Hi guys !This morning I had a very original conversation with a Slovakian friend (Im' French). We are both student and we were attending the helicopter course when,suddenly, between two performances exercices, we started to talk about the B737NGX (see how pmdg gather men ).The debate was the following : On the Slovakian side, it is said that 80-90% of the work for such add-ons is design (ie modelling)On the other side, the value are 50% of modelisation, 35% systems and the rest for tests.So, what do you think ? And if PMDG can answer directly to the question taking the NGX or other addons as example would be great ;)Thanks !Ben.

Multiple people work on PMDG products at the same time, thus I think time is divvied out equally among all areas of the simulation. However, there are more programmers than there are modelers, giving the impression that more work is done on the systems than the modelling. My thoughts... :(

Its much, much easier to build a 3d model than it is to program accurate and bugfree systems. When you model a 3d model you just follow the blueprint. It doesnt really require any effort, other than knowing how to use the tools available and of course various techniques for optimising performance.

It doesnt really require any effort

Oh my...

Its much, much easier to build a 3d model than it is to program accurate and bugfree systems. When you model a 3d model you just follow the blueprint. It doesnt really require any effort, other than knowing how to use the tools available and of course various techniques for optimising performance.

You have obviously never done it.

OK, does anyone here did both at the level of PMDG?I'm a software developer and i know that is quite difficult to have a bug free code.Now, i don't know if it is more difficult to build a 3D model 'cause i never done it.

Its much, much easier to build a 3d model than it is to program accurate and bugfree systems. When you model a 3d model you just follow the blueprint. It doesnt really require any effort, other than knowing how to use the tools available and of course various techniques for optimising performance.

That's incredibly wrong. The VC and external model have both taken a ton of time and effort and I know both Vin and Jason would be offended by this statement that what they've done took no effort quite. They'll still be tweaking the models right up until release actually. Both the VC and the external took well over a year to build from the time we had all the source material in place. There's more things than I can count that went into both that you likely will never know about. (I wish we could do a "Making of the NGX" documentary or something)

(I wish we could do a "Making of the NGX" documentary or something)

And with the 777 you'll have that chance :(

You have obviously never done it.

I have built many 3d models and I have also built many computer programs and its of my opinion that its much easier to build a 3d model. You just model according to the blueprint. You dont have to be a genious like you have to be when you are trying to replicate aircraft systems. Perhaps saying it requires no effort to model the gfx is wrong; it does require an effort. It just doesnt require a genious

I have built many 3d models and I have also built many computer programs and its of my opinion that its much easier to build a 3d model. You just model according to the blueprint. You dont have to be a genious like you have to be when you are trying to replicate aircraft systems. Perhaps saying it requires no effort to model the gfx is wrong; it does require an effort. It just doesnt require a genious

Again, you're incredibly wrong when talking about what we're doing at this level. If it's so easy why aren't you working for an addon developer?

Again, you're incredibly wrong when talking about what we're doing at this level. If it's so easy why aren't you working for an addon developer?

Are you saying that it requires more effort to model the 3d than it does to program the systems? Exactly which part of my post is "incredibly wrong"?

We are not here to statute about what is the most difficult task but how the time is spent between them (roughly).Btw I'm both impressed by modelers and developers.

Are you saying that it requires more effort to model the 3d than it does to program the systems? Exactly which part of my post is "incredibly wrong"?

They both require an equal amount of time it's isn't as easy as you think to just follow blueprints the team have mentioned before that they even took laser measurements in order to give ultimate realism.

Sekstifire, I think that you're forgetting that developing a 3D model, doesn't just require making a 3D model. What else do you have to do? You have to take tonnes of reference pictures, at this level it requires you being there on survey trips, having the official documentation from, in this case, The Boeing Company, rather than looking on the internet and using whatever you find first. It also means using exact measurements and inputting that into an incredibly complex CAD programme, then that might not match up exactly to the official documents from Boeing so you have to tweak, render it, see what looks best, maybe make a compromise, render it again, tweak it again and again and again? Then you have the optimization process, see what looks good but is fast. I can go on and on. Of course this is the same as the systems, and PMDG have told us most about that hence maybe why you said this? I don't know, but the systems requires a lot of knowledge too, a lot of reading, for example all the work that was done on the lighting, and the voltage etc. The statement that you made saying it doesn't really require any effort is totally, most definitely, wrong.

I have built many 3d models and I have also built many computer programs

Such a convenient thing to append to your comment.