I actually took delivery of my FDS 747-400 with all the bells and whistles back in February, but I didn't feel compelled to post anything here until now.
Having spent months and months ill-advisedly chasing X-Plane 10's fantastic night-lighting effects, I've finally thrown in the towel on that experiment and upgraded to the tried-and-true P3D visual platform. My God, what a difference. XP looks great at night but P3D blows it away 1000x over during the day, especially with the amazing scenery addons that are out there these days.
As many of you know, building a 747-400 sim these days is a bit of a "different animal" since most of us are powering our sim with Aerowinx's fantastic PSX software and only using P3D/XP to drive the visuals. Using Aerowinx as a base necessitated all new interface software since the tried-and-true InterfaceIT/FSUIPC link is no longer in play and, while spoolup was slow since I got in kind of on the ground floor of this development, the strides that have been made even since February are incredible. Even more exciting, the potential that's still to come in the future given the functionality of PSX.
None of this would have been possible without the help and contributions of people like Gary Oliver, Jon Boe, Pete and Steve Cos, and many others who I won't name here as the list would go on seemingly forever. These are all great guys who have my utmost appreciation and respect, and whom I'm delighted to call friends.
With all that said, here's a photo of my airplane sitting at the gate in Palm Springs prior to a flight up to Vancouver, followed by a video link of the push, start, taxi, takeoff, and climbout.
Thanks once again to everyone who's made this project possible. I am literally floating on air!
Takeoff video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwFIdUrhFoY
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