NBGZerO

Well, there *has to be* (take with grain of salt) a logic in the system that says "TOD reached = 1" (simplified, of course it would be more complex than that). That results in the FMC knowing "hey, I have to start the descent now." From my limited understanding, when that value is set to 1, and the "sim pause at TOD" function is 1 (active), then send some magical dodad command to pause the sim. Of course there are more complexities than that, like interfacing simmconnect or whatever they use to tell the sim to pause. But from the way I see it, it would be a relatively easy thing to do, copy the "send pause" command and set it to a different condition. I can of course be wrong. And for the FMC/CDU to know that a failure is active (any failure), I'm sure there is a global value that is turned to 1 (again, active) as soon as ANY failure is triggered. I understand, and you are right. Going into full detail to where exactly the pause would be triggered would be a larger programming undertaking. I interpreted the OP in the sense of "trigger at first failure". It wouldn't be necessary to take cascading into account in that scenario, since the sim is paused. If it's unpaused, then the simmer is in the cockpit again (if he was gone), and aware that failures are pesent (assuming the aircraft tells him so - EICAS, STAT, master caution/warning...). So, subsequently, if the failures indeed cascade, the simmer can decide when he wants to pause again, and take his time to go through the documentation. But what if the simmer has service based failures on, but isn't in the cockpit at that time? A step climb can be missed (or set to auto), a descent can be missed, but in both cases the plane would continue to fly until it's fuel runs out. In the event of an urgent/serious failure, and subsequent cascading, which let's say results in total engine failure, the simmer might come back and find his plane with no power and thrust, or worse, crashed, given the time. Which would be more frustrating to a simmer that leaves his pit during cruise? Not to forget that a novice simmer would have to deal with more stress should he/she encounter failures during high activity phases like takeoff/landing. But in those scenarios, I'd assume the simmer has access to his or her pause key. Edit: Removed some typos

Wow, that response came fast! BTW, I'm currently watching your videos as my version of IFE (In Flight Education) on my 12 hour haul. Your content is superb! Anway, BTT: I'm not saying you're wrong either. I understand the need/want for realism. Don't take me wrong, I'm not attacking your arguments. Just trying to find a middle ground. I didn't know of such function, seems like I have to do more reading/flying! I understand that. Of course, more features, more development time, more costs, less time for expansions and patches. I was going off the assumption that integrating a "pause at failure" function would be able to benefit from the current "pause at TOD" functionality. Being no dev, and obviously not involved with developing the 777, I can't say how much work it would be. But maybe it would be possible to port the "pause at TOD" function over to the failures as well. Well, by that logic, why need a "pause at TOD" function? Technically (without going on about if it's realistic or not), after TOC and level out, you could just dial down the MCP ALT to your selected ALT, like for example FAF ALT, and set override A/T to never. Haven't done so myself, but I'm sure it's possible. So you wouldn't need to pause, right? Also, it also just as much doesn't take a degree in applied math to memorize when your TOD comes up. My point is, some of the functions might not be realistic, but the sim community is diverse, and PMDG put these functions in to cater to that. I see no reason aside from dev time and cost to expand on that, being it because of a failure, or of an upcoming step climb. Now that you mention step climb, let me adjust this one real quick...

I'm currently on a return flight from RJAA - Tokyo Narita to EDDF - Frankfurt. With and Average Headwind of 38 knots. According to the flight plan, it should take me about 12 hours to complete in 1x speed. I'm kinda tempted to use autocruise though.

I'd say the feature is more for learning how to deal with the failures. If I could say, fail an engine, and then have time to look at the warnings, the symptoms and such things, I could walk through resolving the issue, before executing. That would be of most benefit to someone who wants to work up to having anything fail at any time, with the time constraints and stress that come with it. I'm no real pilot in any sense, but from what I believe to know, real airline pilots are sim trained to deal with at least the most common or most dangerous failures. The middle ground between a pause at failure mode, and full realism would be a function to add a failure at let's say X UTC, or Xnm from waypoint Y (if operating on a typical flight). Then you would still have a sense of urgency, since you still need to fly the plane, but on the other hand, since you programmed the failure yourself, you know what is coming up and when, and can prepare. The next step to this would to add a "buffer" function around the specified fail point, in which it would randomly fail the component either prematurely or delayed. I think the best way to go with this is to go with the "give the customers as many choices as possible" kind of approach. That said, should this functionality ever be considered, a "pause at stepclimb" function would also be neat. I wouldn't use it myself though