Come on ASOBO the 737-Max is bad

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23

Did you do an autoland? If so, you have to disconnect the autopilot during the landing rollout to be able to turn the plane.

24

Anyone else having a problem with the 737 Max not following the flight plan? All pages on MCDU filled in correctly but after engaging LNav aircraft does not make any turns??

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25

We’d have to see a pic of your PFD and ND to help there.

Mine just crashed me during a career mission doing an auto land with 5 knot winds/1 knot crosswind showing on the ND (sigh). There goes my rep :frowning:

26

Anyone else having issues with this plane? I just tried it and it wants to dive into the ground.

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27

Set the aircraft up properly, load it up, set the cg in the cdu, and then trim it accordingly. You will not have any problems then. That being said the trim in the current version is problematic.

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29

I don’t have a problem flying this plane at all. The FMS just needs to be setup prior to departure with all the weights loaded and the plane even helps you out by loading in the current values if you click on the empty fields (most of the time).
This can be done with the Weights and CG. After that VNAV mode will bring you up to cruising altitude or all the way down to the final approach fix pretty nicely, just might have to add in some spoilers if you are not able to decelerate easily enough on descent and pay attention when the PFD tells you to RETARD the throttles

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30

compared to pmdgs ngs max seems like ascam&trash :smirking_face::roll_eyes::exploding_head:

31

What nonsense. These throwaway remarks are getting old.
I’ve made three flights in the freebie Max now.
The plane followed the flight plan no problem in LNAV and observed height and speed constraints in VNAV too.

It looks fantastic both internally and externally. In terms of performance within the sim I’d say it’s pretty good.

I can’t compare it with my PMDG 737 as I haven’t got that in 2024 yet but I suspect performance is broadly similar.
I’ve no doubt it doesn’t have as many bells or whistles as the expensive third party models and certainly does have some incorrect procedures but for what it is - a stock plane - it’s fairly amazing.
One things for sure; If iFly manage to get their Max into Xbox, there’s no way PMDG will release one. There won’t be enough buyers to justify the development cost.

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32

I think it has potential to be really good with some fixes, flight model and trim mainly. The relevant systems for flying A to B seems to work ok, I certainly had LNAV and VNAV working for me, although I’ve only flown it a couple of times.
I certainly get a lot better framerate in it compared to the inibuilds aircraft.

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33

First off, they won’t. The iFly relies on external applications for both installation and operation of the aircraft. It does not run internally, native to the sim itself.

Second, PMDG’s most recent comments on their Max (buried inside a very long interview RSR gave with Captain Kenobi on his YT channel) are that once their enterprise-level contract work with Boeing is complete (which is related to the 737, by the way - a fact I don’t think had actually been explicitly confirmed before), their Max will be released. Given that bit of info, and prior statements going back a year now that indicated that their Max would just be dropped onto their Store without much fanfare during the 777 release cycle, I’d say it’s pretty obvious the PMDG Max was well along before they started their contract work with Boeing, and will be wrapped up and released quickly once that contract work is done. Whatever iFly or anyone else does will likely not affect their plans, as most of the necessary work has already been completed.

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34

That hasn’t stopped A2A and at least one of the helicopter devs with a similar system running outside the sim releasing on Xbox.

As to the latest commercial development with Boeing; remarkable how this news was released just after iFly released their rather good Max, no?

To be sure; RR is nobody’s fool and leaping into MSFS 2020 from day one has paid off handsomely for PMDG.
Why spend valuable development time on a project that will hit the market two years after a rather nice freebie is available and a direct commercial competitor has released a study level example.
It makes no sense when that time and investment could be spent on something without the direct competition and enjoy far greater return on investment.

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It was undoubtedly released in response to iFly’s release, but it’s also undoubted that the commercial work had been going on for a time prior - people had started hounding RSR about their Max before the 77W was released in June, and that volume increased after, given earlier statements about a Max release at some point in the 777 cycle. However, they went radio-silent about the Max, said they’d release more info when they had more to say, and that was it. All months before iFly started showing off their product. It’s pretty plain the Boeing work has been going on for months if not longer at this point, and may go on for months still. RSR’s comments say it’s 737 related and in connection with future products. I have to believe it is some kind of enterprise-level simulation work in connection with the MAX10. But that’s just an inference.

PMDG has done the work, they have the knowledge, and once their 737 team is freed up from their commercial work company firewalls, they’ll have the resources. I strongly expect the Max to come during the FS2024 upgrade cycle they’ve announced for the NG line.

Now all that said, I take strong issue with the following (and getting back to the specific subject of this thread):

The Asobo Max is - to put it charitably - not good at all. I have several dozen hours in the iFly Max (bought on release day) and easily ten times that in the PMDG NG line. The Asobo Max looks fine, it has lots of pretty lights in the flight deck but nothing about it is more than superficial. It “works” for a broad definition of “works.” It’s not even as solidly done as the WT-upgraded 787-10 in FS2020 (and it ought to be another hard question why the 787-10 in '24 is a step backwards from that '20 version!).

After having 2-1/2 years of a real, solidly-done NG, six months with a real, solidly-done 777, and several months with the iFly, there’s no way the Asobo Max can do more that sit there and look pretty in my book. Just not even close to the same level of quality or fidelity. Maybe that’s enough for some, but it’s clearly not enough for many.

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Whilst PMDG undoubtedly are capable of producing a first class Max, apart from RR dropping the occasional teaser hints to the faithful on his own website there’s actually no evidence it exists whatsoever.
You’ll notice that whilst all this important commercial work is being undertaken the 747 series seems to have taken a great many steps forward whilst they also work on 777 series.
As to the Max coming with the 737 2024 upgrade?
That seems unlikely in the extreme as iFly are no doubt working flat out on a 2024 release - for free to existing buyers.
They’ve got to get the 737 out on 2024 asap.

You’ve got the last bit the wrong way round btw; such is the size of the MSFS market, the Asobo Max is very acceptable to the many. With ten million down loads of 2020, It’s actually relatively few purchasers who are concerned about an absolutely faithful reproduction and they’ll spend on something else rather than the same aircraft twice.
RR understands this. He’s selling quality and that takes time and therefore a financial risk if you’re a small team producing complex airliners.

Why take that risk when someone has got there first and someone else has made something for free that will take away a big slice of that potential market.

37

So I spent almost an hour sitting at the gate in this plane yesterday simply trying to load it up and get the numbers to look ANYTHING like the numbers generated by Simbrief. Ugh what a mess.

The EFB UX is terrible - as far as I could see, there’ s no single field to just type in the block fuel. You have to use a slider to sort of get close. If you click into the text fields to try to enter tank values individually, backspacing to delete the contents also toggles an external camera view while trying to delete the old data! Did anyone at Asobo actually try to USE this aircraft the way a flight simmer who knows how to fly Boeings would use it? Further, there’s no obvious way to just enter ZFW that I can see. Wut? Why not?

If they want this to be simple and easy for a real flight simmer, you should simply make text entry fields for ZFW and block fuel, and let the aircraft allocate passenger and cargo weights automagically. If you want to make PAX numbers match what Simbrief comes up with, then setting pax numbers and then ZFW would allocate any additional leftover weight to fore and aft cargo fields. But as far as I can see, there’s no way to do something so simple.

Furhere, just some basic stuff: I don’t see any way to connect ground power. Is it possible? If not, you’ll run the battery down during preflight unless you run the APU the entire time, which will cut into your block fuel and mess up your flight planning.

Again, did whomever design this aircraft actually use it? Have they ever flown other Boeings from a quality developer before? Even if you don’t want to do the ground services and pre-flight weight/fuel loading in the same ways, you still need to be able to do it, and do it accurately.

I’m going to try to make an actual 90 minute flight in this thing today - I expect it will be my first and only flight in a 737 in FS2024 until PMDG and iFly get theirs working.

EDIT: Made it as far as loading into the aircraft when I realized the sim did not save/remember my livery from tests yesterday. Exited to change liveries and the sim CTD’d. I’m giving it one more good college try before punting back to FS2020 for today’s flying.

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38

That obnoxious is sim-wide. I stumbled over the same unreal UI fail when trying to edit a field when in a small plane with the EFB.

I have the same question, too.

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39

Stuff like this is such a self-own. I mean, COME ON! If you make text fields editable with external keyboards, at least do so in a way that locks-out sim-wide interactions.

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40

2024 is drowning in this sort of thing.

The “By the Community, For the Community” only works when you have a director bringing all these disparate parts together to integrate correctly.

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41

I dont even know how to calculate fuel in the EFB planner. I too sit and try shoehorn in Simbrief info best I can.
Where are you two at in the Sim usually, so I can have some company trying to wrestle with this UI and aircraft? @DrVenkman3876 @NixonRedgrave

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I uninstalled it. I needed to get away from my “every time I sat down to use it, the session turned into a bug finding, verification, reporting session.” I grew horrifically tied of that.

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43

I feel bad, Ive been following your roller-coaster ride with this Sim for a while.
I have it installed but I find it difficult to find motivation for bug-tracking things that honestly shouldnt even be categorized as bugs.

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