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Flight Simulation

The PMDG MD-11 and flight simulation

A Brazilian VASP MD-11 aircraft is on final for the Guarulhos international airport in Sao Paulo.
A Brazilian VASP MD-11 aircraft is on final for the Guarulhos international airport in Sao Paulo.

The picture above shows a virtual MD-11 aircraft with the VASP livery over Sao Paulo. In the flight simulator, I positioned it on final for the Guarulhos international airport in Brazil (IATA: GRU, ICAO: SBGR). This MD-11 was created by PMDG.

The landscape is modelized by ORBX and is made of overlapping layers of their different products in order to achieve this final aspect. There is first FTX Global Base Pack, then FTX Global openLC South America and FTX Global Vector. The last touch is added through FTX Global Trees HD, but it is not really visible here due to the late hour.

A Martinair virtual cargo MD-11 is airborne from the Innsbruck airport in Austria.
A Martinair virtual cargo MD-11 is airborne from the Innsbruck airport in Austria.
The mountains surrounding the Innsbruck airport are used as a background for this screen capture of a virtual Martinair Cargo MD-11.
The mountains surrounding the Innsbruck airport are used as a background for this screen capture of a virtual Martinair Cargo MD-11.

The two pictures above show a MD-11 just airborne from Innsbruck, in Austria. The landscape of that region, in real life or virtual mode, is absolutely stunning. I am essentially using the FSX flight simulation platform for now, but I am always monitoring the progress made with Aerofly FS2. The virtual cloud textures for the three pictures are modelized by Rex Simulations and the weather engine used for the flights was  FSGRW.

The MD-11 is an extremely interesting aircraft to fly in the flight simulation mode but it seems that PMDG is not bringing the aircraft up to date to follow the evolution of Microsoft operating systems. It has not been modified neither to work with P3D or other virtual flight platforms. Nevertheless, if customers start expressing their interest in that aircraft, I am convinced that PMDG would allow a bit more research in order to bring that MD-11 with today’s standards of flight simulation ( https://www.facebook.com/pmdgsimulations ).

The documentation offered for the MD-11 by PMDG is really complete. All the articles written in the PC Pilot magazine on how to fly the aircraft are also still available today in only one download.