https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/285125-24feb24-some-good-news-in-your-weekend-update-777s-xbox-and-more

PMDG 737 "Freezes"

Over the past six months or so, we have seen a slowly increasing number of reports that the 737 will simply freeze the user out and stop responding to user input under various conditions. With some community feedback, the culprit seemed to have something to do with the TCAS being in either TA or TA/RA modes, but no amount of trying to duplicate the problem in-house brought us any live captures of the event, or gave us any ideas.

In the beginning there were just a few reports of the problem, and once someone had the problem, it seemed it would repeat often- which is **usually** an indication that the user has installed something on their machine that is causing a negative interaction with our product. No amount of consultation and researching user installs yielded any data that would seem to indicate the problem was external to the 737, but likewise none of the data seemed to rule in the 737 either.

Then it began to happen with the 777- and subsequent to SU14 and then again with the SU15 beta, the number of incidents began to increase rapidly.

It was clear to us that something was causing our TCAS handling logic to get overwhelmed with large volumes of potential targets being communicated to the airplane- and this was causing TCAS to fall over.

Last week we pulled a good portion of our coding resources from the 777 in order to investigate the issue and see if we could back into the problem by working through a number of manual debugging efforts- and after a few hundred man-hours of mind numbing work, we had a firm theory, a proof and a fix.

We have just moments ago handed a fixed 777 build to our beta team for validation, and we will hand them a 737 verification build immediately afterward, if they agree that we have indeed cure the issue. We are treating this 737 update as an emergency update and will have it out to you just as quickly as possible- subject to verification and validation so that we don't cure one problem by handing you a new one instead.

So How Is 777?

Things are really coming together nicely with 777. I'll get back to some preview stuff here once the dust settles a bit. This is "high crunch" time for us to tie in all of the remaining feature sets that we have identified as a requirement for the initial release. We know you are eager for the airplane, and while we are eager to hand her over to you- we are collectively taking a moment to catch our breath and look the product over carefully to make sure it is absolutely in proper shape, with sound fit and finish. We owe you that much- and our goal for this airplane is that it should be the finest, most complete PMDG release yet.

Things are busy here- but in a very good way. It won't be long now.

--------------------

A user asked this question (naturally): "I am a little bit confused. On the one hand, the 777 is in beta testing, but on the other hand, it sounds like development is still ongoing ("tie in all of the remaining feature sets")? And presumably those features would need to be tested as well, which is a little bit at odds with the prospect of a shorter beta that was alluded to some time ago. The lack of any information regarding variants or pricing doesn't suggest we're that close either..."

To which Mathijs answered: "Beta and development almost always go hand in hand because you do not have to test everything simultaneously. You do not need the last tweaks of the lighting to see if there are issues with the flight model, right? And the fact we have not given out information on the pricing or models has no relevance to the state of the development. Setting the sales price is always done as late as possible."
 

Edited February 24, 20242 yr by lwt1971

The price has almost certainly been decided internally already, just not public yet.

Guess when they announce pricing is when we'll know it's very close to release 🙂

So it looks like there is at least a month to go. This is looking like an April release, maybe even May.

1 hour ago, lwt1971 said:

To which Mathijs answered: "Beta and development almost always go hand in hand because you do not have to test everything simultaneously. You do not need the last tweaks of the lighting to see if there are issues with the flight model, right? And the fact we have not given out information on the pricing or models has no relevance to the state of the development. Setting the sales price is always done as late as possible."

Well said.

Months and months away from a T7 release for sure. If we have it by July I’ll be happy.

Edited February 24, 20242 yr by flightskyc

54 minutes ago, flightskyc said:

Months and months away from a T7 release for sure. If we have it by July I’ll be happy.

They don't make it sound like its' months and months away. Seeing it's already deep into beta were probably looking at what abrams_tank mentioned above.                         

Mathijs says they'll be demonstrating the 777 at FSWeekend March 16-17 https://fsweekend.nl/ and also talk about release strategy before or by then.. so that's a clue about how far along beta they are FWIW.

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/285125-24feb24-some-good-news-in-your-weekend-update-777s-xbox-and-more?p=285243#post285243

Q: Thanks for the nice weekend update....but I’m a bit disappointed that for me the most important info is still not there: which 777 variant(s) will release first? In the 737 the release strategy was announced quite early if I remember correctly
Mathijs: Not really early, actually. I do not know when RSR will share this information, but as we will demonstrate the 777 at the FSWeekend, it will for sure be before that.
 

Edited February 24, 20242 yr by lwt1971

Typical Matthijs marketing.

Yes, we are almost done. No, we dont know the price yet. Yes, we are in beta. No, we are currently implementing. 

All in a single statement.

He has learned nothing.

43 minutes ago, techman said:

Typical Matthijs marketing.

Yes, we are almost done. No, we dont know the price yet. Yes, we are in beta. No, we are currently implementing. 

All in a single statement.

He has learned nothing.

I thought his follow ups were much more informative than Robert's usual mangling of the English language. 

It makes its public debut in three weeks so they are obviously close to release, they are still testing features and I doubt the release price would be a subject for discussion by the PMDG team as a whole.

What's strange is after all the effort to produce their wonder tablet its gone completely quiet on that front. I was under the impression we'd be able to play Backgammon and watch pron on it by now.....

1 hour ago, techman said:

Typical Matthijs marketing.

Yes, we are almost done. No, we dont know the price yet. Yes, we are in beta. No, we are currently implementing. 

All in a single statement.

He has learned nothing.

You mean after the A330 disaster? 

I'd be really curious to get some in depth explanation what went down during the development of that thing that it went so out of hand.

1 hour ago, Farlis said:

You mean after the A330 disaster? 

I'd be really curious to get some in depth explanation what went down during the development of that thing that it went so out of hand.

I reckon they just can't code for MSFS.

2 hours ago, techman said:

Typical Matthijs marketing.

Yes, we are almost done. No, we dont know the price yet. Yes, we are in beta. No, we are currently implementing. 

All in a single statement.

He has learned nothing.

Too much red wine.

6 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

Guess when they announce pricing is when we'll know it's very close to release 🙂

It's a million atm.

I hope its at least out by April 20th. https://ctp.vatsim.net