YAMD-Yet Another Megascenery Delay

[Guest sj3]

I don't want to be negative as this is such a great hobby and such an amazing forum, but what the heck is going on over at PC Aviator? That's 3 or 4 delays now since the initial release date on 15-Oct. Currently, they're showing 12/29 on their site which works out to over a 6-week slip. This is a huge slip to most professional s/w development companies. I have first-hand knowledge and experience in business s/w development and none of the company's I've worked for (except Cisco) would survive schedule outages like this. Does anyone know if the issues are business-related or technical? They've already done it once with LA/San Diego which makes this kind of prediction error all the more suprising. I guess I should just forget about ever getting it; that way, I can be pleasantly surprised when/if it arrives! Although I give them my credit-card number back in early October, my understanding is that it's not charged until it ships.Just looking for anyone with info and thanks much. This place is now my all-time favorite information highway stop.I guess PC Aviator should take a lesson from PMDG in announcing/not announcing release dates?sjKEWR

[Guest allcott]

Six weeks is absolutely NOTHING in software development circles!Yes, you're right, they should stop announcing release dates - it's ready when its ready. Would you rather it NOW, or rather it RIGHT, considering you'll be spending your hard-earned? I'm happy to wait, but then I also won't be the first to buy. Just in case!Allcott

[Dark Moment 0]

They're probably reworking the entire thing; there were so many groans and moans in these forums about their preview screenshots that it probably frightened the daylights out of them, poor chaps.So now there's more criticism ... oh dear. I do hope you wrote to them first for an explanation before posting here. That would be the decent thing to do, Shirley ... I mean, surely.I live in Long Island myself and would love to see this area rendered well, so I'd rather they took their time to get it right rather than rush to meet proclaimed release dates (silly, those); but I hope it's not too much of a leviathan to load. If it takes as long to load as it takes me to get home on the Long Island Expressway, there's little point me using it on my dinosaur of a system (over a year old, now).Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

[Guest sj3]

Dark: You know, if there is anyone's advice I would take here, it would be yours as I've found your posts both entertaining and informative. I will write them to see. I have a feeling that the issue(s) may not be technical, but rather business related and possibly juicy, which is why I posted the question if anyone here know's anything about the situation. I'll post anything I can find out. Their policy of not charging before shipping is great. Also, I really liked the FSTV interview with the founder/ceo of PC Aviator. He seemed like a good guy and I plan on supporting his efforts (Megascenery and PC Pilot magazine to name two.Also, Dark, thank you for taking it relatively easy on me for the criticalness of my post. I probably deserved worse and now I will need to get my massochism fix elsewhere!:). Wait, I can beat myself up, can't I? Ouch!sjKEWR

[Dark Moment 0]

Ha ha, SJ! Me, give anyone a hard time? Naaahhhh ... I'm against violence, it makes such a mess on the floor.I had dinner with Mr. Megaman (forgot his name, sorry) at the Avsim Conference and he was certainly a jolly decent chap. I do hope his NY Megastuff turns out to be everything we'd like it to be. At last I'll be able to get off that goddamned Expressway.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

[otterspotter 8]

Excuse my boldness, sj, but by supporting PC Pilot, you're supporting PC Aviator's competition (a UK-published bimonthly). The magazine published by PC Aviator is called Computer Pilot (monthly mag published in Australia and USA). Both mags are great though.M.

[Guest fringe]

Actually I believe they are working on a Winter scenery to be included in the NY release to go along with the original Summer. Spring and Fall will be made to automatically render Summer Textures. A patch will also be released for their LA scenery to make it visible all year round. At the present it will only render while flying in Summer, with nothing but gray squares appearring in the other seasons.John M.

[John_Tavendale 453]

PC Aviator are only the publishers of the product. The problem lies with the developer. Any delay would be from his end.

[chumley 0]

>>I had dinner with Mr. Megaman (forgot his name, sorry) Robert Ferrero?

[Guest sj3]

M. Yup, you're right but you knew that! I did subscribe to Computer Pilot but got the name wrong. I'd love to see a compare-and-contrast between the two. I think CP is the only one of the two with a cd. I realize I'm not directly supporting the developer with the subscription; the only way I can do that is to buy their product(s), which I will.Thanks,sjKEWR

[otterspotter 8]

sj,Since you asked, here's my humble opinion about the two flight sim mags. Both come with a CD and the major difference is that PCP is bimonthly and CP is monthly (more CDs). PCP costs more per issue (around 10 bucks here in US vs 7.95 USD or so for CP).Last CP issue (December) angered me with a couple of the articles, where screenshots are ridiculously huge (in reference to their content) to mask the scantiness of text. In some CP issues, the screenshots are ridiculously small in turn. In my opinion PCP's layout is always immaculate and CP sometimes seems to drop the ball in this respect (quality and size of screenshots, layout, etc). In other words, PCP has a little more solid, professional look (particularly comparing the last issues of both). However, CP has some great regulars, like Hints and Tips section, nice Flight Instructor, Ground School, and IFR, Multiengine Flying sections (not in every issue), my favorite Round Robin Adventures by Al Pelletier. To me, they're the greatest asset of the magazine. It also has siginificantly more X-Plane articles (rare in PCP) as well as combat sim articles. PCP used to have great IFR Training tutorials by Bill Stack (whose editorials in CP in turn aren't that great in my opinion), they disappeared for a while, but they're back in the last issue. They also have flight tutorials, but they're kinda irregular. Both mags have great articles on topics ranging from editing sounds or AI, painting, mixing real and virtual flying, to comparing FS sceneries vs real world places, etc. Sometimes both mags seem to have run out of topics, which in my opionion results from a heavy focus on payware, whereas there's so much good freeware around that you should never be able to run out of ideas (both mags mostly mention great freeware, seldom reviewing it). CP seems to me more in touch with what's going on in the community (nice articles on Dash 7 design, creating a virtual flying club, the tips section).Anyway, I like them both, and since recently you don't see too many reviews or flight sim articles on major websites, it's good to have another source. Reviews in both mags sometimes are too lenient and not in-depth enough, but this seems to be common phenomenon these days also on major websites, as we don't have too many Andrew Herds... But then again, what do we have forums for?Hope this helps. I would be interested to see other people's opinions, although the two mags are seldom mentioned here.M.PS. There's (was?) a good free on-line magazine at www.fsinflight.com (presently down for reconstruction).