A plea for some temporary flexibility on bid-flight aircraft selection

[Avwriter]

Not sure if I'm posting this in the right place, but this seems to be the most active forum, and so I hope that it will receive more attention here. I truly love this VA and its structure, but I have one major frustration that is killing the fun of it for me.

The old PMDG 744F, while once the cutting edge, is now antiquated and cumbersome to operate compared to the current generation of serious study-sim add-ons. It lacks numerous features that I have become accustomed to, and which I have come to expect. It also has compatibility issues with the Steam version of FSX, which I primarily use, and also with some of the other functionality add-ons that are currently available. Every time I fly it, I feel like I am losing a great deal of realism, that I would otherwise insist upon. Indeed, I feel like I sometimes feel like I am trying to start up and old car that is falling apart, and consequently my monthly bid-flights are beginning to feel like drudgery instead of fun. After all, isn't this the whole point of what we are doing here?

I know most of us are anxiously awaiting version 2.0 of PMDG's 744/748. I am too, but all indications are that it is still quite a ways off. At the time of this writing, it is not even in beta, and we all know how long PMDG betas can go on for. If this is out of line, I understand, but could the management please consider temporarily relaxing the aircraft type restriction on bid-flights, at least allowing substitution of the PMDG 777-200F? This aircraft is already approved for use on many GCVA charter flights. and can certainly handle any of the routes that the 744 can handle, even if it carries a bit less freight. I also suspect that a large portion of our pilots own the product.

I would be fine going back to the normal requirements once the 744 v2 is released, but I feel like this would be a reasonable compromise to improve the realism/enjoy-ability of our monthly bid operations until that time.

Please discuss and or offer counter suggestions...

[GTI1643]

Andrew, I think you just summed things up quite nicely. This VA is great and I know that the team is working hard behind the scenes to implement new features.

But it could be much better if we added a few more flights. For example, ATLAS AIR just bought Southern Air and this means we should have Southern Air 777F flights on our roster.

As for the PMDG 744F, it is VERY old and I no longer use this aircraft. In fact, the PMDG 744 v1 is no longer for sale by PMDG. This means new comers to this VA won't even be able to fly a 747 until v2 is released.

As an alternative iFly has a 747 that is easily as detailed as the PMDG 777. For now they only have the pax version released and this would be good to add to the Atlas 747 passenger operations.

With the recent changes in the operations of the real world Atlas Air, there is a host of options at our disposal such as the 757, 767-200, 737F. The downside is that we don't have detailed FS models for all of these airplanes so we should try to make the best use of what we do have.

More 777 (Southern Air) and inclusion of the iFly 747 model would be more welcome.

[John Khan]

If I could add to this,

My old PMDG 747s just would not work with FSX. It did a bit better when I un-installed the lot and just put the original 747 pax. and freight models back on, without the -8 and LCF.

I have got rid of FSX and am using P3D V 3.2. and have the iFly 747 on it. It works great and is very stable, plus as realistic as possible. For instance, you can't start the engines unless you first turn off the packst. Although it is only the pax. version at this time, it is possible to load it with pax. and freight to simulate a freighter,- and, lets face it, we are only looking at the weights of the aircraft for our sake in the VA, not what thry consists of.

This aircraft connects fine with GCP, I tried it unofficial on a short flight between Auckland and Sydney, and everything worked OK. (I don't think I put in the pirep, if it's not OK please remove it).

So, if the management will let us use this until the PMDG 747 is available, that would be great. Quite frankly I think PMDG have become a bit of a ripoff, although I will be getting the 777 for P3D, when I can afford it, as I think it is a very good sim. Hopefully the 747v2 will be as good. I still look forward to the iFly cargo versiont, I would prefer to use that.

I belonged to another VA here in Australia (vozva for Virgin Australia), who were very strict with realism in their operation, and we switched from the PMDG to the iFly 737s for the reason of reality with real operation of the aircraft, among others.

[nwadc10]

We are currently looking at the options. A decision will be published soon.

[nwadc10]

Reference this topic: viewforum.php?f=10

[Avwriter]

Wow!!! Thank you very much for responding so quickly with this temporary solution. I am sure that many will welcome this move. GCVA is the best.