JaneRachel

in my case, six million dollars in unmarked bills in a large suitcase to Ryan's vacation fund did the trick

thanks Bruce, I appreciate that. I thought it was only me that reads them

Hey Maurice, here is the full fuel loadout of the aircraft. It is fully loaded with 320,000lbs of fuel. It will certainly get you that whole 9000 or so miles if you wish. 1) PC Pilot Magazine (I am the Deputy Editor and also write technical tutorials for airliners) 2) yes, you can use pounds or kilos. Please see the screenshot in my earlier post which uses lbs. 3) lots, I haven't counted them all, but there are 16 pages of options in the CDU! 4) honestly, I have no idea, but I will take a look for you later

Aaron, the beta team got the aircraft a few days ago and it is very stable! As for being ready for release, you will have to ask RSR that one, that's definitely a question that needs to be asked directly to the developers.

that is indeed the plan, yes

Dave it is amazing seriously. RSR gave us complete freedom to say what we like and what we don't like in the forums and you know what, none of us can find a thing that is not pitch perfect with this aircraft. That is genuine and serious! We keep getting OMG moments in the testing group, like for example when the first one of us got notified (complete with an EICAS message!) that the cabin was now secure for departure!

Jason is absolutely right, you fly this plane and you think you have got yourself a new job at NASA! Of course as Jason is the developer he knows better than me, but I can tell you that all the climb and performance figures are COMPLETELY accurate at all weights and power settings. There is one word that describes a climbout with a lightly loaded 777LR - exhilarating!!

Something I am very pleased with - the proportions of the flight deck are simply perfect. Notice how the glareshield properly projects forward in to the cockpit. Don't you hate it when panels make the glareshield seem flat to the gauges? Not in this aircraft!

yes to the ECL question, all works fine as far as OOM or CTD goes, there has been neither seen by me in any of my flights or any reported by another beta testers to my knowledge. She is running as sweet as a nut!

Hey Dave, there really is a lot more going on with the 777 than the NGX, take for instance the full fly by wire implementation etc, but what I think has happened (and don't quote me on it!) is that with each release the team really are sharpening their skills. Everything seems faster and more fluid right across the board. Everything has been upgraded, I even find things like the glass display screens look much more like real glass with crisper displays, without any performance penalty. Hey Dennis, in all honesty I haven't yet, but I will dig in just as soon as I am able and report back!

I have posted this elsewhere, but I will post it again here as I think it is such a breakthrough for those of you who want to cover the globe but don't necessarily have the time! Guys, One of the features that really impresses me with this aircraft is a feature in FSX that I have never seen before. It means you can SAFELY do a longhaul in a little over an hour! seriously! Yes, we have all used time acceleration, only to regret it as the whole sim goes pear shaped! The 777 has an intelligent, auto acceleration feature built in, should you wish to speed up your flight! Right clicking the CHR button on the clock by default engages a new automatic time compression mode that PMDG have developed. This mode intelligently accelerates time along the straight line segments of the route up to a maximum level that can be set in the SIMULATION options menu in the FMC. The feature will slow time down at turns, step climbs, level offs etc and is also capable of detecting wind, pressure, or temperature shifts that could upset the aircraft while it's flying accelerated. If these happen, it slows to 1x, recovers and then accelerates again. This mode works extremely well in our testing so far and allows you to complete the longest 200LR flights that exist like KATL-FAOR in just an hour or two. You can turn the mode off by left clicking the CHR button. Yes really, I am not kidding! JaneRachel Whittaker

Hey Jess, thought you were in deepest Austria!

Guys, One of the features that really impresses me with this aircraft is a feature in FSX that I have never seen before. It means you can SAFELY do a longhaul in a little over an hour! seriously! Yes, we have all used time acceleration, only to regret it as the whole sim goes pear shaped! The 777 has an intelligent, auto acceleration feature built in, should you wish to speed up your flight! Right clicking the CHR button on the clock by default engages a new automatic time compression mode that PMDG have developed. This mode intelligently accelerates time along the straight line segments of the route up to a maximum level that can be set in the SIMULATION options menu in the FMC. The feature will slow time down at turns, step climbs, level offs etc and is also capable of detecting wind, pressure, or temperature shifts that could upset the aircraft while it's flying accelerated. If these happen, it slows to 1x, recovers and then accelerates again. This mode works extremely well in our testing so far and allows you to complete the longest 200LR flights that exist like KATL-FAOR in just an hour or two. You can turn the mode off by left clicking the CHR button. Yes really, I am not kidding! JaneRachel Whittaker

I should point out too, as this is a really great feature:- I was concerned (before seeing the aircraft) how easy would it be to use all those checklists, using the little joypad thingamajig that they have in the 777. I need not have worried. If any of you wonder how all this works, I can allay your fears. Whenever you mouse over the checklist screen the mouse cursor changes to the checklist cursor and you can just point and click at checklist items! It is really clever because if you have another display on that display unit it acts just like a regular screen, ditto if you move the checklists to another display rather than the lower display, such as replacing the ND with checklists. The bottom line is that wherever you put the checklist screen, it automatically uses the new cursor feature when you mouse over. Click dead centre on the screen and it pops-up can be resized and still maintains the checklist cursor when it is in the screen region!

Dave, as always everyone is going to see varying mileage depending on their systems. I am running it in Windows 7 on a new i7 Imac and seeing stunning frame rates. You know yourself though, that all hardware is different, so there is no definitive answer I can give. What I can tell you is that the 777 has significantly increased frame rate performance over and above the NGX. The guys continue to really find ways to optimise with every release. I can say that all the testers who have reported performance so far are finding it is beating the NGX hands down. I kid you not! By quite a margin too! Again, I drop in the disclaimer about different people with different hardware, but across the board all the testers are seeing better performance.

Non Normal checklist for an autothrottle failure 16 categories of non-normal checklist, each menu item spinning off in to further checklists for just about every eventuality.. The checklists are interactive too! responding both to pilot input and onboard sensors which monitor aircraft status

no problem, just working out how to upload images to share with you all

the sounds from this aircraft are just phenomenal. There are literally thousands of individual sounds utilising unique code. You will not get a "engine sound #1" effect, quite simply because the sound evolves based on how you fly the aircraft, power and atmospheric conditions. I have done half a dozen or so short hops with her today and you know what, the sound at touchdown was different with every landing! The guys have developed what I consider is a unique system where every sound from a switch in the cockpit to the engines is not locked to a single sound effect but creates dynamic sound based upon current conditions. Hit a button in the cockpit and hear a sound, hit it again, you may well get a different sound! After all, you may have pressed a little bit harder or pressed the button on a different corner and in the real world that equates to a new sound. This is exactly what is happening in this 777. Believe me you will be more than impressed! JaneRachel Whittaker

Gang, Capt Randazzo has kindly lifted the restrictions of those of us in the beta group to share our views of this wonderful aircraft with you! By his good grace, we have been allowed to discuss whatever we wish about the aircraft and be honest with our views. So none of us are writing paid infomercials here Yet, I say wonderful completely genuinely. From the moment you enter the virtual cockpit you will find yourself immersed like never before. At first glance you might be tempted to think that with the familiarity of gauges such as the PFD and ND, that this is just a very big NGX. You would be VERY wrong. The 777 complexity is in a whole different ballpark to the NGX. Its an order of magnitude more complex. Does that mean that the aircraft is hard to fly? No, all of that complexity translates to making life easier for the pilot. An intelligent overhead panel, interactive checklists an autostart procedure and much much more. PMDG have modelled the whole thing in complete ENTIRETY!! As Deputy Editor of PC Pilot magazine in my day job, people often ask me "how realistic is aircraft x". So, I will head that off at the pass right here. There is no weather radar, there is no Electronic Flight bag and of course electronic communication with ATC is not possible. Those things aside, everything and yes I mean EVERYTHING in the aircraft conforms to Boeing manuals and further than that, conforms to how this bird actually flies. There has been a lot of work done by the team to recreate the whole performance and flight responses of the aircraft. Personally, I find that the 777 flies more fluidly than the NGX, everything seems more realistic in the handling and that is saying something considering the work of art that is the NGX! You will not be disappointed with how she flies! The guys at PMDG have the support of a number of very clever 777 pilots and engineers who know this aircraft inside out, from every perspective. They have been through this aircraft with a fine toothcomb. How accurate are those systems, from the fly by wire to hydraulics pressures to landing gear heat dissipation? Let me just share a little secret, in the last month alone there were over 800 suggestions from the tech team to push that realism even further to reach the apex of what can be achieved in FSX. All of those suggestions have seen fruition in the beta plane I am privileged to be flying today. Rest assured that every last detail of this aircraft, every nook and cranny has been recreated with such incredible precision. I was impressed with the 737NGX, with the 777 I am blown away, seriously! Every last detail has been taken care of, and every detail of those little details! There is just so much to discuss. I am open to your questions and I will try and post some screenshots later today. Let me leave you with a little snippet of info on the sounds, Yes, we have all heard sounds when you press a button on the overhead etc, how about that sound changing depending on where you click the overhead button or the pressure of the mouse. The whole aircraft is organic, you will never hear the same sequences of sounds twice, that includes the engines that may be just that bit quieter or whine that little bit more depending on atmospheric conditions. This is not an aircraft of looped canned sounds, the whole aircraft responds to you as a pilot and how you treat her. From every cockpit click to those enormous engines you are not going to be hearing cut and paste sounds but an evolving, living breathing soundset that responds to you! JaneRachel

on behalf of the entire PC Pilot team, I really would like to offer our thanks to RSR for this amazing interview. It is really very much appreciated. We also hope the community really enjoy what Rob has to say! thanks again Rob, you are one of the real gentlemen of this community! Jane

it is worth bearing in mind though that this is no relation to the Atari that we all knew and loved. When Sam and Jack Tramiel retired from Atari the rights to all the products and use of the name went to the toy manufacturer Hasbro. A few years thereafter, Hasbro sold the name "Atari" to Bruno Bonnell and his French publishing company Infogrames. Infogrames then changed its name to Atari, being a recognisabled brand. Infogrames simply bought and used the name. This is by no stretch of the imagination the same Atari. I have always worked in the computer games industry, alongside an aviation career and I have very fond memories of working at the "real" Atari in Sunnyvale. The people there back in the day where simply amazing, each and every one of them. The Tramiels were always incredibly generous too. At the end of a very tiring project my partner and I were given the keys to Sarah Tramiels brand new sports car, given a wad of cash and told to drive to Disneyland to enjoy ourselves. Having Jeff Minter in the next cubicle, with his wonderful eccentricity (google him, if you don't know him!), the weekly event of the Tramiels taking the staff to Cals Burgers in Sunnyvale, which became quite the social event, the list of memories goes on. Before the Tramiels I had the opportunity to work with Nolan Bushnell and Jaron Lanier. However, as I say, the Atari in trouble now is simply a rebranding of Infogrames. No less sad for the people who work there though, but not Atari by any stretch of the imagination. Jane

guys, Just to let you know we have started the process of sorting prizes today. This involves contacting each donator with a list of prize winners and the publisher then sorting the logistics of the most efficient way of getting the prizes to you. There are around 70 prizes and over a dozen publishers/developers involved in this process, so please be patient whilst the publishers and developers get these prizes out to you. Your prizes are being sent to you directly from each publisher concerned and please remember they only got back to work today after the weekend. So please bear with us and bear with them and we will get everything sent to everyone as quickly as is humanly possible thanks ever so much Jane

guys, we are only just getting up out of bed after 36 hours straight flying without sleep, but we will get the audio available just as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience, it shouldn't be too long Jane

guys as Peter touched down on the final flight of the weekend, we have a final total of $14,001 raised! Once we get some sleep (as we have been up 36 hours!), I will give you more details but let me just thank all of our sponsors and especially all of you for donatingl The list is long, PC Pilot Magazine, Avsim, PMDG, United Virtual, Buffalo Virtual, BA Virtual, Aerosoft, Flight 1, Addictive Simulations, Just Flight, Carenado, ORBX, Flightsim.com, Eric at Flightlevel 180, VATSIM, the list just goes on with incredible support. A special thanks to goes to Brian of KOIN TV, who got us on the TV news! A very special thanks to over 300 pilots who flew legs on VATSIM with us and raised a pot of cash. A heartfelt thank you to all of you. Our sincere debt of gratitude goes out to all of our sponsors, donators and those who came along with us for the flights of a lifetime. An incredible achievement, that will really make a difference to the life of Tony Radmilovich Jane

Peter Wright is about to take to the air on the last flight after a marathon 36 hour session that has seen you guys raise over $13,000 Aharon please contact me via PM as we have a thank you gift for you for all your support!