rsrandazzo

Captains, Just a quick drive-by to let you know that we are *still* working on the pending update for the 747 product line. We have a few items that we are testing that haven't passed our own internal "sniff test" that tells us that they are ready for public consumption. For the most part the product is stable, but we have a few nagging items that we want to finish testing thoroughly before we push them out as public releases, because they are considered to be "high risk" changes. It is taking more time than normal- but it is turning out to be time well spent. One of the things that is a constant source of frustration (and, to be honest- a monumental waste of development time) is when our beta testers report CTDs that we suspect from experience are caused by a particular scenery or function-modifying add-on like FSUIPC- but we don't have specific proof when it happens on a customer or beta tester machine. During one of our twice-weekly calls, Chris Powell suggested that we might be able to leverage some of the diagnostic capabilities of Windows to narrow down our response to these sorts of reports in order to prove it was *our* application causing the issue (and thus, fix it) or some other application. We are currently testing this capability- and to date it is proving to be quite handy. We think it needs a bit more time so that we can be sure we are getting data that is valuable- and we are taking our time in working through all of it. The good news is that this is helping us to make the product more stable over all- and that ultimately is the point of the exercise! We have a TON of fixes coming for you (actually, a MFT of fixes if you know what that is ) and some new features that you aren't expecting- so give us a bit more of your patience and we will have this out to you just as soon as possible. We are being a bit overly-cautious here, in all likelihood- but there really is nothing worse than giving you an update that breaks something...

Captains, PMDG 747 Updates: We are currently wrapping up testing of a new update for the PMDG 747 Queen of the Skies II product line, and we are hoping to push this update to you via micro-update in the days ahead. It is a pretty comprehensive update with quite a few feature improvements, efficiency enhancements and even some cool new features that we haven't shown you yet. I thought we would likely push this on Friday this week, but I am less confident in this schedule at the moment- so most likely it is looking like early next week instead. When we actually make the push, I'll have more information for you about what it is, what changed and where we are headed with the 747s in the next round of updates. Prepar3D v4.4 Compatibility: You should have no issues with forward compatibility in any PMDG product currently working in Prepar3D v4.3. It is very important to us that we not obstruct your forward progress in minor version updates of Prepar3D, so we do not inhibit the airplane from running with a new version. Such inhibitors are untidy and rather unfriendly- and haven't proven to be necessary in any regard- so if you want to move to P3D v4.4 you won't find any problems on our end. Prepar3D v4.4 PBR Updates: While everyone is obviously excited about seeing PBR applied to all of our products- this will take a bit of time and we will roll them out on an "as ready" basis. There are no ETAs on this as the dev team is quite heavily engaged in NG3 development, along with a few more major changes in the 747 product line as it currently stands. While we have been watching the PBR update coming through the testing process- documentation was not ready on it's proper implementation so we elected not to invest time in getting a jump-ahead on it because we wanted to see what the final version looked like before investing the time. I do want to be really specific on one point: When we roll out the updates for each product to make it PBR enabled in Prepar3D v4.4, we will be moving the "required version" to v4.4. If you wish to remain with P3D v4.0-v4.3 for some reason, you are best advised to make sure you don't install any updates after we move the requirements, as they will not be compatible with versions earlier than v4.4. You will lose the ability to enjoy any forward updates as we will not be continuing to support outdated minor updates in P3D v4, choosing instead to keep our products compatible with the very latest version from Lockheed Martin. (Because someone will ask: PBR updates will not have any impact on P3D v3, FSX-SE or FSX users.) I recognize that there is some impatience in the community to see these updates- but please give us a bit of time. I have read all kinds of wild conjecture in various forums and Facebook groups regarding what exactly is involved in implementing this feature and how "easy" it apparently is to do. If you find yourself reading the same, please keep in mind that this can be done very quickly- if you are satisfied with it looking like crud. To be done well, it will take a bit of time- and we intend to take that time so that you really get a great looking result. PMDG Forum Move: We will soon be moving our official forum presence to a new location, departing our beloved location here at AVSim, where we have lived since 1999. We expect to have a "soft-opening" initially during which we staff both this forum and the new PMDG forum- but we will quickly cut over to the new location and we obviously invite you all to attend the new digs when that happens. More information soon... Alright- I think that covers today's information. For those of you in the USA, we hope you had a very nice Thanksgiving holiday- and whatever season you celebrate in the weeks ahead- we wish you all the very best wishes for the year ahead.

Tim, For the most part, **everything** in our products is an entirely customized process that takes place outside the sim. We then push data in-and-out of the sim to deal with various items that the sim needs to know about/control, such as landing gear, flaps, etc. I know the lighting controls are entirely customized as well, but off the top of my head I can't think of any reason we wouldn't have pushed state data at simconnect. Two possibilities come to mind: 1) We simply overlooked it. 2) We chose not to because of some interference with the custom visual lighting process. It has been so long since we wrote those pieces I do not honestly recall- but I'll throw a note in our work tracking to take a look. If it turns out to be #1 it won't be hard to push the state data to simconnect, and it will appear in a future update. No promises on ETA tho- we are in the midst of a pretty aggressive update schedule for the entire 747 series right now.

Daniel, So shoot us an email and let us take a look at your work. 😎 To everyone else who has replied to this: I'll be in touch with you this week!

Chen, It is **really** hard to do convincingly. We are working on it, however.

Nameless, Please sign your posts in this forum as is required. I recommend that you create a signature block- that way you don't need to remember. Normally- I simply remove posts that are unsigned- but if you can get your signature issue squared away I can look the other way on this one. (and might even come back to you with an answer to help you...)

Miguelito The rate of decrease in the brake pressure gauge within our simulation is based upon the weighted average of timed observation from 21 different in-service aircraft that varied in age from 28 years old to only 1 day in age. While my training specifically told me to expect this pressure to remain, line observation and discussion with experienced Boeing engineers demonstrated that my expectation was not accurate. So you aren't the only one who started at the gauge and thought: "Now that cannot be right." We put a huge amount of effort into researching such things- I hope that helps!

David, We use a fully customized animation process for the landing gear. It is how we are able to give you fully independent, articulated landing gear that responds to the pitch/roll of the airplane during takeoff and touchodnw. Additionally, the custom animation allows for independent simulation of the alternate gear extension process, and it's impact on things like landing gear doors. When the sim first launches, it initially reports that the gear are retracted- then switches to immediately extended. It takes the gear some time to catch up, because as you know the gear on a 747 won't simply slam from closed to open in 1/18th of a second (which is how quickly FS extends the gear during this transition.) On the crash detection: I generally recommend leaving it off. There are so many issues related to terrain mesh/scenery/invisible vertices that can ruin your day- it hardly seems worth the effort to have it on when flying an airliner. Now if you were flying a helo sim.... That would be a whole other story- and you wouldn't have to worry about the gear animation either. 🤣

Gents, We continue to tune this effect as time passes. In the real world, once you get above 90knots or so- the effect of precipitation on the windshield is more of a blurring effect, and you rarely see any discernible droplets/artifacts rolling across the windscreen. Obviously in extreme rain this will change, but even then it is more an obscuration of vision than a presentation of individual rain droplets running up the windscreen. I'm not completely satisfied with where we are- so we continue to tweak and tune- but it is definitely moving in the right direction.

Boys, Boys, Boys.... It **is already** documented for you! 744 FCOM Chapter 5 and 748 FCOM Chapter 5 each describe the display of the advisory messages associated with the datalink. You will then deduce from your system knowledge that you should not expect to hear a chime in the 744 because it is being shown as an advisory message, while on the 748 it is a COMM message and carries an accompanying advisory message. If this wasn't clear to you: Since you are a good pilot and like to read huge manuals, () jump to chapter 15 "Warning Systems" and you will find further elucidation for your aviation pleasure!

Sander, If it happens again, hit the pause key the moment you become aware of it. Then give me the following items: 1) Airport and Runway being used. 2) Wind direction and speed. 3) Weather engine being used. 4) Nose pitch as read from the attitude indicator. 5) Roll as read from the attitude indicator. 6) RadAlt as read from the attitude indicator. Might not lead me anywhere- but who knows.

Gents, We have not found a replication case for this in house so it hasn't been resolved. Things have calmed down a bit so perhaps i'll find some time to see if I can't capture it in the debugger in the coming weeks. We will see...

I think you two have been sniffing a bit too much of the paint.

Captains, HA! I knew that title would get you to swing in here and find out what I was on about. No- they really **aren't** a dime a dozen- and in fact many of the more recognized livery painters have quietly provided us with feedback over the last two decades that have caused a continual improvement in our models and texture preparations. In fact, feedback from livery painters has changed the way we develop and package our models and the livery paint kits in order to improve workflow for the hundreds of livery painters that help to fill in the worldwide palette of airline liveries that we could never possibly cover on our own. Normally, we try to highlight a couple different livery artists with facebook posts, likes, public callouts and the like- but this year we have a completely new way to recognize, pay tribute and give livery painters an opportunity to help us shape a new, flagship PMDG product. The development team responsible for PMDG Global Flight Operations is nearing the point where, in preparation for launch of PMDG Global Flight Operations we are going to begin expanding the beta testing team from just our core cadre of under overworked, over underpaid, long term beta testers... and we see this as a great opportunity to be able to shine a bright light on the work done by livery painters, while also gaining some insight into our own product lines and some new ways that we can help increase the attention given to your work. If you are a livery painter with a demonstrable body of work, we'd like to hear from you if you are interested in joining the PMDG Global Flight Operations testing team. To qualify, you must meet all of these criteria: 1) You must have a verifiable body of work painting liveries for PMDG products. 2) You must be identifiable to us and to the community through your public profile. 3) You must be willing and able to sign a non-disclosure agreement (which means that you must be of the age-of-consent, or have a parent/guardian who is willing to accept legal/financial responsibility for your non-disclosure agreement.) 4) You must be able to interact with the PMDG development team in a positive, friendly manner. 5) You must be willing to provide us with feedback on various beta level tools and products to which we will give you access. 6) You must be willing to suffer through being as well fed, overpaid and rock-star famous the thankless task of beta testing. 7) You must be able to follow simple instructions... although the ability to follow moderately complex, two-stage instructions is preferred, and probably puts you ahead of most members of the development team. 🤣 If you feel that you meet all of the criteria above, please reach out to us by sending an email to: information@precisionmanuals.com In this email, please provide the following bits of information: 1) Who you are in real-life. 2) If you paint under an alias, who you are under alias. 3) If you paint for an organization- which one? 4) Some links to help us verify your work. This verification **must** allow us to validate that the work being displayed is your original work because it shows your name or other verifiable brand marks. 5) If you have been painting for some time- which PMDG products have you covered and which is your favorite? 6) Approximately how many liveries have you painted, do you think? 7) Acknowledge that you have reached the age-of-consent and can sign an NDA or have a parent/guardian willing to sign an NDA for you. 9) Acknowledge in your email that you noticed we skipped item 8. We will begin to answer emails with further instructions beginning around 15OCT18. (It may take a few days to answer, but we WILL answer you...) We can't wait to open the doors and let you all see what we have created for you in PMDG Global Flight Operations. We are very close to pulling back the curtain- and it will be unlike anything you used in your simming experience prior to now.

Ken, The correct phrase here is that the airplane should be "in trim." What we mean when we say this, is that you can take your hands off the controls and the airplane won't show a strong tendency to change pitch or roll from where you have it currently. Obviously, if you are climbing, it will eventually lose a bit of airspeed and the pitch will naturally lower- but what we are talking about is that being "in trim" means the airplane is naturally going where you have it pointed currently- you do not have to hold control pressure to keep it on the desired pitch/roll. Does that help?

Brian, A couple of items for you: The installer is looking to see that your registry keys show a valid and correctly structured installation of FSX-SE. Once it clears that hurdle, it goes and looks in the directory defined by the registry and version-checks the executable file to be certain you have the correct version. The error message you are getting tells me that your executable has been swapped out for one that is NOT the correct version, **or** you are using some kind of registry redirect in order to marge scenery and products from different sim platforms into multiple sim platforms, but it is misconfigured and causing the error checking to go awry. Based on your comments above i'm not able to diagnose further- but I'm betting that the registry location is misreporting and thus the EXE version check is simply failing out because it cannot find the EXE. I hope that helps you to resolve it!

Ken, There are thousands upon thousands of good folks hanging around here who can help you with any problem you might ever conceivably have. Simming is a hobby. Emotion should never play a role in it. If you are having trouble getting something to operate- simply swing through here and say: "I'm having trouble with ________" You will get a ton of help.

Steven, There are a couple of ways your account might get put on pause or lock: 1) You entered incorrect information and your card issuer refused to authorize the transaction, and you did this a couple of times in a row. 2) You goofed up on your username/password while attempting to log into your account and you did this too many times. Both of these events are completely automated and designed to protect you and PMDG from brute force methods to gain access to user accounts. #1 above will clear after a period of time (hours) and #2 requires input from our tech support team. You will notice I am intentionally vague about the number of times you can goof up, and how long the locks last. That is intentionally on my part. I hope that helps you!

Gents, The pylon flex model got a pretty significant overhaul between 3.00.9008 and 3.00.9019, in order to reduce the potential impact of FPS surges triggering problems in the physics modeling. (Even though you can't see it, occasionally users would get a couple of hyper-update cycles with a REALLLLY small time deltas and this would cause the math to get completely out of wonk since it is based on a differential equation based on time.) The new equation is running in 9019 and **should** be more robust. DANGER HERE THO: Some of you may notice the airplane "tremble" while parked at idle power with the parking break off. This is characterized as a gentle rocking side to side at fairly high frequency. This is a Prepar3D problem and has nothing to do with the 747. You can see it in nearly all of the default P3D aircraft also... Please don't confuse the two.

Gents, This **should** have been fixed in the latest update- but from reports it seems it broke something else inside this logic. We have a half dozen people coding in this general area, some using a bit more robust methods to deconflict 744 and 748 specific messages than others- and it has turned into a morass of issues. Something as simple as a sign... not so simple, apparently.

Captains, (Sorry for all the acronyms in the header... Someone at AVSim decided to crimp the title character allowance so you can't relay enough information to make it relevant unless you condense everything.) A few moments ago we released an update for the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II and PMDG 747-8 Queen of the Skies II Expansion products for both the FSX and Prepar3D platforms. This update is primarily targeted at smoothing a few items that came up in the days post-release, with a bit of performance enhancement and some other detail cleanup as well. You can get this update by running the PMDG Operations Center, then clicking on the settings wheel. You should see a flag there to alert you of the present of the updates, and you can install from there. Note that if you have FSX and FSX/SE, or if you have Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4 installed side-by-side, you may see multiple flags. We recommend you just click through all of them to install the available updates, and then close the operations center, and re-open it. Then you will likely see some flags to alert you that your liveries may need repair in the 747-8. Once you have done this, you are all set and can head off to fly! If you ever wonder whether you are up-do-date with the latest, simply run the PMDG Operations Center, select your product, and then click on VERSIONS. This will tell you the most current version available and the version you have installed for each product and expansion. Thank you for your support of this (and all!) PMDG products- you guys have really been incredibly kind and supportive of this one. She is simply a magnificent airplane and it makes us very happy to see how much you are enjoying this new expansion to the PMDG 747 product line! The change list for this update is as follows: PMDG 747-400/8 QOTSII **WIDE BETA** - BUILD 3.00.9019 (Released 2018-09-27) [ View Issues ] =========================================================================== - 0007249: [Systems - Lighting - VC/2D] Panel lighting (backlight) too low during daylight (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007229: [External Model - Geometry] Main gear hydraulick piston not placed correctly (jbrown) - resolved. - 0007238: [External Model - Geometry] Possible hole in -8f model (jbrown) - resolved. - 0007215: [External Model - Geometry] Side Cargo door opening speed (jbrown) - resolved. - 0007214: [External Model - Geometry] No lights in the main deck cargo (jbrown) - resolved. - 0007231: [External Model - Geometry] Landing lights no reflection on fuselage in FSX (jbrown) - resolved. - 0007222: [Systems - Hydraulic] RAT line missing from HYD3 in HYD synoptics page (rsrandazzo) - resolved. - 0007247: [EFB - General] EFB touchscreen does not register correctly the mouse position (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007239: [Virtual Cockpit - Functionality/Click-Spots] CANC RJCT button fonts (vscimone) - resolved. - 0007245: [EFB - General] EFB Passenger numbers incorrect when KG option is selected (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007244: [General - Unsure] Number of passengers in PAYLOAD page change when fuel is set (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007233: [Virtual Cockpit - View Presets] CDUs and ECL view preset is not zoomable (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007242: [FMS - Initialization] 8F Ident page not correct (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007243: [Systems - Lighting - VC/2D] FLOOD/PANEL LTS DEFAULT LVL options on SIMULATION page reversed (vscimone) - resolved. - 0007241: [EFB - Performance and Computational] Wrong min/max takeoff weight values in EFB OPT calculation error message with OPTIMUM flaps (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007237: [General - Unsure] ET/CHR digits displayed when loading default panel state (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007236: [Main Panel - EFIS Controls] INBOARD DSPL selectors in wrong position when loading the default panel states (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007235: [Pedestal - Radios/Comms/Navs] TCAS mode switch in wrong position when loading the default panel state (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007219: [Virtual Cockpit - Functionality/Click-Spots] Source Select Switches incorrect position during panel state load (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007234: [EFB - General] CTD when scanning EFB airports (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007216: [FMS - Setup/Options Pages] ELEC GEN OFF IS (CAUTION <-> ADVISORY) not saving (rsrandazzo) - resolved. - 0007228: [External Model - Geometry] Rapid change in FPS disrupts stability of engine pylon flex computation. (rsrandazzo) - resolved. - 0007224: [Virtual Cockpit - Geometry/Textures] Visible Seam (vscimone) - resolved. - 0007218: [External Model - Geometry] Several reports of missing landing gear on load (jbrown) - resolved. - 0007217: [General - Suggested/Missing Features] Reset engine EGT after shutdown to ambient temperature (aids quick ignition for -8) (emvaos) - resolved. - 0007221: [FREEZES - All Types] Several users reporting non responsive aircraft and frozen displays on departure (emvaos) - resolved. - 0007220: [Main Panel - Aural/Visual Warning Systems] SEATBELTS OFF (748 only EICAS message) does not clear when panel state loaded into 744 (rsrandazzo) - resolved. - 0007248: [General - 2D Panels] Background panel lighting for the Radio tuning panel in 2D pop up Inop (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. - 0007250: [Virtual Cockpit - Geometry/Textures] INOP light in 8F cockpit (vscimone) - resolved. - 0007251: [Virtual Cockpit - Functionality/Click-Spots] Wrong mouse pointer symbol on STB power switch on 8 passenger (vscimone) - resolved. - 0007201: [FMS - Route/Legs Pages] FIX Page distance limit (mfrantzeskakis) - resolved. [31 Items]

Captains, We have just about all of the bits in place for this weekend's update for the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II and PMDG 747-8 Queen of the Skies II products. We are sitting on what we hope is a minor technical snag that delayed the release from this afternoon to, **probably** Saturday afternoon. (Stress is on **probably** because we cannot say for certain when the issue will clear.) The reason it is hard to say precisely when the problem will clear is that we are trying to solve a problem that involves cloud distribution, but I **can** tell you that the moment we have it resolved- the update will appear for you in the Operations Center. I'l have more information for you at that time, but for now I need to find the bullwhip with the brass knob on the end... stay tuned.

Sergio, I have made about 75 posts in the past week. What have you done? Nothing of substance or value except to be a cankar sore.

I dunno Glenn. Did you see the engine wobble animation we have in the 747 right now? Is a bug.. but it sure looks LOOSE to me. 🤣

Erik, For sanity- lets back you up to a know quantity. Go into your <root sim>/PMDG/ directory and look at these two directories: Delete their contents ENTIRELY, then reinstall your navdata. This SHOULD clear things up for you. If it does not, I may take a more drastic step and have you manually delete the directories, then uninstall the 748/744 completely and reinstall to check and be sure you are reaching the default navdata load provided with those products. (If you aren't- then you are probably having corruption from some other application running alongside- and we will need to narrow down which one...)