"But I want a Golden Ticket NOW Daddy!"

Over at the PMDG forum some interesting stats were released between different threads.  At launch they were selling 2000 units per minute and that pretty much held up for the 1st few hours.  I am sure it has settled down some by now but shows you just how massive our hobby is.  As the world turns and people around the globe find out its officially out the demand will stay up for at least 24 hours.  

The PMDG 777 has already outsold the 737NG by 2 to 1 apparently.  This demand has far exceeded even what PMDG thought it would do.  Its kind of hard to forecast this type of growth but despite the issues that has occurred to some it indicates our hobby is thriving.  Just wait until 2024 comes out if its as good as it looks!  

1 hour ago, JRBarrett said:

In the second photo it appears you are doing the Kennedy 5 departure, Breezy Point climb? As a practical matter I doubt many pilots would fly this procedure in LNAV with the AP engaged. I think the initial part of this departure would always be hand flown. In this procedure standard RNP 0.3 would apply so the 0.14 deviation is acceptable.

I tried this departure in Aerowinx PSX, which as you may know emulates a 747-400, and probably has the most accurate LNAV/VNAV found in any sim available to the general public. I engaged the AP as soon as it became available at 400 feet. It also (initially) turned slightly outside the magenta line. However the magenta line dynamically adjusted to match the aircraft’s current path as it proceeded through the turn. This would be correct behavior for the way this procedure is internally coded. The main constraints are to remain east of CRI radial 039, and to overfly CRI VOR. The AP is permitted to do whatever it has to do to achieve that. I have not tried it in the 777.

0.29 deviation on an RF leg is of more concern, though it is (barely) within RNP 0.3 limits. The real test would be an RNP-AR procedure with RNP 0.17 requirements and a complex path. The procedure I would normally use to test this in a sim is the  RNP Z 13R approach at KPSP beginning at FERNN. This a thorough “workout test” for both LNAV and VNAV.

In the r/w this airport is not served by 777s, but the runway is long and wide enough that a 777 could certainly do the approach and landing.

 

Jim, I would like to share with you the following.

I'm based in JFK and fly in and out about 3 times a month, re SID, yes it is as you mentioned. No questions about the PSX, extraordinary complex software and actually used by some operators under FAA certification as a CBT.

I will comment on the 747, sometimes we engage the A/P at 250 FT RA or when I used to fly the 777 at 500 FT RA based on a/c certification and regulatory agencies, in our case here FAA or ICAO, CAA, etc. 

Now these two airplanes are glued to the magenta line unless there are pretty nasty winds you will notice some variations on ANP to this nature, which shouldn't happen in A/P and no wind conditions as is the case here.The magenta line will dynamically adjust based on speed. However, we need to take into consideration the following: SIDS are designed for a MAX 250 KTS speed at a 25-degree bank angle in order to comply with airspace requirements, unless speed restrictions are in place for better compliance.

Regardless A/P engagement, the FD will give you correct guidance and still keep you on magenta line unless we srew up. 

Unfortunately on this PMDG 777 there are issues and bugs brought from the 737. 

Even on RF segments (something new for them) issues can be noticed. 

Off-topic but, something to mention regardless of being within RNP and just being off the magenta line like this in EDDF, ETOU, ETAR, OMDB, VHHH, will trigger a complaint to the airline. YES, even you are well within RNP. 

I'm really frustrated with the lack of progress in integrating the A/P, FD systems. It's puzzling to me why they're so unwilling to fix something that is clearly wrong with every flight, considering that people are aware of the issue and understand how the systems are supposed to function.

The 777 has a trim reference speed implementation issue. They have stubbornly refused to adjust it properly in P3D, and even now, it is still off. In the real airplane, when you turn off the A/P, the airplane will steadily maintain that attitude, but not in this case. I tested it with the A/P on and did not notice this issue.

 

 IMHO, RSR needs to get his ducks in a row, right now he's selling a product with knowing bugs, not a good practice. We expect better from him unless something drastically changes.

Just purchased it a few minutes ago, so... 20 hours after release.

Made the purchase in 30 seconds and received the email 30 seconds later. Downloading right now.

People just have to avoid jumping on purchase page like a nest of bees as soon as it's available.

So I'm going to start playing 21 hours after release? What a big deal considering we were waiting for it for the last 2 years and will be able to fly it for at least the next 5 years. 

What I missed yesterday what mainly a big headache and a lot of frustration.

I wouldn't have had any issues if I only turned off the blocker first as many on this forum said repeatedly, live and learn, I guess.

17 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

I think I see where my problem was, I turned off ad blocker, but not Chrome pop up blocker. When I did that, it finally went through. 

So, it was you after all and not PMDG's lack of knowledge running an e-commerce site. LOL

Humanity!!

3 minutes ago, CarlosF said:

So, it was you after all and not PMDG's lack of knowledge running an e-commerce site. LOL

 

No, PMDG remains clueless concerning e-commerce fulfillment and delivery.  Yesterday’s debacle showed that and if they had a clue there would be banners on all download messages warning to turn off POB’s.

MHO. YMMV. TANSTAAFL. 

-B

6 minutes ago, btacon said:

PMDG remains clueless

Clueless, wow, ok if you say so. I believe it is the other way around.

Edited June 26, 20241 yr by CarlosF

18 hours ago, Bdub22 said:

I said this in the main forum, I don’t understand why people try to purchase and download a product they already know is heavily anticipated from a company that has historically troubled launches regarding their servers. I’ve been buying PMDG products for almost 25 years and in the last 5-10 years, launch days are usually marred by server issues and problems with authentication. After waiting years, what’s one or two more days, to let the servers cool down? 

Exactly right.  I never ever wait in line and likely never will unless I find myself in a life-or-death situation. They want my money?  THEY have to wait for me!!!. Lol.

18 hours ago, regis9 said:

I don’t understand how a company that spends so much time hyping people up for a release can then tell people to relax and be patient (or go grab a coffee in the rude words of everyone’s favourite former Aerosoft employee).

It’s just a botched release, seems quite like previous releases, and having RSR posting about how good they are at major releases is just tone deaf and arrogant.  I’m not one to bash RSR for every little thing he does like others do, but this is ridiculous and people are right to be disappointed.

The icing on the cake is that it sounds like people purchasing now are getting their emails pretty quickly, whereas those of us who bought right away are stuck in the depths of a server somewhere.

A bad show all around that leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth and should be utterly avoidable in 2024.

A solution?  Staggered release dates. Those who own 2 or more PMDG products get to buy on release day.... Everyone else gets it later.

16 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

It’s an anti-piracy measure. A way of insuring that you (or at least the email address you use) is legitimate.

Two factor authentication is very common in business. I work in a corporate flight department and virtually every vendor site we work with for things like downloading nav databases and charts, or aircraft maintenance publications requires some form of two-factor authentication - sometimes via email, but more often using a dedicated app like Microsoft Authenticator or Duo Mobile.

It’s just a fact of life in the year 2024.

Two factor authentication is apparently now the de-facto best practice standard when logging in to all bank and medical related websites in the US. Presumably a great annoyance to most.

2 hours ago, DavidP said:

Indeed it is - my sister passed away suddenly last night and I read here simmers grizzling because it took an extra 20 min to install a pretend aircraft.

Kind of puts things into perspective.

Condolences to you.  Yep. I was in a RL plane crash which sent me to the hospital for about 9 months. I've probably been closer to death than the 99.9%. The bright spot is that it gave me perspective on life's priorities. 

A "what happened?" update by RSR, and something that goes to show it's not some simple one-team operation that handles their online e-commerce. The buck always ultimately stops at PMDG of course since it's their customers who experienced all the issues, but it's also silly to try and make PMDG out to be "clueless" about their e-commerce operation, given all the providers involved including Google, Amazon, etc (and PMDG don't own/run their own servers any more).

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/307653-26jun24-what-the-f-k-is-happening-2-0-just-because-we-want-you-to-know

Excerpts:
As mentioned in my previous post- we have data that helps us to predict demand levels for release. In the past, when we owned our own servers and distribution systems, we could pretty much predict demand and for the most part that went okay, until our products became more popular. Suddenly keeping up with demand was a real challenge, so in 2018, we moved nearly all of our operational systems to the cloud, at a budget well high of $300,000+ over 18 months. The investment since that move has been even larger- and we now run some industry standard structures supported by Alphabet, Amazon, BigCommerce and four other cloud service providers. It is NOT a small operation and the monthly costs exceed the annual earnings of PMDG back in the early 2000s when we were just getting started.

During 737 release, we found that some of the scaling systems that are supposed to bring resources online during high demand simply failed. There were reasons for it, not the least of which was a DDOS attack that originated out of Indonesia, China and Estonia that eventually wound up swept up into a larger federal investigation into cyber interference. (Really interesting story for pilot layovers, really dull story for cocktail parties...)

Approaching 777 release, I was bound and determined to make this a boring release and we made a significant investment in operations and testing with our cloud providers to ensure we would be in good shape. In our post operational call tonight, they shared some analytic data that was simply astounding- and that had evolved since the earlier calls in the day... but the high level overview is that within minutes of launch, we had exceeded our theoretical high sales rate by an enormous multiple- and this set off the scaling mechanisms that keep our operation running under load.

One of those systems barfed, and it took 3 minutes for it to come back into operation. During that time all orders placed wound up being batched for future processing as load levels permitted. During that three minutes- we batched about 6,000 orders.

That level of recovery, coupled with the amount of processing going on in real time- hadn't been expected. It took from approximately 2054Z until 0115Z to back process those orders.

Should that have been anticipated? Most assuredly. Lack of imagination on the part of everyone involved in the testing process, me included, allowed that to slip through untested.
 

Edited June 26, 20241 yr by lwt1971

19 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

A "what happened?" update by RSR, and something that goes to show it's not some simple one-team operation that handles their online e-commerce. The buck always ultimately stops at PMDG of course since it's their customers who experienced all the issues, but it's also silly to try and make PMDG out to be "clueless" about their e-commerce operation, given all the providers involved including Google, Amazon, etc (and PMDG don't own/run their own servers any more).

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/307653-26jun24-what-the-f-k-is-happening-2-0-just-because-we-want-you-to-know

 

The thing is they said they stress tested clearly not enough they knew the demand so still undermined it. It happens every single time. So something needs to change. Don't have issues with other developers. They said they had learnt from the 737 release clearly not.

Edited June 26, 20241 yr by carlanthony24

1 hour ago, CarlosF said:

Clueless, wow, ok if you say so. I believe it is the other way around.

I’ll let CarlAnthony24 answer for me. He did a better job explaining to someone else. 
 

“The thing is they said they stress tested clearly not enough they knew the demand so still undermined it. It happens every single time. So something needs to change. Don't have issues with other developers.”