747 in 2027. 

6 hours ago, Sonosusto said:

I remember before the 737 was released PMDG was showing some textures in the cockpit and a bunch of people were clearly angry over the textures on one particular spot. Seriously? Acting worse than my toddler.

I remember that, because I was the guy who went to work, put my foot up on the foot rest in question, and took pictures showing that the PMDG texturing was exactly accurate.  Crickets from that particular poster afterwards.  It was pretty funny.  I mean, if you're going to try to correct a dev house with that level of experience around aircraft and you have none yourself, you should at least be able to own your screw up.  😁

Do people use mouse input on Xbox? I can't imagine having to flip all the switches in a PMDG flight deck with a controller...

 

8 minutes ago, eslader said:

Do people use mouse input on Xbox? I can't imagine having to flip all the switches in a PMDG flight deck with a controller...

 

Yes, you can use a mouse with. Xbox.

15 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

Yes, you can use a mouse with. Xbox.

A lot of us PC guys think of Xbox as just a box with the iconic Xbox controller but of course things have changed today. My Boeing Thrustmaster yoke has an Xbox button and I am guessing that Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo can probably connect too. I assume more and more peripheral devices (radio, stream switch boxes like Elgato) are being made for Xbox functionality or can connect to Xbox. The point is that it seems to me, Xbox can do pretty much what a PC can do except when more complex home cockpit builds are being pursued. So yeah, definitely no problems with a mouse 🙂 

Cheers

Terry

The VNAV still needs work on the 738.  No EFB what surprise.

The VNAV is quite good on the PMDG 73.  The LNAV can still use some work, but it's ongoing.  I wish it had been prioritized over the EFB as that's just an option and not even a basic part of the aircraft, but oh well, I understand they have to listen to the community and the community prioritizes a fake ipad over perfect flight guidance for some reason lol.

Do PMDG simply need to hire more full-time staff? Honest question.

I still don't really get it. Every aircraft they release in MSFS is going to net a huge level of sales and thus revenue for them. But it doesn't seem like they're in a hurry, does it?

And sure, I'd like to see an EFB in my 737, but even as a customer, if I had to choose between a 777 and an EFB, I'd choose the 777 in a heartbeat. How much easier is that choice from PMDG's perspective, since one makes them money and one doesn't? And yet here we are in a situation where this EFB (which is going to take them longer than it took the Manhattan Project to build the bomb!) is apparently indefinitely cannibalizing their development of new aircraft. That seems...basically inexplicable to me from a business perspective?

PMDG's general lack of hustle suggests an assumption that the MSFS addon-market will always be there, and will be just as robust in 5 years as it is today. That seems extraordinarily optimistic to me!

James

2 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

The VNAV is quite good on the PMDG 73.  The LNAV can still use some work, but it's ongoing.  I wish it had been prioritized over the EFB as that's just an option and not even a basic part of the aircraft, but oh well, I understand they have to listen to the community and the community prioritizes a fake ipad over perfect flight guidance for some reason lol.

RSR did indicate that the new nav data format is coming in the “very near future”, I am looking forward to that far more than the EFB. Hopefully this will result in properly-depicted (and flown) DME arcs, RF legs and complex RNP AR approaches.

Edited May 1, 20233 yr by JRBarrett

2 hours ago, MikeH99 said:

The VNAV still needs work on the 738.  No EFB what surprise.

I use Vnav all the time on the PMDG 738.  What am I missing, besides the fact it takes me right to the runway? 

46 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I use Vnav all the time on the PMDG 738.  What am I missing, besides the fact it takes me right to the runway? 

I would agree... no problems here with VNAV.

 

4 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

RSR did indicate that the new nav data format is coming in the “very near future”, I am looking forward to that far more than the EFB. Hopefully this will result in properly-depicted (and flown) DME arcs, RF legs and complex RNP AR approaches.

Agreed.  I'm glad we keep hearing about the navdata update anyway;  I figure if they were ignoring it they wouldn't be trying to keep peoples minds on it haha.

16 hours ago, jrw4 said:

It's not the Apollo program, for sure, but the problem they faced had not been solved before. Creating an EFB in MSFS isn't the hard part; getting that code to communicate with the WASM environment in which the PMDG airliner product line has been and is being developed, appears to be very hard. To my knowledge, no other developer has demonstrated that capability previously.

Several developers have already done this. This isn’t some special feat reserved to PMDG. FBW, JustFlight, Leonardo, Fénix are just some devs with aircraft that have WASM - JS communication. Hell even GSX has done it already

I don't really have much to comment on the whole EFB thing, but people are really quite hard on Robert and his PR strategy for some reason. From a developer's standpoint I can't help but feel for him - we're all in similar situations, which is damned if you do, damned if you don't. 

Development is fundamentally boring, it's not flash and razzmatazz 99.9% of the time. The flourish, the fun parts, the result - all comes together in the last 0.1% of it, when the final picture is put together. This, ultimately, is what the customer is accustomed to, and this is what the customer expects to see all the time when a developer opens their mouth to say something. Showing something that looks cool at 50% of the way in, with another 50% to go, is also a death sentence, because then people will complain that it "looks done so why hasn't it been deployed yet", without much understanding that there's only so much functionality a pretty front-end has and while it all looks cool, it's far from usable. 

If you speak, and speak often, to let people know where you are and how things are progressing, without showing any CoolStuffTM, you're also doomed - as people will simply say "shut up and get on with it", but if you shut up and get on with it, people will complain that "they haven't given us a status update in X months, is the project dead?", and so the solution is to update people often with CoolStuffTM - which while technically not impossible, is improbable to produce, screws up development roadmapping for the sake of PR (which is just poor project management), and even if you do, the end result is: "man, these guys sure show a lot of stuff but seemingly never deliver!".

Ultimately, every company chooses their PR strategy based on what their leadership feels is right, and ultimately every strategy will leave some people upset about some shortcoming or the other. 

I think the updates are great , even if they don’t say much it’s just a “we’re still here and it’s not ready just yet” check in. 

What does seems odd though is saying the 73 is ready on Xbox but they’re delaying it until the livery packages and their pricing are decided. 
 

I get why they don’t want to include them with the aircraft - too big a release, not everyone wants them etc but. . . . Why not just release the 73 now (as it’s ready) and the livery packages later?