Captains,

Most of the PMDG team has been on the road for the last two weeks with a combination of team gatherings and FSExpo creating motion all over the planet for a team that lives and works in a geographically dispersed manner. Now that we are back, it is a holiday week in the USA, but I have some news updates for you to enjoy all the same! I am going to pick off a couple of items that are creating questions, and then I'm going to tuck the "not much change here" items down at the bottom.

FSExpo'23:
A bunch of us from the team traveled to Houston to visit FSExpo'23. I'll cover this visit in more detail in a second post, along with some photos to detail the fun!

PMDG DC-6 & PMDG 737 Xbox User News:
For our customers on the Xbox platform, we *think* we have some good news finally on the liveries front: This has been an ongoing struggle, as we are working to build out livery sets that will meet all of Microsoft's store guidelines while also maximizing the number of liveries available to you for the last cost. As previously mentioned, we do not have an avenue to distribute the liveries "free" on the Xbox platform, so we are working with Microsoft to maximize the footprint of each livery package. Without getting too deep into the weeds, we wound up using a new containering methodology that Microsoft recommended, in spite of the fact that it is still slightly experimental and not documented- which required quite a bit of cooperation and back-and-forth testing to ensure it would work as they hope when rolled out live. We have had very good support from their intake team and the first livery package for the DC-6 is now going through intake testing and we hope it will prove that the method works and then we can flood the system with the rest of the packages for both the DC-6 and 737.

A number of folks have been asking if we can tell you which liveries will be included: If all goes according to plan, we will release *nearly* all of the liveries we have available in the PMDG Operations Center- with a few exceptions due to duplication, etc. The goal is to provide a broad range of airlines and colors that you can choose from. To forestall 10,000 "can you also include <insert some favorite here>" please understand that we are choosing from our existing stable of liveries in the interest of expedience and we are not planning to create new ones specifically for this effort.

We had a strategy session with our friends at Navigraph regarding methods to update navdata on the xbox platform. This yielded some technical discussions and potential solutions that are being explored further. Xbox presents some unique challenges to simmers and we are solving them as we go and making reasonably good progress at it.

PMDG 737-600 and PMDG 737-900 for Marketplace PC/XBox:
Both of these products are fully prepped for entry into Marketplace for PC/Xbox but we have opted to keep them in holding while we resolve the livery issue outlined in the point above. We felt it was inappropriate to flood the market with two more projects until we have a meaningful solution in place for Xbox users to obtain liveries. Now that we think we see a solution approaching completion- we will likely push those into the intake process in the near term. We will keep you posted!

PMDG Products in Lockheed Martin Prepar3D v6:
With all of our development resources focused on bringing our airliner simulations into Microsoft Flight Simulator, we are not currently planning to update any of our P3D products for compatibility with P3Dv6. We have done the obligatory "drag-and-drop" to see if the products will work as is and have had poor results. This tells us that some code effort/recompiling will be needed and the resources simply are not available to do so. Earliest re-evaluation of this decision will take place after the 747-400 release in MSFS, which is the same time we will evaluate whether we will conduct further updates of our P3D products based upon the market conditions that exist at that time.


PMDG 737 for MSFS Updates Pending:
We have a number of small updates, and some larger ones that we are beginning to roll up for testing. Lots of small fixes and tweaks all around for PC and likewise for Xbox users. For example we have been experimenting with solutions to the "knob gets stuck spinning" problem that appears for some xbox users, and we are also working on various other cleanup items that we have picked from our issue tracking.

The long awaited tablet is nearly ready on the development side, but needs some wider testing from our betas and a bit more UI cleanup. We think the initial build will be quite nice and we are about to begin working with a few outside designers we have chosen to add their features to the tablet so that you can see the full value of how we have made the tablet universal to our entire product line.

Navdata Changes:
Now that some other areas of 737 development are beginning to wrap up, we have been reallocating resources to one of our other strategic priorities; navdata. We have a test build of the 737 in MSFS using navigraph's modern navdata format and are continuing to adapt the FMS to leverage the additional data and capabilities. This is a long-term item that has been approached slowly and deliberately but we hope to pass off to testing here in the weeks and months ahead. It will be nice to finally leverage the improvements we have made to the LNAV route solvers and the various navigation improvements that will come with this additional step in the evolution of our product line. This update will get rolled into the the 737 for MSFS as soon as it clears testing and will then be rolled into the 777 as well.

PMDG 777 for MSFS:
Speaking of the 777... We aren't quite yet to where we want the product to be at the start of Preview Season... but we aren't far off from that juncture, either. Progress has been slow the past few weeks as we had most of the team in motion and a lot of focus on FSExpo- but everyone is back to work this week, energized and ready for the final push to get the 777 into your hangars!

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/255853-02jul23-a-few-weeks-of-news-and-travel-to-recap

Few little nuggets in there! P3D and Tablet news.

Edited July 2, 20232 yr by MikeH99

LOL

7 minutes ago, Drumcode said:

LOL

Can we not with this again? A lot of people, including me like the fact that PMDG still makes an effort to keep the community up to date with whats going on. Sure, it's a lot of the same stuff, but there's always something one can get out of these updates. PMDG has been around for decades and is pretty much one of the OG's of 3rd party developers. I don't understand this newfound love of hating on PMDG and their updates. I'm no die hard PMDG fan, although I've been purchasing their products since FLY! days, and I know that they haven't exactly been "wowing" us to death, but they still remain at the top of the best 3PD's out there. 

Edited July 3, 20232 yr by Bdub22

WIth the usual sluggish progress, I think by now it is best they just keep quiet and update only when a set release for any update or new product is imminent.

Their way of failing to meet their own dealines is outright ridiculous at this point.

P3D is now becoming a dead sim.....

Even for those not a fan of the PMDG regular updates should be able to agree that their lack of future trust in P3D is worthy of an announcement

1 minute ago, mikethe6th said:

Even for those not a fan of the PMDG regular updates should be able to agree that their lack of future trust in P3D is worthy of an announcement

It just confirms what every other developer have said MSFS is the way forward now. My response on the PMDG forum to Ray's comment You should know by now what people would like and poor visuals certainly wouldn't be one of them. Lets face it P3D V6 won't do that good. A lot of developers have said they will stop developing for P3D, X-Plane and concentrate on MSFS.

Like Rob said

"Earliest re-evaluation of this decision will take place after the 747-400 release in MSFS, which is the same time we will evaluate whether we will conduct further updates of our P3D products based upon the market conditions that exist at that time." In my opinion by this time most likely some point next year they will simply not bother. P3D is coming to a end really for simmers. MSFS is the new thing.

5 minutes ago, carlanthony24 said:

P3D is now becoming a dead sim.....

THIS

Interesting bits to me as always around the 777 and 747... Hope obviously springing eternal here, but is it somewhat safe to interpret RSR's words as the 777 might actually land before end of year? 🙂 

Also interesting, he says they are all in on MSFS as of now and won't even look into making their products work on P3D v6 until after the MSFS 747 is released. And this bit below is very interesting where he says effectively 99+% of their daily installs are now on MSFS (perhaps not that surprising however):
https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/255853-02jul23-a-few-weeks-of-news-and-travel-to-recap?p=255895#post255895

And this little tidbit about the 747-400 in MSFS, good to see them hiring and expanding the team (yet another indicator of their financial success with MSFS) :
https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/255853-02jul23-a-few-weeks-of-news-and-travel-to-recap?p=255906#post255906
Paul- You have no idea how my heart bleeds for getting my beloved 400 in MSFS.... We are hiring to improve forward progress- so... soooooon. -RSR
 

Edited July 3, 20232 yr by lwt1971

56 minutes ago, Drumcode said:

LOL

Word Salad

24 minutes ago, mikethe6th said:

 

Edit nevermind.

Edited July 3, 20232 yr by JBDB-MD80

Paul- You have no idea how my heart bleeds for getting my beloved 400 in MSFS.... We are hiring to improve forward progress- so... soooooon. -RSR

So the 747 is already in MSFS???

9 minutes ago, carlanthony24 said:

Paul- You have no idea how my heart bleeds for getting my beloved 400 in MSFS.... We are hiring to improve forward progress- so... soooooon. -RSR

So the 747 is already in MSFS???

We already knew development on it was started by a smaller subset of their team (per previous updates). The good news here is that they are hiring and expanding the team to throw more resources at it. Very likely not until 2024 I reckon, maybe by then to align and take advantage of MSFS 2024 and its new features.
 

Edited July 3, 20232 yr by lwt1971

47 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Also interesting, he says they are all in on MSFS as of now and won't even look into making their products work on P3D v6 until after the MSFS 747 is released. And this bit below is very interesting where he says effectively 99+% of their daily installs are now on MSFS (perhaps not that surprising however):
https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/255853-02jul23-a-few-weeks-of-news-and-travel-to-recap?p=255895#post255895

I was stunned to hear LM's decision today to postpone tomorrow's release of v6. Wow! 99% of PMDG's daily installs are for MSFS. Their 737-700 is my favorite plane to fly in MSFS.

Edited July 3, 20232 yr by David Mills

“We are about to begin working with a few outside designers we have chosen to add their features to the tablet so that you can see the full value of how we have made the tablet universal to our entire product line”

LOL, release no earlier than late fall.