PMDG 737 Tablet Releases 30 October 23

[BrammyH]

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/268165-21oct23-introducing-the-universal-flight-tablet-for-pmdg-s-microsoft-flight-simulator-airliner-fleet

[21OCT23] Introducing the Universal Flight Tablet for PMDG's Microsoft Flight Simulator Airliner Fleet

Today, 19:42

 

Hello and Happy Saturday, everybody!

Today's update is going to focus only on a single topic: the upcoming introduction of the PMDG Universal Flight Tablet into the 737 fleet.

I want to direct your attention right here at the beginning to the naming convention: This is not an "EFB (Electronic Flight Bag.)" An EFB is a device covered under regulatory guidance that is very tightly tailored toward flight planning and flight management tasks. It tends to be a brick. Limited in scope and lacking an open operating system upon which operators and crews can add in applications and features to enhance aeronautical decision making- and in the case of simming- enhance the simulation experience.

We created the Boeing EFBs for the 737NG, 777 and 747-8 in our P3D line of products between 2016 and 2022- and they are faithful replications of the regulatory EFBs. They are best described as kludgey, narrow in scope and uninspired. While we have long been strident about "modeling the airplane" by March of 2022, it had become obvious that the industry was well on it's way to throwing off the yoke of the regulatory EFB and along with it the limitations. In the simming community, many of our peer developers were finding great success putting flight planning tools on a tablet-esque type device to model the industry movement- and by comparison our perfectly accurate, but well outdated EFB simply wasn't standing up- which is why we decided at the last minute, to pull the EFB out of the PMDG 737 for MSFS and replace it.

At the time we made that decision, we figured it would take a couple of months. All of the embedded functionality was present, we simply had to reformat it on screen and it would be done.

Oh how wrong we were.

To start with, we decided not to simply model a dumb tablet. We wanted an intelligent device that would flow seamlessly across the entire fleet of PMDG airplanes that are coming for MSFS. We envisioned a truly tablet-like garden in which many different applications could be placed, each providing some new capability or feature for your simming adventures. Many of them would mirror the real world applications I use flying a complex jet in the actual operations- but some would also manage your simming experience in a manner that is context sensitive and "makes sense" given our collective experience using tablets and flat screens in our day-to-day lives.

The primary challenge in this approach was that we had to find a way to connect a walled-off C++/WASM airplane to the data-rich outside world in spite of the fact that C++/WASM in the MSFS universe was intentionally neutered of it's wonderful communications capabilities. This task, combined with the effort of learning to work with script (We had only limited experience with it previous to this effort) and figuring out how to make the tablet an operating environment within the sim- all lead to months of very detailed, often unsuccessful work.

We have strong Greek genealogy on the PMDG team- and the mythology of a Herculean task was not lost during internal discussion.

For example, the C++/WASM airplane could communicate with the outside world via some limited http capability, but could not communicate directly with a script-based tablet located on the same computer, since those capabilities were unavailable in the MSFS environment. To get around this, we had to create a semi-duplex communication methodology the leveraged what limited communication capabilities C++/WASM possessed in order to bounce information to/from a remote server in order to exchange information with the tablet. This posed tremendous problems, since the information could only be transmitted using digits due to limitations in the C++/WASM communication capability- and the problems strung on and on from there.

We probably should have canned the entire concept and gone back to "just make it pretty on a faux touch screen" but we really wanted to be able to give you our original vision, AND we really felt it was important that the capability be provided to both PC/Xbox customers- so we stuck with it, eventually solving the problem and putting the whole shebang into testing.

Then came the MSFS Service Update we had been waiting for- which unlocked the capabilities we needed in C++/WASM communication (thank you, Asobo friends!) Just like that, we yanked out all of the complexities we had built in order to run with a far more robust, far simpler communication methodology that makes everything about the tablet/airplane communication as simple as it should be.

To put it another way: After SU13, we no longer had to bounce communications off a remote server 12,000 miles away in order to move a piece of information between two memory locations on your machine. A far more efficient outcome- by all rights!

With the tablet now fully operational, and all of that development effort behind us, we have shifted focus to adding features to the "garden." These features will come from both PMDG and some of our affiliated development partners- with a strong focus on bringing tools to your cockpit that will enhance your simming experience in ways that we haven't even imagined yet. The Universal Flight Tablet truly provides a garden for ideas that can come from throughout the simming community.

So next week, on/about 30OCT23, we are going to push an update that installs a new tablet in your 737!

This tablet will come initially with a small suite of applications that we felt were high on the wish-list of things simmers want in a cockpit tablet:

Flight Plans/SimBrief Integration
- Importing flight plans from SimBrief.
- Download weather for the flight plan route.
- Flight plan/weather sharing between tablet/aircraft.
- Display of Operational Flight Plan.
- Display of real time METAR information (native or simplified format)

Charting:
- Navigraph Charts (Requires Navigraph Subscription)
- Georeferenced aircraft on displayed charts where appropriate.
- Flight centric chart selection/pinning of desired charts.

Performance Computation:
- T/O, Diversion, Landing computations.
- Data Import from flight plans or from the aircraft itself.
- Reduced runway length computations.
- Graphic display of displaced threshold data.

We have many more features in development and testing for use with the tablet. Many of these features we have gleaned from our conversations with you, here in the PMDG forum- so we think you will be excited to see many new features rolling out as development continues on the Universal Flight Tablet. For example, we are currently at work on the applications that will allow you to:
- Manage all of the PMDG Options from the tablet. There *or* FMS menu.
- Managing PMDG Functions from the tablet *or* the FMS menu.
- Manage PMDG Failures from the tablet *or* the FMS menu.

There are other additional features coming which we will detail in later posts- and we have also begun to coordinate with some outside developers in order to bring direct access to their applications right from within the PMDG Universal Flight Tablet. This will allow for some really neat integrations with the applications and tools that you love- all right from within the tablet, without breaking realism, and without needing to have 20 pop-up screens managed all over your desktop.

Within the core tablet functionality, we have included:
- Data Entry via attached keyboard, or via an on-screen keyboard
- Metric/Imperial Units selectable.
- Day/Night setting.
- Independent, fully functioning pilot/copilot tablets.

It is very important to all of us here at PMDG to point out that the tablet, much like our airplanes, is a constant development process. Our vision for the UFT is that it become a feature rich garden of tools that enhance your enjoyment of simming with a PMDG product. We have expanded our development team in part to support this vision, and we are welcoming a few key development partners to coordinate with us on bringing their applications into the environment. The first few applications we are rolling out are primarily focused on giving you some key, important tools that you asked for- but they are also designed to give us a chance to ensure the thing is stable and ready for the growth we have planned.

So- over all- stay tuned. Here comes the fun part!

Since I know many of you have been clamoring for views- here are a few, taken from a range of different flights and operations. (The sharp-eyed will notice that we have taken the screen grabs from a pop-out window for simplicity.)

First, a quick glance showing the preferences manager within the management tool. Here you can choose the desired units for your information to be displayed throughout. The following image shows a sample performance computation, providing the takeoff performance data:









Next, a couple of images showing the simbrief and navigraph integration at work. Here we can see the integration page, and also a shot of the Operational Flight Plan being displayed The buttons are largely self explanatory, but we also have a nice introduction document that will come with the update just in case you need some help sorting out the functionality.






We know that many PMDG users are navigraph customers, and we have put quite a bit of focus on the navigraph integration. In the real world, I rely heavily on ForeFlight on my iPad mini, and we have tried to capture as much of the human-factors utility as possible from the ability to display geo-referenced navigraph charts. This includes zooming and scrolling around the chart, pinning the ones necessary for your flight for ease of use, human factors appropriate layout in the ordering of the charts and of course, the ability to look at any airport you might wish to find while enroute.







To show you the zoom and scroll capability, here is a wider shot of the cockpit, with the 10-3T5 page displayed. You can zoom in and scroll about the page in order to make reading the compliance notations on the chart easier- just like we do in the real world!





We are very happy to finally be getting this capability back into the PMDG 737, and the 777 will come with the tablet on day one. The 777 will also benefit from the new features that are added to the tablet between now and 777 release as well- because we have built the entire function scope to work fleet-wide across all of the PMDG jet airliners!

Have a nice weekend, everybody! 

[Andrew2448]

Absolutely astonished that after this long it's only releasing with flight plan import, charts, and performance calculations. Not being able to do the ground support, options, etc. on initlal release is just... wow. He says it's coming but... you know.

[Bobsk8]

7 minutes ago, Andrew2448 said:

Absolutely astonished that after this long it's only releasing with flight plan import, charts, and performance calculations. Not being able to do the ground support, options, etc. on initlal release is just... wow. He says it's coming but... you know.

Looks pretty good to me. But I guess, now the bashing will start..

Edited October 21, 2023 by Bobsk8

[Andrew2448]

6 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Looks pretty good to me. But I guess, now the bashing will start..

What they do have looks good, no problems there. Just after going on and on about new revolutionary features and working with other developers and dragging it on for that long and all that I would've expected it to be fully featured. Oh well.

[BrammyH]

I am just glad it is finally releasing. Now, we as a nation can get on with the healing.

[Christopher Low]

18 minutes ago, Andrew2448 said:

Absolutely astonished that after this long it's only releasing with flight plan import, charts, and performance calculations. Not being able to do the ground support, options, etc. on initlal release is just... wow. He says it's coming but... you know.

Yeah, what a shame that it can't make you a cup of tea, do your tax calculations, and order you a pizza. Shocking

[Bobsk8]

2 minutes ago, Andrew2448 said:

What they do have looks good, no problems there. Just after going on and on about new revolutionary features and working with other developers and dragging it on for that long and all that I would've expected it to be fully featured. Oh well.

Yeah, well a 20,000 plus hour check pilot for an airline, thanked them for it's development, on their forum. I guess he doesn't have your expertise, but oh well. 

[Bdub22]

Kind of bummed about the UX design. But, we can't have it all. Anyways, back to flying. 

[Bdub22]

Apologies if I missed it, but will this be pushed out to the DC-6 when it's released?

[Wise87]

39 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Yeah, well a 20,000 plus hour check pilot for an airline, thanked them for it's development, on their forum. I guess he doesn't have your expertise, but oh well. 

I must have missed the part where others have to be a RW pilot to have an opinion. 

[El Diablito]

The tab looks good from the pics. It's taken a while but glad it's finally here. I just took a job with ANA in APL so will get some use out of this over the next month or so. 😎

[Stearmandriver]

54 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Yeah, well a 20,000 plus hour check pilot for an airline, thanked them for it's development, on their forum. I guess he doesn't have your expertise, but oh well. 

I'll thank them for its development too, so that now they can move on to improving more useful areas of the sim. ;)

There is definitely nothing ground breaking or exciting here - but that's not a swipe at them, we knew there wouldn't be.  It's just a tablet.  In reality we use more tailored apps on them, but in the sim we have Navigraph plus perf calc - what we all knew we were getting, and all that's really useful.

The bizarre verbiage about it not being an EFB because it wasn't a proprietary, factory installed device is, well... bizarre.  I mean, we're all using iPads these days, with the aforementioned tailored apps as necessary... I don't know a single person in the industry who doesn't call it an "EFB"...

Edited October 21, 2023 by Stearmandriver

[mspencer]

3 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

I'll thank them for its development too, so that now they can move on to improving more useful areas of the sim. 😉

There is definitely nothing ground breaking or exciting here - but that's not a swipe at them, we knew there wouldn't be.  It's just a tablet.  In reality we use more tailored apps on them, but in the sim we have Navigraph plus perf calc - what we all knew we were getting, and all that's really useful.

The bizarre verbiage about it not being an EFB because it wasn't a proprietary, factory installed device is, well... bizarre.  I mean, we're all using iPads these days, with the aforementioned tailored apps as necessary... I don't know a single person in the industry who doesn't call it an "EFB"...

Without that bit Robert's post would have only been 1500 words, he needed to get it out to the 3000 mark.

[Lucky38i]

6 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

The bizarre verbiage about it not being an EFB because it wasn't a proprietary, factory installed device is, well... bizarre.

Was certainly interesting to read.

[KL Oo]

1 hour ago, BrammyH said:

There are other additional features coming which we will detail in later posts- and we have also begun to coordinate with some outside developers in order to bring direct access to their applications right from within the PMDG Universal Flight Tablet. This will allow for some really neat integrations with the applications and tools that you love- all right from within the tablet, without breaking realism, and without needing to have 20 pop-up screens managed all over your desktop.
 

Is it possible, is it just slightly possible, that they mean GSX? I know there's never been any love lost between PMDG and FSDT, but intergration between the two would be amazing (like it was in FSLabs and can be with the Fenix using Fenix2GSX). @virtual anything you can comment on?