https://flightsim.to/file/38975/pmdg-737-800-alaska-airlines-salmon-thirty-salmon-ii-n599as

Just now, F737MAX said:

I hope iFly do a fantastic job with their expected MAX version

They will.  I'm also on the iFly 737 beta team (yeah I know.)...and they also do excellent work.  I was the official painter of their 737 series in P3d (Lost count of how many I painted...but was only contracted for 4, LOL), and I found their NG series to be excellent in every aspect.  I consider both PMDG and iFly premier devs, and enjoy working with both teams.  

5 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

The development process for any software is the same: High costs, no revenue for ages

No truer words have ever been spoken.  A lot of folks who have spirited discussions about pricing seem to forget this fact.  Their risk is huge, not dissimilar to an actual aircraft manufacturer...they take on a huge financial burden to front the finances to work on a project where they don't get paid until its released. 
I imagine that FSL, had they been working secretly on a MSFS version, and fronted a huge loan to cover expenses while they developed in silence, probably had a coronary when Fenix announced, then released their masterpiece.

There was a LOT at stake for PMDG with this release...lets keep that in mind when we squabble about pricing.  I think that's only fair.  And also keep in mind that development continues, and features coming in the future will be...free to us, but there is a huge development cost involved in that (cough cough EFB) (yes I know that is cost factored into the finances in the back end...but still its a future cost nobody seems to consider when chatting about pricing).  Not to mention all the refinements and small goodies added recently (movable Grimes® lights and sun shades!)...with more to come!

8 minutes ago, Waldo Pepper said:

https://flightsim.to/file/38975/pmdg-737-800-alaska-airlines-salmon-thirty-salmon-ii-n599as

Something fishy about that livery! 🤔

46 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

Hehe....Less than a week into the -800 release and there are already over 240 liveries available!  In less than a WEEK!!!

Which is why I never bothered to get into painting for MSFS, lol.

1 hour ago, MDFlier said:

LOL... Same thing happened to me... If my comments seem disjointed, read the other thread... 

I'll give PMDG credit for something. When you fly the 737 and look at the processes running on your computer, you do NOT see a PMDG task running the airplane. By finding a way to get their C++ code to compile into WASM, they managed to get the simulator to do all of that work. And the results are to be honest, staggering. Say what ever you want, but I will tell you that the PMDG 737s are the smoothest, silkiest. most solid feeling aircraft that I have ever used in a simulator. When you click on one side of a dial to change values, the response is instantaneous. There is zero lag. They even got the speed of the changes set up properly, so you can do that and not blow right past your intended setting, or having to wait forever for it to get there. Everything just works. When the 700 came out, I was disappointed that some of the older bugs remained from their original code and I expressed that in a different thread.

I get a solid impression that Emmanuel has made a positive impact on the development of these airplanes. For example, we all remember the painful task of setting minimums for landing at a high altitude airport. I dreaded landing in Denver because you literally had to sit there and spin the knob, or hold it with the mouse for like 5 minutes to get it to the 5450' or so that was in the chart. Users have begged for years for a fix to this through all of the various versions. Emmanuel was flying the 700 (I think) in a preview video, and when he was setting minimums for landing, he said something like, "This doesn't move quickly enough. The team will address it before release.". I laughed at him. Well, I'll be. It did get fixed. Knock me over with a feather. He has commented on other long standing issues that are now fixed. RTA works all the time now. In P3D, it was 50/50. I never did figure that out. Opened my one and only PMDG support ticket on that one. I had a few back and forths with one of the devs via email and he told me that I didn't know how to use it despite verifying that the screenshots that I sent him showed that it was working properly - in the shots that I sent him to prove that it did work properly 1/2 the time. So I only knew how to use it half the time? I guess he thought I drank too much the other half? I'm not a word not allowed of anything (except for one girl, and one specific brand of 5 year old rum), so I'm not here defending them because I love them or anything, but I just think some of this bashing is way over the top.

I have the 700 and 800. These are both excellent airplanes. After having 3 absolutely dreadful landings in the 800 because it was faster and had more energy than what I was used to in the 700, I can tell you for sure that they do indeed fly differently. Enough so in my mind that owning both are fully justified. Not to mention that my home airport is a SWA hub, and nearly all of the shorter routes that I have time to fly use one or the other. The one thing that I regret now is that I never took the time to fly the 700 in P3D. I was missing out and didn't know it. I'll bet I have a hard time landing the 700 once I figure out how to do it in the 800.  

Software is not cheap or easy to develop. You have to invest a ton of time and money to get to the point where you can start making money. Each developer has a fully loaded cost of approx. $150/hr. For every 100 hours (~2.5 work weeks), that is $15,000 spent. That does not include the other costs like operating a facility, and paying the people that have nothing at all to do with making the airplane but simply exist to make the business run. RSR said "thousands" of hours, and I find that to be an entirely believable number given the amount of time that the devs surely had to spend to simply figure out how MSFS, WASM, the SDK, and all of the other tools they need to get their 3D models exported into the proper formats, with the PBR texturing intact (the MSFS engine uses the standard PBR channels in an unusual way). There had to be hundreds of hours invested before they could even think about getting to work on actually putting the airplane into the simulator. Don't expect them to give it away for free. You think the price of the airplane is expensive? Look at PMDGs balance sheet showing everything going out for a couple of years while nobody was buying P3D addons. I am sure that it would make our eyes bleed. 

One last point. A little over 2 1/2 years ago, PMDG made a promise. If you really read it in the context of what was going on at the time, the message was loud and clear. With the imminent release of MSFS, our entire product line is about to become obsolete right as we were on the verge of releasing our newest version. Buy it from us now, so we can bank some cash until we can catch up on the new platform and we'll pay you back later. I understood what they meant, and I took them up on it. When they put out the 700 1st, I understood that the reason was to make getting it as well as the 800 involve some additional cost. I know that bothers some on here, but when we took them up on that promise in 2019 we were promised a "discount", not a free airplane. We all know that if the 800 was released first, that many users would snag it for free and be done. Free airplanes. That's what people wanted. PMDG's only other choice would be to bundle them, and make the purchase price equal to the credit plus some profit. However, the catch 22 is that MSFS doesn't support the old pricing model. Well, it worked out that people can now get the full PMDG experience for about $40. That seems like a good thing for the folks that can't or won't pay $80. And I got the 700/800 into MSFS for $40. To PMDG, I say thank you for living up to your end of the deal. I hope the cash helped. 

 

I would usually pull snippets from a long post such as this one, but I feel its worth the read again when its lost a few pages back with all the posts coming in.

It would be easy to label me as a tainted source of reference since I'm involved in the project.  But regardless, I know a solid opinion when I see it, and @MDFlier has a very good one. (hehe...in my opinion of his opinion).

What I got out of his post is that he understands a lot of nuances that are often missed when we get into spirited discussions about pricing and value for what you pay.  It's more than just what the end-user winds up paying for a product.

If you factor in the valid and poignant statements MD made in the last two paragraphs, you should be able to at least relate to the risk PMDG took, the offer to make good on "buy our P3D stuff now, we'll take care of you in MSFS", and the fact that this plane runs so well in MSFS (That was not just by chance, there was a LOT of work in the back end to make this happen)...that even at its current price and pricing model, its not a bad deal...especially if you average the cost out over the few years you'll be flying it!

 

 

9 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

I would usually pull snippets from a long post such as this one, but I feel its worth the read again when its lost a few pages back with all the posts coming in.

It would be easy to label me as a tainted source of reference since I'm involved in the project.  But regardless, I know a solid opinion when I see it, and @MDFlier has a very good one. (hehe...in my opinion of his opinion).

What I got out of his post is that he understands a lot of nuances that are often missed when we get into spirited discussions about pricing and value for what you pay.  It's more than just what the end-user winds up paying for a product.

If you factor in the valid and poignant statements MD made in the last two paragraphs, you should be able to at least relate to the risk PMDG took, the offer to make good on "buy our P3D stuff now, we'll take care of you in MSFS", and the fact that this plane runs so well in MSFS (That was not just by chance, there was a LOT of work in the back end to make this happen)...that even at its current price and pricing model, its not a bad deal...especially if you average the cost out over the few years you'll be flying it!

 

 

No Truer words about Truer words Steve. 100% in agreement, and remember as I said earlier in this thread,

”And that my friend is the beauty of the Free Market. You pay for what you want if the prices is agreeable to you. If not…NO SALE!”

-B

1 hour ago, Steve Dra said:

Something fishy about that livery! 🤔

With respect to the volume of liveries that hit .to as soon as the 737-800 went on sale - was there a paint kit made available to painters before the release?

I was surprised at how many liveries turned up immediately after the release.

T45

59 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

I would usually pull snippets from a long post such as this one, but I feel its worth the read again when its lost a few pages back with all the posts coming in.

It would be easy to label me as a tainted source of reference since I'm involved in the project.  But regardless, I know a solid opinion when I see it, and @MDFlier has a very good one. (hehe...in my opinion of his opinion).

What I got out of his post is that he understands a lot of nuances that are often missed when we get into spirited discussions about pricing and value for what you pay.  It's more than just what the end-user winds up paying for a product.

If you factor in the valid and poignant statements MD made in the last two paragraphs, you should be able to at least relate to the risk PMDG took, the offer to make good on "buy our P3D stuff now, we'll take care of you in MSFS", and the fact that this plane runs so well in MSFS (That was not just by chance, there was a LOT of work in the back end to make this happen)...that even at its current price and pricing model, its not a bad deal...especially if you average the cost out over the few years you'll be flying it!

 

 

Absolutely! If I were to divide the initial cost by the sheer hours of enjoyment I get out of these addons it turns out to be some cheap entertainment for me. This is one of my only hobby’s. 
 

 

Edited August 27, 20223 yr by Azapata87

4 minutes ago, Azapata87 said:

some cheap entertainment

No doubt!  Do you know how many rounds of golf some fanatics would have to play to average out the cost of their clubs over time/rounds played? 🤣 Anyone who thinks flightsimming is expensive, try golf, bass fishing (you have to buy a bass boat if you're a serious fisherman), cycling....or real flying!

5 hours ago, MDFlier said:

 

I get a solid impression that Emmanuel has made a positive impact on the development of these airplanes. For example, we all remember the painful task of setting minimums for landing at a high altitude airport. I dreaded landing in Denver because you literally had to sit there and spin the knob, or hold it with the mouse for like 5 minutes to get it to the 5450' or so that was in the chart. Users have begged for years for a fix to this through all of the various versions. 

 

 

Just HOLD Your left SHIFT, and is quicker.

4 hours ago, Treetops45 said:

With respect to the volume of liveries that hit .to as soon as the 737-800 went on sale - was there a paint kit made available to painters before the release?

I was surprised at how many liveries turned up immediately after the release.

T45

The paintkit for the -800 was released right at the -800 release.  However, astute livery painters have figured out that you can easily (well, easy for an experienced painter) convert the older P3D paintkit and it works just fine.  I've been doing that for a while. (You'd think I'd get an advanced copy of the paintkit, but it's usually the last thing updated before a release, so I just modify older ones to paint before release)

You can stage your textures buy building them in the paint kit, then when the plane is released and you now have the aircraft textures, its not hard to move the paintkit parts to the texture maps (one of the easiest parts actually...with the right tools).

But yes...the number of liveries can be a fair barometer as to how well a plane is doing. 

Not to start a hype-train on liveries...but I'm kickin' em out today.  Here is Lufthansa by special request by @guenseli. 
OK G....how many Lufthansa paints does that make now I've painted for you? 🙂 

(I added the Star Alliance logo after this early pic and its on the release version)

Enjoying the 737-800 so far. The ground services are also really cool, but quite buggy IMO. A fair amount of times the vehicle get stuck when trying to arrive or depart, leading to things getting stuck permanently. There is no option to reset the ground vehicles either so some things just stay attached until I take off.

I hope PMDG continue to support the product and fix remaining bugs before they move on to the 747/777.

3 hours ago, UltimateAntic said:

There is no option to reset the ground vehicles either so some things just stay attached until I take off.

You do have to "release" them in the Ground Services menus....in case you weren't aware.

I just installed the 800 and it's fabulous--everything works as it should ;o)

I purchased the 700 a few weeks after it was released and still working my way up to utilization the full potential of the product. So, I am in no hurry to invest in the 800 until PMDG implement their EFB which I am assuming will only be for the 800, I was disappointed that PMDG didn't introduce the EFB with the new 737 line since there are Freeware Aircrafts out there with very good EFB. Let's see what it's like when they do come out with on. The ones they had on the 747-8 in P3D was ok.

Kindest Regards.

Forshaw.