[01JUL17] Updates for 747-400 and 777-200LRF released today

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Captains,

When we started pushing out updates to bring our products up to compatibility with Prepar3D v4, we almost immediately began to suspect that our installers were not doing a proper job of getting our products onto the user machine in usable form.

I'll spare you the long version of the story, but the short version is that some aspects of our installation process trace their roots back to our original PMDG 737 release from July 1, 2003. 

Many of you probably haven't stopped to consider that our technical support system gives us quite a bit of reporting data with which to analyze trends in product problem reports- (and if you HAVE stopped to consider it, you might want to consider bringing an iPad or a good book on your next long haul, because clearly you need something else to think about during your flying! ) but needless to say it quickly became apparent to us that a significant percentage of our customer problems were being created by our own installation mechanism and it's failing to handle some knee-knockers with grace.

We wound up putting just about everything on hold in order to analyze the problems we were seeing and developing a new set of installers that we hope will eliminate the sudden up-tick in customers who were having trouble with what should otherwise have been very straight-forward installations.

The past ten days or so have been almost entirely dedicated to installation methods and enhancements- and in order to quickly change the trend line, we have today issued new versions of both FSX/FSX-SE and P3D v3/P3D v4 installers for the PMDG 747-400 and the PMDG 777-200LR/F.

In both the 747-400 and the 777-200LR/F, we made only a couple of very minor changes to the product itself:

• Elimination of a sound-device related CTD that was affecting some users.
• Updated installer
• (For P3D v4) rolled back the dynamic lighting enhancements one version in order to eliminate some problems that customers were seeing with last week's update.  (We are still investigating, but felt this temporary measure was reasonable until we resolve the issues reported.)

A few key notes on these new installers, if you elect to install them now:

• Completely remove the 747 and 777 you have already installed.  Do this for all of our sanity...
• These installers will do a much better job of utilizing the standard ADD/REMOVE/MODIFY capabilities of windows installation
• These installers will actually allow you to run a REPAIR on an existing installation- which can come in handy if you accidentally delete something critical.
• These installers are designed to do a health check on a few key prerequisites that support activation, operation and interfacing of the product to your simulator and the windows platform.

With these out of the way, we are again pivoting back to getting the NGX release ready and the 77W as well.  For those that are not aware, this is a holiday weekend here in the USA, so most of us will not be working the normal full schedule that we have been keeping- and we will pick up where we left off on Wednesday of next week- but I have built that holiday into the schedule expectations thread already with my timeline updates from this morning.

With some luck the 77W will see release here very shortly- and then NGX is in very good shape as of now- so we are hoping it goes through the last round of testing very quickly.

(And just to help quell some really oddball uninformed discussion:  Release of the NGX has no dependency on the 77W...anyone quoting otherwise is woefully ill informed and should be smacked about the head and shoulders until they agree to stop repeating dumb stuff in public....   If you need a mallet, please stop by tech support and we will loan you one of ours.  )

 

**NOTE for Aerosoft DVD/Download Customers:  We anticipate Aerosoft will update their system with the new version of the 777 during the day Monday.  You will need to get it from them, but the wait shouldn't be too tedious.

 

 

 

[MarkW 1,490]

What if our install of the 747 and 777 was fine and subsequent updates via OC also fine.....should we still go through the process or just leave it alone?

[SQC7970 1]

Thank you for the update in the 77W! Looking forward to it's release! Also wishing you and the team an early Happy 4th of July celebration from Singapore!

[shamrockflyer 647]

5 minutes ago, MarkW said:

What if our install of the 747 and 777 was fine and subsequent updates via OC also fine.....should we still go through the process or just leave it alone?

At the end of the day if you want to update then by all means do, if you are happy with your current install then why bother?!..but as RsR stated if you do choose to update then uninstall your 777 and 747 installs and re-download the new installers from your PMDG account.

[ComSimPilot 623]

Thank you for the update Robert. Setbacks happen, its part of the work. I uninstalled my B747 and B77L however the PMDG folder and Operations center still exists and can run. Should we also delete all PMDG folders ?

[scandinavian13 5,192]

Unless we specify otherwise, do nothing other than what we ask, please: uninstall/reinstall only. If we need you to do anything beyond what we mention, we will specifically state that. (No, don't delete things manually.)

 

ALSO: These versions will be minimum versions for the updaters. Upon the next release of something via the micro-updater, if your version number isn't the version number from this full installer, it will not update and advise you to get up to speed.

[77west 139]

Just tested the whole FPS / landing lights thing - it does seem a bit better after this update. With LL, Strobes, Beacon and Nav, at default KEDW, I see a drop from 35-40fps in the VC down to about 28-30fps with lights on. This is better than before.

777 seems mostly unaffected with all lights on.

Thanks for the work PMDG team, and enjoy your holiday weekend.

[Orlaam 306]

Confused.  I only run FSX:SE right now.  Are you guys telling us to remove/uninstall the B744 and reinstall through the OC?  That the only way we'll get updates now??  Or reinstall from the PMDG site, old style????????

[RichieFly 714]

This might not be the right place for this question, but:

After uninstalling and reinstalling the 747, the liveries I added are missing, which I expected. However, there are remanent texture folders in the installation directory. And, when I try to install a livery, the installer complains about these directories already being there.

Just delete these old texture directories?

Example: Texture.CC1 for the Icelandic paint.

Thanks

[MarkW 1,490]

1 hour ago, scandinavian13 said:

 

ALSO: These versions will be minimum versions for the updaters. Upon the next release of something via the micro-updater, if your version number isn't the version number from this full installer, it will not update and advise you to get up to speed.

Okay, there there is the answer, all should go through this update process.  Thanks Kyle.

[stephenbgs 169]

Downloading new installers now and i have the old ones deleted 

Is there a new version number on both models we should be seeing in the OC once everything is back running?

[Dez 7]

The 777-300 it's not update after download.

Mo Dez

[downscc 1,327]

6 minutes ago, EGLL said:

The 777-300 it's not update after download.

It's not available yet... read the first post by Robert.

[AndyUK 26]

I see that like mine his 777-200 isn't the latest version according to the Ops Centre though.  I've just found the same and queried it in the 777 section:

 

[DeCampos 40]

I see a big drop with landing lights on (no other lights on). 60fps to 30fps. It didn't happen before update. Joe De Campos