First look PMDG 737 update

[OzWhitey 3,353]

2 hours ago, threegreen said:

The issue with the mods is that PMDG ask people in their EULA to contact them first for permission before publicly distributing files which are still the property of the developer. They are not forbidding modding itself, at least according to what Randazzo recently said on their forums. That's different from liveries because there is a dedicated paint kit including the respective rights publicly available.

I don't know why they make this distinction between livery and cockpit textures with regards to permission; I'd rather they be less stringent on this and I use a cockpit mod for the 737 myself. Given however that in the end people are allowed to mod with their permission and just have to contact them first before uploading I find this to be needlessly dramatized by the community, but I guess that's nothing out of the ordinary. I guess modders (not all btw) didn't read the EULA because it's not common for a developer to take this stance and even take action to enforce that part of the EULA, but I'm not going to blame the developer for wanting to get a look at the mod first before someone alters and publishes proprietary files, irrespective of whether it's irritating or not.

 

They don’t necessarily allow modding. They just say you can ask. The conversation would likely go as follows:

“Hey Randazzle, can I mod your 737’s cockpit textures PLEASE?”

”No, you little word not allowed, and if you try it we’ll get our lawyers to word not allowed you up.”

They’ve now worked out that the guy who did the worn textures had it on his Google drive, and made Google take it down. Petty and vindictive.

It goes against the spirit of years of precedent, where end users mod whatever they want as long as products are released as freeware. 

PMDG themselves have no issue with taking an airline’s trademarks/IP, placing them on their planes and selling this product for profit. 

Did they get permission from the respective companies before modelling the DC-6 or MD-11?

Ultimately, PMDG themselves are highly reliant on borrowing and modifying the work of others.

Congratulations Bobby R. It’s pretty tame here, but if you pop over to Reddit you’ll see that you’re now flight simulation’s most hated company. Well done!

 

[threexgreen 3,135]

20 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

They don’t necessarily allow modding. They just say you can ask. The conversation would likely go as follows:

“Hey Randazzle, can I mod your 737’s cockpit textures PLEASE?”

”No, you little word not allowed, and if you try it we’ll get our lawyers to word not allowed you up.”

They’ve now worked out that the guy who did the worn textures had it on his Google drive, and made Google take it down. Petty and vindictive.

It goes against the spirit of years of precedent, where end users mod whatever they want as long as products are released as freeware. 

PMDG themselves have no issue with taking an airline’s trademarks/IP, placing them on their planes and selling this product for profit. 

Did they get permission from the respective companies before modelling the DC-6 or MD-11?

Ultimately, PMDG themselves are highly reliant on borrowing and modifying the work of others.

Congratulations Bobby R. It’s pretty tame here, but if you pop over to Reddit you’ll see that you’re now flight simulation’s most hated company. Well done!

 

Yes, they do allow modding as they have just recently made clear. Of course they might not allow a mod if they deem it inappropriate for whatever reason. The issue is all about asking first however and it's astonishing how much the community makes out of it without even knowing what the issue actually is - asking first, NOT blindly disallowing any sort of mod, which about 90% of posts I have come across are talking about.

I don't care about how a theoretical, made up conversation might go and if you go back to my post you will find I said myself that I don't think they should be going after it the way they do. Is it bad publicity and thus bad for the company? Yes. Is there any sort of harm being done by modding textures to look worn? No, definitely not. Is it petty and vindictive (vindictive, really?)? Well, it's unfortunate. But at the end of the day it's a company asking people to obtain permission first for distributing altered parts of their product, which, even if uncommon in our universe, isn't exactly a big deal.

By the way, I find it hard to understand why people (not necessarily you) seem to celebrate Reddit et al. so much for what they are doing. They are literally at the point of posting screenshots of unapproved edits of PMDG's Wikipedia page insulting Randazzo with obscenities. Way to go.

Edited June 22, 2022 by threegreen

[OzWhitey 3,353]

12 minutes ago, threegreen said:

Well, it's unfortunate. But at the end of the day it's a company asking people to obtain permission first for distributing altered parts of their product, which, even if uncommon in our universe, isn't exactly a big deal.

By the way, I find it hard to understand why people (not necessarily you) seem to celebrate Reddit et al. so much for what they are doing. They are literally at the point of posting screenshots of unapproved edits of PMDG's Wikipedia page insulting Randazzo with obscenities. Way to go.

I suspect Reddit is more indicative of the broader flightsim community than Avsim is. If you want to learn what people are saying on the “flightsim street”, it’s a good place to go. At least with regard to the newer simmers who may not have been around since Sublogic times.

I checked the Wikipedia page, and there’s no hate for Randazzo there. Rather, it looks more like something Bobby R would write himself:

“The twitch streamers who were able to download the aircraft upon release heaped massive praise upon the product, with one saying they felt it was a "Game Changer for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the PMDG 737 now takes the sim to the Next-Level"^{[citation needed]}

Lol, that is a particularly un-encyclopaedic entry we have there!

 

 

Edited June 22, 2022 by OzWhitey

[Waldo Pepper 1,952]

dirty bird,

https://flightsim.to/file/32643/737-700-american-airlines-n850nn-2015

[threexgreen 3,135]

10 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I suspect Reddit is more indicative of the broader flightsim community than Avsim is. If you want to learn what people are saying on the “flightsim street”, it’s a good place to go. At least with regard to the newer simmers who may not have been around since Sublogic times.

I checked the Wikipedia page, and there’s no hate for Randazzo there. Rather, it looks more like something Bobby R would write himself:

“The twitch streamers who were able to download the aircraft upon release heaped massive praise upon the product, with one saying they felt it was a "Game Changer for Microsoft Flight Simulator, the PMDG 737 now takes the sim to the Next-Level"^{[citation needed]}

Lol, that is a particularly un-encyclopaedic entry we have there!

If you read my post again you will find I said "screenshots of unapproved edits of PMDG's Wikipedia page"... Obviously, Wikipedia mods aren't going to green light that.

Reddit may give you a general idea of where the community stands with regards to approval/disapproval - but don't tell me for a second it's a good place to go, especially not in this context. AVSIM serves just fine to get that idea, even if it's also not exactly deprived of drama and toxicity (although far more innocent than Reddit et al. of course).

Edited June 22, 2022 by threegreen

[blueshark747 1,843]

Avsim is pretty much the OG of in depth "flight sim politics"

Redditors nor the majority of official MSFS forum population are as knowledgeable nor seasoned when it comes to in depth first hand experience with 3rd party addon flight sim devs the past 15 years.

Some may find Avsimmer feedback pretty critical at times, but the majority of the population left here are quite experienced and are pretty accurate at gauging various aspects of this hobby.

One thing you can certainly count on here is for majority of folks to be a blunt and critical of 3rd party products ,developers and companies with no sugarcoating whatsoever.

 

Edited June 22, 2022 by blueshark747

[Der Zeitgeist 1,575]

18 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

Some may find Avsimmer feedback pretty critical at times, but the majority of the population left here are quite experienced and are pretty accurate at gauging various aspects of this hobby.

Sorry, but that's just not the case. There's no other flightsim forum I know that over the past 3 years has had so many bad takes, often bordering on disinformation, about the development of MSFS than Avsim had.

 

Edited June 22, 2022 by Der Zeitgeist

[OzWhitey 3,353]

18 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

Sorry, but that's just not the case. There's no other flightsim forum I know that over the past 3 years has had so many bad takes, often bordering on disinformation, about the development of MSFS than Avsim had.

 

Avsim is a bit all over the place.

Yes it was pretty awful in terms of disinformation about MSFS, with ideas such as "it's an Xbox game" and "it will be subscription only" being very hard to dispel for about a year there.

Equally, there's some massive, over-the-top fan-persons here, both for MSFS and PMDG. You'll see more attempts at white knighting for PMDG here than you will anywhere else outside that company's forums. Some the the efforts to shut down criticism of the company here have been pretty obnoxious. Also, I see a lot of straw-man arguments used when trying to negate the critics.

Myself, I'd like to think that I hold a somewhat nuanced view on this topic.

I'm definitely shaking my head at a lot of PMDGs recent antics. I'd give them a solid 0/10 for PR in the post-release period.

Equally, I just love flying the 737 in MSFS so much. It may not be the perfect addon, but I like the type and it's a very functional piece of software in an increasingly great sim. 

Edited June 22, 2022 by OzWhitey

[V1ROTA7E 718]

11 hours ago, Kopteeni said:

Vandals are trying to ruin the Sistine Chapel of Randazzo, so PMDG have now taken it to Google to remove these cockpit texture mod abominations

Well, we know PMDG's priority...

1) Full names
2) Ported code
3) Cockpit Mods

just kidding...but seriously, maybe PMDG should ask Southwest, Westjet, etc. if it's OK to use their "Verified" configurations and liveries as that may be a violation of the airline's terms. At the end of the day, it's a video game. This is getting ridiculous.

Edited June 23, 2022 by V1ROTA7E

[DD_Arthur 1,048]

1 hour ago, OzWhitey said:

I suspect Reddit is more indicative of the broader flightsim community than Avsim is.

Blimey!  The broader flightsim community is three dozen keyboard warriors with personality disorders?

[ShawnG 1,823]

57 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

Avsim is pretty much the OG of in depth "flight sim politics"

Redditors nor the majority of official MSFS forum population are as knowledgeable nor seasoned when it comes to in depth first hand experience with 3rd party addon flight sim devs the past 15 years.

Some may find Avsimmer feedback pretty critical at times, but the majority of the population left here are quite experienced and are pretty accurate at gauging various aspects of this hobby.

One thing you can certainly count on here is for majority of folks to be a blunt and critical of 3rd party products ,developers and companies with no sugarcoating whatsoever.

 

Avsim can be counted on to “protect” simmers from low to medium complexity products, even if they are done by decent people in a competent way.  Devs who create hard core complex simulators can literally do whatever they want, including horribly reprehensible actions way in excess of Randangelo’s worst offenses and they will still find willing shills here.

a poster earlier pointed out that pmdg pushes the envelope of what’s possible in flightsims, and they do (or at the very least, they did).  But they also push the envelope on acceptable business practices, and adviseable public behavior.  While pmdg doesn’t  take whole strides over the line very often, they love to feel comfortable in riding the very edge.  Pointing that out, continually if necessary, is not a sin.

[ShawnG 1,823]

8 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

Blimey!  The broader flightsim community is three dozen keyboard warriors with personality disorders?

It’s not like those words can’t be used to describe this place as well…

[DD_Arthur 1,048]

32 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

It’s not like those words can’t be used to describe this place as well…

😎

[Steve Dra 7,579]

3 hours ago, Noel said:

OMG, you're kidding, no?  I haven't purchased the PMDG 737 and was waiting til the 800 arrives.

Best not to listen to someone who doesn't own the product.

I've painted twenty three 737s so far....funny that I haven't noticed any "abysmal textures".  Sure, some areas are not super high rez, but this person seems to do nothing but complain about a product he doesn't own, frequently stating his reasons for not owning it...which begs the question: What's his point?   In my opinion, he has no relevant point so I generally ignore him...so while he may think the textures are "abysmal", making such generalizations are the hallmark of his kind.

Here are a few of the "abysmal" textures he must be referring to:

On this pic, I'm showing the lighting effects with the light scratches and rivet heads when the sun hits them just right.  This is all due to the "abysmal" COMP maps PMDG created for us painters to take advantage of.  Since he probably doesn't know what a COMP map is, what it does (unless he Googles it) and why this is important...leads you to believe he has no clue as to what he's talking about.

Here is another example of the COMP map at work....at a different angle. Again...just "abysmal"

PMDG has stated that they are continuously working to improve the textures. When they re-map older textures, they test how the higher resolution textures impact performance.  So its something that gets better with time, and I've already seen many improvements pass thru the beta team that a lot of simmers won't likely even notice, but it adds to overall package as it matures.  

I wasn't going to post because I'm just so tried of his kind making statements based on whatever mood they happen to be in and the last thing PMDG said that triggered him.  But I felt a counter-point was needed, just in case you did take him seriously.

[Farlis 2,280]

1 hour ago, V1ROTA7E said:

Well, we know PMDG's priority...

1) First names

It's full names, not just first names. Something quite a few people on their forums seem to miss. 😉