How did people volunteer to be PMDGs 777 beta tester?

You had to send a letter to PMDG via pigeon. 

Or be active and helpful in the PMDG forums? Appeared to work for a few folks!

You had to send a letter to PMDG via pigeon. 

 

 

*Wood Pigeon

I shoulda changed my last name to Pabari lol. Cmon Luke(Pabari) post some shots!

Stop being childish, He will released post,picture,video soon enough you wont have to wait an whole day.

How did people volunteer to be PMDGs 777 beta tester?

You either have to be hand picked by pmdg or be a 777 fanatic. Lol

Lets just go with "golden ticket in a candy bar"

It's called politics. You have to be in the family

I flew to Phoenix and slept in Ryan's front yard. Obviously his neighbors weren't too happy with this so Ryan told me if I'd leave, he'd offer me a beta spot.

 

Now I'm back at home and on the wide beta team.

It's called politics. You have to be in the family

 

I just want to shoot this down right now even if it is a joke. No one on the beta team got in simply because they know someone from PMDG. Several of the new testers were just people whose participation and knowledge I was impressed with on the forum over the years. (AJ, Kyle, Luke etc - I'd never talked to any of them outside of the forum prior to selecting them) The vast majority of the older testers were selected this way too. Heck *I myself* became a PMDG tester this way 10+ years ago, which led to me joining the company for real in 2006.

 

A couple of the guys I do know outside of the forum, but I met them here and never would have selected them for beta if they hadn't shown aptitude for this over a long period. Josua Duval for instance first came to my attention with some of his forum bug reports on the NGX - I messaged him and it just so happened that he was doing his pilot training in Phoenix, where I live. I met up with him for lunch one day and we talked and he brought up some other issues and stuff that he'd found. Given that he's actually an airline pilot in training too, it made perfect sense to bring someone like that aboard who had already shown aptitude for finding issues.

 

In short - there is no for-sure way to get onto our team, it's a select group that is generally by invitation only. Every few cycles there's always some turnover where people drop out or we decide not to retain certain testers and that's the point where we go and look at selecting new people. It's not something I want to have people "applying" for - you have to have shown genuine passion for our products and have the type of analytic mind that knows how to coax out the source of a problem and (probably most importantly) be able to articulate it to us in writing in a way that is clear and easy to reproduce.

I just want to shoot this down right now even if it is a joke. No one on the beta team got in simply because they know someone from PMDG. Several of the new testers were just people whose participation and knowledge I was impressed with on the forum over the years. (AJ, Kyle, Luke etc - I'd never talked to any of them outside of the forum prior to selecting them) The vast majority of the older testers are this way too. Heck *I* myself became a PMDG tester this way 10+ years ago.

 

A couple guys I do know outside of the forum, but I met them here and never would have selected them for beta if they hadn't shown aptitude for this over a long period. Josua Duval for instance first came to my attention with some of his forum bug reports on the NGX - I messaged him and it just so happened that he was doing his pilot training in Phoenix, where I live. I met up with him for lunch one day and we talked and he brought up some other issues and stuff that he'd found. Given that he's actually an airline pilot in training too, it made perfect sense to bring someone like that aboard who had already shown aptitude for finding issues.

 

In short - there is no for-sure way to get onto our team, it's a select group that is generally by invitation only. Every few cycles there's always some turnover where people drop out or we decide not to retain certain testers and that's the point where we go and look at selecting new people. It's not something I want to have people "applying" for - you have to have shown genuine passion for our products and have the type of analytic mind that knows how to coax out the source of a problem and (probably most importantly) be able to articulate it to us in writing in a way that is clear and easy to reproduce.

Actually it was a joke. Sorry, didn't try to do any harm.

Actually it was a joke. Sorry, didn't try to do any harm.

 

I figured, but I just wanted to have a solid statement on this out there because I've seen people actually claim this before.

I can see where you are coming from as I have seen different views and opinions about other subjects. Next time I will watch my wording a bit closer. In the meantime, I'll be patiently waiting to a successful release of the 777.

I am down with their selection protocol, they choose some great persons, Luke has displayed nothing but excellence since I have known him on this forum, he is doing well
I am glad its these guys that were chosen, had it been me, I would be flying it around gayly and I would not have even bothered to post one picture.

Good job guys, let's make history with this bird