Status of FSX/P3D Shared Cockpit - 2017

[DaveCT2003 780]

This is a breakaway post from a Shared Cockpit discussion taking place in a thread in the PMDG Forums.  I created this thread to prevent deraining the other thread, which was about Virtual Cabins.

DISCUSSION CONTINUED

Going back years ago I had several private message sessions with Ryan about this. First it was something he said they were planning (his words Rob) but then things changed. Then later it was something they wanted to do, but things changed again. Then he posted openly that the programming for shared cockpit was too much work, their wasn't any documentation in the SDK, etc., etc., etc..  It's just that (at least then) the folks at PMDG (or at least Ryan) didn't understand the difference between the code that Microsoft gave us for shared cockpit is not what was being used by other developers (because it wouldn't work for for all the functions that a third party aircraft has). At least up to the point when Ryan posted this, it wasn't their thing and they weren't interested enough in shared cockpit to research it (well actually, I did tell him that one couldn't use the Microsoft Shared Cockpit functions and all that, but he must have forgotten). Leonardo created fully functional Shared Cockpit for their incredible Fly the Maddog MD-80 in both FS9 and FSX, and systems wise that aircraft still revivals any aircraft in flight sim today, and Digital Design also did this for their Fokker and were supposed to add Shared Cockpit to the Concorde but sadly that never materialized.  I've been meaning to talk with Hans about this, but he's been really busy with CRJ - which I can promise you is a terrific aircraft!

I sincerely hope PMDG will change their minds about Shared Cockpit at some point, as I agree that a Shared Cockpit capable PMDG 737, 747 or 777 would be incredible!  I think what is needed is for a lot of people to start asking them about it again, and point to the successes other developers have had with it.

I'm immensely grateful that Oleksiy at Majestic and Collin at TFDi Design for being far more open minded and implementing Shared Cockpit, and for Mathijs at Aerosoft for having the foresight to do so!  My huge thanks to them all, but especially to Oleksiy at Majestic for being open to listening. He created the first shared cockpit capable airliner since the Leonardo/Digital Aviation days. Also, what Collin and Joshua did with the Shared Cockpit interface was absolutely terrific! What Aerosoft is planning for the upgraded Connected Flight Deck is going to be completely different than what anyone else has done before and I'm looking forward to seeing it.