Price for PMDG NGX Manuals

[DShutt 14]

I've put together some manuals in my day: The Level-D 767 Print Edition Manual; Level-D 767 FSX Manual & Tutorial ; FSLabs Concorde-X Manual & Tutorial; 6 Level-D Tutorials & Guides.I would estimate that perhaps 10% of users actually read the manuals. It's a guess, but I wish I had some way of calculating how many users actually take the time to read the manuals. I don't think it's more than 10%. I could be wrong, but I know that if users simply read/searched their manual first - even the really dodgy ones - these forums would have half the post count. Yet, judging from this thread, manuals are a requirement. If manuals aren't included, it's a deficient product. However, I would guess that at least 50% of users read the tutorials. In my experience, most users don't want to know WHY, they want to know HOW. Tutorials tell you how.Producing manuals - either in PDF or Print - is labour intensive and expensive. We were one of the first add-ons companies to create an original - no copy and paste from a Boeing manual - print edition manual. Demand did not cover all the copies.So, PMDG have created a product for those who WANT the EXTRAS and are willing to PAY? Sounds like a reasonable offering to me.Now, if we could only get 90% of users to RTFM, we could all go outside for a walk!

[CoolP 283]

Nobody is questioning the fact that those things are optional, the complains just focus the fact of the price for that option.Nobody forces you to buy a car but I think that it's allowed to judge about its value, regardless if you ever buy it or not. I absolutely agree with those who find the threadstarter's wording inappropriate and somehow insulting, but I see the intention behind it.One missing fact is the clear statement from PMDG, if those 737NGX pdf manuals will be printable or not. If I've missed a clear sentence (in this thread) regarding this, please point me to it and I'll apologize instantly. I really don't need the 3300 or so pages like the fans do, I just need some detail like seen on the MD11 or the J41, printable and coming with the product. This product (the plane!) can be high prized as it looks like some work has gone into it and is about to go in.I've found the arguments about the actual work which goes into the manuals interesting and the various assumptions which then could build the price for the flight sim ones too, but maybe some of us have forgotten that Boeing doesn't sell paper to airlines but a document with legal linking. Wrong values and steps in those manuals could cost one or more lives while we don't suffer from this fact and therefor the accountability in our sim. So this legally based price for airlines will be different then and while the paperwork surely seems like a good and quality one, I'm able to reproduce such quality at about half the costs in my friendly copyshop. See me as a frequent customer there, so I'm able to judge about some printing costs if I go for personal works. I doubt that the PMDG chose a copyshop with on demand printing but very likely the even cheaper mass production of some kind.I'm sure that PMDG will have bought some license there and I'm sure that it will have cleared up quite some money on the bank but should I really believe in those fictional real word costs, compared to selling manuals to airlines? Well, ..PMDG sells some fan ware now and while I appreciate the availability of this option, one maybe has to realize that they go for very fan prizes too. The placement in the "gifty" Christmas time could be another flesh-out fact there. This isn't a problem if the pdf only guys receive some quality too and are able to print their needed pages. Even the buyers of the funky stuff will see some need to print as I doubt that text markers go into 300+ Dollar manuals together with some (maybe flight sim related) handwritten remarks.Daryl, I think your view on customers and their amount of reading or not reading manuals is a very biased one. If one misses some things or doesn't understand them he's a proven human being with a job, a family and a hobby only. So even if he doesn't find the table on p.11, passage #2 and the marked text there, he will surely appreciate your and others work on good manuals and tutorials. So the glass is almost half full there and not down to 10%. :(

[mgh 89]

Those who think the manuals could be published more cheaply should go and do so. PMDG have put resources into publishing them and it is entitled to charge what it wishes.On the other hand, we are entitled to decide collectively if we're prepared to pay that price. At the end of the day, the market will decide if that price is right. PMDG will either make a profit on them or it won't.Flight simulation is "luxury" good, which means no one actually needs it - no one will go hungry if they don't have, no children will die because of its absence. We are talking about a hobby here and we can only buy what we as individuals can afford - others may be able to afford more.For a number of years my hobby was running a 30 year old MG B roadster. That cost me £400 about ($600) a year in tax, insurance, and testing before it even turned a wheel. So on top of that I had to pay for fuel, spares, repairs, and servicing. I'd have loved a Ferrari Dino 246 of the same era but I couldn't afford the £125,000 ($180,000) to buy it, never mind run it. Other people could, but I never complained they were beiong ripped-off etc.

[oldbear 33]

nothing about FS is 'life or death'.

You're right. It's far more important than that... :( Ian

[Chock 17,769]

Whilst I and I'm sure many others see the point CoolP is making, the inescapable fact is that printed versions are going to be expensive to produce. Of course PMDG don't have to worry about the prospect of killing 150 passengers if their fancy toy NG flies into a virtual mountain as a result of a typo in their manuals as Boeing do. So it is true that PMDG can disregard the legal implications in relation to the safety aspect of having to get a manual absolutely flawlessly correct, but they cannot disregard the production costs of creating several thousand loose-leaf pages in various indexed sections, which will have to be printed, guillotined, collated into sections by a print finishing department and then placed into ring binders by hand.Some of that process is indeed automated at the very best print companies but - especially for loosely-bound stuff - you might be surprised how much of the process is not even in this day and age. Which means it really is pretty costly to have that kind of stuff made and packaged up. Anyone can phone up a printer and get a quote for that if they are having difficulty believing it to be the case, but if you do phone a printer to find out about it, be sure you are sitting down when they quote you the price. This will be a lot of the reason why if you want some manuals such as these, you will have to pay a lot for them, so it's a choice, but don't imagine that all the PMDG staff will be riding around in brand-new Porsche 911s as a result of having charged what they had to. It's a niche product in a niche industry, and they are never cheap to produce.Al

[CFIJose 5,485]

If this hobby is a huge expense and a waste of money for some, imagine real pilots who lose PIC privileges because they can't get a medical?They spend thousands and thousands of dollars training and flying. Then, they can't act as PIC.The cost of this hobby is nominal compared to real flying.

[Mike... 7]

A PDF that can't be printed, is there even such a thing? Perhaps not with Adobe Reader, but how about another program or a PDF to Word Doc converter or something to that extent. And if all else fails, print screen indeed.:(

[steve310002 1,198]

I think a few people are being a little over sensitive here. I don't think the original poster was intent on insulting anybody. I think he just expressed himself badly. The expression 'being off your rocker' where I come from just means you're a bit nutty. It can be meant in a negative way but can also be meant in a light hearted way. I think everyone on a planet earth is a little nutty in their own way so where's the harm (especially flight simmers )? Scott probably didn't intend on insulting anyone with his post, it was just his way of expressing his surprise at the price. If you don't know the cost of aviation manuals then this might well be surprising. After all it is a lot of money, fair and square.Please relax a little. It's Christmas guys and there are people in the world who have absolutely nothing but the clothes on their back and some not even. There are kids who would simply dream of playing with a model 737 but whose parents can't afford it never mind flying one on a computer. What you do with your money is your business but I am a little dissappointed to see so many people upset over something this trivial especially at this time of year.CheersSteve

[Chock 17,769]

A PDF that can't be printed, is there even such a thing?

Yup, well sort of... when you use the full version of Acrobat to create a PDF-X file (or indeed some other applications which can write a PDF file), you can cherry pick numerous permissions for the PDF such as whether someone who opens it in Acrobat Reader can copy bits from it, or print bits etc, but the limitations will only be within Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat if you don't have the password. There are ways around it of course, Print Screen would only get you a print at screen resolution (i.e. typically 72 or 96 dpi depending on your monitor), but here's nothing to stop you from opening up the PDF in something such as Photoshop and printing it from there, you'd have to do it one page at a time unless you did a batch process, but you'd be ale to get it out at full resolution.So yeah, it's true to say there is no such thing as a document that cannot be printed by someone knows what they are doing with their computer.Al

[martin-w 3,238]

The expression 'being off your rocker' where I come from just means you're a bit nutty. It can be meant in a negative way but can also be meant in a light hearted way

Precisely! Perhaps the true meaning of the expression has got lost in translation by the time in reached our friends across the Atlantic. It's not really much of an insult to be honest.In regard to the price of the manuals... there's an old saying, you charge what the market will stand. We can only speculate as to how much profit, if any, is being made by PMDG.My advice, is if you don't like the price, don't buy them. And yes, I too would never spend that much money on a set of mere manuals, but that depends how much cash you have available doesn't it? Some people are wealthy enough, or enthusiastic enough, to be able to justify the expenditure.And so be it.

[Tierborn 188]

I think a few people are being a little over sensitive here. I don't think the original poster was intent on insulting anybody. I think he just expressed himself badly. The expression 'being off your rocker' where I come from just means you're a bit nutty. It can be meant in a negative way but can also be meant in a light hearted way. I think everyone on a planet earth is a little nutty in their own way so where's the harm (especially flight simmers )? Scott probably didn't intend on insulting anyone with his post, it was just his way of expressing his surprise at the price. If you don't know the cost of aviation manuals then this might well be surprising. After all it is a lot of money, fair and square.Please relax a little. It's Christmas guys and there are people in the world who have absolutely nothing but the clothes on their back and some not even. There are kids who would simply dream of playing with a model 737 but whose parents can't afford it never mind flying one on a computer. What you do with your money is your business but I am a little dissappointed to see so many people upset over something this trivial especially at this time of year.CheersSteve

this is funny .... " I think he just expressed himself badly."   :(

[Guest veeray]

Dunno about you guys but photocopies here are 3 cents, printing is 10 cents per page. So 300 dollars just on the pages, nevermind the custom PMDG binding, color laminates... it's actually a very good deal.

[Guest 747-fan]

I'm not so sure it couldn't have been done cheaper. Printed in the US does add a bit to the price, doesn't it?I won't buy them. Not because I can't afford to, but comparing the prices of the manuals to hardware prices, I'd rather buy an i7 CPU or something.

[FlavioSSA 44]

Buy one iPAD with the money and open the manuals in it!!!

[n4gix 4,947]

1. These are not "almost replicas" of the real life manuals pilots get - they ARE the real life manuals with PMDG branding and warnings against use for real-life flight operations. That's it, you're buying exactly what you'd get if you were a pilot going to training on the actual airplane.

Ryan, I've garnered the impression that PMDG has basically contracted with the actual company that produces the "official" manuals to produce the PMDG versions. It would seem reasonable therefore that the actual customer's cost is largely determined by what the supplier is charging PMDG for the service. :Thinking:It seems to me that it is completely unreasonable to expect PMDG to charge less than their costs... :(