Stearmandriver

The Kodiak has become my go-to IFR platform in the sim. Running it flat out (hey, not my engine 😉) it'll indicate about 155kts. That puts you over 200kts true at 10,000ft, so it'll get places. But it also has the short field performance to take you about anywhere; great for those LPV approaches on Vatsim to little airports. It's capable in the bush too, but not as good as a Porter, so the Milviz Porter has become my go-to bush basher. Its downside is that it's slow (115kts indicated), but it's the single nicest flying plane I've tried in this sim. The Kodiak is a great do-it-all platform though, that's its appeal to me. There's a great community flight model mod floating around for the Kodiak to, if you happen to find the original a bit twitchy.

That's good news!

Control calibration isn't the issue. Most of us probably use multiple sim aircraft and even multiple sims; if we had hardware or calibration issues we'd be aware. It's behavior specific to too many aircraft in THIS sim only...

One hundred percent this. It's frustrating to me that this sim is capable of such good physics, and yet I've only found two planes that, out of the box with no control sensitivity adjustments or mods, actually fly like airplanes. The rest (even some very popular 3rd party aircraft) are FAR too sensitive in pitch, with FAR too little inertia, and very strange trim behavior that starts at one speed, changes to a different speed after a second, and is - again - far too sensitive. I tried this sim and then stayed away from it for a long time because of this - until I was convinced to try a couple mods. These proved that the sim is quite capable of very realistic behavior; I guess the default behavior is what's bad and too many aircraft devs are sticking with this? As an example, a very popular 3rd party aircraft was recently updated. I was excited to try their new flight model, and so installed the update and removed the community flight model mod I'd been using. Ouch. Crazy sensitive pitch, no inertia, and rudder trim that moves far too fast and is several times more effective than the rudder itself! Back to the "definitely wrong" mod... The Milviz Porter and PMDG DC-6 are the two I've found that should be the gold standards of flight models in this sim. They actually... feel like airplanes. Flight model mods from Robert Young, CCM, Bush Leauge Legends etc. are good too. I just don't understand how the base aircraft and too many 3rd party ones can be so bad!

Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. I didn't know that; sorry for any confusion.

In the real world there are freighter versions of the -700 and -800. I seem to remember that the PMDG -700 will have a freighter variant; don't know about the -800.

Well that's what I mean... it will (I assume, since it did even in FSX.) The only time any workaround or modification is needed is if the procedure contains an RF leg. I don't speak Airbus, but I'm not sure why you'd need to figure your own TOD? Even in FSX, once you had the procedure activated, LNAV/VNAV/dial the dirt, and click off the autopilot when you want to fly, or at least for the flare, and done. Even the freeware G1000 NXi has had fully working VNAV for a while now; as far as I know it's not something that should be a challenge.

I've never messed with carriers in MSFS (DCS is just too good in this regard, so no need), but surely if carrier templates can be created like the ones linked above, then they can be edited? Otherwise, you've kind of gone the wrong way ;). I'd probably use the DC-6 and save/resume en route, but if you want to land, maybe a flying boat design like the Goose and spend a few nights at sea ;).

I see no reason to say the PMDG 73 can't do RNP AR procedures; the only ability it lacks (on older sims, we'll see what we get here) is the ability to do RF legs. RNP AR procedures don't necessarily include RF legs, and even when they do, the PMDG box can still fly them, they just have to be approximated by a series of waypoints. Back in FSX, I created the whole series of proprietary RNP procedures that my company uses in Alaska, and the sim actually flew them just fine. Now, because of the need to use pseudo waypoints to create the RF segments, my in-sim procedures weren't a 1-1 match with the approach chart, but I was certainly able to create procedures in a way that caused the PMDG sim to track the real-world lateral and vertical paths of these procedures. Descending, twisting approaches through the Wrangell Narrows into Petersburg, or up the channel into Juneau, or curving through the Sitka harbor bowl, rolling wings level on final at 200ft... sure looked the same out the windshield anyway. I am also looking forward to RF capability, and we know it's coming. Not too important to me that it exists on launch day though... there's plenty of other flying to do, and in the end, the box can still fly these procedures from a functional standpoint.

Just not dispatchable part 121 in known or forecast thunderstorms. That's not the same as unairworthy; you can fly live 121 legs all day outside of convection. Or, you can fly part 91 legs anywhere you want. The first model released will be a -700 after all; might as well just do some corporate shuttle or ferry work. 😁 Being serious, while radar will be nice when it arrives, there aren't even any "in-game" ramifications of flying through weather right now, so... meh. It'll come when it comes. Regarding datalink weather, it does currently work just fine in the sim. Any aircraft with a G1000 has it for sure; don't even need the NXi for that.

Sounds great, thanks!

Naturally, the PMDG NG3 for MSFS when it releases. I'm sure no one needed to request that one haha... just curious if it's the kind of situation where the plane needs to release before MCE can be updated to include it, or if it's something you can do ahead of time to be ready for the release? 😉 Thanks! Love MCE, it remains the best prigram of its type by far.

I like this idea. I'm fortunate to not have needed something like it yet, but as more complex aircraft release for the sim this year, I'm sure everyone would benefit from something like this.

Yup that's the problem I'm running into. I thought I'd ask at the Marble/KDE forums but they seem pretty inactive. There must be somewhere the electronic map fans hang out online, I'll keep looking...

I'd much prefer both my real and virtual airplanes to look brand new lol. The ones I'm being paid to fly, I care less, though I'd still rather be in a new clean cockpit. The new Maxs are nice, now that the previously new -900ERs are starting to age. The -700s and -800s have been around for a while now, and the non-ETOPS -800s especially spend a lot of time in the state of Alaska which is kinda hard on airplanes... The airplane I fly most on my days off was built in 1942, with a 1943 date on its Army Air Forces acceptance placard, and it looks a heck of a lot better than this. 😁

Since the last thread got closed for a ridiculous reason, we'll try again here... At work today I snapped a few shots of the area depicted by the texture in question. Below is the PMDG screenshot posted before, and then a few real pics: My pics are all much closer than the screenshot was, but I'd say the PMDG textures are pretty good. (I don't think this area is *actually* intended as a footrest, as you can see what eventually happens when it's used as such - this was a beat-up old -800. But we all end up using it that way eventually. I think its actual purpose is just to provide a little "give" in the event you swing your shin into it, vs being a hard sharp metal right angle haha.)

Hello, I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I've decided to try to undertake the task of stitching all the tactical pilotage charts for the island of New Guinea together, and making them a map theme for LNM. An example chart can be seen here: https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/tpc/txu-pclmaps-oclc-22834566_n-15a.jpg (The others are scattered through this page, with other areas of the world available as well:) https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/tpc/ Now, I've worked with georeferenced images before, I know my way around photoshop, and I've done some simple coding/xml/web scripting. I understand this may be a tedious process, but I hope I have the basic skills needed (and a lot of time to kill in hotels). But I need a nudge in the right direction. I'm having trouble understanding how you would geo-reference such a map, that is regional and not global in nature? I see no coordinates in the .dgml, and the tutorials linked in the LNM docs all seem to reference global maps, where it appears you just align your global map with an example image. I'm glad to put in the study time to figure out how to do this... but I need to know what to study :D. If anyone has any hints, I'd be interested to hear them... Thanks!

Yup, I do it pretty much the way you said. It would not surprise me if there's an easier way, but until someone else tells us both what it is, here's my workflow ;). Right click anywhere on the map, mouse over "userpoints" --> "add userpoint here". That will open the dialog for adding a userpoint, and the coordinates of where you clicked will be there by default. Change them to your desired coordinates and click ok. You can then search for whatever you named your userpoint in the search window, or look for it visually if you know the rough location.

Happens to me too... I have to reset reactivity and extremity dead zone on every airplane I fly, every single time. These two settings no longer stick, and they're the most important ones to me.

Glad to hear the update from Dudley, but I can't say I blame them for not updating until there's something to update. I mean, why would they care if the sim community starts rumors that they're not working on GA anymore? It's irrelevant to them. When they release a product, it will be good and people will buy it so they'll have their sales then. Until they have something to sell... any community rumors are meaningless. And those rumors are automatically put to bed when they DO have something to sell. I guess if it were me, I wouldn't consider it worth my time to regularly post the same "we're still working on it" update either. When there's a plane available, I imagine we'll hear.

^^^ What Threegreen says. The footrest texture looks just fine to me. I know we all use sims differently, and I really do think that's cool - and I mean that sincerely. Even so, I've been really quite surprised to see some of the things people are focusing on in these upcoming releases... the animation of an engine spinner? How a footrest on the bottom of the panel looks when your eye is 12 inches from it? When would you ever even see these things when flying the plane like a plane? It is neat to see how varied the hobby is.

In reality, it probably does not matter from a functional standpoint whether they get their own raw "location of precipitation" data or they get a copy of the stock "radar." The only real difference is in appearance; the stock weather display is blocky and pixelated, and airborne wx radar is typically (over)smoothed. The functionally important difference that should exist is that the stock weather display isn't airborne radar at all, but datalinked radar information. This means that not only is it not live, but it's a different picture of the weather (as it's from ground-based WSR-88D sites vs a transmitter in the nose of your aircraft.) Neither of those differences seems to matter to the current stock weather displays though, as it seems to actually be live and very detailed, and exist where there should be no ground radar coverage. So if a dev were given the stock radar pic and just applied smoothing and stuck it on their screen, it'd be the same thing. Of course tilt wouldn't really work correctly but it never has in a sim, and even MSFS probably doesn't model thunderstorms well enough for that, so it'll be simulated either way.

Well... any airplane can be flown that way, especially in the sim, right? (Sure minus autoland but I'm sure you know that's rarely used when not dictated by wx.) Personally, I usually hand fly up to somewhere in the 20s, and disconnect autopilot/autothrottles on downwind or base... and when hand flying, the plane definitely doesn't do much for you. It's almost unique among airliners in modern use, that way. When I used the NGx in FSX, I flew it the same way in vstsim. It's a little tougher being that you're single pilot, but with a good voice rec program like MCE or FS2C, workable and fun.

So... you've never flown a 737 😉. But that's probably good enough to know that the 73 isn't exactly a "do everything for you" airplane...

Found a guy who's never flown a 737. 😁