[18OCT17] So what is going on at PMDG?

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Captains,

We have been fairly quiet the past few months as we finally took some time off to recharge after releasing the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II.  Wait.  What?  We released that back in January?!

True.

And immediately upon release we cancelled the normal post-development break for the team in order to have all hands on deck to convert our product lines to make them compatible with Prepar3D v4...  This pushed our workflow well into the summer, and by the time it was over all of us were in good need of a vacation.

So now that the PMDG DC-6 Cloudmaster is out, the 747-400 is updated and the product lines for Prepar3D v4 are stable, the teams have had a break and we have all returned to focusing on forward progress, I thought it was time to give you a quick update on what we are up to!

 

EXPANDING THE SUPPORT TEAM:

At the beginning of October, we welcomed long-time beta tester and friend to the PMDG team, Chris Makris to our support team.  Chris has been with us for nearly fifteen years and earned a reputation on our beta team for tenacity, detail focus and technical knowledge covering a wide range of computing, simming and PMDG topics.  This is hard to do, as our beta team to the man has demonstrated an incredible willingness to dive deeply into each of our products in order to uncover even the most minute faults, so Chris was an obvious choice for us when it came time to expand our support team to continue meeting the needs of our ever-growing customer base.

Chris has already been at work for nearly three weeks and if you haven't had a chance to work with him, I think you will find he fits well into the mold cast by Paul, Ryan and Kyle.  Chris picked up the workflow quickly and was already so comfortable with the normal flow of reports that come in from our customers that his introduction to the team was incredibly smooth.

I hope you all will welcome Chris to the team- and recognize that his addition represents further preparation for things to come!

 

UPDATES FOR THE 737, 747 and 777 product lines:

Last weekend we pushed a series of updates for the PMDG 737NGX, PMDG 777 and PMDG 747-400 product lines.  These updates represented a bunch of cleanup details that we collected during the previous couple of months to further stabilize the existing product lines and correct some outstanding flaws.  You can check the PMDG Operations Center and the versions tab of an individual product module to get a rundown on what has been updated.

 

PROGRESS UPDATE: 747-8

We are busy doing some pretty significant work on the 747-8 at the moment.  I am going to be intentionally cagey in not telling you precisely what we are working on, except to say that we are adding new functionality that is unique to the 747-8 that wasn't accomplished during the 747-400 development cycle.  I don't have a clear feel for when we will drop this product into beta testing just yet, but I will tell you when that happens.

We will begin giving you some previews of the airplane right around that time as well.

The 747-8 is a significantly different product than the 747-400 in many many regards.  It is interesting to experience the difference between the two airplanes and to observe how similar, yet completely different the airplanes are.  Many crews around the world are dual qualified and move back and forth between the two types as part of their employment. You will be able to do the same in short order and if you are at all like me, you will develop a real love of the technological capabilities of this magnificent new airplane!

 

Okay- I have to get back to some tasks on the code-side, but I will be back with a few more interesting new items in the days to come.

I hope you all had an enjoyable summer and that you are looking forward to a fun winter of flying!

 

 

 

 

[Boomer 1,619]

Shhh...EFB for the 748...shhhh...

[anden145 2,285]

Interesting...
Thanks for the update, Robert.

[pedrotrindade 335]

A big WELCOME to Chris Makris and all the best on his new job. And thanks for the update, RR.

[ErichB 3,638]

Shared cockpit. :)  One can hope.

[jfriz 27]

Thanks for the update. Welcome aboard Chris.

Jerry Friz

[Chock 17,769]

1 hour ago, Boomer said:

Shhh...EFB for the 748...shhhh...

Yup, that's obviously going to be the case, it's not a good fun dash eight variant without it, even though strictly speaking it is an option rather than a standard feature on the real aeroplane. Since we've already seen a few FS add-ons which have one (FF A350 and QW 787), it's kind of got to be in there anyway from a competitive product standpoint.

The tricky part is how does one do some of the features of one. The electronic checklists aren't such a big deal to pull off since they are essentially a set of pages for a clickable gauge not dissimilar to a PFD gauge since everything which has to be displayed is a known quantity; the feature is certainly a welcome one on the QW 787 and the FF A350.

It's the moving maps and charts which are the trickier bit; one can do something as basic as allowing it to display PDFs you can stick in there, which we've seen quite a lot of add-on aeroplanes do, but isn't a very sophisticated way of doing it and a bit of a faff to use, or something a bit more refined such as that offered by Flight Control, which generates them from the sim's database, and so I suspect that'd be the way to go, since licensing charts for an add-on to use would indeed be cool, but it would be expensive and probably require a user subscription, and that kind of thing is a turnoff for buyers even for stuff which isn't too expensive, as seen on Carenado's new Cessna which will require a subscription for its synthetic vision simulation after one year's use gratis. That's supposedly only a tenner, but it was enough to put quite a few people off pulling the trigger on it.

What I hope PMDG will do, is take a leaf out of Flight Factors and make the manuals for the product accessible in the cockpit EFB too, as that really is a useful feature in a simulator. I'd put money on them making it linkable to an iPad/Android Tablet too, which again is not a new feature for sims, the CS 777 can do that with its FMC and Eric Marciano's Easy FMC does it too, but it is cool.

[GAJ52 54]

Was hoping for some mention of the JS41 as its currently in Beta 

[jrgaz 34]

Thanks for the update Mr. Randazzo and welcome to Chris Makris.  

It seems to me that if Aerosoft can provide a shared flightdeck option for their Busses (that cost a lot less too), PMDG should be able to do so easily.  It is an important feature that is sadly lacking in their products and I feel it's time they implement something similar.

Can't wait for the next updates....

[Peter Webber 339]

1 hour ago, rsrandazzo said:

I hope you all had an enjoyable summer and that you are looking forward to a fun winter of flying!

Don't forget us "simmers" here in the southern Hemisphere who have just had a terrible winter and are hoping to have a fun summer of flying! Thanks for the info and updates!

[GCBraun 2,390]

Any updated when the DC-6 for X-Plane will be updated?

Thiago Braun

[scandinavian13 5,192]

1 minute ago, tgcbraun said:

Any updated when the DC-6 for X-Plane will be updated?

We said it was going to be updated?

[GCBraun 2,390]

Any new information when the DC-6 for X-Plane might be updated?

Thiago Braun

[Boomer 1,619]

Aircraft manual access in the aircraft efb would be awesome.

[anden145 2,285]

Not to be a negative-nally here, but who says it's an EFB, they're cooking up?
I'm genuinely curious, as I personally don't see the great benefit or idea of an EFB in the VC.