Xplane 11 update status?

[scandinavian13 5,192]

12 hours ago, lbarber said:

And the fact that PMDG is leaving it's customers in the dark regarding something we've spent money on and would like to be able to use with a new platform doesn't mean it isn't absolutely rotten customer service. Y'all used to stand behind your products and your customers, the PMDG name meant you were getting a quality product with a company that would work to support how its customers wanted to use it. It's a damn shame that's turned into "you bought what you bought and we owe you nothing else."

Lee,

I'm going to request that you explain this, if you don't mind. In the meantime, let me address what you've written so far, point by point:

• We're leaving customers in the dark.
  I don't see how this is the case. The DC-6 was marketed for, designed for, and released for XP10. We currently support it on that platform. The fact that other platforms exist that may be compatible, or semi-compatible, with the XP10 version is irrelevant. If I were to take JetMoto, the original PlayStation (from the 90s) version, and toss it in my PS4 and it worked, great, but I'm not going to claim that SingleTrac is not keeping us in the dark about things because it hasn't released a comment about updating it to PS4. They marketed, designed, and released the product for the OG PlayStation. I spent money on it, yes, but that doesn't entitle me to have guaranteed compatibility, or even comment on possible compatibility, for future releases. It was a game for the OG PS. That's all it was intended for. Anything else is outside the scope of discussion...even if the game released right before the PS2 came out.
   
• No guaranteeing forward compatibility is rotten customer service.
  This is, of course, your opinion, and one that you can base your personal purchasing decisions on, but I'm going to strongly disagree with you. It is not common to have this guaranteed. Where this is the case, it is explicitly stated by the developer, and there either either bundle deals (as we did with FS9 to FSX), or the dev states outright that a purchase will carry you through X timeframe (as we did when we announced P3D development).
   
• We have somehow changed to not stand behind our products; and we should support how customers want to use it.
  Please provide evidence of this. As mentioned before, we stand behind the intended use of our software. Nothing is preventing anyone from using their product in the platform for which it was designed. If anyone were to have issues in that environment, we will gladly assist in helping them get it all working properly. The claim about supporting customers how they want to use it isn't true, and hasn't been true. If people report issues with our products because they're using DX10 in FSX, we will note that our product is not compatible with that use. Other shader mods can cause weird behaviors, EZDOK's camera shake actually injects its own physics into the sim, and so on. We fully support that users have different priorities when using our products, but some of those conflicts are ones that we cannot be held accountable for. If it kinda works in XP11, or 12, or 19, great. If it doesn't, then that's a fact of life, and this is not unusual with software. I have a ton of old XBOX games that don't work on my XBONE (one of the reasons I kept my 360 around). Some of them released right before the XBONE came out and I had to purchase a new copy to use it on the BONE. Stuff like this happens. It took extra effort. That comes at a cost.
   
• You bought what you bought, and we owe you nothing else.
  Hate to say it, but it's true, and I don't see the issue with that. This is a business, and not a charity. In past, similar, cases, we offered either a bundled version (because the new sim had already been released by the time our aircraft was ready), or a slightly discounted version for a new product entirely for a sim that had newly released and we had decided to go through the extra efforts (and in the case of the P3D versions, the cost was front-loaded to cover the expected P3D versions).

[GCBraun 2,392]

Still using the flawed Xbox 360/Xbox One analogy. As you know, they are completely different architectures. One is a PowerPC system and the other basically an x86 PC. It is nothing like XP10 and XP11. The fact that the DC-6 barely works on XP11 proves that the adaptation efforts would be nowhere near what a software developer would need to do to convert a 360 game to the X1. And, even then, the backwards compatibility program (an emulator, really) allows you to use hundreds of 360 games on the X1 for free! 

As I`ve said before, the DC-6 was released last year, not 5 or 6 years ago. It is a shame that we have to resort to hacks to use the product on a newer version of the very same platform originally intended to be used with the product. This new version, I repeat, was released just some months after the DC-6 came to market.

Other developers charged for the update to XP11. I would have no problem paying a fair price to have the product upgraded. Is that option even being considered?

I would appreciate if you did not lock the topic as you did the last time.

Thiago Braun

[scandinavian13 5,192]

1 hour ago, GCBraun said:

Still using the flawed Xbox 360/Xbox One analogy. As you know, they are completely different architectures. One is a PowerPC system and the other basically an x86 PC. It is nothing like XP10 and XP11. The fact that the DC-6 barely works on XP11 proves that the adaptation efforts would be nowhere near what a software developer would need to do to convert a 360 game to the X1. And, even then, the backwards compatibility program (an emulator, really) allows you to use hundreds of 360 games on the X1 for free! 

The analogy isn't flawed. It's a high level example of a lack of forward compatibility being guaranteed. I could use a number of Windows versions. FS9 versus FSX. Regardless of what analogy you want to use, updating things for a new platform costs dev time, unless the new version of the platform really isn't that much of a new version.

So, sure, 360 versus XBONE might be a lot more effort than XP10 versus XP11. I don't know. Regardless, both examples require work. Work costs time, and time costs money. And your backwards compatibility point only goes so far, so if we're nitpicking analogies, yours is flawed, too. Many work, but it also points to the fact that many don't, and require work, which requires time, which requires money. It also carries an opportunity cost to other products in development, too.

...but here's where it all falls apart, because it's the crux of the issue here: you stick a 360 game into the XBONE and it doesn't work. You shrug a bit and think "man, that sucks" and you move on. Here? People show up in the forum and accuse us of keeping them in the dark. It's not forward compatible. We never said it would be. Nor did Laminar assert that XP11 would carry backwards compatibility for XP10 items. If that's "in the dark" it's because people are turning the light out on their own and blaming it on someone else.

1 hour ago, GCBraun said:

As I`ve said before, the DC-6 was released last year, not 5 or 6 years ago. It is a shame that we have to resort to hacks to use the product on a newer version of the very same platform originally intended to be used with the product. This new version, I repeat, was released just some months after the DC-6 came to market.

Have you developed for both platforms, or are you making sweeping assumptions here?

The recency with which a new platform releases after an add-on is completely irrelevant. This is completely blown out of the water by your fifth line in the first quote, and the second line in the quote above: "it barely works" and "we have to resort to hacks." Why? The reason you have to resort to hacks is because the new sim has a changed behavior for something (and usually multiple things, as is the case here). The very fact that these incompatibilities exist is a testament to how different the platforms are. If it were as easy as a lot of you are claiming here, you'd be able to just hack it into XP11 just fine. This isn't the case, and let's not even get into the fact that it kinda worked in XP11, and then one of the later updates to the platform stopped all of that.

If any idea is flawed, it's the idea that it's easier to convert an add-on to XP11 simply because it released closer to when XP11 came out.

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Gents,

To reiterate something I said a while back:  To date with regard to XPLANE, we have done precisely what we said we intended to do at the beginning, which is to bring a world class simulation title into XPLANE in order to explore the ins and outs of how to make our existing processes work within the XPLANE platform.  We did this in order to educate ourselves, to gain some experience with the platform, evaluate it's suitability to support our entire product catalog and to learn about the customer base and the market. 

As of today- we have been able to do all of these things.

Once the DC-6 was released for XPLANE, we pivoted to providing a MAC compatible version, and then deployed our development assets in keeping with strategic development plan, which is still where those assets are deployed.  As I have stated a number of times, XPLANE11 came as a total and complete surprise to us- and thus wasn't part of our development agenda.  When we can cleave some developer time free, we might change this.  We might not...  That decision will come later and it won't be made based upon opinions or hollering or thumping of chests.  It will be made solely with an eye toward optimizing the best return on our development time, whether that means XPLANE, P3D, or even FS98, for crying out loud.

Now, I realize that a few folks gain immeasurable satisfaction by trying to turn every thread and every discussion into a self serving miasma of woe in which they portray themselves as a hapless victims of some nefarious scheme in which the horribly evil machinima of PMDG has done them wrong- but the bottom line is that this is nothing but dishonest bunk peddled by folks who haven't the slightest clue as to what is actually going on in the background.

So lets keep our eyes on the facts- ignore the self professed victims threatening to hurl themselves from ledges- and keep in mind that we do actually have a plan and a workflow agenda here at PMDG and we are sticking with that plan- even if a few people do slip and fall while trying to attract attention to themselves from those ledges in the mean time.