UrgentSiesta

I think it's what happens when you let a biz person run an engineering company. Like I'm sure Calhoun can run Burger King or Jiffy Lube with no issue. But a company where people die if "Perfection" isn't the standard? IOW, Any engineer could grow into a great CEO, but the inverse simply isn't true.

I believe Fenix is the better example of a fresh blood payware dev 🙂 No ill wishes to PMDG, but yeah, if iFly can deliver a Hi Fi 73Max for MSFS before PMDG will, then more power to them! Just my personal 2cts: I'd way rather have a Hi Fi 747 than yet-another-737-variant. I'm set in re the 73x's.

I love the Streagle myself - stunningly well done. And as long as you don't fly the 737 like a Strike Eagle you'll be very satisfied. 😁 If you're ever looking for a similar quality GA aircraft, go no further than the A2A Sims Comanche.

At $36, the 736 is without a doubt the best bang for your buck of any airliner addon in any sim. Heck, it might be for any addon in any sim... Also a bit of a sports car as far as airliners go. You can get it into and out of a great many general aviation fields 😁 I'm will undoubtedly be handing more money to PMDG when the MSFS 777 releases. I never got it for P3D because the Queen of the Skies is my preferred sky scraper. So it should tide me over til the Queen arrives in MSFS any year now 🤙

I can't speak (entirely) for the other guy, but I find it very interesting to re-fly historical military missions, especially in an unprecedentedly realistic sim like MSFS. Generally, low level missions are the most interesting to me, since they are the most challenging to fly (especially if you're navigating Old School pilotage). AFAIK it's not at all about fantasizing about death and destruction, it's about being able to visualize & better understand what happened, and how it somewhat must have been for all the young men of all sides who flew those missions all over the world. When I've done it, and looked down at a(ny) city from a bombardiers perspective, it genuinely fills me with sadness to think of the horrors experienced by those below. All the more so considering the nearly singular failure of strategic bombing of civilian population centers to hasten the end of wars.

They are definitely an "acquired addiction" 🙂 The modern ones with SAS/FBW can be quite docile (such as the HPG H160). Most important thing to remember when flying them is to never, Never, NEVER rush things. 2nd most important is with helos you have to anticipate rather than react.

In re the "standard in-game" flight model, there are basically TWO: one is a significantly rewritten development of the FM that came from FSX/P3D. The vast majority of MSFS addons (especially airliners) use this. And as noted elsewhere, highly competent developers can make a convincing FM using it. There is also the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) / Soft Body Simulation / New Propellor Simulation modeling. (Note that MSFS' CFD implementation is greatly streamlined to allow real-time performance on a desktop PC). This is somewhat similar to XPs BET (Blade Element Theory). CFD delivers (IMHO) superior flight characteristics to the default MSFS flight engine - when it's done well. In re the 737, FlightDeck2Sim (an IRL 737 Captain and IP who prefers the XP Zibo 738) has had high praise for the flight model of the PMDG 737. IIRC, he says one of his very few AND minor critiques is the way the PMDG handles on short final thru touchdown. And he did say the difference isn't something big enough to dissuade anyone from choosing one over the other. Interestingly, iniBuilds, a highly praised dev, and one of the very few to move from X-Plane to MSFS, has said that their A310 (a free Default but High Fidelity MSFS bird) performs & handles within just a few percentage points of their version for X-Plane. They credit this to their use of MSFS' CFD. I presume this extends also to their more recent payware A300 for MSFS. There's also an IRL airline Captain around here who has high praise for the Default 747-8 flight model. It, and the 787, also got significant systems upgrades during the AAU upgrade program.

Well said.

Not if you pay for it - like you do with your Flight Sim or Addon 😉

IIRC, I think it was somewhat the reverse: Asobo built a "digital twin" world sim, and they were using a TBM to show it off, and then somebody took it to MS and the (now obvious) conclusion was reached...

Good thoughts. I think you're right in re AAA title-ish sims/games that want to appeal to an extremely broad swath of potential simmers/players. But, as with Laminar Research, 1CGS (IL2), Eagle Dynamics (DCSW), AeroFly, Boundless Dynamics (VTOL VR) and even BMS (torch bearers for the modernization of Falcon 4.0), we see that small(er) shops can still make first rate sims - when they aren't trying to be all things to all people. eta: funny thing that Prepar3D didn't occur to me, but it's another example of a sim that's (slowly) getting better over time. Kind of an edge case due to their core audience, tho... And we see that they can keep substantially improving their already genuinely good sims, and (thanks to market pressure from MSFS) at a rapid rate, too. And let us not forget that though MS/Asobo have/are delivering unprecedented improvements in general purpose flight sims, there are areas / features that they still need to improve upon, or outright add to the sim. I guess in terms of "billons and billions" (cue Sagan 😉 ) being required, I think a lot of that has to do with their chosen value proposition and modus operandi for the sim itself.

Reminds me of WW1 Razzle Dazzle, or the WW2 war weary formation ships (ex-bombers) 🙂

v2020 was, and remains, Next Gen. v2024 is a huge upgrade built on the next gen of v2020. Kinda like Windows 11 is still NT at it's core 😉

Apple gets most of their "flight sim" related stuff from Google. Apple also stopped innovating a long time ago, turned themselves into a music and movie publisher, and then turned their back on their business customers by summarily ending their business services & product lines. So while they have metric tons of cash, they don't have the vision for new ventures (which is what you get with a guy like Cook). Google's also highly focused on consumer entertainment like Apple, ad revenue, etc. And their biz services divisions are doing rather well, too. But they can't seem to find their a** with both hands when it comes to gaming, though they have all the other pieces/parts for flight sim, unlike Apple. And Microsoft is SURELY billing Xbox & Asobo for ALL the services used by MSFS. There are still tremendous infrastructure costs and lots of salaries that don't work "at" MSFS, not to mention the still independent subcontractors like Blackshark AI, et al. I.e., in a company like MS, there is NO FREE LUNCH. What makes Microsoft the "right" company is that they have an already well established AND successful gaming division (that heretofore had no interest in flight sim). That is, from FL30, more of a fortunate coincidence than anything. Love what they're doing, but they have a looooooong history of screwing over their customers, vendors, partners, acquisitions, et al, as well as a string of unforced errors. All of which means we should enjoy what we're paying them for, but stop short of adulation.

I went back to my home town where I hadn't been for decades and found THAT house 😉 Though I had done the same thing in X-Plane, the photoreal made all the difference in terms of nostalgia.

I mean, we have to respect the fact that they are seemingly satisfied with their current revenue... OTOH, one of the key premises of MSFS v2020 was/is that the market is order(s) of magnitude larger than FSX/P3D, along with the fact that many "gamers" are reluctant to consider the high prices of Tier 1 addons. I've never seen a bad review of Mad Dog (other than textures), so they might want to dip their toe in the lower price pool via a sale now and again. Even if it's just around major holidays, etc. It's just kinda hard to consider spending $80 on an addon when I can get Fenix for $60 and PMDG for $35. And yeah, I'm a "casual" when it comes to airliners 🙂

How many times have I told you: DON'T wash the MD 500 in hot water! 😁

If I had to guess, the whole, "oh, and you need to rebuild whatever airport decides to accommodate A380s" was a key part of the downfall. IIRC, that's also a significant part of the reason the 777x has folding wing tips.

It's recently morphed into an official iniBuilds project. And will now be payware (which is fine with me).

And rather definitively, at that: "Before the rumors go wild... we are not doing a 717. I ll close this topic to prevent spread of misinformation"

Gulfstream is "uncooperative" when it comes to flight sim. There are a couple out there for X-Plane that have pseudonyms, but I feel like Robert's too much a stickler to go the route of a "gray market" addon.

My dad said that of all the 'liners he flew the 727 was his all time favorite. And being a former USN Aviator, he knew how to have some "fun" with it 😉 I have the extremely immersive FJS 727 from X-Plane - it's a GREAT addon. Hope to see someone do the 727 justice in MSFS asap.

A little newer than the '50s 🙂 Larry the Cable Guy

Well, you're in luck! Just get the 737-700, choose the BBJ and you're off on your next >6,000 mi flight! 😉 Not quite as fast, of course, but you'd have to step up to the Falcon 10 to get longer range. Just kidding (sorta). It'd be great to have a really fast biz jet with long legs. 🙂

") the planform wing of a C172 being the base model for the geometry of a wing for any fixed wing aircraft" I was reading thru the devs guide the other day and wing sweep is a parameter that can be set. Afaik, though, unconventional planforms like canards, deltas, and swing wing (variable geometry) aren't.