In all the years I have been flight simming, testing, and evaluating big jets for the love of the hobby, a special criteria exists to grade the flight model of any particular subject. The Precision Manuals Development Group (PMDG) lineup of Boeing 747s, 777s, and 737NGs have always passed the test on quality flight modeling, pretty much taking the top spot for the very best. The competition is usually far below PMDG’s level of quality, at least on the Boeing lineup.
Now with the advent of the “still kinda new” Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020), the default airliners seemed pretty good to me over the past few years, but not great. They are loved for their good looks and ability to travel to and from great expanses of the sim globe, but not much more. The default sounds were horrendous—and still are. Luckily, that was solved by a little company called FTSounds, which has redone many of the default aircraft sound sets to something far closer to the real thing. Now in addition to that, the default jetliners recently got a makeover in terms of systems modeling and avionics updates by the Working Title company. These free upgrades got pushed automatically by recent in-sim, mandatory updates, so by the time you see this, you’ll already have the newly enhanced heavy jets.
