Personally I'm disappointed w/ all 737 offerings so far. Once the weapons systems are fully functioning and realistic, THEN I'll be happy. Until then, it's just a glorified air taxi.

2 hours ago, Murmur said:

Zibo is clearly better in all aspects of the flight model

Especially in the ones that are really interesting. Anyone can tune an autopilot over the years. PMDG struggles on autopilot in various ways (pitch oscillations, poor altitude tracking, etc.) but I expect them to catch up there eventually. Where I think they will continue to struggle is in rudder authority (flight and taxi), crosswinds, and simple flare dynamics at landing. I wonder how much of all that is PMDG vs Asobo. They claim they have a custom flight model in the mix somehow.

Airliners are poor judges of flight dynamics because they sit on autopilot all the time and many people will be fine with that as they stare blankly at the sparkly textures and the atmosphere at 30kft (an atmosphere that xp12 is looking better at rendering in any case). Boooring. Give me crosswinds, proper flares, and "good enough" cockpit textures.

Where is the Zibo FMS lacking? It's just fine. Don't need all the possible system failures either. PMDG is overhyped.

Nor is it as cheap as it looks. The -800 (the one that everyone wants) is another 60. I bet that business model continues for every iteration of an airframe.

I have done some test flight with them, compare with "fly with unreliable airspeed" tables, zibo 737, both w/ and w/o EFM on, are too slippery and try to gain speed and altitude with the pitch and N1 set with chart.

LevelUp 737 are slightly better when in clean config, but too much drag with Flaps 15 or 30, making landing with no ASI by numbers provide by the table much harder.

NGXu in P3D just spot on the numbers

Not have NG3 yet, not sure.

Has the new flight model been ported over to LevelUp yet?

5 hours ago, Murmur said:

Infact, this thread is about the flight model. Zibo is clearly better in all aspects of the flight model, including ground physics. I give preminence to flight models in a flight sim, but that's subjective, others may have different priorities.

 

IntoTheBlue also thinks that the ground handling and some aspects of flight are better with the Zibo. I reckon PMDG pushed it out a tad early because of the race that's on. They have promised regular and continuing updates and development. I expect the plane to improve in this respect. Whether or not I buy the 800 will depend on I this together with a well thought out EFB.

Edited May 18, 20224 yr by jarmstro

20 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

pushed it out a tad early because of the race that's on

Race? There's no competition in terms of market share. I doubt they were under any market pressure. Say that especially given it took them years longer than expected to get it working. Their only pressure was their own, on themselves. Even flightdeck2sim said he's noticed youtubers generally shying away from making direct comparisons, if even mentioning zibo at all. They are all following the money trail.

6 hours ago, Murmur said:

Zibo is clearly better in all aspects of the flight model, including ground physics.

Why? 

41 minutes ago, rka said:

Why? 

I just reported the opinion of RL 737 pilot flight2decksim, try asking him!

4 minutes ago, Murmur said:

I just reported the opinion of RL 737 pilot flight2decksim, try asking him!

"Because YouTube" - well, that's what I thought 😉

Been reading along this thread and I though to myself that I really didn't have anthing worth the post & your read to do, but I changed my mind ( not difficult 🙂 ) and here it goes...

Sometime ago I tested Zibbo, more than once. It felt nice to me but had that usual sluggyness that characterizes most airliners in XP11. There are exceptions, like those of the Toliss airbuses, and apparently the CL 650 and the Felis 742 so Alexis told me, but not many...

In MFS I now have the PMDG 737 - I can't resist Robert's call whenever he says: - Captains .... It's meant for me, I know, so I go and buy the stuff 😜

Well, I do like the feel of flight of the PMDG 737, but I no longer recall how the Zibbo feels, so I would have to reinstall it to check....

The numbers, the performance tables available for earlier 737s, and even some good flight test data can be found around the Internet, but honestly long goes the time I used to spend some good time reading that kind of stuff and performing "flight testing".

The only thing I can compare to RL, based on my experience with gliders, are... gliders, and honestly it scares me big deal when someone asks - how do they perform in XP, MFS ?.... Lousily ... 

None of the gliders I ever tested in XP9, 10, 11 and FS9, X, P3D and ow MFS satisfy me at least as much as Flight Unlimited 1 and 3 gliders did, Condorsoaring and Silent Wings... I would like to see a glider released for IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad or DCS just to be able to find how those flightsims can reproduce the main characteristics of "the feel of fling a glider"...

When I talk of gliders in XP, I did try the most exquisite mods, and even a project abandoned by it's desginer when after a long long journey he decided it was a lost cause 😕

In MFS it's even worst the way it is right now ( I am using the Discus 2c ), less the fact that some of the weather effects available since SU9 have really started to make glider flying more enjoyable and somehow even useful for training RW tasks ( specially due to the extraordinary scenery... ).

So, when I ear / read the comments of RW pilots about how close a given flight sim product behaves to the real thing, and praise it, I think to myself that there's either a serious problem with my evaluation, or all other aircraft are just way different from gliders IRL too 😕

I have finally decided to use * ANY * flightsim procedurely ! I use the best out of MFS given it's astounding scenery realism, and in glider tasks I use exactly the same software I use in the gliders I fly IRL.  That's good enough for trainning. 

In a simutaled airliner all I can ask / expect is a close representation of engine parameters, performance in takeoff, climb, cruise and descent, good modeling of all sorts of systems, specially flight managing systems, fbw, etc.... I have given up on taking the aircraft to extreme attitudes and look after a good "out-of-the-envelope" behaviour in the sim, or even questioning ground physics :-/... ( hehe, I just have to think how far from reality all of these sims behave in as far as ground physics go when in a glider during takeoff or landing... ).

Edited May 18, 20224 yr by jcomm

Give 10 pilots a bunch of planes to review they will all come up with different opinions, will all depend on which part they focus on.

5 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

Give 10 pilots a bunch of planes to review they will all come up with different opinions, will all depend on which part they focus on.

Yep cant  argue  against  that 🙂

2 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

Give 10 pilots a bunch of planes to review they will all come up with different opinions, will all depend on which part they focus on.

Yup, and that's not even taking into account how the base sim affects them either.

Like jcomm, being also more of a glider pilot in real life than with most other types of aeroplane, this is usually the area where I can comment with plenty of real-world experience to back it up, although again this is frequently influenced by one's own preferences. Since we're not exactly inundated with gliders in most of the mainstream sims (as opposed to things like Condor and Silent Wings, where they do behave as expected for the most part), it can be difficult to say what's not convincing with them in mainstream sims, but if I had to pick one thing which definitely is wrong about the way they fly in most, is that there appears to be a notion among people programming the way gliders handle which suggests they think that a glider's nose will wander about all over the place because it's not being driven by a prop, and so we end up with gliders which feel like the thing is on a very loose pivot point centered around the middle of the wings; this occurs a bit with the powered ones too.

Sadly, nothing could be further from reality with how gliders sit and ride on the air; whilst it is true that they have no propeller pulling them through the air, nor acting on the rear surfaces with propwash, and this does mean you tend to have to give them a proper bootful of rudder to get them to roll into a turn because they typically also have a lot of adverse yaw what with their long wingspans, it would be incorrect to imagine they have no engine at all. Their engine is gravity, and once they actually are belting along through the air powered by this, they don't wallow about in the way most sims tend to depict them; they really do penetrate the air in a very positive manner, it's easy to forget that that gliders have a VNE which is way higher than most powered single-engine GA aeroplanes if you stick them in a gentle dive. I've certainly gone belting past a few Cessnas in my glider in real life going well past their top speed, no doubt much to the Cessna pilot's surprise.

This was always my problem with P3D, FSX and XPlane, none of which seem to get this right; P3D and FSX were a bit too much 'on rails' and XPlane is a bit too 'wallowy' which I think some people conflate into thinking is a realistic feeling of riding on air. If you watch my first ever Chock's Hangar video where I compare numerous payware and freeware Boeing Stearmans in various sims (this being one of the powered aeroplane types I have actually flown for real), it's actually the default Stearman in MS Flight which wins out in the comparison of flight behaviours (not in all respects, but certainly quite a few), since it is the only one which can do a proper ground loop amongst other things, which certainly was a plus point for ground handling effects too. One of the worst ones in that regard was actually the freebie Stearman in XPlane, and it's why I've never really got on with that sim in spite of many people holding a different opinion on the matter.

That video was made before MSFS was released, and so it might at some point be something I revisit to throw the payware Stearman in MSFS into the mix, but certainly I feel that MSFS conveys the feeling of actually going through the air in a fairly convincing manner even though it too can sometimes do that wallowy thing. 

As with most things however, and as alluded to by mjrhealth, a lot of this comes down to what one personally tends to prefer, which is why I always cringe a bit when people say things along the line of: 'real Cessna/747 pilot etc says this, or that...', in the same way that one might say of my own comment here 'real glider/biplane pilot says this...' because after all, this is just my own opinion and preference, a lot of which is informed by, in the absence of a real seat of the pants feeling on a desktop sim, my own preference for what gives me the best impression of how something seems based on personal experience and the replication and/or substitution of the physical feedback from these experiences.

Where ground handling is concerned, I can say for sure, based on the fact that I do shove the things around with a tug in real life, that the ground handling of airliners in most sims is something which does leave a bit to be desired in terms of inertia and is not that great in MSFS. As one can imagine, there is a really noticeable difference in how this happens with say, an ATR-72 and an Airbus A330, with the small one setting off easily and the other much larger one needing quite a bit of a shove to get going and the towbar clanking away like mad as a result of this; once rolling, the smaller airliner is certainly more inclined to turn easily and wander off course, which is why, contrary to what most people might suppose, it's a lot easy to push out a big airliner than it is to push out a smaller one, not least because you can actually see underneath the bigger ones, and actually being able to see where you are driving the thing helps! The 737 and the A320 are kind of halfway between those two extremes, and of the two, the 320 is a bit easier to drive around because of its longer undercarriage which affords a better view than with the 737.

I can live with slightly ropey ground handling in flight sims so long as the take off roll is reasonably convincing and the most critical aspect of any flight - the landing - is well depicted; we are after all talking about a flight sim and not a driving about sim. The PMDG 737 NG for MSFS does a good job of these so far as I can tell although as noted, I'm more of a glider pilot than anything else, so this is just my opinion and people can and doubtless will disagree with it, which they are perfectly entitled to do. This is after all, not a 'my sim is better than yours' post; fly what you like and if it floats your personal boat, great.

Back with real airliner pilots, I was having a funny conversation on the headset with one of Loganair's Embraer 145 pilots yesterday. We were having a competition to see who could do the best 'Eaarm' at the start of a sentence, which as you know, pilots always seem to start their passenger announcement sentences with. After the push, I said 'Eaaarm, push maneuver complete, can you set the parking brake?' and he declared that one the winner. Loganair's pilots are a really good laugh. So I would definitely lend that pilot's opinion of the Zibo 737 more credence if what he'd actually said was: 'Eaarm, the Zibo 737's flight model is really good'. That's what proper pilots do. 🤣

 

Edited May 18, 20224 yr by Chock

Flight model really isn't about how "rail" or "smoothness" or "bouncy" it feels.

It's all number.

Giving X amount input, what's the sim's Y' output compare to real aircraft's Y.

For desktop simmer, it's harder because your joystick can't replica the range or force of input, and output is also very limited, you can only say like "giving 50% of full range elevator up, what's the output on flight trajectory" etc....

Modern flight model is very good about this kind of thing already, the flight model on Level-D simulator have been used for air crash investigation, they use pilot input in the FDR and see if output are same with other FDR data, to see if there are aerodynamic damage or external force like windshare playing a role in the accident, if there is none, the data is almost spot on (I can't recall which accident, but I have read it on actual accident report.)

I remember back to FS9 days, the CS757 have very "dynamic" "wobbling" "feeling" to it compare to many other "railly" aircrafts.  But once I stating to learn deeper, compare the QRH Cruising table, it's just way way off.

I now plan my flight with realworld data so TO performance and fuel consumption are very important for me, some add-ons just tent burn 15% more or less fuel, making you run dry before destination or too heavy for landing.

Also Now I fly a lot with 70s jets without AT, it'll be very painful if the cruse chart's engine setting not match the table

Both FSX/P3D and XP have some limitation to it's basic flight model, for example, P3D's wave drag doesn't change with AOA and Jet Engine only limited to one TSFC. however, with some patient, you can tweak the numbers to make it fit with most normal flight condition. and high-end add-ons like PMDG/FSL etc... they use SDK or data injection to tweak them on the fly to make almost perfect match.

Does the PMDG 737 finally have correctly sized cockpit windows? 🤐