PMDG have withdrawn P3D products from sale.

[Ronda_sim]

39 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ve always been very selective with the aircraft I buy. I don’t have a hangar full of them. Current count is five. PC12, DA-62, XP Lear 25, PMDG737NGXu and Concorde. I only buy if it fulfils a need. A 747 and 777 are unnecessary for me. It’s one or the other. Leaning to the 777 as it’s still operational.

I am a little similar to you. I have the freeware Alpha Jet from Rikoo and also Carenado Bonanza A36, Vertx  Diamond DA-62, PMDG 737 all expansions, PMDG 747 all expansions, PMDG 777 all expansions and QW 787. Every single of those gives me different feeling and I enjoy it differently. But after all it's your decision. Btw, I would suggest if you take PMDG 777 to fly it with auto rudder off and change the static cg height to 13.999 value. That will give you the ultimate experience flying it and landing it. 

[Ray Proudfoot]

1 hour ago, Ronda_sim said:

Btw, I would suggest if you take PMDG 777 to fly it with auto rudder off and change the static cg height to 13.999 value. That will give you the ultimate experience flying it and landing it. 

Is that an official tweak? Not being a real-world pilot I’m not sure I would notice any difference.

[dave2013]

13 hours ago, Scottoest said:

If it makes no sense to sell the stuff at full price, it makes even less sense to sell it at a discount.  They also aren't going to borderline give their products away for free, in the event down the road they decide to start selling them again.  And again: There are still costs to that (server, transaction processing, whatever), even if they sold everything "as-is".

Why would it make no sense to sell their P3D stuff at a discount?  At least it would incentivize some folks to buy them, like me, for example.  If they offered their planes at an 80% discount, I would likely buy a couple, even though I know that I would receive no support or future updates. Although I don't like PMDG's management, if the deal is sweet enough then even I would be persuaded to buy from them again.  At least this way they make some money.

They already have their servers operating for the stuff they do sell, so putting a few extra Gigs of P3D planes on there and letting people download them would cost PMDG nothing.

Dave

[Patco Lch]

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

The 747 is being phased out

https://www.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B744

Ray, it’s your choice what you buy but I have to take exception to this statement amigo. Any time of day check out the dozens of 747 in the air all over the globe. And this doesn’t show the 747-8 variant. A lot of them are freighters but hey, none of the issues caused by kranky peps😉 They’ll be flying many years to come. 

[Ray Proudfoot]

24 minutes ago, Patco Lch said:

https://www.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B744

Ray, it’s your choice what you buy but I have to take exception to this statement amigo. Any time of day check out the dozens of 747 in the air all over the globe. And this doesn’t show the 747-8 variant. A lot of them are freighters but hey, none of the issues caused by kranky peps😉 They’ll be flying many years to come. 

Vic, British Airways and Virgin have ceased flying them. This from Wiki…

”On 16 July 2020, British Airways announced it was immediately retiring the remaining Airbus A318-100 and Boeing 747-400 aircraft, the last of the latter having flown the previous month. British Airways had originally intended to phase out the last 747s by 2024 but brought the plans forward in part due to the downturn in air travel following COVID-19 pandemic and to focus on replacing the 747 with the more fuel-efficient Airbus A350, Airbus A380 and Boeing 787.^[34][35]”

[Patco Lch]

3 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Vic, British Airways and Virgin have ceased flying them. This from Wiki…

”On 16 July 2020, British Airways announced it was immediately retiring the remaining Airbus A318-100 and Boeing 747-400 aircraft, the last of the latter having flown the previous month. British Airways had originally intended to phase out the last 747s by 2024 but brought the plans forward in part due to the downturn in air travel following COVID-19 pandemic and to focus on replacing the 747 with the more fuel-efficient Airbus A350, Airbus A380 and Boeing 787.^[34][35]”

LOL, OK friend. I guess it’s all in what you’re looking for. In the end, it’s all about the fun.

[Scottoest]

5 hours ago, dave2013 said:

Why would it make no sense to sell their P3D stuff at a discount?  At least it would incentivize some folks to buy them, like me, for example.  If they offered their planes at an 80% discount, I would likely buy a couple, even though I know that I would receive no support or future updates.

The point is that they don't WANT people to buy them, because presumably their costs have gotten out of whack due to the minuscule volume being sold.  Selling a bit more, but doing so because you're selling at a big discount, doesn't solve that problem.  Nor would giving people advance warning so they can go buy the stuff that no longer makes business sense for you to sell one last time.

If selling their P3D products was still profitable, they wouldn't have been removed in the first place. There would be no reason to do so, unless you think the answer is spite for P3D or something.

[Luke]

1 hour ago, Scottoest said:

The point is that they don't WANT people to buy them, because presumably their costs have gotten out of whack due to the minuscule volume being sold.

I'm not sure why you say that. There's no evidence for it, both in flight sim or software in general.

The most expensive unit of software is the first unit sold. You have a tremendous fixed cost of developing the software in the first place, plus the infrastructure needed to sell and support it. Early releases have bugs, because no matter how comprehensive the test suite and program, it doesn't compare to the wide variety of use cases it's subjected to in real life (which is equally true for real aircraft). The bugs actually need fixed. This is why the lowest gross margins happen at launch.

The only marginal costs PMDG have left are those required to physically sell the aircraft, which for their own infrastructure amounts to pennies per unit sold (costs by the way shared across all product lines). I've heard anecdotally that many support requests (not unique to PMDG) are around the store, registration and licensing, again not particular to P3D products.

The P3D products have never been more profitable than they are now.

Cheers

Edited August 13, 2024 by Luke

[ATRguy]

3 hours ago, Luke said:

 

The P3D products have never been more profitable than they are now.

 

Except nobody is buying them, which is why they aren’t selling them anymore. 

[Ronda_sim]

10 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Is that an official tweak? Not being a real-world pilot I’m not sure I would notice any difference.

It's not, but you might have a problem bouncing the airplane on landing, as I did. There is few subjects I can recommend. 

 

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/pmdg-777-forum/112961-touchdown-bug-still-exists

 

hope those help you. But I found out that if you increase the center of gravity towards 19.999 that makes the plane unusable in ground operations like taxiing and pushback. It works only on RWY. So I tweaked the value towards 13.999 and this is good behavior. 

[IanHarrison]

11 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Vic, British Airways and Virgin have ceased flying them. This from Wiki…

”On 16 July 2020, British Airways announced it was immediately retiring the remaining Airbus A318-100 and Boeing 747-400 aircraft, the last of the latter having flown the previous month. British Airways had originally intended to phase out the last 747s by 2024 but brought the plans forward in part due to the downturn in air travel following COVID-19 pandemic and to focus on replacing the 747 with the more fuel-efficient Airbus A350, Airbus A380 and Boeing 787.^[34][35]”

And Qantas, the other major user I can think of. My last trip to OZ was 747, next one will be 787.

[Ray Proudfoot]

3 hours ago, ATRguy said:

Except nobody is buying them, which is why they aren’t selling them anymore. 

My friend would have bought the 737 and I would probably have bought the 777. Still struggling with my conscience over giving money to a company that shows such a lack of respect to its customers.

Funny how Aerosoft can afford to keep the 777 and 747 on their servers. I hope the cost doesn’t cause the company to fold.

And my post yesterday saying I wished to buy from PMDG was met with this response from Mathijs Kok… “We do not sell any P3D products at this moment, sorry. Of courser we fully support the customers who have it.”

“AT THIS MOMENT” doesn’t sound like a permanent decision but they seem incapable of making a decision. An announcement of closure in four weeks allowing those sitting on the fence would have been more logical.

[SimeonWilbury]

Main reason I hadn't pulled the trigger on the 777 yet is the 747-400 is what I use for most of my long-haul flying.

Granted, it is being largely phased-out in passenger services, but there is still a good cargo-network out there to take advantage of. And I'm not that concerned about flying 'outdated' ops so I'll just use a site like https://departedflights.com and fly 1996 Pax Ops when I feel like it.

It might still be my favourite aircraft to fly in P3D, it's definitely aged a little graphically now, but it runs superbly on my system (no PBR means minimal VRAM usage) and I've always found it superbly stable (beyond one CTD issue related to the FS2Crew RAAS demo which I solved by buying the full thing).

[Blasb]

I thought I would not comment on this matter anymore but here I am.😁 My take: I do not have any problem with PMDG removing the P3D products for whatever reason they have (even though I am not really sure how they reason) but I do feel like it was done in the wrong way. My recommendation would have been to at least provide a heads-up for people so that they have a final chance to buy some of the products that are still missing from their hangar.

I was quite late to the flight sim party (only started back in 2022) and I will now not have the chance to buy the NGXU 737-600/700 for P3D (of course the iFly version is still available but I prefer the PMDG Boeings). I also think they could have gotten quite a lot of sales if they would have given such notice (maybe even complemented with a farewell sale for the P3D product line).

At least they have not yet provided any definitive answer in regard to P3D (at least to my knowledge), so I do still have some faint hope that the P3D products will be back on the PMDG store. 

On a more general note, I do not understand why some of these 3rd party developers are putting all their eggs in one basket (specifically when they have an existing P3D lineup). I would imagine that updating the current lineups to P3Dv6 wouldn't be that costly and then you would have some protection in case something happens to MSFS down the line. 

[VHOJT]

I don't believe the 777-200ER can be bought from Aerosoft.

As for the 77L/F/W, I think they are pretty good actually.  A tiny bit dated in cockpit textures, but sounds and systems are relatively good.  Being a bit older, I also a get excellent FPS with it, even at heavy airports/areas.  It's also the only PMDG product in v5 (out of the 744 and NGXu) that has dynamic lights that actually work properly and without massive FPS hit.  Taxi cams work too.

The only gripe I have with it actually is a quite annoying one.  The FBW can be twitchy on approach in gusty conditions, something it didn't always have and I think was introduced when it was updated when the 777-200ER came out.

No EFB if no 777-200ER either, but Simbrief has 77W takeoff/landing calcs, PFPX has profiles, and TOPCAT has data for 777-200LR and F.  PFPX fuel burn very accurate with minor bias adjustment (+/- 0.4 percent if I recall correctly - will check).

Have been enjoying BAWing in it, handing the controls from myself to myself on a one-man monitored approach haha

Edited August 13, 2024 by VHOJT