Current state of the 787?

What is your opinion on the 787 after AAU2? Worth the effort to dig into, or still quite basic? And how does it compare to e.g. the 737, FBW, CRJ, etc?

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Honestly pretty dang close. Aside from the missing FMC buttons/functions and not being able to drop in forecasted winds for the route everything else seems quite complete. That and a few non functioning overhead switches and system page options. You CAN add winds to the route data but on a 14 hour flight with 111 waypoints or with step climbs, no way is anyone doing that manually.

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Hm, I am no reallife pilot, but in my opinion, inertia is missing to some extensive degree. It feels too light and reacts too fast. Like a bumped up Cessna. It likes to jump up from the runway at takeoff (yes, trim correctly set). The avionics are great and very useable now.

My experience is that the avionics are better but its terrible on touchdown and goes all over the place.

Sounds like paid aircraft are still paid for a reason then :wink:

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It’s multitudes better.

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technically, you just need to add the winds (3 flight levels of wind data) on the climb/takeoff page and on the descent page. I realize, to your point, it’d be better w/ simbrief integration, but they didn’t add that on this one.

Correct, the climb and descent is easy to do. It’s the enroute winds that for me are more crucial. For climb the TOC wind in the INIT REF is sufficient enough. The descent like you said just choose 3 levels down within grids that have the most wind change between them.

It’s pretty good. I find it fun to fly although the trim is way too sensitive and does not act as a speed trim. It’s quite pitchy as well so handflying it can be frustrating, but I have learned to land and take off pretty well.

It’s like this…I enjoy it, and I fly it often, and when I go back to PMDG, I breathe a sigh of relief and know why I paid all that money.

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Just a few points to note that will perhaps shed some light to let us know if what you’re experiencing is a bug or not:

  • Presently the trim does act like a speed trim. Moving the trim switches changes the target trim speed. Then, this speed is fed into the fly-by-wire control loop to generate a trim speed error for the C*U law, generating a pitch up or down moment proportional to the magnitude trim speed error
  • Currently our control law pitch rates match the manufacturer data. However, the control column in the actual plane has quite a bit more travel than most consumer control products, so, for example whereas 25% of maximum pitch rate of 2.5 degrees per second might be a long bit of travel in a control column it might only be small amount in some devices, making the subjective feel more sensitive even if the rates are correct for the percentage of maximum control input. It’s hard to come up with a good compromise here that suits every input device so for now we’ve opted to just match the real aircraft rates.
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We did get a small number of reports of this, but it was very late in the AAU2 beta and only a couple of reports. However, we were able to replicate it now after some trial and error and get it fixed for a future update.

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I’m already very happy with the quality of the 787 and 747. FMC already pretty good. If SimBrief integration comes, and a EFB, it would be even better. But they’re fun to fly. I’m impressed with the stream of good free aircraft recently: A310, Longitude, TBM, ATR, and now this! And there already was the FBW. Hope that MSFS is also finally going to impress on the ATC/AI Traffic front.

Is it possible to import the flight plan from simbrief?

Hi,

The speed brakes on the 787 are slightly insane - like a parachute. I observed this behavior during the AAU2 beta (descent FPM in excess of 7500+ with speed brakes deployed) and saw that Flightdeck2Sim on YouTube encountered the same behavior on his most recent stream showcasing the 787/

I opened it up hoping against hope and was pretty disappointed.

If the Fenix or PMDG are 10/10 this is maybe a 5. It barely skims the surface with very little systems depth. We need one of the big 3rd party devs to make a 787 as, due to budget and scope, I don’t believe this is ever going to cut the mustard.

@Roflcopterrr That is realistic believe it or not. The 787 speedbrake is excellent at doing it’s job.

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FD2S had a 787 pilot in his chat observing the behavior and claiming ‘that isn’t right’. But the internet is the internet and credibility is always questionable. Based on your post history, I am curious if you fly the 787? If so, that’s awesome. :smiling_face_with_tear:

Are you positive you have the aircraft loaded correctly? The vast majority of systems are indeed modeled, so this is a bit puzzling. Perhaps a conflicting mod in play? You should be able to follow through with a real world FCOM or QRH and get the real world behavior you expect, for the vast majority of things. Several type rated pilots were involved in the feedback and testing phases.

Maybe a bit more description about what issues you’re running into would help us dial in whether you’re seeing the right behavior.

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I do indeed. I’d love to see a PMDG 787 as this one looks nice but just lacks the depth. Of course for many people that might be just what they want though!

The real ones are quite powerful as well; the descent rates at altitudes were tuned using the speed brakes descent rate tables from the manufacturer data, so should be quite close to those numbers.

If you’ve seeing numbers that disagree with those numbers though, we would be interested to see that and log and issue.

I’ll give it another chance then and actually try flying it.

I’m basing my opinion off having fired it up yesterday and feeling distinctly underwhelmed. It sounds like it deserves a second chance though so I’ll try it again. Happy to post feedback by DM if you’d like.

I’m in complete agreement about the speedbrakes. I’d have said that rate of descent (and more) is entirely possible with them fully out at high speed.