Spent the past few months with the Fenix A320 and PMDG 737. Have really enjoyed learning both planes and consider myself pretty good with them both now. Looking to focus on a wide body aircraft next and curious which of the aircraft available for MSFS: Headwind A330, Salty 747, or Heavy 787 is the closest to PMDG/Fenix in overall quality and depth.
Realize these are all free and likely less developed than the excellent PMDG and Fenix models but wonder which is the best of the 3.
Any opinions?
I haven’t really tried the other two but the heavy division mod for the 787 brings more FMS functionality to the 787, along with ability to pull in a simbrief flightplan and set the performance data up for vnav, tod etc. If you are used to the boeing style 737 FMS then it will be an intuitive jump. It’s not as feature rich as PMDG FMS though.
None of them will approach the system depth of Fenix/PMDG, so there won’t be much new for you to learn.
That being out of the way, the Headwind is equivalent in system depth to the FBW A320 Stable release. It integrates their release directly and then has a few changes on top of it. It’s very familiar and stable if you’ve flown the A320. But it is missing many of the additions that exist in the development and experimental versions.
The Salty is still a little thin on system depth. Still a bug or two that pops up from time to time, like trying to switch from LOC to APPR for example. There’s a LOT to improve on the stock B747 and the Salty team is doing their best with limited time and resources. It feels to me a fully staffed team working on a pay-ware version will really be needed.
Very helpful. My thinking has been to focus next on the A330. It has good range for longer flights, nice modeling, and should get an update relatively soon. Looks like the FBW guys just released the RC1 version of .9 stable. Hopefully, that will lead to a more feature rich Headwind A330 as they seem to adopt to stable FBW release code.
Also, most recently I’ve been flying the 737 so the switch back to Airbus makes sense.
dont forget that the 787 is encrypted, heavy division is doing what they can.
Very true. Seems like team Headwinds has the most freedom (and, help) to improve the plane. Candidly, I can’t wait for PMDG to release the 777. Know it will likely be next year but the experience with the 737 has just been great. For now, I guess I’ll take the A330 for a spin.
FBW a320 is the most “Feature complete” of the 3. That said, compared to the Fenix it’s but a drop in the bucket
Salty and HD are okay. They are “VATSIM-Ready” if that gives you any clue as to it’s fidelity
Everybody has got their own opinions ofc, but I really enjoyed the 787 over the 747 (but in reality I prefer the 747-8, its just an absolute beast of an aircraft and looks great in UPS livery).
If it were me, I’d go for the 787 first for something different, its not got the system depth of the PMDG or Fenix (obviously) but I still enjoyed flying it and the modelling is decent.