I never said anyone was making a fortune. I was commenting on the implications of needing 24,000 man hours to build a model. Its equivalent to about 12 people full time for a year. My opinion is that this is over the top. Can PMDG comment on its accuracy?

I never said anyone was making a fortune. I was commenting on the implications of needing 24,000 man hours to build a model. Its equivalent to about 12 people full time for a year. My opinion is that this is over the top. Can PMDG comment on its accuracy?

Sorry for the double post :(

> 24,000 hours for a single plane- even with>the systems modelling- would be grounds for being fired>I totally agree. The type of work we do is extremely demanding and indeed entails more hours than I care to count, but 24,000 hours for an airplane? Thats a bit extreme.Jim Rhoads

But even in professional game development things can take a lot of time when you are breaking new ground. Half-Life 2 took 5 years to make. Doom 3 also took a tremendous amount of time. However, these were made by companies that already have cash cows in place, and where developers make the final call (because they own the company). And I believe id software and Valve have top notch people working for them.If there is any such company in flightsimming, it would have to be PMDG or maybe Dreamfleet. It seems that everyone have the 737. Obviously I haven't seen the 747 yet, but it'll have to be seriously groundbreking to take 24000 hours (if it isn't just boasting), especially since PMDG has worked out a lot of stuff already with the 737NGs.-

Would depend like I stated on what you include in those hours.If it includes the beta testing, documentation writing, etc. etc., you might get close.

>Would depend like I stated on what you include in those>hours.>If it includes the beta testing, documentation writing, etc.>etc., you might get close.>Ok... :-lol

>Can PMDG comment on its>accuracy? Go to the PMDG forum and do some search. I recall there was a post by Robert Randazzo that was claiming that 737-800/900 took oover 33,000 hours to develop. I think 12 people working for a year is not totally unrealistic - PMDG team consists of close to 10 folks and 737-800 (with prior 737-600) took close to 2 years to make. Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Yes, It seems PMDG are more along the lines of professionals- The artist absolutely is- The renderings of the VC, and his modeling work is EXCELLENT.I found some renderings from one of the artists at Heliotrope- His name is Mike Hughes. This guy is awesome. He works for another game development company now, and I haven't talked to him in a few years. These were done in '97, on (if I remember correctly), a dual P133. I can't remember which package he used. They didn't use MAX yet (we had 1.0 back then) since they didn't like the renderer. It was a package which I heard them complain didn't have XYZ mapping. Not Maya- it was on the Mac also. ANYWAY, the first one is actually from a video sequence in Pax Imperia of a few spaceships taking off. The second one- and here is my point- is a concept rendering. They were working on concept art for a wizard game (sorry, that sounds lame- I can't remember the game). The art director told them they have 2 days, and had to use under 70,000 polygons. This is what he came up with. I decided to try my hand at the "competition" as well, but after only two days mine sucked :)