rsrandazzo

Gents, The purpose of SID/STAR procedures is to help both sides of the equation understand what the expected plan will be. In the real world, at least in the USA, SID/STAR use has dramatically increased as high performance airplanes become largely FMS equipped. It is a RARE moment not to be given a SID or a STAR leaving congested terminal airspace in the USA. I have seen a couple of comments about pilots "declining vectors" and the like- and all I can say about that topic is: Not on my flight deck. The controller is our partner in the outcome of the flight. He sees a bigger picture than we do- and if he wants us to fly the whole SID/STAR, we will and we are prepared to do so. If he wants to vector us off the procedure for simplicity or convenience- so be it. We comply convivially. (Okay- sometimes I gripe to my copilot... but that is more just to hear myself talk... LOL) As for VATSIM: I'm betting most VATSIM controllers will vector you because it allows them to interact with traffic in their space. The traffic load isn't as high or as continuous as many real world sectors- so why lump everyone into a SID/STAR and just sit and watch them? Either way- as a pilot- you should be prepared for both!

Gents- We got the issues resolved back on Wednesday, but I have been a bit too busy to update this thread. If you are having trouble- please reach out to support and obtain their help- but as for the server issue that plagued us the past two weeks, it is resolved. Thanks again for your patience- it wasn't much fun for us either!

Gents, To follow up on Kyle's post: This type of service outage is taking place in a system that was updated in order to prevent service outages. It has been a near constant focus of my attention for almost two weeks, working with our vendor to determine **why** the manual license return function that our support team uses so regularly has magically ceased working. On Sunday, it appears one of the engineers investigating that issue did **something** that knocked the activation system offline and he was unaware of it until I started barking about it when Kyle brought it to my attention during the day, Sunday. (Yes- I do have a pretty good bark...) NOTE: Activation SHOULD be working now... We have a forensic analysis taking place to determine why activation was allowed to fall offline without notifying us (it should have) and we have been advised to expect a fix for the license return issue on Tuesday. (I am moderately hopeful that this will indeed be the case.) In the mean time, if you are going to unintall/reinstall FSX, upgrade hardware, build a new computer, etc- we STRONGLY encourage you to go into to the FMS and select the license return function. Using that function you should be able to return your license and then check it back out when you are ready to install on your new setup. (This of course, is the recommended method and is documented in the manuals... you read those right? RIGHT?!?!?!) In the mean time- we do have a small stack of folks who are waiting for this to be fixed- and I am making quite regular noise to keep the pressure on our licensing vendor to make sure they get us up and running ASAP. I apologize- and your patience is appreciated!

Dan, I'd just let him sit here and scream his head off. He isn't actually interested in help or a solution, else he would have realized the system has been working since the weekend, as I detailed in my post. He wants attention. He wants to yell at someone because it makes him feel empowered. Imagine how much fun it would be to hang out with him, drinking coffee with friends in a crowded coffee shop with mediocre service? Can you picture the embarrassment as he wedges off like that to the poor server in front of everyone? Of course you can't... because most cowards only act like he does in front of an internet audience.

Gents- As of a few hours ago, we successfully identified the point of failure and corrected the problem. Anyone with a valid license key should be able to activate without any further problems. THANK YOU for your patience as we worked through this issue. It is always uncomfortable when we conduct system upgrades, but it is especially uncomfortable when we find that there are problems on a weekend because it is often hard to get adequate support from vendors even though weekends are the busiest time for simmers! Internally we are still working through some cleanup items, so the support team is a bit behind on a few tasks, including license returns/resets. We hope to have those issues resolved late tonight or during the day sunday, for those impacted. Need to get through all of these hiccups so I can get back to resolving squawks from the Tech team!

Gents- For reasons that are still unclear, it appears that any user attempting to activate a key for the FIRST time is being rejected by the activation system. We are not sure why this is happening, but our vendor has been notified and we are continuing to research the issue. I apologize for the inconvenience- we will get it resolved just as quickly as possible!

Captains, Late thursday night, our activation service was brought back online after a comprehensive server side upgrade. We had been conducting a bunch of testing to make sure everything was working, but it appears our testing missed something and we are in the process of researching. Right now- it seems that any products with a previous activation history are able to activate and maintain status, but any activation keys that have not previously been activated are being rejected. We are working on it... I apologize for the inconvenience, and we will keep you updated here in this thread.

Gents- We are now mostly back to normal operation. Might be a few reboots here and there or short outages as we tweak and tune things a bit- but the major work is done. I'll be back to code now, fortunately! The tech team has been keeping us extremely busy!

Gents, Jim summarizes the major points very well in his post above. Steam restricts addon sales in such a way that the sales process is effectively anti-competitive for third party developers such as PMDG. Not only must we pay Valve a sizeable sum for the honor, but we then must also pay Dovetail Games for the access rights to being on their channel. Taken independently, either of these costs is extremely high, but taken together they are prohibitive unless we want to raise the price of products sold through steam to significantly higher levels than regular distribution channels in order to recoup the losses. The advantages that Steam distribution brings in terms of market exposure, customer simplicity and a wider potential revenue pool simply don't offset the costs of doing business via that channel at this time. It might change in the future- but for now it just doesn't add up for us.

Thomas, Check my post up at the top of the forum- we are causing your problem at the moment (Sorry!) but we will have activation back online ASAP...

Captains! Those of you who were active in this forum during the leadup to the NGX release and the 777 release will recall that we typically make an investment in updated technology for our servers and systems during the last phases of development of a major product. We are in the midst of completing some pretty comprehensive system updates and upgrades that were planned for today. We anticipated the outage lasting about 12hrs, but some of the changes are taking a bit longer to test and get squared away for operational use. The KEY hiccup right now involves our license activation servers and requires input from the vendor in order to be certain the hiccup is resolved properly. This being the case, both activation servers are currently offline having updates accomplished, and that means we are unable to conduct activations for customers needing them. We took the eCommerce system offline to prevent anyone from being able to make a purchase during a period of time when we know they won't be able to install, activate and go flying- as it seems rather cynical to take the customer's payment and then tell them "you have to wait until tomorrow." We anticipate having everything back online during the day Thursday, but we don't have a specific time just yet. I apologize profusely for any inconvenience this causes. I recognize it can be frustrating to being doing an installation only to find out something unexpected prevents you from getting flying- but I hope you know we are making some changes to improve our ability to support you, and our products for many years to come! Thanks- I'll be back here to let you know we are operating again once we have the whole shebang back online! (And yes... this is a good sign, for those who are trying to find some way to link it to progress on hte 747. )

Gents, A few folks have asked about Prepar3D. We do not yet know if the P3D version will release concurrent to the FSX/FSX-SE release, or if there might be schedule lag between them. It is simply too early to tell. We will let you know as the Prepar3D version begins to move through testing, so you won't have to guess. We use FSX as our primary development platform for this product, but we have already made changes to allow the product to work in Prepar3D, using many of the new P3D tools that have been developed. In a perfect world we would release both at the same time- but we shall have to wait and see if perfection is reality.

Captains, A short note to let you know that tonight we have officially moved the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II base package for FSX and FSX-SE past an important milestone. She is now being flown and tested by our team of Technical Advisors. For those who haven't been with us through this cycle in the past, or those who didn't really notice it taking place last time, we operate with two independent testing teams: Team 1: Technical Advisory Team is made up of industry experts to include engineers, technicians, operators, flight crew and others with intimate experience in the operation of the airplane. These individuals conduct the first wave of testing on any new product because they have a tremendous reservoir of operational experience from which they can provide us with feedback on nearly all aspects of the airplane being modeled. Team 2: Beta Test Team is made predominantly of simmers who have worked with us as testers for many years, along with a mixed bag of Tech Advisors from other products such as the 777 and the NGX. There is no specific timeline for how long each of these teams will have with the product before it reaches release readiness. Such decisions are made largely by feel and through our experience having created a number of products during the past twenty years. The only thing that determines when the product moves from Tech to Beta and Beta to Release is the product itself. When it is ready- then it is ready! We have asked our Tech Advisors not to share any images of the product just yet- but I suspect we will remove that gag order pretty quickly. Okay- I must get a few hours of sleep before the testing starts to fill my days with schematics, logic charts and reference materials...

Captains, A few moments ago we made live the MacOS compatible version of the PMDG DC-6 Cloudmaster for X-Plane and simultaneously dropped an update to the Windows compatible version so as to bring them both to the most current cycle: v1.11.0045. The MacOS version is available for sale immediately- and the Windows updated version can be had by simply accessing your account in our eCommerce system, navigating to your purchase history and redownloading from there... Once you have the updated installer, simply run it over top of your existing installation and you will be all set to go with the very latest version of the DC-6! The change list for the DC-6 going all the way back to initial release follows: ================================================================ Version 1.11.0045, 27 June 2016 INTERNAL MODEL - Blurry VOR needles and gauge glass sharpened - Mild texture adjustments SYSTEMS - Refined yellow ADF needles' behavior - Allow transmitting on Com1 or Com2 - AFE only activates main tank boost pumps Before Takeoff DOCUMENTATION - POH refinements - Pilot Intro refinements - Refined PFPX profiles, including one for the A model MISC - Flipped the headshake realism slider direction - Mac OS X version is available - Removed version strings from graphics Version 1.10.0043, 10 June 2016 AUDIO - 3D positioning of all engine sounds - Open windows/forward right door now admit exterior sounds to cockpit, fade in/out with aperture - Exterior sounds are doppler-shifted when the airplane is viewed externally - Exterior sound volume fades appropriately with camera distance from aircraft - Engine sounds no longer 'pop' when switching views - Stall horn is silenced - Stock fire warning bell overwritten with our own correct one - Aspect ratio is included in exterior volumes (a bit louder in front of the plane) EXTERNAL MODEL - All light leaks hunted down and killed - Geometry and coloring tweaks INTERNAL MODEL - Increased texture resolutions: ceiling, sidewalls, glareshield, fuel dump, etc. - Bolts, bolts everywhere! - Improved gauge reflections - Vibration of the whiskey compass - Other vibrations added to various cockpit parts - Artificial horizon corrected for level - Ball corrected for level - Little texture anomaly fixes and light leak fixes - Gust lock housing tweak SYSTEMS - Modeled fuel volume within the lines so that switching to/thru an empty tank won't immediately kill engine (oops!) - Engine fire correctly causes engine damage - Fire warning lights turn off when fire extinguishes - Increased concentration of CO2 to slightly increase effectiveness as a suppressant - ADF/RMI needle motion is smooth rather than sudden - Cold&dark behavior of certain instruments is corrected - Engines will still turn when mags are off - BMEP gauges no longer 'go crazy' when cold&dark - Inactive transponder won't force off-side transponder to deactivate - Carburetor damage no longer occurs when engine not running, more forgiving of high-OAT climates - Cabin heater core temp is cooler and POH-compliant DOCUMENTATION - Tutorial revised with feedback from users - Graphical livery installation instructions in Pilot Intro - POH updates including aux blower SCENARIOS - Autopilot logic corrections - Mixture levers restore correctly in saved scenarios - Scenario no longer loads with incorrect control deflections - Gust lock is unlocked before anything else happens, when loading a scenario MISC - Additional key commands - Tweaked 'fall-in compensation' logic that applies to turns - Tweaked 'artificial dihedral' logic that applies to banks Version 1.00.40, 1 June 2016 - Initial release ================================================================ Conversion to FSX/FSX-SE and Prepar3D is taking place and we will have more information on that process for you a bit later in the summer. Alright- clear those props and get going!

The following never cease to amaze me: 1) You guys will argue with one another over ANYTHING. ("Oh look- lint!" "No- it is fuzz." "NO I SAID IT WAS LINT!" etc.) 2) Some folks just make NO effort to educate themselves prior to offering completely uninformed conjecture. We post our development agenda and thought process over and over... Thank you to those who read it and try to disabuse the non-readers of their ignorance... 3) Some folks think our decision making is binary. We are fairly sizable team- we don't work on a single project at a time... There are other points- but i'm making myself grumpy just recounting them.