And the work goes on.......My boss is chasing me for site progress....I will be giving him the "PMDG answer" later in the site progress meeting......Boy I am screwed!

And the work goes on.......My boss is chasing me for site progress....I will be giving him the "PMDG answer" later in the site progress meeting......Boy I am screwed!

 

Funny thing about your examples is that they have absolutely no parallel to functions here.

 

Construction projects have clients and deadlines, just as your boss has people to answer to (clients), and deadlines to meet.  Here, that's not so much the case.  Sure, this being an SP, there are clients to answer to, but the deadline isn't one of time (as would be defined in a contract as your construction job is likely tied to), but a deadline of completeness.  If it's not complete, then there is no delivery.

 

In the case of new projects, products are being created without any investors or clients.  As such, there are no clients to update or satisfy.  It would be very similar to me coming out and saying:

 

"Hey, I'm turning the back acreage of my property into a landing strip which I intend to use as my own personal runway.  The field will be listed as privately owned / public use, and I have reached out to local flight schools to encourage them to use it, too."

 

If a local school asked "when is this going to be ready," I'd be perfectly within my right to say "when it's ready."  It might aggravate the school ownership, but it's not like I owe them anything, as it's a project being undertaken of my own volition.  I'm hoping others might buy it (and perhaps buy into its use somehow - landing fees / fuel purchases, etc), but if nobody does, I have my own private runway to use.

 

Taking this back to the issue of a deadline of completeness, if the project is not complete then it will not release.  There is no contractual deadline of time related to remediation of issues (much like your business would have).  If you'd like to somehow bring some type of legalese into Flight Simming in an effort to "improve the quality" of developer interactions, you're welcome to try.

 

Your example of giving the same answer to your boss really holds no water.  It's a completely different situation.  Nice try though.

It's fine that PMDG doesn't quite tell us too much, it makes me more surprised when things happen, and you never know when we'll get an update!

 

But, ETAs are very important not only to the consumer, but they also give the creator/person delivering the product/service something to aim for, something to use as a "landmark," or something to keep the project at the proper pace. If you fall short, sure people will be upset, but in a way I feel as though they would be happier knowing that there was a schedule clearly in place and the company just failed to complete the project within that time, as compared to having no knowledge of the pace of the project and whether completion is even planned in the next X amount of days, weeks, months, etc. It's true that the company owes the consumer NOTHING, because they haven't paid for a product at that point (presumably), but it's just a proper business practice.

 

A note on my last sentence there, I feel like PMDG should be updating us on SP1, because we paid for a product already that has faults. There needs to be evidence that the faults will be repaired and in a timely manner (other than just forum updates that give no indication as to the time frame of completion), This is just like how if a product has errors in it, that company is responsible for delivering the most functional product possible in a timely manner.

 

I don't care so much, because none of the major issues are affecting me (as far as I can tell). Those who purchased this product Day 1, and have stowed it away in the hangar because there has been NO Service Pack in 8+ months and, what, 3 verbal updates via this forum, do have the right to be upset. PMDG sold this product to them in what they believed was the best state it could be in, and it's (to me at least) in our rights to request, calmly of course, information concerning when Issue A/B/C will be fixed.

 

If you read this far, I commend you, because I didn't even plan for my response to be this long. Also, I don't mean to "troll" if it appears that way, I'm just trying to justify both sides of the argument, for the sake of clarity to both parties on either side of this issue.

 

Thanks!

 

Note: Edits added in BLUE.

A note on my last sentence there, I feel like PMDG should be updating us on SP1, because we paid for a product already that has faults. There needs to be evidence that the faults will be repaired and in a timely manner (other than just forum updates that give no indication as to the time frame of completion), This is just like how if a product has errors in it, that company is responsible for delivering the most functional product possible in a timely manner.

 

Right, and I addressed this in my last post, noting that there was some credibility to the claim that there's a product in need of remediation.

 

The issue, though, is the following:

•  
• Stick to deadlines and tick people off because you only addressed a partial list of bugs.  This also has a heavy cost in terms of bug tracking, management (don't want to drop any in between different HFs or SPs - that bug got addressed in the last SP...right?!?), and change management.  It's honestly a bear, and to give an accurate parallel, there are companies out there that have a sole purpose of project management to manage things like this.  I work for one at the moment, and we have a whole TEAM of people dedicated to tracking and managing project schedules and which builds address which problems and known errors.  This is required because the government imposes strict deadlines.  If those did not exist, there would be no need.  Inevitably, this leads to distributing something on the deadline, but requiring additional projects because the original deadline was unattainable (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_Law)
• Stick to solving the issue and simply release one SP once known errors are fixed.  This may take longer than many would wish, but there is a lot less of a cost related to software management (particularly because this industry doesn't generate the overhead to have a dedicated software lifecycle team).  Additionally, it generally leads to fewer SPs to manage (both internally, and by the end user).

It's not a black and white issue.  Just like everything else, it's a bunch of grey.  There are tradeoffs to everything.  Imposing deadlines means you might meet them, but it also means you might need to set more deadlines for future projects to sweep up the issues missed because you had to cram to finish by your deadline.  Not imposing deadlines generally means you sort everything all at once, though it might take longer.

 

There's validity to both trains of thought, particularly in varying industry settings.  PMDG simply choose to follow one of those trains of thought, for their own reasons.

I agree completely with that. Its interesting to us though, being used to that method of managememt (providing deadlines.)

 

You can not make everyone happy, of course.

 

 

You can not make everyone happy, of course.

 

Exactly.  As soon as you start releasing multiple SPs, you start irritating those who wanted a simple one-and-done approach (generally what I subscribe to).

Will the SP1 version have the ability to integrate with the up and coming VATSIM client SWIFT thus allowing ACARS / CPDLC / ATSAW via FMS / MFD?

 

See: http://forums.vatsim.net/viewtopic.php?p=449633&sid=9221716c72673070b03ebeb17d8a56a0#p449633

 

Best wishes,

 

Nothing in SP1. But my guess would be they'd need to see how it all works and see if it's even possible. The Communications page is the only thing missing from this 777 now really - everything else you see, works! Of course they could probably create a complete dummy Comm page that sends stuff no where and you get no responses - but that'd probably be a waste of time on their part.

 

But yeah, I'm really hoping something is possible with the new client and possibly some integration in an update.

Transparancy is a good thing . May not always be from a salesoffice perspective though :-)

 

I do believe that we are patience clients supporting this hobby of ours.

 

Still the pricetag of these products deserve some kind of respect for the developer but updates are always welcomed.

 

Looking forward to the release of both SP1 and the -300ER. (happy customer)

 

Michael

I'm 100% sure that PMDG do have a schedule for working on and releasing SP1, and the NGX SP2, and all that stuff, but they keep it internal. Any project done within a self respecting company has a schedule. 

 

And i can't blame them for keeping it private. That way they can work on the project without added outside pressure. If they feel it needs 1 more week of work to get it to a PMDG standard, they just work one more week on it, instead of having to explain themselves.

Huh? Come back in Sep 2018 for B777X SP1 and B777-300ER release......Oct 2029 for PMDG B744V2 release is more like it at the rate this is going.....

 

 

And the work goes on.......My boss is chasing me for site progress....I will be giving him the "PMDG answer" later in the site progress meeting......Boy I am screwed!

 

 

What's the definition of trolling again?

 

 

Banning works only so well.   Once banned, there's rarely controls in-place to prevent the troll from creating another account to get another existence "fix".

 

Larry, trust me... I can tell you from personal experience, that after moderating another forum for nearly 8 years, that banning does work. We wouldn't bother if it didn't.

 

Yes, occasionally a banned user does attempt to register, but when they do, we know! And if we don't, then by definition they are inconspicuous, thus behaving themselves, so objective complete.

 

 

 
While I agree there's usually someone who goofs-up and responds to the troll, it's my hope that eventually all the sane people will just render the troll's posts as non-existent. No response = no validation of their existence = no gratification on their part.

 

That may be your "hope" Larry, but just a quick glance at this very forum demonstrates that everyone "ignoring the miscreant" never happens. All it takes is one person to bite back and the thread goes south. Everybody en masse, joining forces and ignoring the perpetrator just doesn't happen, and is contrary to human nature, thus an ineffective strategy. I've never come across any forum where that happens.
 

 

 

 

IMHO the best forums allow individuals to block the display of posts from another individual. Sadly it doesn't appear that the Avsim forums let you do that.

 

At Just Flight, users don't have the ability to block other users, I don't know many forums that do. At JF we moderators do have the facility to ban users, block IP addresses, block a range of IP addresses, hide topics, hide posts, edit posts and other clever things. Admin have even more power.

Be careful what you wish for, there is a certain forum for a addon program where they have a moderator that will lock threads, delete posts or even suspend accounts of members that are not even trolling. Maybe frustrated but not trolling.

I think that all in all, everybody does a pretty good job over here in not getting too over zealous.

Just my opinion.
Regards,

 

 

You must PM me and tell me who that is Rick, I'd be interested to know.

 

If PMDG were to decide to assign an extra moderator or two to this forum, I have utmost confidence that they would be fair, and good at their jobs and operate in accordance with PMDG guidelines.

AVSIM does actually let you hide the posts from certain users.

Click on your name in the upper right corner of the forum display, and then click on "manage Ignore Prefs".

As Thomas has suggested all you need to do is  to use the ignore option which has been around for  ages. or just simply use  the report option

 

You must PM me and tell me who that is Rick, I'd be interested to know.

 

If PMDG were to decide to assign an extra moderator or two to this forum, I have utmost confidence that they would be fair, and good at their jobs and operate in accordance with PMDG guidelines.

Hi Martin,

I should have been a little more specific, the forum I am referring to is not an AVSIM forum, it is a developers own forum for his product. The point I was trying to make was that AVSIM and the devs that use it, in general do a pretty fine job.

 

Regards,

Hi Martin,

I should have been a little more specific, the forum I am referring to is not an AVSIM forum, it is a developers own forum for his product. The point I was trying to make was that AVSIM and the devs that use it, in general do a pretty fine job.

 

 

 

 

Yes I was aware of that Rick, I just wondered who this other developer was with such a draconian policy.

 

I was also just pointing out that if extra moderators were assigned here, then they would almost certainly not be as unfair as the developers forum you mention. So I don't think we have to be careful what we wish for in that regard here.  :smile: