757 FDE - What is going on???

[Guest Phoenix5]

Phil,I can bet your house, that I was as dumb founded as you when I started investigating the claims made by Brian.I can assure you that at no time has PSS knowingly taken work done by another person or company, and used it without first obtaining the required permissions and/or paying the appropriate license fees.As you know Rob Young was employed to write the FDE's for the PSS B757 package. In all fairness to Rob, we must investigate this matter fully and wait for explanations to what has happened. I have emailed Rob regarding this and communications are continuing.I will post further details here over the next 24 hours as the situation becomes clearer. I ask that nobody posts further regarding this until such time as all the facts are known.

[miguelpp 25]

Hi Steve, could we have some information about the patch for the 757 (it

[Guest Phoenix5]

Miquel,I am sure you will understand at the moment, we are trying to sort out the issues that have jumped up and surprised us over the last 14 hours or so.The FDE's are in the workshop at this time, and there will be a release of newer files later today, and after working with real B757 captains we hope to have the VNAV climb issue fixed and incorporated into the second update, which we hope to release in the coming days.

[miguelpp 25]

Thanks, Steve.Miquel Egea.

[Guest Phoenix5]

PSS has investigated the statements by Brian and found that we did in fact use the POSKY FDE. So that everyone is aware of the circumstances let me outline what has happened and what steps we are taking to correct the situation 1- We have removed the 757 from sales and will not reopen sales until the software in question has been corrected 2- We offer our profuse apologies to the POSKY team and especially to Warren Daniels their FDE designer 3- We have contacted POSKY and offered our apologies. 4- The error occurred because in the very early days of design of the MDL for the 757, we did not have an FDE available so to test the the MDL we used the POSKY FDE. This was later removed from the files. Somehow, it later got used to test some corrections when we were preparing an update and was then used with the patch. This was unintentional and is extremely embarrassing As anyone who understands the FDE knows that there are a number of items in any FDE that will be the same for the same aircraft;wing span, length etc. However, we have taken renewed efforts to ensure that all of the dynamics themselves are unique to the PSS FDE and does not infringe on the copyright of any other author. Again we apologize to POSKY and to our customers for what is a most embarrassing incident. And we assure all it will never happen again.

[philbrown 9]

Nice to know nothing sinister was going on.Two questions:Was the VNAV climb issues caused by this error?Will this affect the release of a new/updated set of files to solve the VNAV climb issue, which you stated would be released within days?Thanks for the update.

[Brian Doney 127]

What patch was this supposedly a part of, Steven ? Surely not 1.2 ?

[Guest Phoenix5]

Phil,I am hoping that the climb issue will be addressed concurrently to the FDE revision, but there is a change required in the gauge file as well, which may slow the process down but I am pushing for a quick release.

[philbrown 9]

What on earth is going on with PSS and this FDE? The 757 has been out for ages now, and we are still waiting for an updated FDE.Then Brian drops a bombshell, and having looked over Project Open Sky's aircraft.cfg file for their 757, and compaired it to PSS's 757, they seem to be almost a carbon copy of each other.I am getting very concerned now as to what exactly is going on with PSS. Can someone from PSS make a statement regarding this matter, informing their customers exactly what is happening???

[Brian Doney 127]

You can ignore me if you want to, but I'm not going to go away...I can prove conclusively that the "they just snuck back in with the patch" statement is false.Here's the Effect section from a v1.1 .cfg:(EFFECTS)wake=fx_wakewater=fx_spraydirt=fx_tchdrtconcrete=Opensky_sparkstouchdown=fx_tchdwn, 1Dated September 02, 2006Care to try again ?

[Guest NormanB]

Brian,Since I was involved in the earlier development of the 757 maybe I can offer some insight and perhaps refer you to Steven's words.Yes, a basic cfg was used in initial development. My recollection is that this file wasn't provided by either Rob Young or myself. When changes were made only these changes were passed back, not a full file per s

[Brian Doney 127]

Norman,My beefs with PSS aside, I have much respect for you and Steven, separate from the issue at hand...I can certainly understand...early on in the development cycle, the idea of just grabbing an FDE to get something to work in the sim, you are certainly not the first to do this.My experience has always been with using a default FDE early on, but hey...Having said that, this situation does highlight the sloppiness / carelessness that has quite honestly taken over this outfit...it's just one thing after another, after another. Some things still don't add up, for instance, how is it that with the extremely long development cycle of the Load Manager, no one noticed this ? How is it that this repeatedly slipped by PSS "testers" over and again ?I'm tempted to do a point by point comparison from v1.1 to v1.2. It would be interesting indeed to find changes, as this would refute the idea, IMHO, that it was truly a mistake....why would you be working on/altering an FDE that doesn't fit ?Guess we'll see...EDIT: Just to say, that this statement:"Please do of course remember that an FDE is more correctly the binary .air file - the .cfg is generally only for limitations and visuals."is a little misleading...I can understand the general point you are trying to make, but it reads as an attempt to down play what is still a very serious issue...After all, the Airplane_Geometry section, the flaps sections, etc...are not mere visuals, and are absolutely vital to the overall FDE "picture"...

[Guest NormanB]

Brian,Perhaps you missed the important bit. I am not part of PSS so have nothing to gain here. I'm not about to explain the testing process however suffice to say that testers had pointed out the effects which were corrected. The fact they were reintroduced was nothing more than human error in copying good things into an old file rather than the other way around. I guess however that doesn't fit in with your conspiracy theory and by your own admission, beef with PSS. The public face of PSS until last year was Steve and I and continues to be Steve. Since you have no issues with us two, who is it you are out to harm?

[Brian Doney 127]

Norman,Who am I out to harm ? Heh, that's rich...Don't try and equate extremely poor decision making on the part of PSS in: 1) ever even considering using someone's freeware work, for any reason, 2) allowing an environment to develop that could allow this to be released for sale and go unnoticed for 6 months, as an attempt by me at some kind of smear...My beef with PSS is that they can't seem to pull their collective heads out of their rear ends to do literally anything right the first time...Now on to my "conspiracy", conspiracy of what ? PSS used and sold files they had no business with, no business whatsoever, none. No conspiracy theory necessary to prove that point.That it has been admitted by PSS doesn't absolve PSS of anything, there are still many questions left, some of which I've asked above.Most of which we'll never see good answers for, I'm sure.Where is this phantom FDE, by the way ? I'd be interested in looking it over...Lets see some evidence that it even exists. I see allot of obfuscation and very little supporting evidence. Post an aircraft.cfg, anything. Not in a few days after PSS has had time to cobble something together, but right now...I won't hold my breath.You may not be with PSS any longer, but you entered this thread in their defense. You wanna engage me on the issue, that's fine, but lets get down to brass tacks then, and get to the details of what actually happened. Don't waste my time with melodramatics.

[Guest Phoenix5]

Brian,You have had your say, you pointed out an issue that had slipped past us, but at the end of the day it was an honest error.We have said this, we have made contact with the appropriate people, and are dealing direct with them. You admitted yourself that it is common practice to use an appropriate FDE to test basic MDL's when beginning a project, and PSS is no different. It seems you think that we have deliberately tried to con you, well that is not true. You say we should pull our heads out of our rear ends, well excuse us for being human and making mistakes. Actually Brian if you or a representative of yourself would care to come and visit me in Brisbane, I would be happy to show you my alpha/beta files and prove that the aircraft cfg file is ours, they are all time/date stamped so I can not tamper with them.I have worked hard since Norman's departure to provide honest and reliable answers, and maybe with the exception of the first couple of weeks after the transition I feel I have been fairly successful in this. As I said earlier we have removed the B757 from the inventory whilst we sort the issue, and the FDE will be restored with the correct PSS data A.S.A.P. now I am hoping that this will include the VNAV fix, but if it does not it will be shortly after.