First pictures of the PMDG DC-6 for MSFS!

[Bomber_12th]

As for the Starliner, I found the video of the work they're doing. Even the clip is that same mix. It's done in the style of a '50's promo film, but highlights the modern resto work. The flight deck looks to be set up like a modern airliner. There's a glimpse of it around the 3:10 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjXDWhYz9UU

Unfortunately, Lufthansa had to pull the plug on the Starliner project a couple years ago and it now sits in storage in Germany. Some of the people who had been working on the project were found to have been ripping Lufthansa off, purposely drawing the work out to get paid more. At the time the project was canceled, Lufthansa had already paid $163 million towards it, which of course is an absolutely insane amount for the work that was done.

[Tom Clayton]

Well... That certainly blows bubbles! I hope they can restart the project sooner than later. It would be fantastic to see her in the skies.

[banjoman1960]

Well... That certainly blows bubbles! I hope they can restart the project sooner than later. It would be fantastic to see her in the skies.

That will never fly again,i think.......i read somewere.......to bad

[Javis]

Hermes, Patron Saint of Vintage Aircraft (a.o) put a stop to this ill-fated and unlawful undertaking.

He would not and could not allow the internal of a Lockheed Constellation, the most beautiful propliner ever build, being disgraced by the insertion of a godless glass cockpit. Not only would it have been total madness, it would have been pure sacrilege.

[Javis]

I realize my desire for the old/new blending may be considered heresy, but I also believe that it could bring in an entirely new customer base. Get the people that are used to flying the hair dryers with their modern systems to set foot (virtually) in some old heavy iron, and maybe they'll get interested in learning how it was done before "glass" was invented.

Exactly !

But here you want to replace the "how it was done" method (i.e. steam gauges) with a glass cockpit ?.. How will they learn ??.... ( they'll probabely take up their phones and Google 'steam gauges'... )

Not only once i have been totally surprised by comments here and on Avsim by flightsimmers, and certainly not the youngest, who were asking about how to use VOR and ADF stations. For years they only had been using GPS. A total mystery to me. Back in FS5 i started with using real (but outdated) Jeppesen en-route and terminal charts, binders full of 'em. Still have them but a few years later the release of a superb freeware nav program (can't remember its name... FSNav ??...) made it all redundand. Easy does it but the use of real Jeppesen charts was a LOT more fun. ( as was 'flying the needles', luckily we can still do that)

[cavaricooper]

Jan-

We are to blame for a generation that does not revere history and hard work, rather always demands to be spoon fed and catered to. I'm with you. Let the glass PFD/ND do what it is intended to, and the Sperry and Gyrosun do what it was supposed to- and LET NEVER THE TWAIN MEET! Heck, I refuse to put a GPS in mine. SIDS and STARS are perfectly flyable with raw data reference (for now, until the FAA in its infinite wisdom starts decimating the VOR population).

We are also to blame for the fact that most of this generation cannot spell sacrilegious.

C

PS- don't forget Little NavMap (with Sectional overlay). That too does a bang up job, but even there I use Skyvector more as it forces me to "find" my position rather than rely on a pretty aeroplane symbol.

[Motormouse]

So, you mean something like this :



Personally, I'd rather turn into a real life garden gnome in charge of the dungheap then to step inside the cockpit of my beloved Spitfire and be confronted with this...

Leave vintage cockpits with steam gauges. They belong together. If you want to fly a glass cockpit choose one of the plastic bathtubs with wings. They also belong together. And plenty to find in MSFS.

Sorry Tom, comments about vintage aircraft in combination with modern instruments will send shivers down my spine (check out Manfred's C-47 in FSX/P3D to know what that could lead to..).

And particularly since your comment is here in a topic about the PMDG DC-6 which features one of the finest and most beautiful steam-gauge cockpits ever. You don't want them to go mess about with that, i'm sure.

Still, all IMHO of course.

Trouble is, a proportion of aviation rule makers prompted by litiginious lawyers have decided old aircraft should be banned from flying unless they have certain bits of kit installed, retrofitting the garmin glass cockpit stuff enables them to fit these bits of kit , and have necessary cockpit displays, wher there wouldn't otherwise be room.

I don't like it either.

Ttfn

Pete ( licensed aeroplane engineer)

[Bomber_12th]

The thing is, if modern avionics and GPS are provided as an option in the cockpits of vintage aircraft in MSFS (which I would personally love), can we please (pretty please?) have it done to actually match at least one real-world subject? Instead of having an avionics/GPS option that is completely fictional (only existing in a video game world), it would be so much nicer to have an actual real-world depiction. The old Realair Spitfire package was great in this regard. Many real-world classic aircraft and warbird cockpit modifications are done in a way that they don't really take anything away from the authenticity of the cockpit, other than, in the case of warbirds, perhaps removing the gunsight (often considered a safety hazard anyway). This is especially the case with owners who desire keeping the cockpits as authentic as possible while still being FAA-compliant and allowing for ease of operation in the modern ATC environment.

BTW, of the nearly 70 Spitfires currently flying today, the vast majority, if you were looking at them from this same perspective as below, will appear completely stock, with many of them having gunsights too, with the modern and extremely basic avionics usually hidden down at floor level.

[Bomber_12th]

[keithb77]

Hmmm....we might not be buying the upcoming AH Mustang then ... see preview at Flightsim.com
https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/conte...And-AS3x-Units

It does say they are optional...

[AussieMan]

​Think it is time we got back to what the original idea of this thread is. It is about the PMDG DC-6. Wandering way off topic with things that have nothing to do with the DC-6 but a lot of speculation.

[wombat666]

What Pat said.

[Tom Clayton]

But it wouldn't be an SOH thread if it didn't take the occasional left turn!

[Javis]

​Think it is time we got back to what the original idea of this thread is. It is about the PMDG DC-6. Wandering way off topic with things that have nothing to do with the DC-6 but a lot of speculation.

There's simply nothing to talk about a possible MSFS PMDG DC-6 without speculation. That's all we have atm, isn't it..

The DC-6 is a vintage propliner and features the perfect example of what a vintage propliner's cockpit entails. IMHO it is much more interesting to discuss a vintage cockpit in relation to modern instruments than to speculate about the price the DC-6 is going to cost us... What could be a better subject than the DC-6 to know about people's stance towards the vintage/modern instruments 'dilemma' ...

Oh, and Tom started it, not me..

P.S. and the fact that i went for a Spitfire- instead of a DC-6 cockpit as an example is because i don't want PMDG to get any ideas.. ;-)

[BananaBob]

In my honest opinion, this is all because of the C.C.C., the Coffee Cup Crowd. I don't trust them and never will, LOL.

[cavaricooper]

There's simply nothing to talk about a possible MSFS PMDG DC-6 without speculation. That's all we have atm, isn't it..

The DC-6 is a vintage propliner and features the perfect example of what a vintage propliner's cockpit entails. IMHO it is much more interesting to discuss a vintage cockpit in relation to modern instruments than to speculate about the price the DC-6 is going to cost us... What could be a better subject than the DC-6 to know about people's stance towards the vintage/modern instruments 'dilemma' ...

Oh, and Tom started it, not me..

P.S. and the fact that i went for a Spitfire- instead of a DC-6 cockpit as an example is because i don't want PMDG to get any ideas.. ;-)

Jan- LOVE IT!

[Javis]

Thanks Carl, we need to be vigilant when it comes to our pins and needles, éh ?..

Maybe good time to, on popular demand, close the glass cockpit subject but not without one last piccie here :



The PMDG DC-6 VC shows that integrating a modern instrument in a vintage steam gauge cockpit could actually work very well. I'd be quite happy with this, i hope Tom will be too.

For people who might've missed it, a quote from Mr.PMDG himself : " If you have hung around the PMDG forum for any length of time, you know by now that I am a sucker for vintage airplanes. Of all of our products, the one nearest and dearest to my heart is the DC-6, as this product represents a hard-working, classic era of aviation where the mere act of intercontinental flying was barely short of a miracle. The sights, sounds, smells of this era of aviation have long since departed the common travel scene, but our DC-6 keeps them alive by giving PMDG customers the finest Douglas propliner simulation available. "

And also : "We have been hard at work on the DC-6 of late we think you will be blown away by the improvements. I promised the team that I would do a bit of flight testing with it this weekend, so here is a quick screen grab from my desktop of the DC-6 of her awaiting an evening test flight.." ( i did not copy the screenie because it's very dark and hard to see what we're looking at)

And one last remark by Mr. Randazzo that makes me quite reassured about the authenticity of the forthcoming PMDG DC-6 VC : "And with that I am off to join my four-engine, fire breathing, smoke belching, oil dripping mistress..."

Nobody will have the nerve to put a glass cockpit into a four-engine, fire breathing, smoke belching, oil dripping mistress..

I guess we'll be sitting pretty, Carl.

[Tom Clayton]

I'd be quite happy with this, i hope Tom will be too.

(As long as the price is reasonable, that is...)

[UnknownGuest12]

I'm with Javis on this one ... that 'Spitfire' is a travesty...

Absolutely !!!

[LostPilot]

It's a good thing those Garmin units are completely optional. How quick some of you are to throw the entire plane out with even the notion of glass. From what I've seen of the aircraft itself, it looks like it might give the FlyingIron a run for its money. That said, I'm always prepared to eat my words...

[Sunny9850]

There's a real-world group restoring the last (?) L-1649 to flying condition by rebuilding it from the ground up. They're also including glass. Count me as a fan, since this is what's realistically needed in order to fly in the modern world. It also fits with my love of anything that looks vintage on the outside but is thoroughly modern inside, like the heretical practice of putting a fuel injected crate engine under the hood of a '65 'Vette. You get the beauty of the old with the reliability of the new!

Sadly that is no longer the case. The L-1649A was stopped by the corporate bean counters at Lufthansa. The aircraft was taken from Maine to Germany and is now in storage there with a rather certain future. But since the L-1649A was never meant to have it's wing removed there is no FAA approved procedure to do so. That means Lockheed would now have to come up with that....in order to make the airframe airworthy again.

The cockpit rebuild was going to be a rather tasteful mix of old and new to keep the aircrafts historic side alive as well as fly in the 21st century airspace including pressurized flight trans ocean. All of which in hindsight was just too much at once.

I would gladly pay 100$ for a MSFS version of the L-1649A .... not sure a DC6 is worth that much to me.

[cavaricooper]

From PMDG's FB page-





C

[Alan_A]

@cavaricooper -

Not yet on final but seems to be cruising along...

[cavaricooper]

SOME NEWS TO SHARE FROM PMDG-

[22MAY21] It is finally time for a bit Show-and-Tell related to Microsoft Flight Simulator



Captains,

We have been rather quiet about our pending product releases as they related to Microsoft Flight Simulator, but the time for silence has now drawn to a close. After a long period of keeping our MSFS experience to ourselves, we are finally ready to show you what the road ahead is going to look like for our product lines in this exciting new platform.

Let me start by saying that we do not view Microsoft Flight Simulator as a "port-over" process. About fourteen months ago we determined that a full, new development process would be called for in order for us to take full advantage of everything that the new sim platform has to offer. It has been a painstaking process to throw out more than two decades of experience and workflow in order to build new products for Microsoft Flight Simulator, but now that we have a few products working in MSFS I am certain that taking the longer pathway was the best decision we could have made.

Our plan is to bring our entire 737, 747, 777 and DC-6 lines into MSFS. This task is currently our highest priority workflow and we have moved resources from around the company to accomplish this task. Originally we felt that 737 would be our first product to hit the release cycle, but this proven not to be the case. There were a significant number of technical hurdles that needed to be cleared before we could push any of our glass flight deck airliners into MSFS. While this has been a painful process we believe that we are clear of the worst hurdles and what remains now is mostly just the work of development required to finish our products properly.

We are fortunate to have a very talented team that works in parallel on multiple projects at one time and it became evident a few months ago that our DC-6 had reached a point where it was ready for testing well ahead of the 737 that was supposed to beat it to release. With that realization we pushed the DC-6 to our testing team a few months ago and they have been putting hours and cycles on the simulation to great effect.

There has been a fair amount of skepticism within our customer base as to whether Microsoft Flight Simulator is-or-will-be a valid platform for the sorts of products PMDG makes. We have remained silent on the topic in part because we don't generally talk much about products early in the development cycle. We also don't like to talk too much about our development agenda prior to a development project reaching some maturity because it is important as a small developer for us to maintain as much flexibility as possible to shift resources around as they are needed to keep projects from bogging down. But this of course has caused some conjecture on what our opinion of the platform might be, so we thought it might be a good time to lay bare what we are up to with Microsoft Flight Simulator.

We are "all in" with this new platform. We have reached the point where we are certain that we can get all of our product lines effectively into the simulator, and that process has begun in earnest. Currently we are working on the DC-6 and the 737 product lines, and Vin is building out the new flight deck for the 777. We fully expect to have the DC-6 and 737's released this year, with a remote possibility of the 777 releasing as well by year end, and the 747 during first half of 2022.

For years, many of us in the development community have lamented the fact that we are developing cutting edge simulations of incredibly sophisticated airplanes, only to have them look like 1990s animations when they appear on the screen. That is no longer a reality for products that appear in Microsoft Flight Simulator. For better or worse, we finally have a simulation platform with a dynamic, living world, an incredible lighting model, magnificent atmospherics and a broad range of capabilities that will allow us to simulate our favorite airlines to a degree never before possible.

To show you what we mean, we have decided to celebrate the impending release of our first MSFS product by opening a new, official PMDG You Tube Channel.

Yes... PMDG is now officially lowering property values on YouTube.

We invite you to visit our new channel here.

As of this moment, we have uploaded the first half of the Basic Tutorial Series for the PMDG Douglas DC-6. While many of you have flown the DC-6 in XPL or P3D, I hope these short videos will show you just how more advanced the simulation is within the MSFS environment. With a modern rendering engine and a modern lighting engine, our simulation of this truly fantastic airplane is about as close as you can get to being there. We have never put much time into video promotion of our products, but that all changes now. I hope that this new tutorial series gives you a chance to see just how detailed and beautiful our products will be in the new Microsoft Flight Simulator. There really is no comparison at this point, but don't just take my word for it: Go look for yourself!

I still have another half dozen pending for the basic tutorial series, and then I'm going run an advanced series of tutorials for those who really want to learn the in-depth aspects of operating a radial engine airliner with precision. This is a subject about which I am passionate, and after flying the DC-3 for a dozen years I hope that these tutorials will really help you to see the realism and authenticity of what we have created with this product.

Soon enough, I hope to upload a preview of the new LNAV model in operation within the 747, as well as some preview vidoes of the 737 in MSFS... I'll shift focus to those once we have the DC-6 out the door over the next couple of weeks.

In the mean time- if there are specific topic areas that are of interest to you in the DC-6 tutorials, please shout out and let me know. Since I am deep into the production process for these I can easily work some requested topics into the flow of things as I progress.

Oh- and no making fun of my artwork... I'm a pilot, not an artist.






Robert S. Randazzo
PMDG Simulations
http://www.pmdg.com

[Mr.Mugel]

That is looking sooo good. Probably not going to be really cheap, but I won't be able to resist on this one. And I didn't expect this thing to come out this year at all, now it's not going to be very long after all.