kevin911010

I envision a flight simulator where you start off at the briefing room, gets the flight briefing, walks to the airplane, then walk out to do a visual inspection, then get back in, and manually close and lock the door!

The problem for me, just now (15 minutes ago!), is that the crash occurred as I descend through 16000 feet on a 7 hour flight. I knew I had to risk it because I had to re-connect the joystick, which means I have to switch to desktop to load the Saitek profile then back to FSX. Should have at least tried to save the flight next time...

No you did nothing wrong; I've encountered this problem as well. The "FMC Message" message on the EICAS will not go away, even after the message has been cleared in the FMC. The usual way I fix this, is to force a FMC message to reappear again, e.g. intentionally select the departure route again before takeoff, which causes "Takeoff speed deleted" to reappear. This time the message will be cleared without any problem.

I have encountered (most likely) a bug related to altitude today while on ILS final approach: The aircraft was near the IAF. The A/P modes are SPD, LOC and FPA, with G/S mode armed. The FPA is set to descend to 3000, where I wish to capture the G/S for auto land. Unfortunately the aircraft was still slightly above when it pass 3000. Then I set the target altitude to 0 on the MCP and instinctively press the altitude nob. The aircraft was at around 2940 at this time. Note that VNAV is neither engaged nor armed. Now the bug happens: The landing altitude warning appears. (I noticed this happens the instant I press the nob) The descend profile in the navigation display shows that the ideal descend path is below. I am 1000000 feet above it! (Yes, one million feet!) The A/P was disengaged and I hand flied the aircraft to capture the G/S, then re-engaged for auto land. It landed successfully so I don't know what might happen if I to GOTA then select VNAV. I have a screenshot of the approach, but I don't know how to upload it here (I suspect I don't have the privilege to do so). It shows the aircraft 957142 feet above the ideal vertical profile, while at 230 feet on the ILSZ34L approach of RJTT. I am using SP1 of the 777 by the way.

I understand your logic here and you have your point - Many simmers like to fly the route they will take / have taken in the real world - using the exactly same route, same weather, same plane. The problem here is - those planes have been done and redone many times in the sim world. Think pop songs - many singers have sung songs like "My Heart Will Go On", "You Raised Me Up", "You Light Up My Life" etc. Many instrumental versions - orchestra, piano, saxophone you name it, chances are you'll find a recording of it. If a new singer is going to re-sing those songs in her next album, sure they are nice melodies but 'classic' in the sense that they're getting old. The quality and attention to detail brought by PMDG is undoubtedly unsurpassed - the first time I sat in the real 737 simulator (the ones certified for training) I knew almost every switch and indication light in the cockpit. But 737 can only be as good as a 737. I'd love to see variations, the ones that I don't see everyday. Come to think of it - if every singer re-perform existing songs, how do new hit songs come out? I believe that PMDG has the ability to pull off a new plane that will soon become everyone's favorite.

I still have the Saitek Cyborg Evo as well! It's my first joystick and was purchased together with FS 2004, also brand new at the time. It has developed some inaccuracies over the past 10 years or so, and I have applied lubricant to it more than a few times. But if I connect it now I'm sure everything is functional ^_^ No offense to scandinavian13, I know why it behaves like that; I've flown a real plane and the real 737 simulator (the ones certified for training). The problem is, pressing "z" twice on the keyboard won't silence the A/P alarm; but mapping a joystick button to A/P disconnect, that button will silence the alarm! I'd have expected pressing "z" twice would do the job as well; they are, after all, mapped to the same function in FSX. If the into ever mentioned that keyboard and joystick commands are treated different then I certainly can't get the message; I read every single word of it many times and ended up searching the internet.

I have the Saitek X52. Yes it is a bit frustrating that the 777 seems to have its own set of commands. When you first got the plane you have to find the solution somewhere in the web. (And scandinavian13 don't blame me for not reading the intro... I did, but still couldn't get it.) The 777 is able to detect whether buttons are pressed on the keyboard vs joystick, and they act differently. For me, I mapped a button on the joystick to the [A/P connect or disconnect] function in FSX(default keyboard key is [z]). This will be the autopilot disengage key (but not the engage, you have to press the engage button on the MCP manually with your mouse!). Map another joystick button to the [A/T arm] function. This will function like the disconnect buttons physically present on the real throttle. Finally map another button to the [TOGA] function in FSX. That will be the TOGA switch physical on the real throttle as well.

I agree~ the funny thing is that in FSX flying the PMDG 777 in vc, all the displays in the cockpit (e.g. all those V1, V2, Vr, flap settings, ILS frequency small numbers) are crystal clear. When I fly in P3D with the iFly 737 they are blurry, feels like they rendered the cockpit display at a low resolution and then scaled it up to match my computer screen. If you click on the cockpit display (so now it renders in a popup window instead of in the vc) it's crystal clear again. I tried pulling those sliders in the "Performance" option of iFly but with no observable improvement.

I'd certainly like to see another PMDG-quality aircraft with analog gauges. I have the PMDG 777, iFly 737, all those come with electronic displays and caution/warning managements. I looked back at FS98 yesterday (anyone here started flying sim around that era?) and missed those 12 round gauges for the engines on the 747. It can be anything, like the old 747, or 737 classics, or 707, 717. I won't really want PMDG spend their time to make an Airbus as it feels quite similar to the 777 already. Like someone mentioned, having one plane for each function in the sim is already enough. Surely they can have all the Boeing and Airbus wide-body jets in their collection, but at the end of the day (literally, flying is usually the last thing I do before sleep) I'll just select the same plane to fly 90% of the time.

I totally love the passion you have towards making the paint the best of anything. It's what drives better than ever innovations.

Seeing this in an aviation-related forum, I keep hearing the voice in my head: TERRIAN TERRIAN!!! PULL~~~UP!!! TERRIAN TERRIAN!!! PULL~~~UP!!!

Congratulations for finding a job that you enjoy. I kind of wonder if some day my hobby will become my career, but the other way around. I am a professional developer and I have been writing codes for the past 11 years. Developing websites scaled for the cloud, setting up databases and migrating servers is starting to get a bit boring to me (but I still quite like it at the moment). I have also been playing flight simulation since the Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 era (anyone tried that?). Wouldn't it be amazing if someday I become an airline pilot flying the latest Boeing 787 onto a 9000ft asphalt runway!

I get very low frame rates with the ifly 737 as well. Low in the sense that it's much lower than a normal fps impact. If I fly the built-in F35 in the area (say, LAX, with BlueSky sceneries) I get 30 fps (I set the max to 30). But on the ifly 737 at FL330 I get the fps around the 20s, during ground taxi it can be as low as 6 fps. I don't think this is a hardware or configuration problem, my spec is in my signature and it's quite a beast. I believe this has more to do with ifly's code. Even with PMDG 777 in FSX I get 12~18 fps while taxing.

I have the same problem as well, after I attempted to install a scenery meant for FSX but faked the FSX install path for P3D. Obviously the installer has assumed FSX all along, and the install/uninstall operations are not in sync with scenery.cfg, which fortunately is not that hard to edit manually.

I've been using Windows 8 x64 with FSX and PMDG 777 for quite a few months now. FSX is sometimes unstable, but that feels more of a FSX problem, not PMDG problem. The PMDG operations center works quite well (except it does not support high DPI screens. Which is quite frustrating because I sit quite far from my 23" monitors.) I have decided NOT to upgrade to Windows 8.1 because Windows 8.1 removes many features!