PMDG Update

[JRBarrett 3,080]

20 minutes ago, jbdbow1970 said:

Guess you miss the other parts of my post its more than just simbrief or navigraph. Rob said in radio chats 6 months ago. They want their fleet of aircraft to work together on all platform :ie P3D and MSFS for their GFO to sell kind of like Vatsim which can't be used on Xbox either.

 

GFO may never see the light of day. It’s been in development for years. I have doubts it will ever be released for P3D, much less MSFS.

PMDG absolutely does want want their aircraft to be available in the Marketplace and on X-Box. They have made that very clear multiple times. The 737-700 very recently (finally) became available on the Marketplace. The 737-800 will probably follow shortly.

X-Box won’t be possible until SU12, but you can be sure that if Asobo does indeed fix the current WASM issues on X-Box, that PMDG will be available on X-Box too in short order.

They are creating their EFB in JavaScript, and running it totally within the constraints imposed by the MSFS SDK, specifically  to avoid being locked out of the Marketplace or X-Box. If that wasn’t a concern, they could create the EFB as an external program that works alongside (but not within) the MSFS environment. That is definitely possible, as Fenix has shown with their external connection to Prosim.

If that was the approach they wanted to use, they could do the entire EFB in C++, (a development language that PMDG knows very well) - and there would be no complications that come with passing data between JavaScript and C++

[JBDB-MD80 1,473]

1 hour ago, JRBarrett said:

GFO may never see the light of day. It’s been in development for years. I have doubts it will ever be released for P3D, much less MSFS.

PMDG absolutely does want want their aircraft to be available in the Marketplace and on X-Box. They have made that very clear multiple times. The 737-700 very recently (finally) became available on the Marketplace. The 737-800 will probably follow shortly.

X-Box won’t be possible until SU12, but you can be sure that if Asobo does indeed fix the current WASM issues on X-Box, that PMDG will be available on X-Box too in short order.

They are creating their EFB in JavaScript, and running it totally within the constraints imposed by the MSFS SDK, specifically  to avoid being locked out of the Marketplace or X-Box. If that wasn’t a concern, they could create the EFB as an external program that works alongside (but not within) the MSFS environment. That is definitely possible, as Fenix has shown with their external connection to Prosim.

If that was the approach they wanted to use, they could do the entire EFB in C++, (a development language that PMDG knows very well) - and there would be no complications that come with passing data between JavaScript and C++

I kind of agree but we will see how PMDG products react on Vatsim, IVAO or PioletEdge network on a Xbox.

[JRBarrett 3,080]

1 hour ago, jbdbow1970 said:

I kind of agree but we will see how PMDG products react on Vatsim, IVAO or PioletEdge network on a Xbox.

No add-ons by any developer can be used with an online ATC network on X-Box. That is nothing unique to PMDG. No default MSFS planes can do it either. You cannot run the client software on (like VPilot) that is required to connect to the network. I don’t think that is ever going change.

PMDG aircraft work just fine on Vatsim or Pilot Edge on the PC version of MSFS

 

Edited January 30, 2023 by JRBarrett

[JBDB-MD80 1,473]

19 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

 

PMDG aircraft work just fine on Vatsim or Pilot Edge on the PC version of MSFS

 

Well that's the point I was trying to make in the first place sir It will never be viable on Xbox as far a live ATC.  This is the bottleneck within the MSFS framework Just like 3rd party weather or camera like Chaseplane. The Xbox is locked out and to some extent so as is the P..C.

Edited January 30, 2023 by jbdbow1970

[NZ255 309]

On 1/29/2023 at 4:39 AM, MDFlier said:

Then, another team spotted it an asked me to do something similar for them.  

And now it’s a critical, production tool haha

[MDFlier 2,031]

24 minutes ago, NZ255 said:

And now it’s a critical, production tool haha

You're probably right. They successfully perform the functions previously done by 2 actual people who were laid off.

[Luis Hernandez 570]

16 hours ago, Konterhalbe said:

Have I already mentioned I hate updates? 😉 There's always something going wrong and I hate surprises in that regard...

Truer words have never been spoken. I thought I was the only one wary/fedup with updates.

[Lucky38i 1,095]

55 minutes ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Truer words have never been spoken. I thought I was the only one wary/fedup with updates.

Seems like this is a simple case of damned of you do, damned if you don’t with regards to updates.

[lwt1971 7,419]

FWIW, RSR's latest on the EFB/C++/WASM topic:

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/236389-26jan23-new-updates-ploural-for-pmdg-737-msfs-product-line-released-today-updates-whole-line-to-3-00-0060#post236460

 

Originally posted by ind3x View Post

Robert,

Can we get an actual & concise reason as to why the EFB is taking so long? You have a team of developers that have 10+ experience in this industry & coding background.

We have developers like FlyByWire simulations that have pushed an EFB & have constantly improved it throughout the past two years. We also have other developers pushing planes like the MD, with an EFB. So, excuse my ignorance but what is with the constant waiting for asobo to do things in order for it to work for YOU guys when it hasn’t been an issue for other developers.

Thanks.

 

TJ- "an actual & concise reason" implies you think I am being dishonest? That comes with more than just a tinge of nastiness. If we were sitting together over a cup of coffee- would you choose to communicate that way? I'd like to think not.

I tend to be VERY careful how I discuss this because the professional antagonists in the herd like to run around screaming "oh, PMDG is kicking sand at Asobo" which isn't true. PMDG products are designed in C++/WASM which gives us very deep and rich capabilities in simulation and allows us to utilize decades of well vetted, precisely engineered simulation technology to recreate various systems and feature sets for our products. Many of these features cannot be accurately reproduced using script based languages and many others cannot be reproduced easily in a script based language. For what we must presume are security reasons, Asobo felt it was necessary to block C++/WASM code from using nearly all of the usual communication methods that would allow the C++/WASM based airplane to communicate with the outside world. For this reason, we have had to create the tablet in a script based language (which is not terribly difficult) and then try to find ways to pass data between the script based tablet and the C++/WASM based airplane.

Unfortunately- the few methods Asobo is willing to allow for this purpose are either not well suited to the task (passing text across a numeric channel for example, requires some artistry and imagination) or are not well documented and somewhat fragile for use of purpose at the moment. (see my comments in the original post in this thread.)

None of this is insurmountable- but it does take time- and we keep running aground on issues that are not well documented, not documented at all, or not working precisely as expected for reasons that might be technical flaws on our end, or simply bugs in the platform. It takes time and lots of cooperative back-and-forth communication to sort these things out. Your presumption that we are sitting around waiting on someone else to create a solution is quite invalid- and would probably evoke a crude response from the team lead in charge of this effort. 

None of this is anyone's fault at Asobo or PMDG- it is simply that we are the first team to try and build this kind of communication between a script based feature with a C++/WASM based airplane. Asobo is listening and probing errors that we bring to them- (which is incredibly helpful) and we try very hard to vet the problems on our end before wasting their time with a tail-chase that comes from an error being made on our side.

So- it takes time. If we had an entirely script based airplane it would be far easier- but converting our well engineered, well vetted simulations to script would probably take far, far longer.

If you think any of this is easy, TJ- I'd be happy to hire you and put you on the team. I suspect you'd probably be surprised by just how talented your teammates are- and you'd regret presuming otherwise in your post above.

-RSR

Edited January 30, 2023 by lwt1971

[regis9 4,014]

It might have been actual, but it wasn’t concise 😂

[lwt1971 7,419]

3 minutes ago, regis9 said:

It might have been actual, but it wasn’t concise 😂

Hehe, brevity is not exactly RSR's strong suit :)

[JYW 2,984]

The OP's point was made directly, even brusqely perhaps... but I don't see Robert's need for the defensiveness and enemy-isation (a word I just made up) of the OP, when it's pretty clear he's just impatient and frustrated .... rather than calling people a liar or insinuating that their not clever.

....and I say that as someone firmly in the PMDG-supporting camp.

[Keirtt 574]

21 minutes ago, JYW said:

The OP's point was made directly, even brusqely perhaps... but I don't see Robert's need for the defensiveness and enemy-isation (a word I just made up) of the OP, when it's pretty clear he's just impatient and frustrated .... rather than calling people a liar or insinuating that their not clever.

....and I say that as someone firmly in the PMDG-supporting camp.

I personally agree with this. I think the punishment here (not literal) didn't fit the crime. His response seemed a bit over the top and this is also coming from someone who is in the PMDG camp and has been a customer since 2004.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Keirtt

[Paul K 1,339]

I'm also in the PMDG camp, and think RSR was perfectly justified in the tone of his response.

[Sonosusto 681]

Awesome. I love PMDG products and always look forward to more DC6 or 737 updates. EFB would be nice for Navigraph/charts etc as I find that very handy (even though I have a second monitor for all of that).

As far as PMDG (or several other developers): this is usually not their main job. A lot of them have careers outside of this hobby. So I am not surprised something will take more time.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Sonosusto