rsrandazzo

Gents, Quick clarification for those who aren't familiar: A single activation on your machine will allow you to run in both Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4. If you have the 747 installed and activated already in P3D v3, you will not be asked to activate uniquely for P3D v4. That being said, you MUST run the uninstaller and remove the 747 from P3D v3 BEFORE you install to P3D v4, else your license will not work in P3D v4... If you follow our installation instructions, and you are not seeing the airplane run, the first thing I would do is to make certain you run the installer as an administrator, and that you are running the sim as administrator. Failing that- hit up support and one of us will help you through it. IMPORTANT: This isn't difficult... Don't over-think-it!

Daniel, You didn't read my installation notes did you... Never mind, I already know you didn't. Scroll up to the top and read them. It will answer your question. If it doesn't- just follow the instructions anyway.

Steve, Thank you for your opinion. The NGX is indeed a well loved and popular product of ours, but no less so than the 777 and 747. I'm sorry it brings you so much pain to have to wait the 7-10 days it will take us to have that product out the door also, but after nearly three months of 15+ hours days for nearly every member of the team as we work to convert our product line to make it compatible with Prepar3D v4, this is just as fast as we can go. You seem to be under the impression that we have been lazing around doing nothing, waiting on Lockheed Martin. How I wish this had been the case. To the contrary, we have been working 15h/7d since early march to get these products ready for testing. (and this after nearly a year of the same to get the 747 completed.) The detail you seem to have missed is that our testing teams can only digest so much at one time... It does no good for the cook to put all three meals on the table at one time if the customers can only eat a certain pace, wouldn't you say? So again, I'm terribly sorry for making you wait a few days for the NGX. It will be here before you know it. (And if I can convince the team to work without sleep- we can probably improve productivity that much more!)

Bill, No need. The operations center takes care of all of that for you. One of the nice things about how it works.

Dave, You sure may. The goal was to give you as much flexibility as possible. Hope that helps.

Captains, A few moments ago, we published our first x64 update to the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II. Updates the 747 within our Prepar3D product line so that you can use it in either Prepar3D v3 or Prepar3D v4. I am going to refrain from my usual excessive wordiness in order to make sure a few points get seen under your noses: THESE NOTES ARE IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ THEM: This is a complete product and installer rebuild, thus requiring that you download the entire 1.2GB installer anew from your PMDG eCommerce account. I will include the installation instructions a bit lower down for those who need them. As of this version, we are still awaiting a x64 compatible RAAS module from Bryan York at JetExpress/FS2Crew. He will provide it to us when it is ready, and we will push it to you via a microupdate a bit later on. RAAS works normally in P3D v3, but it does NOT work in P3D v4. Saved flights are not currently portable between our 32bit FSX/FSX-SE/P3Dv3 offerings and the P3D v4 product line. We are looking to address this for a future update, so for now do not attempt to move saved flights back and forth between 32 and 64 bit product lines and you won't have any problems. Other than these warnings, you should find that the Prepar3D v4 edition of the 747-400 is a much smoother operating product thanks in part to the advancements Lockheed Martin has achieved with their simulation platform. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS: Go to www.precisionmanuals.com and log in to your PMDG eCommerce account. Click on VIEW PREVIOUS ORDERS locate your order record for the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II for Prepar3D. Click on the download link, and await the download of the 747-400 in 1.2GB of digital glory... If you have the Prepar3D v3 version currently installed, uninstall it now. (Yes, you must.) Run your new installer. If you have only one version of Prepar3D installed, it will offer to install for that version. If you have both Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4 installed, it will offer you the option to choose which version(s) you would like to install. Complete the installation. The Operations center will update itself at the conclusion of the installation, and then it will run and offer you the ability to repair your livery installations. The ship is now yours, Captain- go have fun! Quick note for FSX/FSX-SE users: We will be pushing an update to bring the FSX version of this product up to a matching standard with the Prepar3D v3/v4 version, but it might be a day or two as we are a bit overwhelmed with all of the moving pieces we have on our hands this weekend... Stay tuned to the Operations Center for your update!

Andrew, DANGIT. I knew we dorgot to do SOMETHING.

Captains, We are still chasing down some pretty annoying issues with making the 747-400 compatible for use with Prepar3D v4. On Friday morning, we were pretty certain we would have a release for you during the night tonight, but it has been a frustrating night of solving what appears to be a nearly non-stop chain of very small items. Any of you who have flown an airplane will understand when I say that "sometimes you just know by instinct that you should abort the takeoff..." That is how I felt tonight as we were discussing whether or not to release this update to you, without a clear picture in our minds of why we had just seen a few oddities that were not repeatable. I know you all are eager to get flying in Prepar3D v4- and believe me- this transition is making a complete hash of our development timeline, so we are eager to get you flying in Prepar3D v4 as well- but not unlike the professional flight crew up on the flight deck of an actual 747, you aren't only paying us to know when to release this product, you are paying us to know when NOT to release it... The "no-go" decision is always the hardest decision I have to make because I know it is frustrating to wait for a highly anticipated product. But please trust me- we don't want you to experience 10x the frustration with a product that randomly misbehaves in ways that ruin your enjoyment of the new simulator. I'm going to get a few hours of sleep, and we will all be back here chipping away at the issues on Saturday and I'll let you know how things are looking throughout the day. The moment we sort out these last couple of items- she will be all yours!

Gents, I removed all sub-posting from this thread because the original intent was to lock it and keep it empty in the first place. A quick note of thanks to those of you who offered their praise to the PMDG team for our ongoing efforts to get you P3D v4 compatible product updates... We appreciate the kind words- we really do. The team is working around-the-clock right now and has been for the better part of a week just on these processes. Back to this thread: I removed all of the extra posts because the original point of this thread is to provide a concise, uncluttered location for folks to get the most common questions answered- and I didn't want it to become a victim of random observations about people's buying decisions, accusations that I am an unsympathetic listener, long and well articulated treatise on our pricing mechanisms and why any individual poster shouldn't be held responsible for the fact that he never actually read them, requests for additional mayo packets in the PMDG lunch room, or further complaints about the music selection playing from my iTunes feed while I code... Now back to testing installer mechanisms....

Captains, This thread will keep you up-to-date on our progress and expectations toward the release of each of our Prepar3D v4 compatibility updates. I am going to keep this thread locked, and I will be updating it as information changes. You can check back with this thread to know what the most current information and expectations are. Let me translate that again to make sure it is clear: As we progress through releasing each of our Prepar3D v4 updates, we will be keeping you up-to-date on progress in this thread. The information will change and will be updated new information and expectations become available. Please note that testing for market suitability has only just begun, since our beta tester and technical tester teams only gained access to Prepar3D v4 today at the same time you gained access... PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II: This product has been released for Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4 PMDG 777-200LR/F: This product has been released for Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4 PMDG 777-300ER Expansion: This product has been released for Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4 PMDG 737NGX: This product has been released for Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4. PMDG 737-600/700 Expansion: This product is expected to release on/before 31JUL. (see note in other announcement.) PMDG DC-6 Cloudmaster: This product has released. PMDG Operations Center: The OC will update a number of times during this process. If it tells you to update, we recommend doing so. The appearance of a product module for a Prepar3D v4 compatible PMDG product within the operations center will normally happen prior to the product release. This is normal, please do not let it confuse you. Check here for official release announcements. How and When: We are putting a tremendous amount of effort into making the transition between Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4 as simple and effortless as possible. When the product is ready for release, we will simply instruct you to re-download it from your account at our eCommerce site. (Aerosoft customers will get their copy from Aerosoft... but it will lag a day or two...) The Prepar3D v3 and Prepar3D v4 will be contained within the same installer, similarly to how we deliver FSX/FSX-SE in the same installer. There is no free transition/upgrade pricing between FSX and Prepar3D as these are different product lines.

Tomas, I have seen this on a few occasions as well, across all of our products for a few years. It is a subject that we are constantly investigating to see if we can find a fix. We have some ideas on it, but haven't found a fix yet. SOMETIMES you can cure the issue by pressing and holding the F1 key for a few seconds... Sometimes that doesn't work. Most of the time I don't see it at all. We will keep looking.

John, We have been telling folks over and over since January of 2015 that the x64 transition was already included in your Prepar3D purchase... If you see anyone else who seems to have missed that news- please pass along the word? We would hate for folks to miss the bus because they didn't know! For Aerosoft customers: Yes- you will be included. If you purchased via download from Aerosoft it will be a simple matter of getting them the download files. If you purchased on DVD, there are a fair number of greater logistical challenges, and as always- you will need to be patient while we work with Aerosoft to sort out a solution. (Sorry... but DVDs are just harder to support with major changes!)

Captains, Now that the cat is out of the bag on the worst kept secret in simming, we can **finally** give you a bit of information on what our Prepar3D customers can expect to expect moving forward during the next few weeks and months. As we promised back in 2015, customers who have purchased our products for Prepar3D v3 are going to enjoy a free transition to Prepar3D v4 and the advent of 64bit simming technology, as this was already rolled up into the development costs of the product you already purchased. Beginning on/shortly after the release of Prepar3D v4, we will begin publishing Prepar3D v4 compatible versions of our existing product lines. We have spent the better part of 2017 thus far working our way through the transition of our existing product line to make the NGX, 777, 747 and DC-6 compatible with the new, Prepar3D v4. As of today, we have both the DC-6 and the 747 operating within Prepar3D v4, and we hope to have the 777 completed later this week, with the NGX to follow shortly there-after. Those who are already customers of our Prepar3D products will be able to obtain these new versions at no cost. Now a couple of notes: With the release of Prepar3D v4, we have new sets of developer tools and many new features to work with that did not exist (or existed in less useful formats) in Prepar3D v3. Our goal with the initial push into Prepar3D v4 is to bring you a fully x64 compatible product version that has been rebuilt using the new development tools for each product initially. We will then be updating each product over time to include many of the new functions native to Prepar3D v4, and pushing those updates to you via our in-house product updater functionality. Schedule-wise we are still working out a few details because we haven't been allowed to discuss Prepar3D v4 even with our own beta team, and that also means we have been unable to beta test the DC-6 and 747-400 in their new x64 iterations... So we need to work out the details of how we will do this before pushing the new versions to you. (The DC-6 is easy- since that product is still in beta testing, we will have it fully tested when it releases in a few weeks, obviously, but the 747-400 is a whole different animal...) My best guess right now is that we will begin pushing the new Prepar3d v4 versions to you within days of the initial Prepar3D v4 release, as this will give our own test team a chance to make sure we haven't missed anything obvious before handing the product over to you for use. In order, I expect you will see the products in this order: PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II, PMDG 777-200LR/F (and expansions), PMDG DC-6 Cloudmaster, PMDG 737-NGX (and expansions.) Again I want to stress that PMDG customers who have already purchased our products for Prepar3D v3 **as of the day we release the Prepar3D v4 compatible version** will receive the update at no cost... (No matter what foolishness you read on the internet! ) We will have lots more information for you in the coming days, so please stay tuned!

John, et al, In the sim community- folks have traditionally misunderstood what your MLW really means. If you land at a weight that exceeds your MLW, It does NOT mean that the airplane will break. To the contrary- airplanes touch down over MLW with relatively little fanfare. The MLW is a weight that is established by the manufacturer's engineers as the weight at which the structure of the airplane will continue to lead a normal structural lifespan. If you bought yourself a 777, and landed it 100,000lbs over MLW every single time you flew, that airplane would theoretically show signs of fatigue wearing at a rate faster than an exactly identical 777 that was routinely landed at a lesser weight. Makes sense, right? So from my vantage point on the flight deck- if I take off at 877,000lbs and and have a catastrophic failure that calls into question the safety of the airplane or it's occupants- I am going to make the decision to eat some of the stress life of the airplane by putting it back onto nearest, most suitable runway available. If, on the other hand, the biggest risk to the flight is that I might inconvenience my passengers schedule, I will take the time to find someplace reasonable to dump fuel and reduce weight. There are even occasions where the airline might decide it is necessary for me to return to the field- and they will make the decision to authorize an overweight landing pending the crew's agreement... it all takes place within the sphere of the modern airline operation. What happens after a landing over MLW? The manufacturer has provided the airline with a detailed inspection to put the airplane through, depending upon the circumstances. All in a day's work.

Pablo, Thanks for the post! We were doing a ton of precautionary security work over the weekend, and one of the servers got left shut down accidentally. I THINK this caused your problem. You mind checking again and letting us know that you are all set now? How are things at AA? Did you and I converse briefly a few years back about you building flying time on your own while working for AA? Or did I confuse you with someone else? If yes- how are things progressing?

Chris, A half dozen years ago or so- someone asked the same question. One fellow replied with words-to-the-effect-of: "Rolls Royce, Bentley, Gulfstream, Tiffany & Co. PMDG: All things you can never buy on sale." It still makes me chuckle.

Robin, Thanks for pointing it out. I offered polite public reply and a bit more direct private one. I don't play the cute game. I'll keep you posted as to what we learn.

Aimee, I am so "happy" to learn that you would be "happy" to speak with me if we reach out. How would you recommend we convert your happiness into actual communication? The traditional methods of reaching out via email have apparently not met with enough happiness that anyone felt they were important enough to answer. You all have my office number, my mobile number, both of my email addresses- and you have used them plenty when it suited your needs...

Josh, I am going to call you out here. In this thread thus far, I have removed 20 posts from 7 users. So far this weekend I have removed 30 posts from 9 users in the entire forum. All of them except one are previous users of the PMDG forum, and all of them are expected to behave in accordance with our forum guidelines. The poster who you are attempting to turn into a victim was not silenced for his position on any matter- his posts were simply removed in accordance with our long standing policy because he made a decision that following the forum guidelines did not apply to him. This fiction that we "only edit out contrary opinions" is rubbish. Look through this forum and you will find we are quite accepting of all opinions- provided that they are stated factually, respectfully, and signed by the poster. I am sorry if you don't like that we make a modest effort to enforce our guidelines here- and I certainly know we don't catch all infractions- but if you are going to make a victim out of someone who isn't- at least do so truthfully.

Gents, A few folks appear to be construing my concerns as speaking out against Dovetail- or wishing failure upon their project. Nothing could be further from the truth. To the contrary, I would love to see them succeed and become a major player in growing the marketplace for many years to come. A perfect scenario for PMDG, as I have been stating for a few years now, is one in which we can sell you a 747 to fly on the platform of YOUR choice, not ours. That means X-Plane, Prepar3D or whatever becomes of the former MSFS franchise in Dovetail's hands. To reaffirm my larger point, it is this: If Dovetail intends to require that all content created for Flight Sim World be published via their steam channel as a pre-condition to allowing it to be sold via outside, traditional channels, then this is a change in position from assurances that were provided to third party developers when Dovetail first emerged in our community. In PMDG's opinion, this change would be very bad for the long term health of the ecosystem. Their ambiguous statements this week, combined with the rather fluid staffing changes and the evaporation of what previously seemed to be a healthy communication channel has left me to wonder how things will play out in the end. The answer to that will have big repercussions for the existing developer community, and not just PMDG. Oh and one unrelated point: A couple of folks have repeated some bogus commentary stating that PMDG has ignored the XPlane community. Please do have a look at our DC-6 for XPlane, and take the time to read our position on the X-Plane market and community. Facts are always good for the diet of reading...

Thiago, That is unfortunate because you had some valid points. I removed about a dozen posts for 5 users out of this thread, nearly half of which were yours. We have required users to sign their posts in this forum since 1999... This is detailed at the top of the forum and we expect and appreciate your compliance.

Captains, I have been a member of the simulation developer community since 1992, when I began creating freeware scenery using the incredibly primitive methods available to us 25 years ago. In the quarter century that has followed, the team that is PMDG has worked very hard to push the state-of-the art of desktop simming to new levels and to all points of views I feel that we have succeeded. I have the sometimes-fun/sometimes-frustrating position of being the visible face of PMDG. I am very proud of the fact that in most reasonable opinions, users in this community generally give me credit for being up front with what I think of trends and moves within the simming marketplace. I have always been against paid-beta testing, for example- and I took an incredible amount of criticism for coming out strongly against the trend by warning users to be wary of their investment ten years ago when the paid-beta trend took off. Five years later, many users were sharing their horror stories and lamenting that perhaps this was indeed a bad trend in our marketplace. I have tried very hard to be a calm point of view in the community- recognizing the enormous size of our customer base. I have tried very hard not to criticize other developers- even in the face of no such courtesy from others. I spend (literally) thousands of dollars a year on products from new developers because I think it is important for all of us in the "old guard" to support new entries to the marketplace because a thriving marketplace is what helps our own companies to grow. Occasionally, users have tried to pit PMDG vs <some other entity> in a strange "coke v. pepsi" or "godzilla v. mothra" battle that I always find to be supremely strange. I like our competition- because they help to bring customers into the marketplace with their own products- and ultimately we all wind up sharing in the health and vibrancy of the community. I don't worry about much in the future of our hobby- except for two things: 1) Someone making a grab to control distribution channels and their associated profit margins. 2) Flagrant dishonesty/concealed motives. You are going to start hearing me talk about these two topics quite a bit in the coming months, I fear. Three years ago, PMDG was involved in a conglomeration of well known sim developers who negotiated with Microsoft to acquire the rights to continue developing FSX as a platform. Late in that process, Dovetail Games appeared on the scene with a better, cleaner plan, and Microsoft rightly chose them as the custodian of their platform's future. My primary concern then, as it is today, is that Dovetail might ride into a marketplace that has been created by companies like PMDG, Aerosoft, Flight1, JustFlight, SimMarket and dozens upon dozens more- and attempt to make a overreaching money grab by forcing all developers to push our products through THEIR distribution channel. There are many economic reasons why this will signal the beginning of a decline in product quality and product differentiation, and I can certainly go into that in detail in another thread if anyone is actually interested in the process- but suffice it to say the PRIMARY reason why we have such a broad and active marketplace for flight simulation addons has EVERYTHING to do with how free and open the marketplace is- and how low the barriers to entry are placed for new entrants. I fear that this is about to change for the worse- in spite of assurances to the contrary. After I made my post on Friday regarding the news release from Dovetail regarding their upcoming sim, a user pointed me to an information post in which dovetail address the topic of distribution for 3rd party addons like ours. In their post, they said: "In order to market as an official FSW add-on, you will be able to sell your add-ons on your own store as long as it is made available on the Dovetail channels as well." Last night, I was lying awake pondering this comment, because it was in direct contravention to assurances I was given when PMDG was asked to provide input and ideas and engage in conversation with Dovetail about putting PMDG's products into their steam channel for FSX-Steam Edition. This afternoon, I went digging into our email archive and my conference call notes- and sure enough, I found a lengthy communication exchange that involved multiple members of the leadership team at Dovetail responding to my direct concerns regarding the rumored requirements that companies like PMDG would only be allowed to sell products for their new platform if we agreed to sell them via their steam channel. I was assured in no-uncertain terms that this would never be the case, as Dovetail felt that such a move on their part would destroy the ecosystem that has grown and thrived and made the FSX platform and brand so significantly more vibrant today than it was ten years ago when it was launched. This has me pondering: What changed? For a few years, PMDG and Dovetail had an open line of communication. It was honest, humorous, respectful and at times unpleasantly candid. But there was never any doubt that we held one another in mutual respect and wanted to see one another succeed. That communication essentially dried up after PMDG decided not to push our products via Dovetail's steam channel, because we couldn't see the value in surrendering nearly 65% of the revenue earned by our products in order to be present in that channel. Sure, not all of that cost winds up in Dovetail's pocket- (Steam takes about 30% of each sale, for example) but the bottom line is that companies like PMDG and Aerosoft and our competitors get here by having the ability to reinvest in ourselves and our products. If our distribution costs become artificially inflated by being forced to use a high cost channel in which we don't control our own destiny- it is only a matter of time before the companies with the kinds of capabilities simmers have come to love vanish from the landscape. We have been reaching out to Dovetail off-and-on since late last year and those efforts have met with deafening silence. Perhaps the language chosen to describe Dovetail's position inaccurately appears to constrain developers to their steam channel, when instead they mean to separate community offerings as "official" and "unofficial" in a manner that has yet to be described? I don't know- but the silence doesn't bode well. After all- PMDG aren't exactly newcomers to the marketplace. I sincerely hope that Dovetail hasn't decided to toss aside the value set that has allowed the ecosystem of flight simulation to grow and thrive. If they have, it will have grave and terrible consequences for the continued growth and product quality of the community. As I said, I don't like money/power grabs, nor do I like dealing with dishonest brokers. From where we sit today, it seems we may be dealing with both and that is a very troubling thing indeed.

Captains, With our entry into the XPL simulation market, we added a bunch of new users to this forum who aren't used to the "norms" of how our forums operate, so I thought it might be helpful to put this post up in the pinned section to simplify things for everyone. Here in the PMDG forum, we post occasional updates with information that is new, or needs to be re-presented for various reasons. Generally speaking, you aren't going to see us say something like: "We don't have any news about XYZ topic" unless it is directly related to the larger point being addressed in a post. Also, since I am the official mouthpiece for PMDG- I have developed a habit of putting some information into the title of the thread to help you know what platform or product line I am referring to. Generally speaking, I try to stick that that topic as I am already pretty long winded- and inserting unrelated information into my posts will only make them even longer and windier. This has caused a couple of folks to jump into threads specifically related to other simulation platforms and wonder aloud why I haven't mentioned something for their interest in XPL... To avoid anyone being made uncomfortable- I am putting this thread here in hopes that it helps quell some of the self-immolation being used in order to get information: As announced in 2014: Our first product for XPL is the PMDG DC-6 Cloudmaster for XPL (win and Mac) This product was released on 01JUN16. As announced in 2014: After releasing that product on the XPL platform, we intend to release it on the FSX/P3D platforms. Once that has taken place, we will evaluate tasking for that team and determine what they will do next. We have many many choices for them, but a few too many moving pieces to make the decisions final at this stage of the game. When/if we have more information on further new products for XPL, we will, obviously, let you know! The next thing you might expect from us is an update to the XPL DC-6 based upon any changes/fixes we implemented product-wide during wrap up of development in the FSX/P3D environments. New Item, 20JUL17: With the release of the PMDG DC-6 Cloudmaster in FSX/P3D- we will be focused on those platforms and making certain that the DC-6 is delivering as a stable, predictable product, just as we did after the initial XPlane release in 2016. Once we are through the release period, we will evaluate what product changes to roll back to the XPlane version of the DC-6 and on what timeframe we may make those changes. We have no timeline for such decision making as yet, nor do we have a timeline for making the changes that are subject to that decision. We will post more information here when we have it available.

Michael, It has been my personal experience that Norton is a horrendous piece of software that creates more problems than it solves. Sorry it appears to have created trouble for you... The advice Tony offered is the best advice to follow.

Jose, You and me both. Peter, Currently I have a scheduling conflict, but that may change here in the next couple of days. The FSCon folks have reached out a couple of times and they have been incredibly patient with my non-committal replies. Between PMDG, my consulting and some other work I'm doing related to flying- my schedule is just a mess. I really wish these functions would go back to February/March dates. So much easier to schedule a weekend dedicated to them when you aren't in the middle of summer... I would have loved to have made Aerosoft's this weekend, but the same problem persists...