6 hours ago, G MIDY said:

The funniest thing I find about the obsession with EFB's is the fact that they're so boring. I literally can't think of anything worse than a screenshot of an EFB but kudos to PMDG if they manage to put one out there and successfully dress it up as exciting. Maybe once a screenshot is released we will see arguments on here about the shade of grey on the plastic surrounds...

Maybe it will be skinnable.  (I'm kind of joking, but after working on it for so long...it would be neat to brand your EFB with a VA logo for example)

Yes being able to move their EFB out to a tablet or something like that would be nice.

7 hours ago, G MIDY said:

Personally, I think the only critical importance for any MSFS EFB is the ability to drive it on an iPad. […] For the rest of time, don't worry about it, fly the aircraft and look where you're going! 🙃

It‘s also very useful when flying in VR. Makes it much more convenient and immersive. 

16 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

It depends on how much additional revenue releasing the product on XBox brings in. If it is a substantial amount, they would be foolish to not do it, even if it complicates the development process.

The delays with the EFB and the communications around it make it seem like they didn‘t expect those delays back when they made the decision to go for the XBOX, so chances are that they made their decision based on wrong assumptions (essentially: it costs a lot more time=money down the road than expected) and tldr it was a decision that caused losses in the whole picture.
But since this is only speculating I‘ll leave it to saying it was a wrong decision for us PC-users.

Neither I,  nor most of the contributors on this thread actually understand the complexities of producing a piece of software for a sim.  Coupled with the commercial decisions in relation to that piece of software, it must be very difficult.   And of course, those decisions will be aligned with the most profitable outcome.

So I don't criticize PMDG for any of the delay happening here.  But the reality is that the continual delays (for what most consider a simple EFB) are somewhat reputationally damaging (rightly or wrongly) because all developers are on 24h trial, every day, by social media. Everyone is judged in relation to others, even though the circumstance may be different.

But as harsh as the judgements are, once the products are released, the judgements quickly fade into obscurity and  the product becomes the next best thing.   People simply have no patience, including me.

Edited September 5, 20232 yr by ErichB

1 hour ago, ErichB said:

Neither I,  nor most of the contributors on this thread actually understand the complexities of producing a piece of software for a sim.  

The Dunning Kruger Effect 😄 !

A discussion about the EFB or the lack thereof is of course legitimate. Forums are made for that. There are a couple of interesting posts in this thread. To put a little pressure is also welcome and can be fun. 

But being harsh with a dev, ridicule him  just because he does not deliver in time something he is not contractually obliged to deliver is not only ludicrous, it is also  inappropriate (decent ?). And giving lessons in project management to one of the  3-top tier simcraft dev of all time is embarrassing. For those who delve into this exercise. Not for Randazzo.

Edited September 5, 20232 yr by Dominique_K

50 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

A discussion about the EFB or the lack thereof is of course legitimate. Forums are made for that. There are a couple of interesting posts in this thread. To put a little pressure is also welcome and can be fun. 

Agree, 100%

3 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

But since this is only speculating I‘ll leave it to saying it was a wrong decision for us PC-users.

Based on what? Why do you keep pushing this narrative?

PMDG deciding to not go on Xbox would not have changed the current situation.

I'm still trying to figure out whether JRBarrett and Lucky38i are posting in English? 😂 They lost me after their 1st post!

21 minutes ago, Peter Webber said:

I'm still trying to figure out whether JRBarrett and Lucky38i are posting in English? 😂 They lost me after their 1st post!

I think.. from what I can gather..translated  what’s happened is something along the lines of this…

 They (PMDG) decided to bake their friend a fancy birthday cake from scratch only to later discover, once they’d started that there was no icing sugar or little candles in the house. 
 

Not wanting to disappoint their friend they went to the shops to find icing sugar and little candles. However it took so long to find the bits required , get home and decorate the cake , that by the time they took the cake over to their friend’s house they found that his wife had already been to the supermarket and bought a ready made birthday cake , which , actually , was far superior.

In a fit of anger and frustration the PMDG cake was thrown on the floor and stamped on , then eaten by the dog.

However this was quickly forgotten about as everyone sat down and enjoyed a slice of the ready made shop bought cake.

It was only then that the developers, and then in turn their friend, realised that they’d been so busy trying to put the icing on the cake , that they’d actually forgotten to bring the main  birthday present that they’d been promising to give their friend all year.

The developers pretended not to notice, looked at the floor and talked about something completely unconnected.
Their friend having seen the wasted efforts they went to in making and decorating the cake,(they’d even signed their names in icing sugar on the top so everyone knew who it was from ) felt sorry for the developers and decided to also keep quiet.

The developers left the party with the promise that next year’s birthday would be much better and it would be worth the wait.

After they’d left the friend stood and looked at what was left of the developers cake on the floor, he wasn’t really convinced next year would be any better.

Just then there was a knock on the door , it was the new developers that had recently moved to the street into a house across the road, and they had all sorts of amazing gifts and party food with them, like cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks, things the friend had never seen before.

The friend felt a pang of guilt as he once more caught sight of the cake on the floor but he opened the door wide delighted to see his new friends and the gifts they’d brought.

 

 

Ok....I'll have a few beers, then go over this again....😉 Thanks for clarifying.....I think...

Edited September 5, 20232 yr by Peter Webber

40 minutes ago, jon b said:

I think.. from what I can gather..translated  .......................The friend felt a pang of guilt as he once more caught sight of the cake on the floor but he opened the door wide delighted to see his new friends and the gifts they’d brought.

 

 

Brilliant 🤣

4 hours ago, jon b said:

I think.. from what I can gather..translated  what’s happened is something along the lines of this…

 They (PMDG) decided to bake their friend a fancy birthday cake from scratch only to later discover, once they’d started that there was no icing sugar or little candles in the house. 
 

Not wanting to disappoint their friend they went to the shops to find icing sugar and little candles. However it took so long to find the bits required , get home and decorate the cake , that by the time they took the cake over to their friend’s house they found that his wife had already been to the supermarket and bought a ready made birthday cake , which , actually , was far superior.

In a fit of anger and frustration the PMDG cake was thrown on the floor and stamped on , then eaten by the dog.

However this was quickly forgotten about as everyone sat down and enjoyed a slice of the ready made shop bought cake.

It was only then that the developers, and then in turn their friend, realised that they’d been so busy trying to put the icing on the cake , that they’d actually forgotten to bring the main  birthday present that they’d been promising to give their friend all year.

The developers pretended not to notice, looked at the floor and talked about something completely unconnected.
Their friend having seen the wasted efforts they went to in making and decorating the cake,(they’d even signed their names in icing sugar on the top so everyone knew who it was from ) felt sorry for the developers and decided to also keep quiet.

The developers left the party with the promise that next year’s birthday would be much better and it would be worth the wait.

After they’d left the friend stood and looked at what was left of the developers cake on the floor, he wasn’t really convinced next year would be any better.

Just then there was a knock on the door , it was the new developers that had recently moved to the street into a house across the road, and they had all sorts of amazing gifts and party food with them, like cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks, things the friend had never seen before.

The friend felt a pang of guilt as he once more caught sight of the cake on the floor but he opened the door wide delighted to see his new friends and the gifts they’d brought.

 

 

I'm not sure the analogy is fitting, but it was a fun read none the less. 

5 minutes ago, NovemberUniform said:

I'm not sure the analogy is fitting, but it was a fun read none the less. 

Yes, sorry, too much time spent alone  in  foreign hotel rooms in the middle of the night.

7 hours ago, Lucky38i said:

PMDG deciding to not go on Xbox would not have changed the current situation.

Uh what? So PMDG trying to get a freakin' EFB working for over a year is force majeure or something? And they've not had the decision to change their approach (languages, framework etc.) to what everyone else does who seemingly has no problem to get a working EFB into their airplane (Maddog, Fenix, FBW, Aerosoft etc.)? And it's only a coincidence that neither of those latter developers released their aircraft on the XBox?
 

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

So PMDG trying to get a freakin' EFB working for over a year is force majeure or something?

No, did I say that? You can take that up with them. However, I've already explained that Xbox has no bearing on this current situation for reasons already outlined. However I've repeated them below just incase you missed it.

 

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

And it's only a coincidence that neither of those latter developers released their aircraft on the XBox?

Did you forget the part when I mentioned two other well known high fidelity devs with releases on Xbox? Using a JS EFB and WASM based systems? Where they already do JS-WASM communication via LVARs?

 

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

to what everyone else does who seemingly has no problem to get a working EFB into their airplane (Maddog, Fenix, FBW, Aerosoft etc.)?

With the exception of Maddog. Fenix, FBW and Aerosoft all have JS EFBs with WASM-based systems ( I know what you're going to say about Fenix, but before being reactionary, keep reading). I can speak for FBW specifically that with the exception of SimBridge, would work just fine on Xbox however we don't for legal reasons. Aerosoft most likely would work as well, I would need to look at the panel.cfg if they use something besides html and wasm guages. Fenix as you know, does processing externally with data than passed over simconnect to drive it's displays which would disallow it from being on Xbox. So that makes 2 confirmed well known devs on Xbox with a possible further 2 more to be on the platform, I of course most likely missed the other lesser known but high-fidelity devs on Xbox, however this was for the sake of example. I stress, this is not an Xbox problem.

I'll say this for the fourth time. PMDG was spending the better part of a year writing a serialiser for JS-WASM communication as LVARs are limited to numbers. They needed to write a serialiser to convert text data to number and a deserliser to convert those numbers back to text. Why this took them a year? ask them, that's not really the point I'm making here.

Fact of the matter is, these problems are not specific to trying to place your product on Xbox, it's a problem to do with serialisation, which isn't trivial but is possible. Now SU13 has provided a communications bus where this serialiser/deserialiser is no longer needed hence this update. Also since SU11 WASM could make HTTPS calls which meant WASM modules could call the internet, i.e simbrief and navigraph, which was another reason for PMDG making the serialiser, this is no longer needed since SU11, unless they had the need to make HTTP calls (HTTP not HTTPS).

You can take what you will with this information. I'm just laying out how things are at present. If you still want to blame Xbox for your problems, go ahead I don't know what more else I can tell you.

Edited September 5, 20232 yr by Lucky38i