Steve Dra

I sure hope so...I had "some" interest in their 747s back in P3d and FSX. 🙂 Anyway...I digress....as this post is about the MAX in MSFS...which I'll also start posting pics for...when I'm allowed to. 😉 (That Singapore screen was my desktop for the longest time back on the day.) For now...just imagine this P3d version of the iFly MAX....in MSFS:

Twotone Murphy did a very nice video showing how you can speed up load times and reduce the stuff you never use that gets installed with MSFS updates. Check it out here

Have you taken FlowPro out of your community folder and see if it helps? Looks like its calling the virtual keys (Escape key, TAB key, etc)...and can't find them for whatever reason

Hehe....I was thinking the same thing...love that phrase and mad I didn't think to use it here in a prefect example before you did. 🙂

I find it more hilarious than annoying....Its much like Pavlov's theory that they are so conditioned to complain here almost subconsciously whenever there is a new PMDG post. Here is a quick flowchart documenting their thought process when a new PMDG post comes out (or doesn't)

Be still my heart! I enjoy freighter ops much more than passenger flights....and both your upcoming beauties have pretty much take that role in the skies these days. I'll fly FedEx all over the US and DHL in the EU with the 757...and take the mighty 767 across the pond when she's released. One of the few passenger 767's I'll fly often (and paint) is the last one I flew on a few years back...to the depicted airport below from Dallas....(this is one of my favorite angles to shoot a "glam" shot of a plane...rocketing off the runway, gear tucking up on her way to destinations in our dreams) 🙂 When I was setting up this pic, I made sure to capture the iconic landmark that makes this airport easily recognized. Very excited about these Boeings....will bring back fond memories flying them back in the "old" days of flight simming...but with much more fidelity that MSFS offers us...what a time to be a simmer. 🙂 Speaking of iconic background scenery....this older American Airlines classic landing in this shot leaves no doubt where she's touching down. 🤣

I just realized that I was actually sitting at the computer...eating popcorn (kettle corn to be exact) while browsing this and the other PMDG post, LOL. Sometimes life imitates memes these days....but it made me laugh when I realized I was doing it. 🤣 (being able to laugh at yourself is a vital life-skill lost on many these days) Having a very different perspective than many here, concerning PMDG in general...I'm glad I have another hobby to keep me busy while the rest of public waits for the next PMDG release, and not get too drawn into these PMDG posts that always seem to degrade into personal insults to the point the mods just close it. It's not touching grass, but it is very relaxing, rewarding, and has served this community for the last 20 years. Almost as fun as flying, but just as rewarding as flying down to mins in bad weather....and just above the DH, see the lead-in strobes in the center of your view, and you put her right on the centerline in the TDZ perfectly. 🙂 Speaking of that hobby...I just saw in the comments on one of my recent releases at flightsim.to that I made a mistake on it....who can spot it? Proves that ever after painting for as long as I have, I still miss stuff occasionally, LOL This one was definitely one of those "Oh I know this livery well...this is the 2nd one I did (well 4th if you count my iFly 737s)...I'll just add the logo at the rear doors and push it out." Hehe...I actually missed on my 1st Germania paint...and its been wrong on all of them!! This was just the 1st time someone pointed it out. Boy do I feel silly (laughing at myself again at this bonehead mistake)

Not directed at anyone in general in this incredibly diverse Avsim thread....but for the matter of RSR's aviation credentials, accomplishments...etc....One should only have to browse the internet to get to this little video where he discusses the DC-3 that he used to own, manage, maintain, restore, oh...and take back and forth across the Atlantic to participate in a little D-Day celebration with dozens of other DC-3s/C-47s. In my book...that is all the aviation "cred" he needs...and yet this is only one of his aviation accomplishments (he also owns and manages one of the highest-rated flight sim companies on the planet). I'd say the guy deserves a little respect in that area, don't you? Looking for others here who've doing something similar in their aviation careers. If you're the impatient type, go to to 4:40 for the start of his walkaround and history of his Tabitha May. Just wanted to share this story...regardless of your opinions of him...this is a very interesting, up close look into his DC-3. Any aviation enthusiast should find this video fascinating.

Yeah Chris, I've been pretty lucky (well...I do make sure my configurations and hardware setups are pretty tight) that I too have had no issues with the rudder and nosewheel...but I know others (including beta testers I work with) that have. You just have to be willing to work hard to identify and troubleshoot your issues on your specific hardware, while working with the developer (through their helpdesk system) to get it resolved.

LOL....Captain Sim tried their hand at a copyright-protected TIE fighter a while back....did not work out so well for them. 🤣 A 707 would be epic! I'm old enough to have flown on a few of them...most memorable was my Pan Am flight from KJFK to Rota, Spain (military charter flight) back when I was 12 or so. The sun rose into us as we flew eastward, and it glistening off the nacelles of the 2 engines on my side of the plane is a vision that is still vivid in my mind 50 years later.

I hear ya! 😉 Its funny how much angst there is about rudders and nose wheel steering in MSFS. Its a quandary to set a balance where you get a mix of good control, while feeling the inertia in a turn you're going way to fast into, and make it for every conceivable hardware config tens of thousands of pilots have on their simming rigs. I don't envy any of these devs that have to give us good rudder and nosewheel steering these days....there is a lot of discussion and testing on the beta team over it. The problem is that we represent a tiny fraction of the simming population, so we can't test even 5% of the various hardware configs out there and find a solution for each. Sadly, we have to wait for an individual user to report it, get his settings and hardware, and see if we can replicate and fix. Its not easy to say the least. But in this day and age....most everyone just expects it to "work" for them out of the box. While that is the ultimate goal, its not a good view of reality.

Hey Ron and @Swe_Richard, Our friend @simbol is taking care of the 727. https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/630216-sws-fsreborn-to-make-727/?do=findComment&comment=4917286

Ahhh...I believe you are correct. Thanks for the clarification. 🙂

A lot of folks seem to think that RSR just rambles on about things, and all they get from it is that he talks too much, doesn't seem to say anything meaningful, and tune out after the 1st few sentences. I'll agree that some of it may be musings about things on his mind, but other stuff, like you say abrams, may be strategically placed hints of what is formulating behind the scenes at PMDG. The speculation that flies off the shelf with each of his posts is probably one of the best marketing tools in the simming community. The part that seems to evade detection of many is the fact that just his musings constitute PMDG's own marketing campaign, and who promulgates that throughout our community? We do! Either wittingly or unwittingly, every time a post like this is made, free marketing is happening for PMDG. Is this by design? I'll let you be the judge. Let me ask you, would you rather spend tens of thousands on a dedicated marketing department and the actual marketing itself, or just have the CEO of the company make a few "passing remarks" and get all the free marketing you need for sales by word-of-mouth from the community? 🙂 In the marketing world, publicity is publicity, good or bad...and it helps expose the brand, which more times than not, leads to more sales, regardless of what the community personally thinks of RSR and his methods. The irony is that every time a disgruntled simmer posts here about how PMDG is this or that...how they take too long, how RSR talks too much, etc, they are unwittingly feeding the marketing train...probably much to their dismay if they ever stopped and thought about it. 🤣 This kind'a reminds me of the scene in Pirates of the Carribean where Sparrow steals the British ship, gets their attention on the other ship, and they come and board the one he appears to be stealing. All the time saying how silly he was because they could never set the ship to sail with 2 people. Then when they arrive and board her, Sparrow and Turner hop on the fully-prepared ship, cut the rope and sail off....thanking them for providing them with a fully-prepared ship. Then the final insult to the Commodore is when he starts to ready their new ship to pursue Sparrow, only to find that he's disabled the rudder. LOL And the quote from the person next to the Commodore "That's got to be the best pirate I've ever seen"...one of the best scenes in the movie. I know, it's a bit of a stretch for this situation, but here it is you want to enjoy the scene regardless. .

Hey Ray, if you recall history...your country, who pioneered a lot of the tech behind RaDaR (capitalized as such since it is an acronym for Radio Detection and Ranging) used to call it "Chain Home". It helped your country win the Battle of Britian (I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but for the sake of others who are deficient in proper history, hehe) So RaDaR Contact could also be called "Chain Home Reachout" LOL

on the drone camera I'm not sure....I have a button mapped for zoom (and by default, its the + and - keys on the numeric keypad)....and I've never explored editing a camera.cfg file to see if it sticks. I've done it so often with my keyboard, I press the + key for a moment and it goes to 78-81%...so that has been working for me. I open the camera window when I want to fine tune it to 79% for detailed camera work. I was testing some new textures on my Navy paint...at 79% zoom, it just looks....right. (big storms rolling into NAS Key West when I shot this pic)

I've shouted this from the rooftops since MS2020 release. The default zoom level on the drone camera is 50%. 99% of simmers never adjust this to the proper zoom, which after many hours of testing, I've found to be 79% (not 100 like you'd think as that level introduces to reverse fisheye effect) Here is the default drone at 50%...Fisheye gone wild! The wing close to the camera is too looooong while the far wing is too short in this "perspective" Just flat-out looks wrong. Now...zoom in to 79%. After I zoomed to 79%, I panned the camera back to this position because the view was now too close to the aircraft. The proportions of this little 737-700 look just about perfect don't they? Remember...I zoomed in, then MOVED the Camera to achieve the view I wanted. Now with the camera lens zoomed to 79%, and never touching the zoom ring on my camera again...I MOVE the camera to wherever I want it on the plane....so here is the nose of the 737 at 79% zoom and the physical camera placed where I want it. That looks pretty good huh? What folks tend to miss is the completely separate meanings of zoom and move (or pan) with camera manipulation. Sherv is completely right that the proportions of any aircraft can look "off" if the cameraman is just grabbing the zoom ring on his camera lens and zooming...without moving himself (and the camera) to the proper distance from the subject. I pride myself over the decades of being a screenshot artist 1st..then just getting into livery painting when I wanted a livery a freeware group painter refused to paint back in 2003. He finally told me to just to paint the dang thing myself. I taught myself how to, and that's how I got to where I am today. 🙂 I'll leave this long diatribe of camera settings with an actual screenshot that, properly zoomed and positioned, just appeals to my senses when I view it. (lighting, time of day, lens flare on (in this case) other traffic in just the right positions....a lot of thought when into this shot believe it or not) Notice the sun on the flap canoes on the right wing but not the left, the sun reflection just on the front of the belly...the brightness just enough to see the livery. I did not post-process this, I just adjusted the sim to get this shot. Not 100% unedited I guess, but you rarely get the exact conditions you're looking for, and when they occur, by the time you set up the camera, they are gone, LOL. This shot was pretty much default...I just adjusted the time back 2 mins to get the sun where I wanted it to produce the reflection off the fuse and the subtle lighting I was going for.

Actually, all flights in MSFS or any flightsim are unrealistic. If you can hear a leaf blower outside your bedroom window when you're at 35,000 over the middle of the Atlantic....Unrealistic. If your Mom comes into your room when you're on final to Kia Tak (oh wait...you wouldn't be on final to Kia Tak as that airport is closed...my bad), and tells you to get off that computer and clean your room, again...unrealistic. If you wish to only fly realistic routes and such, that is your choice. The "realistic" component of any simmer's experience is relative to the level of real-life suspension they are willing to accept. For you...if its not the real weather, time, airframe, registration, route, ATC, etc...its unrealistic. You of course have a limited range of flights to fly by that preference, but that's your choice. Others have other preferences. BTW....if you are flying your commercial flights in an airliner by yourself...that is completely unrealistic. As is flying one without 1500 hrs min and a license and type-rating to fly said aircraft. So you can take the whole realistic thing as far as you want, as long as remember its your level of realistic, not necessarily all simmer's experience. 😉

LOL...yeah. Funny thing is that if everyone knew about the "8K" texture craze, they'd re-think their desire for them. I'll not get into the minor details, as when I start talking Flightsim livery design and painting, I tend to go overboard, LOL. Call it an occupational hazard (I like to paint, sue me, hehe) 8k textures are not twice the size of 4k...they are 16 times larger! However, when 8k is used logically and only in areas it really matters on the model, you can have a great outcome of both quality and performance. When it comes to CS 8k textures though...they are more concerned about showing you stunning still photos for their sales and marketing stuff than they are for the performance in MSFS. For example....do you really need 8k textures for the APU and main engine interiors? CS seems to think so, and make no mistake...they look lovely. But for some textures you're going to see ONLY on the ground during a walk around and when you get tired of them after the first few times marveling at them...they are stealing your FPS in the sky...who wants that? The iniBuilds A300 is a good example of how to do 8k properly...only used in areas where you'll see it a lot. But it can still be a performance hit on modest systems set to higher settings. A 4090 is not going to care though...so if you have one you'll be saying "They run just fine for me". Hehe, with 24gb of DDR6x memory...they darn well better! Anyway....CS is a horrible Dev however you look at it, and you'll never convince me otherwise. If you must buy from them...do it on the 24hr $9.99 sale they seem to have yearly around Christmas. Don't expect the plane to fly like the real one (without help from some great 3rd party guys out there that mod it), and forget about support...esp after they release the next exterior shell to peddle to the masses.

Remember him and Ariane well....The only commercial member that I recall that ever got kicked off Avsim. Tom HATED him with a passion.

You know LH is always on my list. 😉 And not just because you request it.... rather its in the top 5 of my favorite liveries. 🙂 But expect LH Old colors from me on any airframe that flies it.....not a fan (yet) of the new livery. I miss the yellow. 😞

Haven't really had a chance to get familiar with her...completely focused on a larger, non-Airbus aircraft at the moment. 😉

Hehe....I know how easy this can turn into a "we need XXXX airport" thread....which shows we're hungry to get ALL major international airports in the sim. Heck...in reality, a case could be made for all airports, from a grass strip to KATL (or DFW as I'm not hating the bespoke KTAL in the sim). US Airports seem to always get the linelight, but @F737MAX lists some dingers in there too. EHAM was sure a delight to get as the last major...but we know there are so many more. Let's hope all the great scenery devs at least compare notes so we don't get 3 CYULs at the same time, again, hehe.

I recently started a broccoli garden.....Discuss. 🙂

Thanks Bert. Did a lot of cleanup and got all my sceneries out of community and official folders...all working well. 🙂