PMDG update

[Republic3D 1,232]

Randazzo: "Asobo are working overtime and moving mountains for us, but we will not lift a finger ourselves to be able to sell our $130 airplanes to your user base"

PMDG are behaving like divas. The tools are there if they're willing to work with them. Instead they expect Asobo to take Flight Simulator 2020 back 14 years to 2006 so PMDG doesn't have to write as much code. 
That's bad news for everyone enjoying Flight Simulator at the moment. PMDG needs to adapt to Asobo, not the other way around.

[Biology 1,347]

43 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again,

If the developers would use the tools at their disposal, mainly, the javascript API, they would find that there are really no missing features from which to build a fully functional aircraft with full systems depth.

Between what is available in JS and WASM today,  I can see no barriers to developing a "study level" (though I'm starting to hate that term) aircraft. The issue is that the developers are refusing to use what's available to them and instead waiting for everything that's already available in more modern tooling to be shipped to the C++ experience.

I dare say you'll see systems depth rivaling the big players before too long here.

-Matt

I also agree with this. A perfectly complicated airliner can easily be built using modern APIs of MSFS, as Asobo confirmed in one of the Q&A sessions. On the other hand, support for aircraft depending on legacy code is still quite incomplete - no multithreading for WASM modules, a maximum of 4 GB addressable memory per WASM module and incomplete GDI+ (yes, I know, GDI+ it is pretty much ancient at this point but PMDG, FSLabs and many others are still using it) wrapper to name a few.

However, as Asobo also mentioned in that Q&A session, legacy code isn't necessarily inferior as people portray here. It's just different - both approaches have different strengths and weaknesses. As a businness, for PMDG, FSLabs and many others it just doesn't make sense to rewrite entire aircraft code from scratch, when Asobo already promised legacy wrappers for their code.

Edited November 22, 2020 by BiologicalNanobot

[cavaricooper 2,614]

Mindful of my relationship with PMDG, I will only say, they know what they are doing, what they need, and when they expect to get it.

I, and others, are grateful for what they produce, and will support them, when they do.

C

[dobee51 348]

49 minutes ago, odourboy said:

I just hope they have the financial strength to survive a year plus delay in releasing on MSFS.  More disappointing then the delay would be PMDG failing as a business all together.

About PMDG

PMDG's simulation products are being used by individuals, companies, pilots and professional flight crews in nearly every country around the world. A leader in the development of advanced simulation technologies, PMDG's simulation software has become well known for attention to detail, innovation and thoroughness.

PMDG works with some of the biggest names in aerospace and partners with some of the world's largest airlines in order to produce highly detailed airliner simulations that are capable of reproducing the complex world of the modern flight deck in finite detail.

PMDG is a global business with employees and contractors working in Canada, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

PMDG is headquartered in Alexandria, Virgina.

 

They'll probably be OK...

[OSM 683]

5 minutes ago, Republic3D said:

Randazzo: "Asobo are working overtime and moving mountains for us, but we will not lift a finger ourselves to be able to sell our $130 airplanes to your user base"

PMDG are behaving like divas. The tools are there if they're willing to work with them. Instead they expect Asobo to take Flight Simulator 2020 back 14 years to 2006 so PMDG doesn't have to write as much code. 
That's bad news for everyone enjoying Flight Simulator at the moment. PMDG needs to adapt to Asobo, not the other way around.

I am sure new developers kick PMDG from Olympus in a couple months. Around many young, highly motivated and really talented designers and coders wiling to cooperate with Microsoft and Asobo. Perhaps this is time for PMDG to take retirement.

[MattNischan 3,778]

4 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

As a businness, for PMDG, FSLabs and many others it just doesn't make sense to rewrite entire aircraft code from scratch, when Asobo already promised legacy wrappers for their code.

This is definitely understand, for sure. And I don't envy the position they're in, from a business perspective. But, in some sense, this is the price of innovation. You can't expect to write your code once and just have it last for the rest of the lifetime of your company, making you the same money over and over. And so, as someone who is a lead architect on a half million code line system, sometimes it's time to pay the tech debt piper, so to speak.

And some of the technical limitations, like a lack of threading and only 4GB per instrument, are definitely not deal breakers, even if threading specifically would be convenient.

[BigDee 119]

19 minutes ago, Republic3D said:

PMDG are behaving like divas. The tools are there if they're willing to work with them. Instead they expect Asobo to take Flight Simulator 2020 back 14 years to 2006 so PMDG doesn't have to write as much code. 
That's bad news for everyone enjoying Flight Simulator at the moment. PMDG needs to adapt to Asobo, not the other way around.

Great MSFS user post. They are delaying the 737NG because they insist Asobo to reverse the code in FS2020 back to FSX, so they don`t have to do much work.

They have clearly stated the SDK is in an unfinished state and they cannot bring the quality they want to give the customers with this SDK. Contrary to the professional developers of FS2020, they want to release a top product at first day, it`s impossible right now.

[SlowFlyer 78]

5 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

As a developer myself, I can mostly confirm this. A perfectly complicated airliner can easily be built using modern APIs of MSFS, as Asobo confirmed in one of the Q&A sessions. On the other hand, support for aircraft depending on legacy code is still quite incomplete - no multithreading for WASM modules, a maximum of 4 GB addressable memory per WASM module and incomplete GDI+ (yes, I know, GDI+ it is pretty much ancient at this point but PMDG, FSLabs and many others are still using it) wrapper to name a few.

So, you are saying, it's not due to a lack of tools from within MSFS and it's not due to MSFS missing or lacking some essential, basic codes that is slowing down the progress of these developers to product high, quality software; it's because they are slow to accept a change in the way they have been developing their software over the last many, many years? Or is it because they don't have the knowledge or expertise yet to develop a MSFS 737 up to the standards of a Prepar3d 737?

Maybe MSFS is so "new" that a lot of new learning is required. Like, me who used to know a little, small bit of basic would needing to now learn to use some more modern software language.

Cool, I guess, they are just being "difficult" because they are resistant to changes, and are having a difficult time "getting with the new times".

Seems very simple, these developers only need to hire people who know the new codes...and then they can have a plane that features a "realistic" and functional FMS; great, believable flight dynamics based on weight, air density, fuel levels; realistic malfunctions, great working autopilots, etc.  And then throw in all the other goodies for a $100+ software over and above a very pretty interior/exterior model.  

As you say: " A perfectly complicated airliner can easily be built using modern APIs of MSFS, as Asobo confirmed in one of the Q&A sessions" Boldness added by me.

Asobo who needed hobbyists to fix the autopilot, FM of their own default aircrafts says it's "easy"...

[Biology 1,347]

29 minutes ago, SlowFlyer said:

So, you are saying, it's not due to a lack of tools from within MSFS and it's not due to MSFS missing or lacking some essential, basic codes that is slowing down the progress of these developers to product high, quality software; it's because they are slow to accept a change in the way they have been developing their software over the last many, many years? Or is it because they don't have the knowledge or expertise yet to develop a MSFS 737 up to the standards of a Prepar3d 737?

Maybe MSFS is so "new" that a lot of new learning is required. Like, me who used to know a little, small bit of basic would needing to now learn to use some more modern software language.

Cool, I guess, they are just being "difficult" because they are resistant to changes, and are having a difficult time "getting with the new times".

Seems very simple, these developers only need to hire people who know the new codes...and then they can have a plane that features a "realistic" and functional FMS; great, believable flight dynamics based on weight, air density, fuel levels; realistic malfunctions, great working autopilots, etc.  And then throw in all the other goodies for a $100+ software over and above a very pretty interior/exterior model.  

As you say: " A perfectly complicated airliner can easily be built using modern APIs of MSFS, as Asobo confirmed in one of the Q&A sessions" Boldness added by me.

Asobo who needed hobbyists to fix the autopilot, FM of their own default aircrafts says it's "easy"...

It's quite complicated. Basically, MSFS already provides enough tools for creating high-fidelity aircraft, just not the ones P3D/FSX developers are used to. Even though there aren't enough tools for the developers who don't want to rewrite their aircraft from scratch, Asobo has promised that there will be backwards compatibility for P3D/FSX aircraft and they are already working on it.

PMDG, FSLabs and others have two options - they can completely ditch the legacy code and start from scratch, which would take like 3-4 years (which is the average time for a complex airliner add-on to be developed from scratch) and maybe even more or they can simply wait for the tools promised by Asobo and then quickly port the code afterwards, which is expected to take around 1 year.

In short, it's not because PMDG, FSLabs and others are being lazy, refusing to change or simply incapable of using new tools, but just because it would take a lot more time and resources to develop an aircraft from scratch using new MSFS tools. Imagine PMDG NG3 being released in 2025 instead of 2022.

So, I don't think there's someone to blame here. Both Asobo and third party developers are doing their best, we just need to wait a little bit more. PMDG, FSLabs and others create extremely nice aircraft, and I can't wait to see their offerings in MSFS. Similarly, I would love to see the aircraft developed using new tools too.

Lastly, what I mean with "easily" in this case is to be able to create an aircraft without encountering show-stopping development roadblocks (which is quite possible using modern MSFS APIs), not the work itself.

Edited November 22, 2020 by BiologicalNanobot

[MattNischan 3,778]

9 minutes ago, SlowFlyer said:

As you say: " A perfectly complicated airliner can easily be built using modern APIs of MSFS, as Asobo confirmed in one of the Q&A sessions" Boldness added by me.

Asobo who needed hobbyists to fix the autopilot, FM of their own default aircrafts says it's "easy"...

This is just a super unfair bit of sarcasm.

As someone who has been knee deep in the existing code base for over 2 months now, I can say that, yes, pretty much every feature you see in the existing PMDG P3D products is possible with the tools as they currently exist. You would need to use a combination of JS and C++, but completely doable.

Whether or not that classifies under a specific definition of "easy" is a language issue: it is certainly possible.

-Matt

 

[abrams_tank 7,397]

28 minutes ago, SlowFlyer said:

So, you are saying, it's not due to a lack of tools from within MSFS and it's not due to MSFS missing or lacking some essential, basic codes that is slowing down the progress of these developers to product high, quality software; it's because they are slow to accept a change in the way they have been developing their software over the last many, many years? Or is it because they don't have the knowledge or expertise yet to develop a MSFS 737 up to the standards of a Prepar3d 737?

Maybe MSFS is so "new" that a lot of new learning is required. Like, me who used to know a little, small bit of basic would needing to now learn to use some more modern software language.

Cool, I guess, they are just being "difficult" because they are resistant to changes, and are having a difficult time "getting with the new times".

Seems very simple, these developers only need to hire people who know the new codes...and then they can have a plane that features a "realistic" and functional FMS; great, believable flight dynamics based on weight, air density, fuel levels; realistic malfunctions, great working autopilots, etc.  And then throw in all the other goodies for a $100+ software over and above a very pretty interior/exterior model.  

As you say: " A perfectly complicated airliner can easily be built using modern APIs of MSFS, as Asobo confirmed in one of the Q&A sessions" Boldness added by me.

Asobo who needed hobbyists to fix the autopilot, FM of their own default aircrafts says it's "easy"...

Hmm, it seems like you don't know that you're talking about.

If what MattNischan says is true since he has looked through the SDK and knows the code to interface with MSFS, then a "study level" airliner can be done with the existing API of MSFS. However, that means much of PDMG's code, which is legacy code, would not be useable.  It means PDMG's development team has to learn the new API, develop code that works with the new API, and also learn Javascript.

PDMG appears not to want to spend its developer resources to rewrite their code.  And if their development team isn't familiar with Javascript, that is an additional learning curve.  In other words, PDMG wants Asobo to spoon feed them, so that PDMG spends the least amount of developer resources to port their legacy code to MSFS.

It's possible that other 3rd parties can step in to make "study level" airliners as long as those 3rd parties are willing to learn the API for MSFS, and also use Javascript.

Edited November 22, 2020 by abrams_tank

[marsman2020 1,310]

Even if the 3DPs dug in and used the new tools vs waiting for Asobo to add backwards compatibility layers...if they  hired 4x the people and somehow compressed the time to start over from scratch down to say less then a year. Asobo might still issue some update and break the thing and cause negative repercussions for the 3DP brands and MSFS while MS takes weeks to approve a fix.  Just like we are seeing now with the Mooney.

If I magically had a full study level airliner ready to release sitting here in my PC, I'd need to get some serious behind the scenes info and assurances from Asobo before I would release it, vs saying let's wait for a Sim Update or 2 to make sure no core aspects of the sim are going to change and break stuff.

Also, to be honest I am skeptical of Asobo actually delivering on their promised backward compatibility layer.  They seem to struggle with some of the design aspects of their own code let alone writing shims for another teams API from 10 years ago.

Edited November 22, 2020 by marsman2020

[OSM 683]

Just curious Who and Why are paying Asobo coders to do something for PMDG or any other 3PD?

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

I've always thought that the SDK excuse was a little too easy...

[ashepherd316 63]

hopefully someone can port the aircraft to msfs