We are jealous.

[claviermichel 0]

Dear Mr. Randazzo,May I politely ask you to have a look at this thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...46005&mode=fullin which comments from your staff was requested on two occasions over the past three days.Please take a look at another thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=146190&page=1in which a member of your staff commented within hours if not minutes.Looking at this I am hoping there is no discrimination between those customers of yours who are more interested in cabin lighting issues and those of us who are interested in more accurate representation of flight deck equipment.Of course you may argue that your policy as described by one of your staff in this thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search is to draw a line to any further development of your products.This is a business decision of yours an I respect it. Nevertheless it does not prevent you or your staff to answer questions. It looks to me that you are facing two or more customer groups one which is interested in accurate flight instruments and flying technics and one who is more interested in aicraft cabin, toilets, repaint, cargo doors and so forth. Now both groups when purchasing your products had to pay for the development price of what the other group requested. I am sure that a PS1 like aircraft would have been developed by your company (no visual or exterior views) it would not have ahd the commercial success you are enjoying. My point is that we have for quite a long time silently accepted to bear the cost of developments which are of minor interest for us at the detriment of more useful developemts for our use. As it happens, those of us regretting that flight deck equipments have not been developed to their extreme are the ones who would certainly not refuse to pay a much higher price for these increments. So you would not loose financially. My question is why don't you ask your team to devote a small percentage of their time to:1. reply to questions raised by your customers in a fair manner,2. give enough information for others to develop addons if the time of your staff is too precious, 3. integrate - as far as technically feasible - our wishes in forthcoming products if you categorically refuse to upgrade existing products.I hope this post will not be misunderstood by any of you it is not meant to be a complain or bashing at anyone.Best regards

[Mats_J 2]

Michael,I saw you used my answer to a user in your post. I would only like to point out that I am not part of PMDG. I am a test flight pilot (beta tester if you must) for this team. I am not part of the staff.Secondly I have a hard time to understand your questions. If you want some accurate response I think you need to clarify your specific stand point and your questions.EDIT: Reading through the threads I think I now know where you are coming from. Regarding ACARS I don't think it is as easy as it being 'ported' as you put it. To really implement ACARS as it is used (though mind you I have limited knowledge of the full capacity) you would need to develop a common language, or interface if you will, for it to work with everything everybody wants. We might be on the way when it comes to the sim navdata but we have a long way to go...Finally regarding ACARS. This question pops up intermittently. I know that the staff (not me) have answered the question before, "the one who searches will find..." ;-)Cheers,

[claviermichel 0]

Mats,Thanks for your quick reply. My sincere apologies for having perceived your signature as being a PMDG one. I am not so familiar with the different level of duries within the PMDG organisation.Glad you finally understood my point(s). Clearly I am talking about the inplementation of all CPDLC elements. Is this feasable? within a PMDG product? if not as a stand alone product? could this stand alone product be integrated at least graphically in a PMDG product? etc..My other point was more business strategy related. I would like to get a better idea on which kind of clientele PMDG is more attached to. The visual oriented clientele (to put it mild) or the "hardcore" techno parano would be pilots who prefer to spend money on perfectly simulated flight instruments. But I guess these question are not of your domaine Mats as you are not part of the working team.EDIT: As far as searching through the forum posts I did. Believe it or not. However I could not find any satisfactory answers to my questions. If there is a post I overlooked which contains all the answers, I would be grateful if you could point me in the right direction.Best regardsMichael

[michal 44]

>It looks to me that you are facing two or more customer groups>one which is interested in accurate flight instruments and>flying technics and one who is more interested in aicraft>cabin, toilets, repaint, cargo doors and so forth.To show you how opinions may differ what is really important in simulation as "flight instrumentation" for some people - I for example put your beloved ACARS into the same category as "toilets, cargo doors and so forth".Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

[Guest]

Yeah I'm one of those that like both systems and asthetics maximized. I guess thats why we pay so much and wait so long! Worth it though.

[golli 0]

Hi there.I'd like to chime in here.I am really glad that PMDG put so much work into the 747 as they did. It is currently the best VC out there and she's macro-spot on, on the outside(IMO). System and Sound vice........I'd sertainly like to think she's perfect in that category, she feels like it anyway :-beerchug But how would I know, I've never been on a real 747. Ditto for the flight dynamics !! How would I know, never flown one, but she sure makes me "think ahead", so she's belivable, for me anyway.As for the FMC/CDU. The best Boeing one out there (IMO). LDS and PSS skipped a few little things that PMDG did not. So I like that part of her. I'm not aware of any airliner add-on out there, that imported every aspect of a real life CDU/MCDU.I am also glad that PMDG did not spend any time (and money) developing the 747 lower deck cabin. Personally, I could not care less if an quality add-on had a Pax cabin or not, I never go there. And wing view's ??? total waste of time IMO.It is exactly there, that I think that FSX failed. Way to much emphasis on "useless eye candy". A view from the gear bay....##### ?? etc..etc.. (not here nor there).I think that PMDG has a good grasp of their demographic/market appetite. And those new MD-11 VC videos only reaffirm my faith.To sum up my preference: 2d panel, Cabin and wing view's are things I never look at.I'm in the VC all the time, but there are some Kodak moments from the virtual ramp.ACARS system..To the thread starter, You are aware of the ACARS gauge that comes with FS Flight Keeper ?? I think that concept is better than demanding that every airliner developer import ACARS into their CDU/MCDU. Why....because, as I understand it, an ACARS system has many layers and is so complicated, all in it self.Just imagine all the demand and "issue" threads, every airliner developer had in their forums/message boards........:-hang As I understand it, a fully developed ACARS system is WAAYYY above, those often demanded and beloved weather radars, in complexity.Sure am glad that there are companys like PMDG, LDS, Dreamfleet, FS2Crew, JDT LLC and Hi-Fi Sim, to name a few.Golli.

[Tabs 2,790]

Michael,Couple things here:1. We can't possibly reply to every thread on the forum - sometimes the forum moves so fast that things are already off the front page before we have a chance to see them for one. Other things may not get a response simply because they're just discussions and not specific support requests. A lot of the purpose of this forum is for interaction between our uses, community-based help, and not necessarily that a member of the dev team will always reply to anything that gets posted. I try to do my best replying to as many things as I'm capable of or at liberty to discuss.2. Regarding ACARS - it's something we have wanted to do for a while, but for a variety of reasons we obviously haven't yet. One thing that's for sure is that we're not going to be taking a third party package and integrating or "porting" it into our aircraft. If people figure out how to use 3rd party stuff independently, that's great, but we're not going to do large amounts of recoding of our FMC for something like that - at that point we'd just as well do it ourselves. (and this is assuming the mentioned ACARS truly is accurate, which I don't have experience with) It would create all sorts of potential support nightmares too with us having to potentially try to solve problems in our aircraft with code we didn't even write ourselves, own rights to, etc.

[claviermichel 0]

Ryan,Thanks for your comments. I fully appreciate the amount of work it is for you and your colleagues to check and follow up on so many posts. As to ACARS I also better understand PMDG's position now and the kind of difficulties from a coding point of view it could generate. At least your reply has the merit to be clear and it puts to an end to a wish some of your valued customers have.ThanksBest regards

[Tabs 2,790]

I didn't say anything about wishes being put to an end lol... we're well aware this is a requested feature (along with WX radar, a 777 and all the other things people ask for here :) ) It's unlikely that an ACARS will be integrated into the 744's FMC, but it's more than possible for future products.Never say never.