Haven’t had a chance to try her out…but it is interesting that X-Aviation had to race to get their 737 released before this one… 
Available (free) HERE…
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So I downloaded it and took it for a spin. Very nice for a freeware aircraft. I haven’t had time to extensively explore it, but I think it translates what it must be like to fly the 737 fairly well. The cockpit textures are a bit flat, which is where you see payware aircraft like the FlyJSim 737 stand out. The interior 3D modeling is good…not excellent, but good. Looks like default X-Plane FMS, which is kind of blah…but I wouldn’t expect a full FMS/C in a freeware module necessarily. Default map options on the PFD. I did notice an odd behavior where the compass only seems to indicate proper direction based on movement rather than where the aircraft is pointing. No virtual pilots in the external views…which is always a bummer (payware aircraft do this too…). Four nice liveries. External model looks great. Flight model feels good although I must have to map some trim because default trim didn’t work. Sounds are good, but perhaps a bit muted compared to the FlyJSim 737…to the point where I didn’t even know or feel the landing gear hit. There is also a slightly distracting over modeling of the control yoke in the virtual cockpit where small movements of your joystick result in fairly large control yoke movements that looks a bit odd.
Overall a fun plane thus far…and the price is right…! Some screens I grabbed…
BeachAV8R
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Downloading.
Is the default FMS bad enough to consider something paid? I think FMS setting up and SIDS/STARS are something that I still need a lot more time getting into on XP.
Does the default FMS even have those nav points if I went and grabbed a bunch of common departure/arrival routes?
That looks exceptional for freeware. Thanks for linking Beach!
Yeah…the default FMS is pretty bad. I mean, you can set up linked waypoints, but it doesn’t do very good at editing and it is very bare bones in what it can do. You should be able to find the waypoints for STARS and SIDS, but you won’t be able to load them as procedures, so you’d have to put them in one at a time. Or you could use an online utility to make an .FMS file and then just load it that way.
http://onlineflightplanner.org/ ← With that you can make a flightplan, export it to .FMS, then load it in the default X-Plane “FMS”…
You could look at this free plug in - I’ve not tried it yet though: http://www.x-fmc.com/
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Nice preliminary write up, Beach. You may have me to partially blame for some of your complaints. I’ve been in touch, off and on, with Pierre and Benedikt for several years helping where I can. Honestly, X-Plane has some very serious limitations and working around those limitations forced a great deal of extra work on Pierre to make the model fly correctly. The trim is on a different key map because it doesn’t work like the GA trim that X-Plane forces as a standard. As we all know, by far the most powerful pitch control on a large(-ish) jet is the stabilizer, not the elevator. Pulling and pushing the yoke makes small changes. Resetting the stab is where the work is done. Pull the yoke, trim out the pressure and recenter the yoke, drawing a straight line between the two control surfaces. The ratio of yoke displacement to stick movement feels pretty authentic to me but I haven’t flown since given a beta aircraft file a few months ago. There is a payware FMC that works with the x737 but I have not tried it.
The x737 is a labor of love for those two. They have given us a plane that flies about 90 percent right–pretty decent given the price. But without a plausible Flight Director and without an accurate autoflight that captures the subtleties of LNAV, VNAV Speed, VNAV Path, ECON, RNAV RNP, etc, the plane will be more toy than training tool.
I should also mention that the systems modeling has improved exponentially in two years. The overhead panel works pretty convincingly. And I love how I have to move the armrest to tune the radios exactly as I do at work. He modeled the sense of space (and lack of it) within the flight deck extremely well.
An FYI on this exceptional freeware aircraft, the current public beta seems to be pretty stable with the latest XP11 build and the x737FMC payware add-on. The HD liveries are just superb. Thinking about flying this for the MUDSPIKE Christmas challenge, since this is really the only time that I get go big. But some of you might think this cheating 
Get the 5.2 public beta here:
Regardless, if you are looking for what may be the best freeware aircraft for any sim, the x737 gets my enthusiastic vote.
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