Hello all, since it hasn’t really been discussed here yet, I figured a lot of you may not have seen PMDG’s decision to completely discontinue support for OC2 starting May 31st. (https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/396717-oc2-end-of-life-and-livery-utilies)

For us P3D users, this is honestly a pretty major issue, since it effectively means we’ll no longer be able to install liveries at all, including third party PTP liveries. That’s a huge loss considering the fact that these are literally aircraft liveries. I understand PMDG wanting to move away from P3D and focus on MSFS and whatnot, but completely removing even the most basic functionality (aka installing liveries) seems pretty excessive imo

What do you guys think about this decision & is there any realistic chance PMDG could reconsider this?

IMHO there is no realistic chance PMDG will reconsider anything related to P3D. I think it’s just their way of driving their herd in the direction they want them to go. For me quite disappointing.

32 minutes ago, lucker931 said:

For us P3D users, this is honestly a pretty major issue, since it effectively means we’ll no longer be able to install liveries at all, including third party PTP liveries

Their liveries, understood. But will they remove ability of installing 3rd-party PTPs, where everything is managed locally? Ouch...

16 minutes ago, Luis Hernandez said:

Their liveries, understood. But will they remove ability of installing 3rd-party PTPs, where everything is managed locally? Ouch...

Indeed, they said that it'll be completely unfunctional after May 31st.

I saw that too. I don't know why third party liveries would be impacted unless we cant open it at all once they kill OC2. This kinda came up last year when said the were going to shut down OC2 and I thought they said livery installer would work. 

Did they update all the aircraft installers to the latest versions?

Unfortunately with Windows 11/Nvidia updates impacting P3d negatively its becoming a struggle and I have been slowly moving away from P3d. 

I believe they explicitly mentioned that you won't be able to install .ptp-based liveries through OC2, so unfortunately I think it may be different this time.

Request have been made for PTP functionality off the server. I've seen no PMDG response to this. As with most things P3D my guess is the answer is NO. My humble opinion is, if they thought they could get away with terminating all the licenses and just shutting down all the aircraft you have paid for in P3D, they wouldn't waste a moment doing it.

There I go again...

Isn't the biggest issue that we wont be able to download the latest version of the aircrafts? Since the installer versions are not the latest versions.... If someone has time, please ask them a question about this.

We had better make instructions on how to download the latest updates for the planes before then. Also had better unstuff any ptps that need keeping. 

Classic PMDG - it can hardly be hard to allow it to install ptps offline. They just don't care. 

Have given up making reasonable appeals to them - too many times they are untrustworthy and careless. Their actions and choice of staff suggest that they are not really in it for any passion these days - just business.

 

PS - I did download nearly all their free liveries for 738, 739, 744, 77L/W a year or so ago - so if anyone is desperate for one, let me know. Might ask PMDG via ticket if I could host these if there any interest, but I'm not sure they would allow it. 

Edited May 12May 12 by VHOJT

3 hours ago, VHOJT said:

Have given up making reasonable appeals to them - too many times they are untrustworthy and careless. Their actions and choice of staff suggest that they are not really in it for any passion these days - just business.

 

Not just the staff. Too many fan boys ready to pummel anyone who questions the church. The staff is happy to let them. After hundreds of dollars of purchases I rarely look at their forum. Sorry this subject never fails to pull my rant chain.

3 minutes ago, Patco Lch said:

Sorry this subject never fails to pull my rant chain.

Me too! 

Apparently, they just closed a new thread on this topic on their website rather quickly.

What I don't understand is, does the installation of a third party livery (or even a PMDG livery downloaded via the export function), really require a connection to PMDG?

With all due respect, it seems strange a piece of software that, supposedly, is working locally/offline on your machine should be cut-off by PMDG?

It is fair enough if PMDG does not want to update its planes, provide liveries anymore (in order to save the costs of hosting such liveries etc.), but leaving the possibility to install third-party liveries in off-line mode should not be a big ask for them. 

I'll ask the question via ticket tomorrow - also to do with how we should update the planes after install. Won't hold my breath, but it certainly would be nice and cause me to feel more positively about future purchases if they could allow us to install 3rd party liveries/update. 

I know there aren't many of us left, but even if we should open ptp files somehow. 

11 minutes ago, VHOJT said:

I'll ask the question via ticket tomorrow - also to do with how we should update the planes after install. Won't hold my breath, but it certainly would be nice and cause me to feel more positively about future purchases if they could allow us to install 3rd party liveries/update. 

I know there aren't many of us left, but even if we should open ptp files somehow. 

Thanks. Let us know if you get an answer.

If you archive the PMDG folders in the P3DVx root folder, the P3DVx\Simobjects\Airplanes folder, and in C:\Users\<yourUserName>\AppData\Roaming you should have everything you need to copy back on top of a base install to have the liveries in your current install.  No .ptp files needed.

But if there are PMDG or 3rd party ptp liveries out there you may someday want to use, install them and archive them now.