ClearedtoLand

Snowboarding and the full culinary experience. Sounds delightful, and quite a nice tradition too.

Oh, you're all forgiven, though I assume the nameless one can pull rank, in which case, you know, it was probably spelled correctly in the text and we can all agree that I got wrong, one doesn't mess with authority :wink: Personally, I would have stayed in Italy if my stomach dictated affairs, but that German beer ... Also, I want to congratulate you guys on the remarkably innovative advertising you have developed for the new Queen. A bit unexpected and definitely subliminal, but genius all the same :wink:

Good old South Africa. By the way, have you looked out the window recently, it's probably been stolen already to be used as a minibus taxi. It shouldn't take some innovative thief long to figure out that the old 747 will just glide through that M1 traffic.

Hey, Erich, lekker om jou te sien, hoop alles gaan goed met jou.

I'm sure someone will pick this up, but I just want to point out a typo, It's Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens, not Suid-Afrikaanese Lugdiens. And thank you for including that one in the list.

Tourist Simulator X?

Yep, following AVSIM topics has resulted in me suffering only one OOM incident in the last two years (I'm a pedant, I keep a record of every incident and fix for it I encounter), and that one was on the 26nd of December last year due to a corrupted sound file. AVSIM, keeping the digitally challenged in the virtual skies and making it look easy.

Armen, if you are the person ultimately responsible for the sound packages of the 737 and the 777, I just want to express my appreciation for all that you bring to these simulations. Just as excited as many people are over the external visuals, so am I over the sound packages. In fact, I would go so far as to confess that for me the immersion of the sounds of the planes are even more important than the detailed external visuals. Thank you for a great job. Edit And if you think getting that one letter wrong was bad, you should have seen what my first attempt at correcting it looked like. Errare human est ... but it says nothing about being hopeless

Guys, it's Christmas, let's all take a break from hammering one another over our shared frailties as human beings and spend the next few days being grateful for all that is good and constructive in the world, while sparing a thought for those who are less fortunate than we are. Merry Christmas to all of you, thanks in particular to the many of you who have helped me solve sim problems without even knowing it, may you all have a peaceful festive season surrounded by your nearest and dearest.

Man, I see a Christmas present for myself tonight, I have been following this topic closely over the last few days taking note of the feedback and observations as well as the developers' response, so all I am going to add here is, thank you to all those who have offered their views, more so to those who stayed up late to help the developers isolate issues, and definitely to the developers for the positive engagement they have with their customers. Well done! Merry Christmas all and happy flying.

Truth be told, I think I will be flying the 717 exclusively in Delta colours out of KATL. That should satisfy both my need for realism and my desire to have this bird.

I've also been eagerly awaiting this one, the commitment to ongoing development and support for me outweighs the negatives of issues (minor or otherwise) upon release. This one looks good enough for me to make an early purchase and take it from there.

That's perfectly understandable, I regret missing out on the MD-11. I still marvel at the FedEx MD-11's going in and out of Stansted, but with time constraints as they are, I've found that I am now spending more time on the 777-200LR than the 300ER, those near 17 hour flights between OTHH and KLAX are about the only long haul flights I can do these days. As sure as I am that I am going to get the Queen V3, she's probably not going to be a day one purchase for me. I've learnt to block Kyle's mysterious teasers ... with great effort I should add, and an enduring sense of nostalgia to boot. The Queen v2 was my first payware add-on, and the JS41 was the one that honed my hand flying skills. If it wasn't for PMDG offerings, I probably would have lost interest in simming around 8 years ago, so it's never an easy decision to retire anything from them. But PMDG has to shoulder some of the blame here for releasing new products that surpass their previous ones. I will be expecting a personal apology from Robert on this matter

I've only looked at the V3 videos in a superficial way as I keep on feeling like a dog in an experiment run by some guy called Pavlov whenever I watch the V3 videos, but I've also noticed some rather striking differences. However, that said, I retired the V2 the moment someone added functional weather radars to the T7 and NGX, and flying the 747 without it just didn't seem satisfying to me any more. Now, I'm going to go dig for bones in the backyard or chase cars to pass the time.

I don't know the exact amount that I have spent on this hobby, but hardware included, it is in excess of $ 2500 if I had to do a rough estimate. I have stopped buying any additional addons while I wait for more clarity on what the future holds for post 32bit development. I am very happy with my set up as it is, but I don't want to invest too much more in FSX as I am pretty sure I would do it all over again to take advantage of newer platforms in the future. $ 2500 on a computer based hobby may be a sizeable chunk of change that could have been 'better' invested elsewhere, but given the amount of satisfaction I get out of this hobby, for me, it was worth it. I have probably become a more discerning simmer over the years, so in a pinch, if someone said to me I can only take three addons to 64bit heaven, it would be ASN (or AS2016 as it would be a new purchase), A2A Cessna 182, and the PMDG 737NGX. That would be my sim on a budget, but I would quietly complain that if that is all I can take to heaven, heaven is a bit lean.

Yep, I spotted that the moment I read Kyle's post and revised the initial refutation of 1. The content of the argument changes on the basis of that correction, but the conclusion remains unaffected. I felt a bit silly after I read that.

Ok, ambiguity, I'll clarify. The claim was that Froogle compromised his integrity by being a beta tester for PMDG, and as such that position influences his judgment, i.e. he would say nice things about the 747 v3, not because the product merits it, but because he benefits from it in some unspecified way, unless one assumes that early access to the product is the benefit. Now, I'm not sure how many others follow this approach, but I like George Polya's approach to solving problems, what are your assumptions, and are those reasonable? So let's look at some of the more pertinent assumptions involved in making the above claim about Froogle's integrity, and here we are only trying to identify assumptions, we are not yet commenting on whether they conform to reality or not. 1. PMDG chooses beta testers on the basis of, among other things, a willingness to put a positive spin on a product, regardless of whether the product merits positive reviews or not. 1.1 PMDG is more concerned about positive publicity about their products than they are about the actual quality of their products, and so offer incentives to beta testers to ignore flaws and focus on positive things only. 1.2 PMDG is prepared to sell products that they know are flawed. 1.3 PMDG shows little concern for the quality or accuracy of their products. Now, are these assumptions reasonable? I think there is enough evidence available about how PMDG select their development team to know that 1 is a absolutely NOT a reasonable assumption. Why select qualified type rated pilots for the development team when you are simply going to hand it over to a bunch of yes men for beta testing followed by no consideration for whether customers notice that the product performs nothing like it was claimed to operate by Beta testers. And one would expect to see a plethora of topics complaining about how the product performs nothing like the beta testers said it did, if this were in fact the case. But that is not what one sees. 1.1 makes no sense in view of the refutation of 1. It makes even less sense when one considers the number of free service packs PMDG releases to fix things that did slip through. So, if there is well established proof that PMDG fixes errors on an ongoing basis and even adding additional functionality (weather radar, 777 improved VAS usage) when those become possible, then 1.1 cannot be true, and as such, 1.1 is also not a reasonable assumption. 1.2 and 1.3 failed the moment 1 and 1.1 were shown to be unreasonable and as such they cannot stand on their own. There is one other assumption one can make about Froogle compromising his integrity, but that would show a casual disregard for accuracy of any sort. I hope that clarifies why I said that a Beta tester providing false information about the product would undermine the entire Beta testing process. I think it goes without saying that neither PMDG nor their Beta testers have a mindset of, this product is basically flawed, but hey, let's all call it great and flog it in any case. I think Froogle's integrity was needlessly criticised here. Ok, I just read Kyle's response and noticed that I confused tech team with Beta testers, I'll fix that factual error, but wanted to post the admission before anyone responded to the above post.

A beta tester who provides false information to the public about the product they are testing seems to me to defeat the very purpose of beta testing. I can't see the benefit for either Froogle or PMDG in such an endeavour.

Cessna 182. If I can afford my own aircraft, then it means I can afford to end up in one of those places where nothing bigger than a small plane can get to in any case.

I've only experienced one hard landing with Ryanair, but it was sufficiently hard for the flight attendant to observe that it was the FO landing and that he was quite new.

Maybe Luanda (FNLU) Angola for FSX? I know of two versions out there, but neither of them is particularly good.

I use Simmarket almost exclusively, and over the years have had to do a number of reinstalls. I have never reached the download limit, and have found that some of my reinstalls always show 5 out of 5 installs remaining even when I know it was the third, or in some cases the fourth reinstallation that I had done. This does seem a very unusual response from Simmarket, as I have always had good service from them, including a credit note for a product that I had bought twice in the space of a week, and for which, reasonably, they might have told me that my stupidity is not covered by their purchasing TOS, with a sarcastic reference to that old adage about a fool and his money. Instead, I got a no questions asked credit note. I realise that this is little consolation, but don't give up on them so quickly. Someone might just be having an off day over there. That being said, I hope they get it sorted out for you in a hurry.

No relation, I assure you. For one, he landed on the runway. As anyone who has seen my sim landings can tell you, that's not always where I end up LOL. This is one instance where the bard's dictum on roses and names does not hold. Still, I found that observation sufficiently funny that I had to break my silence in this thread.

The beauty of simming is that it lends itself to a great many more avenues of exploration and satisfaction than the pursuit of the perfect emulation of real world procedures. I know of at least one 6 month old who thought the night lighting of the 777 overhead panel was just about the most captivating sight she ever saw, and that the sound of the engines of the JS4100 was the perfect lullaby. And then, sometimes, it's just a great form of escapism. To borrow a line from Bender from Futurama, Reality can bite my shiny metal ... I forget how the rest goes.

I completely understand what you mean about this plane being a joy to fly, for me personally, it is my favourite jetliner by a mile. And even though I regularly simulate flights at the far end of medium haul, I find that doing shorter ones allows for more flights on a day. If you are interested in some short haul routes into exotic areas, Rwandair flies the 737 800 from Nairobi (HKJK) to Kigali (HRYR), and Ethiopian Airlines flies the 737 800 from Zanzibar (HTZA) to Kilimanjaro (HTKJ). Both of those can be completed in under an hour. Obviously, the reverse routes as well. I don't really know how many hours I have on the 737, but it is far more than all the rest combined, which is not bad considering that I was convinced that I wasn't going to buy it. As for getting the most out of the systems, due to time constraints I take my time getting to know the planes' systems, as such, it demonstrates that there is an enormous amount of pleasure one can get from the plane without necessarily knowing the systems inside out. I tend to take the view that, given just how much depth is simulated, it is up to the individual user to find their sweet spot, whatever that may be, because this plane is such a joy on so many different levels.