Has anyone heard if any of the usual players (CS, PMDG, Flight 1) are working on a 777 for FSX? I know Wilco has one, but it's about average from a modeling perspective and I was hoping for a bit more realism.

PMDG have announced that they will produce the T7 after their NGX. They will also produce a Dash 8.

I also believe it shouldn't take that long after they get all the base code and tech for the ngx complete so after that it shouldn't take very long at least thats what I believe so please correct me if I'm wrong. :( since they will use what they learned and did with there 737 new ngx project.

I hope to see a new FSX 777 soon. I haven't seen a 777 in flightsimming since JustFlight's 777 package for fs9. The visual model and VC were gorgeous, and the systems modeling was intricate, but it was buggy. Perhaps it stretched the boundaries of fs9's capabilities a bit too much...The default 777 in FS9 was, in a word, junk. Surprised that the 777 wasn't included in FSX, though we did get a 744, as incomplete as it is...

PMDG and no one else. For 6 straight months I've been waiting for a replacement for the Overland 777 I've been using for an oh-so-long period so far.Dave.

If you can wait unti the end of this year or early next for the PMDG, otherwise you're stuck with the Wilco version.

I think the end of this year is a bit optimistic to say the least when it comes to PMDG.

I think the end of this year is a bit optimistic to say the least when it comes to PMDG.

Definitely! I love their aircraft, but they miss "deadlines" like nothing else. It's been years since they first announced they were working on a second version of the NG and we have nothing for it. Most recently, they said "mid 2010"...and right now it's not even in beta testing. On their forums they post small updates about the NGX promising more in "just a couple weeks" or "very soon". It then ends up being 6-8 weeks before a new update. Honestly, they can get away with it beause their aircraft are so good. I'll definitely by the NGX, the 777 and likely the Dash 8. However, their customer relations leave much to be desired.

Definitely! I love their aircraft, but they miss "deadlines" like nothing else. It's been years since they first announced they were working on a second version of the NG and we have nothing for it. Most recently, they said "mid 2010"...and right now it's not even in beta testing. On their forums they post small updates about the NGX promising more in "just a couple weeks" or "very soon". It then ends up being 6-8 weeks before a new update. Honestly, they can get away with it beause their aircraft are so good. I'll definitely by the NGX, the 777 and likely the Dash 8. However, their customer relations leave much to be desired.

I think the same can be said for most add-on developers out there.However the 777 will use a lot of the same resources and methods from the NGX development, and the expected development timescale therefore is going to be much shorter than that of the NGX.

I think the same can be said for most add-on developers out there.

I largely agree. Most add-on developers take a substantial amount of time to develop add-ons and often go past deadlines they set. Where I feel PMDG has really lost it though is that they have of recent (past 6-12 months) given many loose deadlines and failed to meet them. At first the NGX was to be released in mid-2010, then it would be in beta in just "a couple months". Their updates always promise more information "very soon" or in just a couple weeks and then fail to deliver. I understand and accept the "done when it's done" statement, but then do not set any deadlines at all. I think most add-on developers abide more by the no timeframe/deadline at all principle. The other add-on developer coming to mind that does give deadlines frequently is Aerosoft and in fairness they almost always miss them as well.I just don't understand how timelines can be so blatantly ignored. I'm in residency as an orthopaedic surgeon; if we book a case for 2 hours and take 9 hours we're going to lose our OR block time, if we tell you we'll fix you're broken wrist in 3 days and do it 2 weeks later we're going to lose patients. I fully understand that %@#$ happens, but do not set a deadline or timeframe if you can't make it...simple as that. PMDG does seem to have returned to this philosophy with their new release date set for 2017 (or was it 2014?), but for sometime they've been quite poor at following any timeline they set.

I'm a little confused by this thread. I've been following any information I can find about PMDG's upcoming projects, but I haven't once seen any deadlines from them.

I also believe it shouldn't take that long after they get all the base code and tech for the ngx complete so after that it shouldn't take very long at least thats what I believe so please correct me if I'm wrong. :( since they will use what they learned and did with there 737 new ngx project.

On offence but...

In good fun, of course.

I largely agree. Most add-on developers take a substantial amount of time to develop add-ons and often go past deadlines they set. Where I feel PMDG has really lost it though is that they have of recent (past 6-12 months) given many loose deadlines and failed to meet them. At first the NGX was to be released in mid-2010, then it would be in beta in just "a couple months". Their updates always promise more information "very soon" or in just a couple weeks and then fail to deliver. I understand and accept the "done when it's done" statement, but then do not set any deadlines at all. I think most add-on developers abide more by the no timeframe/deadline at all principle. The other add-on developer coming to mind that does give deadlines frequently is Aerosoft and in fairness they almost always miss them as well.I just don't understand how timelines can be so blatantly ignored. I'm in residency as an orthopaedic surgeon; if we book a case for 2 hours and take 9 hours we're going to lose our OR block time, if we tell you we'll fix you're broken wrist in 3 days and do it 2 weeks later we're going to lose patients. I fully understand that %@#$ happens, but do not set a deadline or timeframe if you can't make it...simple as that. PMDG does seem to have returned to this philosophy with their new release date set for 2017 (or was it 2014?), but for sometime they've been quite poor at following any timeline they set.

Okay, my previous joke-post notwithstanding...While I agree they are damned by giving deadlines, they are damned when they don't. Rock, meet hard place. However, I do believe that, being at the top, PMDG probably has attracted (or can at least) the top talent in the industry. Why they don't run parallel teams is beyond me. The window to get these FSX projects out is now. Flight (and perhaps XPlane 10) will change the environment somehow. Also, they still have the drag of the FS9 folks biting at their ankles.In the end, the real problem is the total nightmare of making any complex feature work with the FSX SDK. The development cycle (design-build-test-adjust) is just atrocious for FSX. There are no unified tools and debugging and testing largely involves firing up FSX, over and over, just to tweak a certain feature, squash a minor bug, or anything for that matter. This is not to say that the SDK does not come with high-quality tools, because it does, but tt must be terribly excruciating and mind-numbing to use the tools AND extend past them in ways that the basic design of FSX doesn't necessarily accommodate. How many of the developers at PMDG are full-time at it is difficult to know, but could you imagine risking your career and livelihood on being a full-time FSX developer? Madness. I am astonished that they keep prices as low as they do, but they have to as the market won't bear much more (I expect that they should ask for 100 Euros for the NGX and they won't be wrong to do so). So, while I joke (and sometimes not joke) about how long it takes to put out high-quality/high-fidelity addons for FSX, I believe I can relate to how it must be a nightmare to actually make these addons. I believe the point of departure for the plethora of "light" and "complexity simplified" and all other short-cut addons is that taking it the last mile in realism is a massive chore. Think about it, Quality Wings is "right there" and "this close" to being able to run with the big dogs (at this point, PMDG is the only big dog; LDS is far too dormant and can't coast on inertia forever). In fact, on the topic of LDS, it is probably about impossible to keep up the hours needed to make a high-quality/high-fidelity addon and put food on the dinner table. As I'm sure all of becomes too much and "day jobs" must be maintained.So, great aircraft addons are the pinnacle for many of us, but the pain of their birth must be recognized and factored into our expectations. Given that PMDG is likely pioneering into uncharted territory, it is not surprising that they'll slow down as they find new dragons to slay. Meanwhile, they must keep market interest and intrigue.So, I'm not sure your medical analogy and what PDMG are doing is apples-to-apples. While I don't mean to imply that your experiences in the OR are not without surprise, but most of what you encounter on the operating table has some precedent or you have some means of accessing expert knowledge. As PMDG pushes waaaaay outside of the boundaries of what the SDK will allow, and are yet bound by many of the provisions and mechanics of the SDK, they are really put into a pickle. There are no simple answers.In the end though, I do agree that somewhat ostentatious posts will come along from PMDG at times, followed by an assurance that Nirvana is just around the corner and then... dead silence. It must be just as tough for them as it is on us - they probably really believe they are at a breakthrough and then, Whammo, some nasty pops up its head and its another 6 or 8 weeks of grinding away. So much software development can be spent chasing elusive "will-o-the-wisp" but-this-should-work-dammit problems.My parting humble suggestion to PMDG: get a guy like Ryan to do a developers blog where details, even minutiae, are shared with the public in a one-way style. The posts are made with no expectation or promise of dialog regarding the posts. We can just look over their shoulders and see, on a regular basis, that they are indeed slaying dragons rather than lying fallow.Hey, I can dream right? :(

PMDG isnt the only big dog at all, there are others like FlightSimLabs, Level D and the Leonardo SH team among others. These other developers dont have a huge hangar of products like PMDG, but the products that they do have are all excellent. I'm also kinda tired of all the "Lite" planes out there, they dont appeal to me at all. I'm more of a system geek, systems are much much more important than graphics to me.

Why they don't run parallel teams is beyond me.

As far as I understand it, they do!