NM5K

Never have noticed those issues here. And the takeoff trim will vary a good bit depending on pax, cargo weights. I've seen some takeoff trim settings below 5, but I see just as many above 5. Never have noticed any problems after takeoff using any of the various settings, and never have noticed any hard pitch down behavior. Never have seen the retrac light issue you describe. I flew the 700 today with a fairly light load, "BBJ rig", and if I remember right, the takeoff trim was about 5.6. It varies with every flight, so I wouldn't really consider a trim setting below 5 as "wrong" unless a real worlder claimed to never see a trim set that low with a similar load and balance. And below 5 is still well in the "green" area as I recall.

Like the short hops myself. Which is why I keep running the 737, and haven't tried the 777 yet. The big bird seems more catered to the long haul flights, and I just don't have the patience to stay at cruise till the cows fall out of the sky.. And still plenty to learn on the 737.. I've been running it since it came out, and still have plenty more to learn about it as far as the more obtuse quirks. So it still keeps me busy. I'll probably try the 777 one of these days, but think I will still prefer the slightly more manual systems of the 737. And like I say, it much more suits the length of my usual flights. To me, Houston to LA is a long flight.. Most are much shorter.

Fuzzy seat looks comfy.. Better than my rawk hard office chair.. :/ Like the throttle quadrant.

No error that I know of. I use both radio and baro, and both work here. Made another of my action videos today doing the HOU to DAL shuttle.. I set minimums at 200 using Baro.. Love Field at 477, and I set for 677.. I often use radio also.. Never had any problems with either. Both work fine here. No peanuts were served on a plate. :angry:

As far as the centerline, keep the runway in one spot on the glass. Preferably as close to the center as possible. To make it really easy, use the HGS. That makes lining up a piece of cake. When getting close, you want to visualize keeping the runway right between your legs. Speed is fairly critical, so practice keeping your Vref+5 or whatever as close as possible. Too slow, and you risk a tail strike due to the high AOA. Also makes for a false teeth rattler for the ones in the back. Too fast, and you have to float too far down the runway to bleed off speed. Only flare a small amount. You pretty much want to fly the plane onto the runway, rather than holding off until stall like you would a small Cessna. You flare, but only a small amount, and not until you are below about 20 ft or so. Watch an autoland, and note how the plane only flares itself at the last few feet above the runway. That's how you want to flare. Also, watch down the runway towards the horizon to gauge how much to flare. That will take a bit of practice, but once you get the hang, you can make a decent landing most every time. Don't watch the runway right in front of the plane, watch farther down the runway to gauge when and how much to flare. You will get used to where the horizon is, and you will get to where you can flare the same appx amount every time by watching where the horizon, and the end of the runway looks in relation what you see from the cockpit. Watch the horizon during autolands to show you about how things should look. If you seem to over flare, push the nose forward with the yoke a bit to get back to normal flare right before touching down. That can also make for a smoother landing in the cases where your speed might be a tad slow, and the AOA a bit high. If the speed starts getting too low, keep some power on until touchdown. Will make for a smoother landing. But with the right approach speeds, you should be able to go to idle at around 10 ft or so, and fly it onto the runway. Practice makes nearly perfect.. BTW, I'm not a real pilot, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But I almost never have a truly bad landing with the NGX. It's better to land firm, than to float 1/4 of the way down the runway trying to hold off for a greaser. That's bad practice in a modern Boeing jet and will earn you a spanking by your artificial instructors. lol

Might be true, but if I zoom in that far, I have to move my viewpoint around so much it gets to be a real hassle. Don't use trackIR, etc, so I have to hit space and use the mouse to pan around. The main reason I use the CDU 2D popup is that I think part of the yoke often covers it if I remember right. It's not that I can't read the lettering. It's to be able to hit all the buttons without the right handle of the yoke being in the way. I think anyway.. Sometimes I'll popup the ND if I want to check the small blue letter airport ID's with a higher res. It's faster and easier than changing the zoom. Other than that, I don't use the popups much. When flying I'm usually zoomed in a bit tighter than what the video showed. Not a lot, but I'll usually see only the left engine gauges, not both when the view is straight ahead. Having to space and mouse my views, being zoomed out a tad makes for shorter view shifts when diddling with the MCP, etc. And I like a bit of a peripheral view. Seems more natural to me. Fer instance when driving my car, I see almost all of the front dash, both left and right sides with my usual vision that I see. I realize the 737 is a lot wider, but I think I would still be aware of more than just the PFD and ND when flying unless I had the seat cranked up really close. I'll have to sit in a 737 and see how it looks/feels if I ever get the chance.. Never have been in the cockpit of one. A Learjet is the only jet I've ever sat in up front, and it's pretty narrow overall. Not much wider than a car as I recall. It's an exercise of contortion just climbing into the cockpit of one of those things. lol

Sounds like your zoom is set very high. I can't really think of any other reasons that would cause what you are seeing. At the zoom levels I use, I can see all of the needed instruments, and still have no problems seeing outside. I normally raise my seat level only one notch from default. Of course, the panel detail and lettering, etc are small compared to a high zoom level, but still readable. I like the view to fairly closely mimic the overall big picture I would see if sitting in the plane, rather than a high zoom level on the instruments. I can always zoom in more if needed, and you can also click on the panels to see a zoomed in fixed version. I do that sometimes with the ND, and often with the CDU, as I don't like having to reset my zoom too often. I use a zoom number that is in between the 10 point zoom clicks using the space bar and mouse, so I have to fine tune using the keyboard. Kind of a pain... So I don't change zoom very often while in flight. Also, there is a 2D panel with the NGX unless it's not included in the DVD version. Don't see why it wouldn't be. I never use it, but if you cycle through the VC cockpit views with "A" you should see it. Also, the HGS "HUD" is there because it's on many of the real world planes. It's not a view workaround. An example of the appx zoom level I usually use. Even if I zoomed in a bit more, I would still have no trouble seeing the runway on approach, and seeing most of the instruments. I use the HGS most of the time, but this is one of the few videos I've made where I wasn't using it. You would want to set for 720p resolution and go full screen on youtube to see it appx as how I see it when flying.

I never much cared for EFIS-MAP.. Always thought it was quite cluttered vs PFD-ND. Have they also gone to RNP like Southwest did a while back? That was about the same time Southwest ditched EFIS-MAP. 738fly, as far as the MCP, I imagine it depends on the age of the plane. The older ones use the Honeywell, but the newer ones use the Collins. I think the appx cutoff date for the Honeywell MCP in NG's was around 2002-2003 or so.

I could see it if one ran only one plane every flight. But I run several different planes so it's not practical. But I had zero problems when I did do it. So noticed no uncertainties in doing so. The only disadvantage was being stuck with that particular plane, and not being able to switch. I suppose one could rig up batch files to load different flights with certain planes, so you could pick the plane before firing up FSX. I did that when doing sound testing and switching between the various models. I also load a few sound files that way, as I use different volume level files depending on the 737 model. IE: nose gear ground roll sound for one.. I have bat file shortcuts for those on my desktop.

I normally have been starting with the trike since I've been running the plane. And I start from a small airport, then load the NGX, then choose the departure airport. I figured I would have problems if I tried starting the flight with the NGX as that has been the rumor on the forum. But... I actually found doing that would work just fine. I discovered this when doing a paint job, and getting tired of going through the double load process every time I fired the sim up. If I set the NGX as the startup plane, and load a panel state to set it how I wanted, which was ready to fly in that case, it worked just fine. So it should be able to be done. What mine will never do, is change from one NGX plane to another, even if a different model, say from the 700 to the 800. That has never worked on my sim. When it loads the different plane, it's half kaput with some VC textures missing, etc. If I remember right, it won't even let me do it if I go from the NGX to a default plane, and then back to the different model NGX. Never seems to work. I have to choose one version and stick with it for the duration of the sim session. If I want to change, I have to shut down and start over. But I still start with the trike for normal use, because it lets me choose which NGX plane I want to fly, which varies. If I set it to start with the NGX, I'm stuck with that particular plane.

I would think it would be fairly decent for stock FSX. And likely usable for the NGX as long as the scenery/cloud/traffic, etc settings aren't too high. My puter is no real powerhouse, and I run the NGX good enough to fly fairly smoothly, but I keep the settings rolled back a bit when running that plane. Also, I'm not running much in the way of fancy 3rd party airport scenery which helps a good bit.

Hummm.. Normally the first thing I would think of is proper trim set, and no pressure on the yoke when engaging. But if it's not that, maybe something is jiggling or adding pseudo pressure to the yoke, which could be a control or yoke calibration issue, dirty pot causing control jiggle, etc.. ??

They have a few. And it seems most of them zip in and out of HOU on any given day. 17 SWA flights out of KHOU tomorrow will be 500's. Used to fly a sim version quite a bit in a past FS life. They still have a good number of 300's too, but the older ones are slowly being replaced with 700's as the new ones filter in. Don't know how much longer the 500's will be around, but I don't think they are in a huge rush to ditch them. I think they find them kind of handy for the short non full flights, so they can save the larger planes for the wider loads that tend to fill up. One fixing to land on KHOU 12R right here.. B)

Just a note that Joe Lincoln passed away this last Sunday, November 30. A few of the old timers will remember him. Did a lot of work with FS4, FS5, and maybe even earlier. I believe he wrote the very first real weather program back around the FS4 days. I can't think of any earlier weather programs. Also did a lot of FS work with Laemming Wheeler, and a few others, with the FS5 aircraft packages, which were released on CD's as Apollo and also sold from the LINX BBS. Also the FSWOW scenery design packages, and probably many other programs I can't remember offhand. He started the LINX BBS, which was a popular FS BBS in the days before the web took off. In recent years, he didn't do too much FS work, but still flew it from time to time up to FSX. Did a lot of ham radio tinkering, restoring of old radios, and such, the past few years. Also was quite interested in seismic detection and recorders, and had three seismic setups at his house.

Looks like the colors.ini file got messed up, or changed.

I would load new from scratch default settings, and then save new flights. Basically start over. Maybe that will cure it. ??

The new blue looks a lot more primary to me than the old "canyon" blue. Slightly different for sure. But we'll see how it wears with time. I remember when the first canyon blue jets came out, I still liked the tan ones better. But after a few years I got to where I liked the blue ones better than the old tan planes. I remember when Braniff used to use a lot of different colors, and most all of them were non primary colors. I remember I once flew on a Braniff 727 from KC downtown to the then nearly brand new KIAH in Nov 1969. It was kind of a baby doo-doo green.. lol And they had baby doo-doo yellow, brown, etc.. lol. They also had crock pot orange, funky blue, and I forgot what else.. I wonder if SWA thinks the name font on the new paint is large enough.. I guess they wanted it readable from 5 miles away.. lol

Dunno.. Hard call, and user preference I suppose. Being an artificial SWA buoy, naturally I've always tried to get those as good as possible, and fine tweak them as I'm really picky about the color shades. But I have some custom BBJ skins that look fairly good. I even rigged up a custom Coleman Co. BBJ for my lantern and stove hunts. lol Now SWA has switched their livery, so will be rigging up a few of those. I did majorly tweak one of the 800's with the new paint. Just wish I had a model with the new winglets to make it 100%. I had found one version in the file library a couple of months ago, but the color tints were way off. So I redid the paint on it to suit me and my ultra finicky SWA nature. Need to get a 700 rigged up.. When I first saw the new style paint, I wasn't that hot on it, but after a while it's kinda grown on me a bit. This is the first 800 I tweaked up. Did some pretty serious changes on the color shades vs the original that I d/led, but think I got fairly semi close. All it needs are the new style winglets, even if just a visual model.. When I get a 700 going, it will be right, as none of those have the scimitar winglets yet. Or that I know of anyway. That's just on the 800's so far. An 800 going out of dinky Houston Southwest Airport? Sure, why not.. lol.. That's where my paint shop is.

The other "plain" looking planes probably have fairly low res textures. IE: 1024, etc.. So even with the 4096 setting, they will still only show the 1024 of their particular texture res. The high setting just let the planes that do have high res textures "IE: NGX" actually be able to show them at their full res. It won't help the low res planes.

Yep, I think that's right. Mine used to change quite often because I would change scenery settings with different planes. But I then started leaving it at 1024, and it's been so long that I forgot that changing settings is what caused it. I can run a lot higher scenery settings on most planes vs the NGX. If I go too high with it, I'll get OOM's.

The "4096" setting is mainly the outside "skin" texures of the airplane. And unless you fly at ultra high resolutions with the video res, you won't really see too much difference between 1024, 2048, and 4096. Also, if I remember right, every time you shut down FSX, it reverts the setting from 4096 back down to 1024. So I think you would have to manually change it to a high setting before each FSX startup to have that high a setting. I keep mine at the low 1024 stock setting as my puter and video are only so-so, and being I don't see much difference at the resolution I use, I just leave it there to save VAS memory load and help avoid OOM's and the dreaded "skeleton" plane problems which are more prone to happen if you run the high skin resolutions on a so-so box. You can probably see more difference in the settings if you ran a high res, and zoomed in close to the plane. I don't do that much, so I'd rather run the low textures. Even those are not too bad up close at the res I run. If I remember right, this setting doesn't effect the VC. The VC resolution is set using the PMDG performance manager tool, which has a high and a low setting. I use high for the VC textures and model, but use low for the VC displays being on a so-so puter. The eyebrow windows are only on the older planes.. "real world". The newer planes don't have them. And some airlines such as SWA have blocked them off on old planes and have painted over them. So no SWA plane has them that I know of, including their oldest planes. The only plane I run that has them is a pseudo 600 BBJ I run, which I rigged up as an old plane with eyebrow windows, older Honeywell MCP, etc. Boeing didn't actually make a 600 BBJ, but I wanted one as I like flying the 600, so I converted an old airliner into one in my artificial world.. lol It's the "oldest" plane I run in my NGX fleet. That's another thing. Only the older planes use the Honeywell MCP. The newer ones use the Collins. But you will still see a good number of them in the older planes, including SWA, etc. So user preference on how old you want the plane to be. Myself, my everyday SWA 700 uses the Collins as I rigged it as a "medium" not so old plane. I use the HGS on all mine as I'm spoiled on it being an artificial SWA buoy, who use them in the real world. The HGS is the best thing since sliced bread me thinks.. Totally spoiled using it. So I have all my usual planes rigged with it, including the "old" 600 I run.

None of that is normal, except that if you crank up the brighness on the displays themselves, the black background can look blue. But I don't think that is your problem. No bugs per say. I run the 700 more than any other model, and see none of that stuff. Some have reported the TCAS issue, and it's not normal either. I never see that. You have local puter issues. Either you need to reinstall, you need a font upgrade, or some other program is clashing with the NGX and causing problems. There is no bug within the NGX itself that should be causing all that, as I see none of them here, and I've been running the 600/700 since the first day they came out.

It's built into both programs. But I'm not running P3D to see what differences there are in vapor locations. Also, being as the FSX NGX won't run on any of the later versions of P3D, how can one tell what the NGX vapor would do in the current P3D version? I don't usually see smoke locations for the wing tips unless it's added 3rd party. So I assume they are using the wing geometry/tip locations to decide where to place the vapor. ?? At this point, I would think P3D would be about the same being as they haven't added anything new as far as the planes themselves. Or that I've heard of anyway.. You could add vapor at the flaps ends, etc if one wanted it. About the same as the added vapor that is used on the FA/18 I run. But I don't know if you could turn off the default FSX tip vapor. Maybe use a different name vapor texture/fx so it couldn't see the default, and then add all new ones. ?? I dunno without trying it. Sometimes when you delete textures like that it can make black areas if the fx is still running and calling for the texture.. :( yuk. Also, if you did add vapor to flaps, I don't think you could make it follow the flap movement without special fx trickery. You would have to compromise and decide on one point to place it I think as it is stock..

Dunno.. I don't think mine has that problem. As far as I recall, I do see my landing lights shine on the plane, and hit the runway from external views. So if that's the case, the problem is likely video/settings related on your end. There is no way to increase the brightness of the taxi lighting. Some planes like the 800 can seem a bit dark out. But no adjustment as I seem to recall the taxi lights are actually the FSX landing lights, and the NGX landing lights are custom PMDG lights. What I do if it's really dark, is flip on the two right landing light switches for the two fixed landing lights. That will perk things up nicely.. Then before takeoff, flip them all on and add the retracts to the picture. I'm not sure how well the taxi lights light up the runway from an external view. Never checked it. They should show up a bit, but nothing like the landing lights.