[Skybird]

PMDG's 747 is available for FS9 since years and has now been carried over to FSX.

For FS9, it is usually been seen as one of the three or four most sophisticated packages for FS9, beside the 767 by Level-D, the ATR-72-500 by Flight1, and recently the 737 by iFly.

Knowing all the mntioned titles for FS9 myself, I can only say that it is packages like this that do justice to the claim that Microsoft's software can be used as a simulator indeed. Because what Microsoft delivers in the box by default, is not so much a simulation, but a game. The big advanatge of it is it strictly modular conception. And by exchanging all the modules that come out of the box, and replacing them with more sophisticated modules for cockpit functionality, weather, environment etc etc, you can turn a game into a sim, using FS only as kind of a framework to keep all the new modules linked together and interacting with each other.

The PMDG 747 is plenty of fun, and plenty of studying, especially if these kind of addons are new to you.

This is not to reduce the fame of DCS simulations. Getting A-10 next week, and knowing Black Shark so far, I do not say at all they are any less worthy simulation. In fact Black shark still gives me more prblems to master, than any other flightsim. Those Russian systems simply are not up to my taste, and I am also not used to their handling design philosophy. A problem I already had with the cockpit of Flanker 2.0/2.5. I even struggled when trying (infeiror) moduels for Airbus simulations in FS. I like the way Boeing does system handling simply better. Plus I am used to it. Currently reading the manual (the almanach...?) for A-10, and already feeling more at home within the sim, than I ever would feel in a Russian avionics package. The way systems and their handling are designed just are more familiar to me, from other sims over the past 12 years, including F4, of course.