What is your preference and why???

Dear Fellow builders,

As the work progress continues a lot of different ideas start coming which really makes me stop and think.

Probably this has been discussed from the pros and cons side before. But the question is as follows;

There are some very good 737 aircraft modeled. And all of us somehow liked it. I am talking about PMDG or feelthere. For me the main reason was more aircraft systems were modeled and it was giving me the feeling that my airplane was understanding my commands and recating accordingly. This is true in terms of flying performance (as real as it gets closer to reality - like PMDG) and/or from overhead logic or FMC programming.

However,

It is quite obvious that PMDG is not at all home cockpit friendly. Continuously denies to help the community in terms of releasing an SDK (no news about NGX as far as I know) but the airplane has some logic and flies very nice.

On the other hand pm+default airplane+open cockpits works like a charm with one exception that pmdg is still having great deal of issue on 738 model. And people try to write patches to solve the conflicts.

As a result I want to ask everyone here their ideas about whether you would feel more comfortable to fly with a default kind of (maybe modified model) write down all the systems logic yourself and simulate as you fly, not really caring whether it was supported by the airplane model OR would like your airplane to understand your commands and adjust itself based on your commands?

Let me open this up a notch more, in a completed cockpit as far as the lights and the system logic sequence works it gives you the feeling of reality for sure. But on PMDG case if your airplane is able to give you some indications and has the possibility to act based on additional commands than default airplane this seems to make me feel more comfortable and more realistic.

I really would like to take your attention to this issue from realism point of view and to learn how would you feel more comfortable.

I hope this will not cause some of us to tear down their cockpits:)

Best regards and have a very happy full of flying and building year,

barkay

Hey Barkay.

Most of us have found that the PMDG aircraft for flight model, and Project Magenta for instrumentation and overhead is the best fit.

But thats just mostly from trial and error.

Spending 30 Euros on PMDG aircraft only for the flight model is a lot of coin, but it is so worth it.

Trev

Hi Barkay,

I think PMDG is a great program, however i agree with you that PMDG has issues with customer service and their willingness to assist developers of hardware for the cockpit builders. I can understand the amount of work that is involved in writing such excellent software and you have to respect their rights to protect their hard work and intellectual property.

I too have been thinking of alternatives as my recent experience is that i have bought various hardware components that are not compatable with PMDG because of the different interface that they use, the cost of PMDG alone is costly, but now you can and (have to buy) drivers for about 75 Eur, coincedently the people who write these drivers are staff and founders of PMDG.

What i do find interesting is that before these drivers were available certain products within my sim worked ok with some elements or functions missing, however as these new drivers evolved and firmware's have been updated, unless you have these drivers, nothing works - i feel some manufacturers have been forced to support the new drivers.

All the hardware manufactures now have to update their firmware and guess what ? You cant really use the hardware with PMDG unless you buy the costly drivers to run them.

My findings are based on PMDG and FS2004 and one of the Biggies for me was a MCP that i use, it worked ok with PMDG before and i have seen several setups working with FS2004 however since the firmware update i had to pay 75 somthing Euros to get it to work again, go figure ?

This has left me re-thinking the whole PMDG setup and i am already seriously looking for other options, as much as i love PMDG it is becoming way too costly especially if you have to buy drivers at around 75 Eur ( at the moment thats $200 AUD) for each piece of hardware that you use.


Im not much of a software guru but there are alot of guys in this forum who have a wealth of knowlege, maybe we do need to look at better option or come up with a default kind of aircraft that suits all, that is compatable with everything and is affordable.

Im definately willing to try alternatives so what do you have in mind. ?

Clint

Dear Trev and Clint,

Thanks for your answers I hope that this will be a wider discussion with more contributions.

As for me I do not have really big problems with PMDG except the CDU. For the time being as my progress continues I keep on finding their unpublished offsets using FSInterrogate and solving problems one by one.

However the real idea if worst comes to worst is to find an as succesful airplane model as PMDG in terms of flight dynamics and maybe use it with PM software.

I do not know why but I really want my airplane to understand my commands and act accordingly rather than only blinking a couple of lghts and simulate thelogic outside the airplane. Maybe I am too realistic I do not know.

Thats all for now and looking forward to different ideas.

Regards,

barkay