Guys and Gals,Im not normally one for jumping into debates, but I felt that I had to say a few words.Until recently I held the post of ECP (Executive In Charge of Production) at Electronic Arts, the worlds largest most profitable software entertainment company with yearly revenues of $xx billion dollars.And guess what, when some of our products shipped very shortly afterwards we found they had to be patched. With the best will in the world and beta test teams (who were paid full time beta testers soak testing a product from dawn till dusk everyday) numbering into hundreds of testers bugs found their way into products. It is the nature and complexity of products that this happens.Now I have seen people here complaining about the testers that Robert and his crew used and having to wait for a patch etc etc etc, often getting quite unnecessarily nasty (and its only a tiny minority I know).Robert could have hired a fulltime staff of professional paid beta testers numbering in the hundreds of people. He could have also sent the aircraft out to various "test rigs" of machine configurations around the world. Yes, it probably would have caught a large chunk of the bugs (but even then probably not all). The only downside would be that to pay for all that testing, the companies who do configuration testing and all that extra overhead you would have all had to pay in the hundreds of dollars for each copy of the aircraft.At Electronic Arts a shipping game could ship a million units, at a pricetag around the same as this aircraft (or thereabouts probably a little more). Breakeven is in 100s of thousands of units at that price based around feeding a development team of say 40 developers per game, testers, line producers etc etc.The flight simulator add-on market is small and for small read real small!. The only way Robert and the gang could recoup costs with a team like that would be to charge enormous sums for every purchase.What has Robert done, he has kept his team small, they are working every hour they can to bring you a quality product. They dont have the funding resources or return on investment to cover the costs of massive beta test teams, rooms full of programmers and an office full of customer service people.So when people gripe about the guys being slow to respond in forum, or a patch is taking its time, customer service issues, etc please bear in mind that this is a very small team of dedicated people who are having to fill many roles simultaneously.For a pixel perfect (as we say in the trade) product on day1 requires a significant team. The PMDG guys have done all they can with the resources they have. It really is a matter of helping the team help you! What would you rather have, to pay hundreds of dollars or pay what you pay now and help the guys with any issues that have arisen with your assistance and patience?please cut the guys some slack, as someone who has worked as an airline pilot before moving into software I can say that this is an extremely impressive product and is a milestone in the genre.kind regardsAndrew Whittaker

amen, well said and really happy to read a post like this ;-)happy landingsJan van Hecke

And I'll fall right in behind those comments as well. Looking at the fix list published on this forum earlier today, I think the team has done incredibly well. I believe this is a product that will go from strength to strength, and when the patch is ready I think it will turn 737TNG into a benchmark addon for MSFS.Chris Kirk

My $0.02 worth--This product is setting a standard for flgiht sim addons. The DF 737 was the standard for FS2000 and 2002; this will be the standard for 2002 and 2004. Yes it has bugs. There is just no way the Beta testers could have tested every possible computer configuration. Robert and team have gone way out of their way to keep us informed, updated, and appraised while simultaneously addressing the bugs. Do I wish it was 100% perfect right now? Of course I do! But it isn't--yet. From all indications PMDG is trying their level best to take an already outstanding product and make it truly superior. Personally I think it already delivers a lot of entertainment value and will only get better (I've used some of Robert's freeware panels in the past and they were superior even back then)....Anyway, as a former corporate pilot (many years ago) based in the Pacific NW and now a ground pounder for a large Chicago-based commercial aircraft manufacturer, my hat is off to the PMDG team for a truly outstanding add-on.Bill

Andrew, Like most of the users in this newsgroup, I took PMDG at it's word. Roberts initial acknowledgement of the errors seemed to embarrass PMDG more than it irritated me.However, speaking as a long time software consumer, the software industry seems to have managed to obliterate every notion of Consumer Protection and Rights as we understand them in the USA. Think of what we have accepted as the norm:Vague and overstated EULAs that suggests that we don't own the product we just spent hundreds of dollar on but are only licensed for a limited time. Lets not mention the attempt to suggest that anything developed with this program is also the the property of the software company and the spyware that constantly tells the mothership what I am doing and when I am doing it!!!Massive downloads that follow the purchase of any software program. Optimistically called patches or services packs, these downloads seem to do nothing more than make the software work as had been previous advertised 3 months ago.Bloated and unreliable software that's more likely to give my most personal information to any malicious individual that simply asks for it. Yet every company seems to be immune to responsibility for this breakdown in my personal securityThe list is endless... Yet everyone of us accept this as the standard practice for the software industry. I would shudder to think of what our reactions would be if Sony, GE, RCA, GM or anyone of the the hundred of consumer product manufacturers would go through if they had the same quality record as software design companies. Most of us probably associate this as an apples vs oranges comparision, but at the consumer satisfaction level, I bet your level of enjoyment, contentment and general satisfaction is the same whatever product you just spent your hard earned money on.Hopefully one day the software industry will finally give quality the attention it deserves rather than talking about it constantly.Frederick

you're right that there are inherent problems with quality control and performance optimisation in the software industry.But remember that these are caused in large part by project managers and customers that don't give the software engineers the time they need (and say they need) to create a proper product!Also keep in mind that there are problems in the software you get that are due to external factors that those software engineers have no control over.When I worked on creating software for Tandem mainframes that last was no problem.There was only 1 customer who would be using it on inly 1 computer. Tandem was such a closed platform there was only 1 supplier for hardware (Tandem) and because of the intimate relation with the customer we could dictate to them exactly what other software to run on the machine (down to OS patchlevel is required).We could test the software on an identical machine we owned ourselves, thus eliminating ALL outside factors that could cause problems.Now consider PMDG (or Microsoft, or Lago, or Dreamfleet, or Corel or just about any company creating massmarket software).They're in a market where there are almost as many combinations of hardware and software as there are individual machines in use (not counting large corporate networks where many workstations would be (nearly, but not usually completely) identical).For them such strict duplication of the customer environment is not just difficult, it is impossible. They simply cannot eliminate the class of problems caused by the interaction between different hardware/software combinations.By using massive manpower and financial resources for testing (like Microsoft does, having literally thousands of people testing a major new release) the problems can be somewhat reduced and foreseen, but such testing drives up the price of the product to something that is impossible for a smaller company with a smaller market to bear as their resale price would go up to something the customers would never be prepared to pay. Would you have paid $300 for the PMDG 737 if that would have eliminated 70% of the potential problems with hardware incompatibility (note, no guarantee they would be your problems!)?As to performance/sloppy code, that's largely caused by market pressure and project managers not allowing enough development time causing corners to have to be cut.I've seen that too more than once. Development hands over a timing estimate for a new release, which is halved by the project manager.Then marketing goes out and announces a release date several weeks or months before that shaving even more time off your estimate.In one instance we were left with 2 months to create something we had estimated would take at least 5.First to go in such instances is integration testing.Quality assurance (especially on the level of assuring everything is properly documented and tested together with interfacing modules) is next.Another thing that will go is performance tuning. There just isn't time to write fast running code if that code takes longer to type in and think up.In the end you're left with code that is harder to maintain and where problems are almost impossible to track down as there are a lot of workarounds that in a properly put together system would have been implemented as discrete modules working neatly together.Such things usually lead to errors and performance problems.

Amen...Unfortunatley it doesn't stop with the software industry. Working as a HVAC design engineer I see projects with tight schedules being forced even harder on the expence of quality and optimization. I guess it is a sign of the times. :(Regards,

This is common to every business environment. Name me an industry that doesn't have the pressure of the commercial demands of the market place looking over it forcing it to make compromises. Every company has the the executives who want to go to market early or by pass this or that quality problem. Yet we penalize those companies when they do that.Look at MCI/Worldcom there is an example of a company that allowed the pressures of commercial success interfear with the accepted stadards and practices of business and accounting, yet we the consumer have punished them severely. I bet you not many people are running to sign up for MCI today. The market in the USA had developed such a keen sense of what the consumer expects in terms of quality in all areas of competition, except software. There seems to be a complete immunity for software in the market place to an extent that I find it amazing. Maybe we are so "WOWED" by all these fancy technology features in software we think this lack of quality is acceptable.However, there has to be an imparitive for change to make this work better. The only possible option is to stop buying that worthless Bloatware Release 2.0 that adds nothing to your satisfaction but includes the 200MB service pack download on purchase - But then maybe the software company will just change the terms of the license and end up making more money from the license agreeements than sales of it's software.Frederick

I said nowhere it's happening only in the software industry, but that's the industry I have personal experience in as well as the one under discussion here :)Yes, it happens everywhere.And bloatware isn't necessarilly caused by poor design or implementation.More often than not it's caused by marketing wanting too many features included (most of which though looking nice on a specsheet or in a brochure are utterly useless to the average user and would be better implemented as optional addons thus lowering the price of the core product and at the same time making development easier to implement in distinct stages by making those modules available at a later date).

Hehe ... seems that someone got a brain down here ! :-)http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/26641.jpg

As a proffesional software tester, I can only agree....This is the fact, no matter what we feel about it!And PMDG is almost the only company that actually make it absolutely right -they are honest and they inform us all the time about progress and problems.Great work, PMDG, and a really great product.Bj

Hello Sir Whittaker,your statement is acknowledged very well. Here is some of my thinking. It may not be as clear as I could express in my nativ language, but I'll give it a try.Starting with a question: How was the software industry and market BEFOR the internet so populary? There was NO way of sending or providing patches and fixes over and over again via a nice internet.I know of Microsoft how they pushed developement of the Windows NT so fast, the big team was not up to this pressure. They allowed bugs and errors in order that it could be released and shipped to IBM in time, 'cause a LOT money was at stake. After that about every other software producer made it this way. "Oh, it is easy to do fixes afterwards and send it by CDR and Internet, why should we work as hard and concentrated as in the old days where the RAM was litte and expensive and Computer technics was not as advanced as today?" Microsoft got us customers used to use a not realy error-free OS and it is SO much wide spread that OS like MAC OS 9.x and OS X.2 has about not a big market. BUT OS X.2 is the most advanced and bugless OS I know of compared with any Windows version. And Now here comes SuSe 8.2 what is almost as bugless like MAC OS X.2 and is about as userfriendly and best in performance as Windows XP pro.What does MAC OS X cost? And SuSe 8.2?????You as one out of the Game Software developement and marketing, know as well as I do that we have to know all the bugs and errors Windows has so we can and must find ways around them so the game, FS2k2 ADDOn or any other windows software works as good as possible. Without all these errors of Windows, developement would be a lot easier!As I am a MultiMedia Producer and work in the internet market - develope and create / design websites and digital adverticements, I know about the problem around all these internet browsers - old versions and new versions and there incompatibilities and problems displaying one and the same page right at any browser. It is near inpossible to design and program a website and all these nice JS and others script effects etc. so it appears right no matter what the user uses as a internet browser. And program a GUI for Windows, MAC OS 9.1 and OS X AND Linux for a c-written software what works and does the same on every PC...! How many different GUI visual programming software do I have to learn for that besides C and Assembler? Visual C doesnt work with MAC OS X or Linux.So, please tell me nothing more about sooo many payd beta-testers even cannot find all bugs. That is ####! With less pressure uppon the developer team and a wider time frame internal for develope a software you may have a better chance of a near bugs-less software. And please communicate with Bill Gates and CO that they STOP there way of pushing buggy software and OS! I am working and have worked with Windows 3.11, Windows 95, 98, 98SE, Win2k, Win 2k ADS, Win NT4, MAC OS 9.1 OS 9.2 OS X.2, SuSe 7.1, 7.3, 8.0 and 8.2I teach and train Office 95, 97, 98, XP, StarOffice 6.0, Name me any Macromedia or Adobe Software, every one I can teach and give lessons, 'cause I learnd and studied to work with them.I may be only 28 years old, but I know PCs since the first Amiga 2000 came out. I even worked with Comodore 64 and had all the first Intel 486 and all what came since then. Now I stay with AMD and I build and install my PCs myself with all the parts needed bought piece by piece not a DELL or HP you may buy in a shop. As I do PC-Doc localy and do service for whoms PC doesnt work as it should anymore and they dont know how to help themself, I come and help out for some money. I may not know ALL, but I know a lot about computers.So, there must be a way so that deveopers dont come to miss-use customers as beta-testers and dont push software into market befor it is realy ready and almost bugless. Why does about almost every software works with MAC OS when it was developed for MAC OS? Yes I know Adobe and Macromedia releases patches themself. But how many? Not realy a lot! How many bug-fixxes and service packs are there for MAC OS? I can count them with my two hands ten fingers! Can you do that with Windows???? I can not!Does it has any use to cry and compare the BIG PC Game market with FS2kx market and about the developers? NO! But has it any use to start doing yourself and finding ways to BLOCK Micsrosoft doing what they are doing and finding better ways and solutions?I know many US citicen have no a lot of time after work. Many have more than one job, more than two jobs and maby one ore two hours time at max to fly FS2k2 after work befor sleep. maybe even only at weeksends. Do you have the time to do anything against the wrong going politics of your country or even this little task doing some to get better developed software where you can run even more better developed Flightsimulator software uppon better OS?I live in europe and have about 3 to 4 hours time every day to do so and I made it a job doing so. My hobbies and I became one! I am doing my hobbies and getting money for that. Not now but some day I even become pro with the FS2k4 market...So, PLEASE find ways to HELP the developers and not cry and demand all the time but sitting there doing nothing than play the game. I use FS2k2 to learn for my PPL I wanna do in some month or one or two years. but in every case I know the developers could have done better 'cause I can do better, I demand and cry out loud.Just think about it and give an answere.My old dad, now retired, worked for a big global company for more than 25 years. Many departments and many functions. He worked with the large Computers and with Networks and PC Networks with mainframes etc. and he was NOT a software developer, just a diploma economist who learned PC and Software tech together with me and the first PC we privately bought many years ago. He learned cobal in the beginning working with the BIG-Computer mainframes etc. He now knows more computer languages than I could learn in resonable time and more ever I could learn foreign languages. I just speak german, english and Basic and Assembler and SPS, html, JS, Director Lingo, Flash Active Script. My Dad told me that software in the old days worked with less bugs and every one had to be able to fix errors themself. Now all became so "user friendly" with GUIs it kicks your socks off with effects and stuff, but can every one configure Windows XP so it works almost with no crashes etc. for a long time? I can, and I think that is needed in order to work and fly FS2k2. But not every one may know us much.

>you're right that there are inherent problems with quality>control and performance optimisation in the software>industry.>>But remember that these are caused in large part by project>managers and customers that don't give the software engineers>the time they need (and say they need) to create a proper>product!So who are the project managers of PMDG? I guess Robert S. Randazzo himself!? So...is he a man driven by himself?Concerning the "customers that don

I would agree you can test as much as you like, you won't get rid of all bugs, sepecially with such a complex product. But would EA ever release a product and deliver the manual two weeks later ? Or regarding the advertised liveries, would EA release NHL 2004 and deliver the team jerseys sometime after the first patch weeks later ?Probably not.What I find annoying in the FS-Addon industry are questionable advertisements. Company 1 announces the FMC being 100% of the real thing except Winds Aloft ("if it's in there, it will be in there") and even confirms this is their forum. What you then find in the release are missing features, some corrected in the patch (DES NOW), some not (soft constraints, etc.).Another company 2 advertises and confirms in their Forum own Autopilot routines, in the released product then you find the screwed-up Microsoft routines.Would be easy to mention at least half a dozen more examples.In the end the Addon developers hurt themselves because of increasing customer mistrust. It's not hard to find more and more stuff in fora like "I never buy an Addon anymore right after release " or "any volunteer to try out the new Addon X" ?Do I complain about PMDG ? No, not really, I somewhat expected it. In the end I'm happy PMDG is out there and doesn't produce optically fancy mainstream Airliners with lousy flight behaviour like many other developers. I have learned my lesson after spending US$ 300 for Airliner Addons. Anyone without custom Autopilot is a no-go for me in future, because only then you get both Autopilot behaviour and flight model right. So for FS2004 I'll buy the -800/900 from PMDG and that's it until someone else comes up with something unexpected. In the end the 737NG will be no doubt a milestone and that counts more than the usual waiting time for two patches you'll get with other developers, too ;)Mike

Hi Torben,Thank you for that long mail which obviously came from the heart. I hope that Robert and the PMDG gang will allow me to drift off-topic slightly in the answers that I give to your questions as you offered questions directly to me and you deserve a full reply. Rather than replying privately I will reply here as from my inbox of personal mail I have noticed that others have followed the thread.First I will give you a little of my background (incidentally Im European too, well almost, as Im British :) and a little over six years older than you :) ) I have been developing commercial entertainment software since the age of 12 (in 1981 when the Sinclair ZX81 hit the market). I left school at 16 at the end of 1984 bypassing college and further education to join a games company as a "games author" as were were called then, as we had to do the design, graphics, coding, manuals etc ourselves. Since the sales chart became into being I have been lucky in that everyone of my game releases has charted, usually at number one, either in the USA or Europe. At 35 I am still a games author (even when involved in aviation I still pushed out products), although these days people ask me to manage entire studios of games developers, many studios simulatenously in fact whilst still designing my own games.To answer your first question about bug fixes etc, yes products then had bugs too (and sometimes serious fatal ones after shipping). That side of the business hasnt changed. Before the internet and right back to my early days of shipping games on cassette tape if major bugs were found in games publishers would update and patch the game, however what would happen is that the game would be remastered for the next publishing run. Thats why you see version numbers sometimes on screen in old games. It became potluck as to which version you bought depending on which copy run your store had bought from.The complexity of games has risen steadily over the years based upon consumer demand and expectation, developers wishing to keep pushing harder for greater quality and features, hardware getting better and yes marketing issues too. (Ive never worked in marketing incidentally) Its called progress. Has the bug count increased over the years, when considered pro-rata to the lines of code in a product, not really. There is still roughly the same amount of bugs per x thousand lines of code, its just that x is larger now by some order of magnitude. The FMC code in the PMDG 737 is more complex in terms of code than two or three of my early C64 games put together and thats just the FMC. What makes it hard to track bugs in a product such as this 737 is non-linearity as there are into hundreds of thousands of permutations of state x versus state y. The possible combinations of this switch and that switch, when flying upside down on the fourth of july means that there is no single debug path.Bugs cost money, as developers we dont release titles with bugs deliberately as the time it takes to fix them is time lost from the next project and the next paycheque. In the PMDG case how many people have delayed buying the aircraft until patches? how far has it delayed the start of the 800/900 series, pushing income further away. Did Robert and each and every one of the team want you to be happy with the aircraft on day one. Of course they did its in their interests commercially and financially and on the personal level these people obviously care about their work and you their customers. Ive seen the posts here saying they have the best customer service in the business. I have a friend who Lefteris gave hours of his personal time to help install his aircraft when it wouldnt work.The team were as frustrated as everyone else that there were bugs. The volume of bugs upset them too. Robert was a man and went public on this forum and apologised for the bugs and that there were more than he was happy with and what he was going to do about it. He wasnt trying to give some glib reply, he came on the forum put his hand up and openly apologised. For me that earnt Robert a lot of credit in my book.I will continue in the next post.