As a chief pilot I took a significant amount of criticism from senior management for having this kind of view, but I never once found a guy/gal who would abuse it, so it is an approach we take at PMDG as well.

You simply showed you are a man equipped with balls and intelligence. A job is needed to live not viceversa so I agree with your behaviour 100%. Second, you are keeping us updated and this is professional and much appreciated. Third, the game runs already fine by itself now, so there is no urgent needing of SP1, it can wait a while no problem.

Captains- While I had hoped we would release both the SP1 and the 6700 to you tonight, we are unfortunately a bit behind schedule as a result of an unruly travel schedule on my end... The day after my last update to you, I went on the road for what was supposed to be a 2 day trip to inspect an airplane, but turned into a week as a result of a family emergency. This put me significantly behind the curve on my cleanup items for the SP1 and the 6700, so the rest of the team has been mostly finished while I continue to play catch up. While most of you know us primarily through our posts or replies to support tickets, each of us at PMDG has a family, parents, children, spouses, etc- and any time one of the members of the team has a family "issue" come up, I am always eager to remind them to worry about their family first and PMDG second. (As a chief pilot I took a significant amount of criticism from senior management for having this kind of view, but I never once found a guy/gal who would abuse it, so it is an approach we take at PMDG as well.) One of the guys gave me a blunt, but polite reminder of this policy when I expressed concern about being out of circulation as a result of unexpected surgery my father was scheduled to have but he was correct: I was needed someplace else. So- right now we are running about a week behind where we thought we would be. Tomorrow we are kicking what we expect to be the final SP1 and 600/700 beta versions out to the beta team- and then we'll be looking at release dates HOPEFULLY toward the end of the coming week... (20OCT or so...<Standard Disclaimer Applies>) We are still working a few important items, but none that I anticipate will hold us up for release. (Famous last words! whoops!) This weekend I will update this post with a list of items that we have currently corrected in SP1. It is around 150+ specific items and another 50 or so that are non-specific fixes. (I'll explain what I mean by that in the update.) So stay tuned to this thread during the weekend and I'll add a bunch of information to this post! Sorry for the additional holdup, everyone.

Hope your Dad is okay, Robert. As someone who used to work in hospital operating theatres, I know only too well the stress involved with surgery involving family. I hope he is okay and I wish him a speedy recovery.

Imagine if that idiot who was banned was a pilot!The problem with the world today is that there are to many people who only live for themselves.I must say that the people who use this forum are extremely helpfull and its fantastic how they share their knowledge.I sort of feel that the users of the PMDG products are almost like a sim family,by the way they assist and encourage etc.

Who cares if the update and 6700 is a week or two later, family is all that matters. Hope all is well with your father and take all the time you need. I'm shocked and appalled that someone would really post anything to the contrary. We'll be here when it's done.

Hmm this thread was already locked, I don't know why David unlocked it again.

I didn't unlock it, Ryan did and I respect his decision.This is a private commercial forum hosted by Avsim and PMDG has its own moderation staff.Actually I very rarely intervene here except for emergency issues.Believe me that if we had to monitor this forum like we do with Avsim's forums, 2/3 of the posts would have been locked already!

... I am always eager to remind them to worry about their family first and PMDG second. (As a chief pilot I took a significant amount of criticism from senior management for having this kind of view, but I never once found a guy/gal who would abuse it, so it is an approach we take at PMDG as well.)

I didn't visit the forum for a couple of days and I can hardly believe what I'm reading now! Robert, Great respect for you! I tried to be a team leader like that myself and know that the management is not happy when this is your philosophy. Money is number one, no room for people's personal life. It is great to read how you are leading PMDG, would be pleased and proud to be on your team. Hope that all will be well with your father soon! Take all the time you need!

I agree, Family first (always).Wishing all the best to your father! Take all the time you need.We will wait, no problem. kind regards

Thanks for the update, Robert! Family first is absolutely the correct way to be thinking, and anybody who would disagree with that might do well to consider that without your father, we as PMDG customers wouldn't have had your contribution to the products we so greatly enjoy. ;-) Hope your Dad makes a quick recovery from the surgery, and in the meantime, you've all given us many other products we can be enjoying even if we can't fly the NGX. (And for me personally, that no longer appears to be the case after the latest hotfix, anyway). A suggestion for the moderation team, speaking from personal experience with running a reasonably busy forum myself (albeit still much smaller than this one.) Trolls like that who was banned from the first page of this thread can be a nuisance to all, and simply banning them doesn't completely fix the problem. As we all know, it's easy enough for many folks to circumvent even an IP ban, should they want to. My own experience was that the best fix was not only to ban the offending account, but also to delete the offending posts (and any that were simply replies to that post.) Effectively, you take the troll's soapbox away, and remove the reason for them to reoffend. If nobody's getting to read their point of view anyway, it typically isn't worth the effort to them in repeating the behavior with a new account, and a new troll post. The folks who've replied typically don't mind seeing their own posts go (or get edited to remove reference to the offending content), because they were typically replying to try and defend against the troll anyway, so the removal of the posts furthers their own purpose. Of course, I'm not privy to the reasoning for letting troll posts stand. It may be a matter of resource--obviously deleting the posts takes a little time--or perhaps you have other reasons for not removing the troll's content. Hopefully this'll be taken merely as a friendly suggestion, and not a criticism of your moderation practices. :-)

You take your time, look after yourself and your family first, you and they are the most important thing in the world, you only realise this when they've gone, then it is too late.Great product ever.Kind reagrds to you and your familyWayne Foster

I wish PMDG went to a locked forum in the same fashion as some of the Flight1 products have to keep the yahoos and pirates out. There are too many sickening posts like the ones that David already deleted.Jim Burke

I wish PMDG went to a locked forum in the same fashion as some of the Flight1 products have to keep the yahoos and pirates out. There are too many sickening posts like the ones that David already deleted.

I'm not sure that's the answer, and let's try to keep this in perspective. I would bet that PMDG gets lots of sales by allowing non-customers to come here, read the threads, and get a sense of the excitement most of us have about their products. In some ways we are the company's best hawkers. What annoys me even more than these one-off immature posts is the number of people who feel obligated to reply with defenses of PMDG and RR and with lectures about forum etiquette. Count the number of posts like that in this thread. It's sort of ridiculous because the troll is in no way gonna be influenced by other people's ideas of right and wrong. And, PMDG and RR don't need us to defend them. Someone else said it earlier: the best way to handle idiots like this is to completely ignore them and delete their posts. And if you quote the idiot's post, your post gets removed as well. If you reply to these idiotic posts you are contributing to the problem.

Could we get any further comment on when (generally) the SDK might be available? My NGX is not seeing nearly the amount of use it will once FS2Crew is available for it, which requires the SDK. I also know I'm not the only one really missing FS2Crew. I know that SDK will follow SP1 and the 6/700. However, will it need to wait for the ER and military variants as well (I hope not). And is the PMDG team thinking in terms of days, weeks, etc? Would just like to have some general ideas where the SDK fits. Eric Szczesniak

Robert- Best wishes to your father, take care of him. Worry about the computer game another day. The NGX is a fine machine the way it is, SP1 is only a bonus at this point, not a necessity.Family first is always a rule for me and those I work with. I would support a customer only posting restriction as well.

Take your time Robert, This has been an amazing product since day 1.All the best with your personal issues, I sure am excited for the 150+ item list though :)

Hope your dad is much better Robert. Looking forward to the list too. Fred.