighting. That caused no end of trouble for 3PDs in X-Plane v12, as well as in P3D v6."

This is the area of concern that painters will have to watch for.  I'm assuming they will keep the same basic structure on the composite (COMP) files as they have in MSFS....but as we painfully discovered when we got accustomed to painting these maps in P3d when they switched to PBR materializing...those where not compatible with the method MSFS adapted.

As you can clearly see...in p3D, we customized PBR with maps that looked like this (this is specifically crucial when painting bare metal liveries...as these 2 examples are):

Now in MSFS they look like this:

It is my greatest hope that they don't alter the RGB channel assignments or start using the now-unused alpha channel (by most devs) that will render painter's thousands of liveries incompatible. 😐 

I don't think it will happen....but then again that little sanfu in the transition from P3d to MSFS was an eye-opener. 🙂 

🤐

31 minutes ago, farmer2702 said:

 I have reported to PMDG, but no responded rom them/

Thanks 

PMDG is currently tracking some issues similar to what you're reporting.  When you reported, did you include what version of the 777 you're on?  Also...do you use Navigraph and is its MSFS app installed in your MSFS?  And are you using the Store version, Marketplace or Steam version?

28 minutes ago, rmeier said:

Looking forward to this one Steve...just waiting for my link and key...

Sorry...but you don't need them now....just uploaded it to flightsim.to 🙂  Click the link in my sig to grab her....and I just uploaded BA too

3 minutes ago, JonathanC said:

Thanks! My home base is CYYZ 🙂

Hope you'll like her...she is one of my favorites. 🙂

Good timing....just finished Air Canada Toothpaste....will upload to flightsim.to and should be ready for you guys when you get her installed.  More to follow as I get them done....