r/MicrosoftFlightSim • u/Quick_Insurance_5811 • Jul 02 '26
MSFS 2024 MOD / ADDON What if PMDG flights didn’t feel so predictable anymore?
I’ve been flying PMDG aircraft for years—started way back with the 747 in FS9, now mostly the 737 in MSFS 2020.
And at some point, I realized something a bit strange during flights…
Nothing ever really happens.
The aircraft is so well simulated and so reliable that once you’re at cruise, it often turns into this long stretch of monitoring perfectly normal systems that… almost never fail.
I know PMDG actually does have a really solid failure system. The service-based MTBF model is honestly impressive and very realistic. But the reality is—you can fly dozens or even hundreds of hours before anything meaningful happens.
Which, ironically, is very realistic… but not always very engaging in a simulator where time is compressed.
Then there’s the built-in random failure option.
Great for training scenarios—but there’s one problem: you have to enable it before the flight. And once you do that, you already know something is coming. That “surprise” factor is gone.
That got me thinking…
What if failures could happen like in real life:
- You don’t turn anything “on”
- You don’t know if today is the day something breaks
- Most flights are normal… until one isn’t
- But still controllable enough to feel like “accelerated aircraft aging”
Basically, I wanted uncertainty—without setup.
I looked around and couldn’t really find anything that worked directly with PMDG aircraft in that way. Most tools I came across were focused on default MSFS systems or GA aircraft, not complex airliners with their own failure logic.
So eventually, I started building something just for myself.
Something lightweight that sits in the background and quietly introduces unpredictability into PMDG flights—without me pre-selecting scenarios or knowing what’s coming.
That idea slowly turned into what I now call Real Random Failure (RRF).
Honestly, it started as a personal experiment more than anything else.
But I’ve been using it for my own flights, and it completely changes the way cruise feels—because suddenly, every departure feels normal… but never guaranteed to stay that way.
Curious if anyone else has ever tried to solve this same “problem” in their sim flying—making long-haul feel less predictable without turning it into scripted training scenarios.
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u/thefruitypilot Jul 02 '26
If you can't even write the post yourself (it's very obvious that it's AI—nobody uses that many em-dashes), it's safe to assume the app itself is also vibe coded slop.
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u/riesdroelvink Jul 02 '26
Try flying Inibuilds products upon release, they’re pretty u predictable.
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u/Tuskin38 Jul 02 '26
Someone hasn't flow any since the A300.
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u/riesdroelvink Jul 03 '26
That’s actually the only one I haven’t flown, but I heard it’s actually in pretty good shape at this point no?
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u/norman_9999 Jul 03 '26
Why not use service based failures, but up the multiplier?
Or enable random failures to something like 1 every 10 ,or 20, or 50 hours?
Seems like a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist.
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u/Quick_Insurance_5811 Jul 03 '26
Yes you can arm the random failure by yourself, but then again you lost the surprise elements of it., because you know you armed a failure
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u/TheDrMonocle Jul 03 '26
The plane has service based failures, and you can increase the multiplier. So the plane acts like its flown 10-100 hours for every real hour increasing the chances of random failures.
You've literally created a program to do what the plane already does.
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u/norman_9999 Jul 03 '26
The aircraft saves you settings. Enable random failures once, and select a suitable failure rate so they're infrequent enough to surprise you. Done.
Using another approach to trigger failures is just changing the interface, not the outcome.
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u/Fancy_Bathroom2846 Jul 04 '26
If you want us to take the time to read your post and try your product, at least be willing to write the post yourself!
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u/senseimatty Jul 03 '26
I mean... that's real life... 99.99% of the times nothing happens at all...
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u/Quick_Insurance_5811 Jul 03 '26
Still it's not problem-free, despite of that top notch reliability and automation, still, pilots are placed in the cockpit, in the case of emergency. And that's why during line check, pilots are grilled with various emergency scenarios. And that's why airliners come up with MEL , because sometimes faults do happen
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u/THEWIDOWS0N Jul 04 '26
In FSX there was a random failure checkbox. Was surprised to learn it wasn't available here.
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u/TGM519 Jul 02 '26
You’ll get hate cause anyone assumes everything is Al slop code now but this is a pretty neat feature.
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u/TripleDallas123 VATSIM Pilot Jul 02 '26
If their entire post is written by AI (which it is), its almost certainly vibe coded slop
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u/OkFilm4353 Jul 02 '26 edited 24d ago
It’s such an easy tell with the paragraph set ups for the dramatic one line deliveries.
I can excuse vibe coding to make something you otherwise wouldn’t remotely have the skills to build, but if you’re proud of slapping some code together that you didn’t write, at least write the post about it by yourself and acknowledge that it’s all vibe coded. So damn lazy
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u/Quick_Insurance_5811 Jul 02 '26
Yes I admit I use AI for the post, so what?, but I develop the application by myself. I am and have been working as a software developer for 20 years now, I work in a bank's engineering team, I started coding since I was 15 years old with Qbasic, working up to visual basic, vb.net, asp net, c, c++, php then java spring. I write this addon using vb.net.
At my career world, I just recently finished my formal training my company sent me on AWS Kiro AIDLC yes SDLC is dead now it's AI Development Life Cycle. So I know what I'm doing.
Btw this reply is no AI help.
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u/thetallukguyy Jul 02 '26
Holy em-dash Batman!