This Week's Sim News

Lots of little news items trickling out here and there.  Rather than making a bunch of new blog posts, for each one, I'll just collect them all and post them here:

• The PMDG 737 NGX is out.  I'll be snagging my copy later this week, when the initial stampede dies down slightly.  I guess this means they will be turning their full attention to the 777 next...
• CoolSky made a new blog post pertaining to their DC-9 - specifically, on radio navigation.  This is a highly useful introduction to anyone who isn't familiar with old-school aeronautical navigation, before the days of GPS and modern FMS units that do most of the work for us.  The CoolSky DC-9 will be true to original form, predating all of these technological advances.  Thus, knowing how to track VOR radials will be very important to successful operation of this plane.  Espen is also including a "special radio navigation training simulator" as a component of the CoolSky DC-9.  This is apparently one of the secret features he had referred to previously.  Looks neat.
• According to this post, Captain Sim is apparently looking for some 757 experts to help test out VNAV/LNAV functionality in their upcoming v4.5 service pack for the Captain Sim 757.  Bugfixes include stripping out the dependency on FSUIPC, which will make the flight model much more stable.  Major thumbs up on this one.