Arnaud

:-) Thank you Sir !Nice week-end in sight indeed. So, to sum it up: thanks Pete, and a warm welcome to Armen (I've already gladly exchanged few posts with him earlier today about his nice work on the sound update)Best,

Armen-I do appreciate your explanations, and am learning how limitative FS9 was. It's nice on the other hand is to read that FSX will allow more sounds realism.As I'm quite well used with fs9 I've also been playing around with spot plane view distances, however I still find the normal jet wine to be slightly too high in the trebbles, compared to the 744F updated sounds which I found to be perfect.Thank you Armen :-)

Yes, a great 'thank you' to PMDG for the new Sound Update, which I just got installed an hour ago.However, and most likely it's me only, but as a person who worked many years as a ramp agent, and whose environment was crowded with 744s (in LFPG), I think the external sounds engines for GEs were more accurate before the update :-hmmm The perfect mix of bass and trebble was actually nothing but perfect(prior to the update), I now have the feeling there are too much trebble. I am talking about GE and PW external engines sounds only.All the others tweaks are just very nice, except this. Thought I'd share this here, in case there would be other people like me.The infamous question (which I understand might drive the developper mad) would be: is there a way to restore the previous ext sound and at the same time keep all the other updates?With regards,

There is another 'legal' way to modify the FS weird friction coefficient, without touching any PMDG files. I've read somewhere that editing the SIM1.dll in the FS General Module folder helped some folks.Dont ask me how, just search here in the avsim forums.I agree I am for one annoyed by the fact I burn twice the fuel I'd need in reality to taxi the plane to the runway, but I leave with it.I dont pay for the fuel anyway :( EDIT: oops, sorry, I missed Martin's post about the SIM1.dll

Randy-Phil's right, WSSS has runways surfaces set as 'bitumus', which cause the heavies to crash above certain speeds, during take off and landings as well.I changed it to 'concrete', since turning off the crash detection spoils FS realism: getting ones hands wet when on final is indeed part of the fun I think.Regards,

Thank you Pete :-) Always nice to see a new livery for that beauty.OT, Would you do me a favor and tell me which scenery you use for Heathrow? Been flying there quite often lately with G-VROC and was thinking of getting some nicer sceenry than the default one.Regards,

Thanks Andrew and Luca.Luca-Havent you tried to land the Jumbo at Meigs Field(IL) yet? I tell you, it's quite fun to do. Linate's runway is 8000 feets, enough for a 747 not too heavily loaded. I should have sticked to Linate anyway, I'd still be alive at this moment :-)

Hi-I believe most of you already encountered problems with heavy planes like the PMDG 744s on particular airports, on which the plane is bumping, and at certain speeds, simply crash (during take-off or landings)This is due to the different materials runways are made of in FS .bgl, like 'concrete', 'asphalt', 'bitumus' ('grass' :( ) or such.A simple edit of the AFCAD file, default or add-on, solves the problem easily. What I've done many times. I change the runway property from 'bitumus' to 'concrete' or 'asphalt' and I'm on my way.However here's the question: is there a way so that PMDG planes dont crash on those bitumus runways. An hour ago, after a pleasant flight to italy, for some reason I decided to land in Milano-Malpensa instead of Milano-Linate, and happily crashed because I wasnt aware Malpensa was set to 'bitumus'.Anoying. One 744F and its crew sadly lost. And it's not PMDG related.

Donno where you've read there was any issue with the 744s in Asia:I quite often fly there and never had any problem.

Jeff is right, what framerate issue? I have none, with a p4 3.2Ghz, only 1Gb DDRam and an old ATI 9800XT gfx card.I confirm that's one of the very best FS add-on I've ever witnessed.

For the best standard livery I'd advise Phillip Tan's repaint, availbale in Avsim library here:http://library.avsim.net/search.php?Search...=root&Go=Search

This is a weird issue which is popping up on the forum on a regular basis. I have experienced it once -that was before the 744F update-, exactly the same way Connor Levens describes.Very heavy plane (YSSY-FAJS) loaded with +250.000lbs of fuel, and about 30 minutes after top of climb, slow speed decrease untill stall. Everything was OK on the plane configuration.I thought by then that could have been a FMC coding issue, since the VNAV page was claiming max FL was 340, when I think it should had not exceed FL310 (given the TOW that day).The speed/power loss occured when I was at FL340.And I was flying with FS default weather engine.

Just curious: are you sure that the input frequencies you have are VOR or VORDME stations? I am asking because somtime, as you might know, you have only a DME without VOR, in which case you would receive both identifier and DME information but logically no VOR, so no needle either.That's also the case with militaries TACAN, for which civil aircraft only receive the DME informations.

Alex-I think they actually did fix it, but depsite the fix, the visual of that nose cargo door still affects frames/s.I get reasonnable FPS, my end, not as good as the pax version though.

Yes, the FPS loss in the freighter VC is I believe due to nothing else than the visible nose cargo door. Gives an idea to what would have been with the infamous wingviews in the pax 744.

I bought the 744F and I am very happy with it, although I agree on the slight FPS loss in its VC depsite the update. I bought it especially because the 744F is in itself a major patch for the 744pax as well, not only the soundset, many improvements in the FMC routines, more accurate and refined fuel predicitions etc...That being said, it's also a mater of taste, I've always loved freighters :-) , and most important, always preferred the short 747 hump ala classics jumbos rather than the stretched ones.

I believe you get this message when the FMC database runway's coordinates doesnt match the tuned and active ILS.

Robert,Since our posts, my VC did vanish again. The plane was still on the ground. I carefully tried your trick, but alas it didnt help. Instead, a while after that, the whole Sim crashed.So, sadly, I trashed Active Camera, which I am sure is the culprit.Sadly because I bought it not even a week ago, had fun with it, but it seem to cause too much hassle my end, and sadly because of the lot of time I spent configuring it so that it didnt overwrite my PMDG entries.Now on to try the other 'Walk and Follow' thing, I guess.Best,

Michael,Janov, of whom I remember well indeed, did test the 744 pax version.I find myself the 744 pax very accurate compared to real 744 flightplans.Here I am talking about the 744F - 744F, Michael.

Thanks a lot Robert,Actually I've had the idea to try this, but as I didnt hit okay twice as you suggest, it didnt bring the VC back.Although I never use saved flights, next time the problem occur I will do what you say, and I hope it will make my day :-) Thank you again,Best,

Hi (again),Although I am almost sure I've seen threads with similar titles,the fporum search engine couldnt locate them for me, therefore I post the question again: on several occasions, the virtual cockpit of the 744s at some point simply disappear.Hitting 'S' will switch directly to spot view, no more virtual cockpit. No matter even if I go and choose the VC view in FS views options.I pretty much think it is Active Camera related, which I use, but is there any trick to get the VC back? Everything else works correctly, except the VC who vanished.Tried to pause the sim, several other things(like activating/deactivating the VC from the PMDG options menu) but to no avail.I've just cancelled a flight a moment ago because of that. The VC vanished few minutes after take-off. How annoying.Best,

Michael and Mike,Ouch, for one moment I also thought I had gone mad. The first post I made was done late in the night, or early in the morning, after that famous flight, so I was a bit tired and confused.Of course I meant I was flying eastbound.Now what is really weird: I didnt input any kind of winds in FS, I just let the default athmosphere with its winds and temp, which are indeed usually (according the latitude) 25 knots eastbound winds and standard temperatures.What really bugs me now about that flight, is that I recall for sure I was having tail wind (shown on the ND as well as the FMC), that is for sure.I did had eastbound winds all along the route indeed (like 265/25 for instance) Thanks for pointing my typo.Regards,

Hi Sam,You bet I've had already reloaded that RJAA-PANC flight just to see what the FMC predicted. It predicts always the same fuel burn, as I said, the PMDG FMC is very (now)accurate: what it predicts is actually what is left over destination, once the flight had been completed.I tired both with winds input in the LEGS/DATA pages, and without, only make a slight difference.No, the PROG 2 tail/head/cross winds factor indicator are actual winds, not average. I dont think the 744 gives that kind of information(of no interest for the pilot), only a flight plan does, in order to define the required fuel.Other than that, I loaded an PANC-EBBR flight last night, with a real flight plan as well...and although I havent completed the flight, the FMC gave me a fuel over destination again way smaller than what my real flightplan said there should be.I am now off to check what the differences between 744F and 744ERF are, most likely in there lie the difference between my flightplans and the PMDG birds.Since I bought the 744F, I've always been surprised to see that PMDG 747 cargo max zero fuel weight is 288.100 Kgs, when the 744ERF's mzfw the company I work for is only 277.100 Kgs.The 744pax didnt give me such gap between my flightplans and the PMDG thing. Maybe something got screwed in the meanwhile with the cargos?

Sam,:-) I know well about the winds indicator on the ND! But, even better, the tail wind component indicated on the FMC PROG 2 page (where you can aslo read the SAT btw).Again, I followed that flight from departure block till arrival block, writing down waypoint after waypoint, as you say, the encountered weather (winds and temp) besides the flight plan datas.Even with all the interpolations and corrections you might do, I should not have landed with more than 8.000 lbs less than scheduled.On a real flight plan, you have an 'average' wind value, which is a sum of all the winds expected on the route at given flight levels.On the flight plan I had that average wind was +20 (20 knots tail wind), and all along the flight in FS the average tail wind was indeed 20 knots, all along the route (checking that in the FMC rather than on the ND).Same for the temperatures.So all this doesnt answer my question as to why I found such a huge gap between the flightplan and the actual flight in FS.You claim that you hardly excess ~1.000 lbs on a 250K flt? ...mmmm, sounds good.I usually get ~4.000 lbs, not 9.000 lbs as on that bloody RJAA-PANC, that's the reason why I am a bit alarmed.EDIT: Oh, thought I might perhaps specify I'm in RL a flight dispatcher for a major european company with lots of 744s, both pax and cargos, and that I prepare and check those real flight plans daily, so I know a little bit what a flight plan is and how important the winds and temp are ;-) From this, I also know from 744 pilots that they hardly encounter such huge difference when nothing special happens on the flight, given that the weather enroute forecasts are more and more accurate, which had lead the companies, years ago, to reduce the route reserve for fuel savings (from 5% to 3% for most of them).In the case of my RJAA-PANC flight, I had burned the whole 5% route reserve plus the final reserve, I couldnt even land the alernate fuel (which was Fairbanks). In real life I would have had troubles with local authorities in case of a control.

Thank you Sam,Interesting post. However, it is the most part of the fun, I think, totry to macth the reality, and very likely the first reason why I like the PMDG products so much, at the same time.My wondering has nothing to do with FMC actually, it's just related to an exagerated fuel burn off on a 6 hours long flight.(my mistake, I shouldnt even have mentionned the FMC inputs)To be more exact, the FMC was terrribly accurate on that flight, it predicted from the begining that I was going to burn more fuel than I thought.The fuel boarded, the remaining fuel at cut-off: a huge difference (over 4.000 kgs) with what I had on the real flightplan.I will hopefully do an 8 hours long flight today, with a real flight plan as well, ans see what happens.EDIT: Well, I havent been precise enough since the begining of that thread. It's actually NOT the first flight I do with a real flight plan. Generally, the thing with FS and PMDG pretty much match the real flight plan (more or less 2.000 kgs difference and couple of minutes) on longer flights.So the question was: is there anything that could explain the fuel burn making such a jump?