Jordi Blumberg

Hi Ryan, Perhaps my use of the term 'nose cowl' is inappropriate for worldwide audiences- to add clarification to my question: as shown above there is a white plastic protector sleeve installed on the inlet cowling, its been a long time since I spoke to the guys over on the 'heavy' side of the hangar about such things (757s & 727s are my area), but I recall it may have had something to do with airflow (akin to the center shroud). In regards to source, I'm not in the office until Wednesday but when I am I can certainly see if there's any docs on the company intranet and speak to some of our double-decker crew chiefs. If I find docs worth sending I assume I can reach you at your usual PMDG email address? Regardless, I am aware of times where a hairdryer has been sent out without such a sleeve, so it's certainly no issue if not included.

What a fantastic surprise! One question though, in the rare event this capability is used the dead-heading engine is typically required to be fitted with a plastic protector sleeve over the nose cowl. As this isn't present in the W.I.P screenshots, is it something that will materialize before release? Obviously I would never expect anyone to model such details seeing as you've gone far beyond the call of duty just adding this feature.

Jason, because some may not notice I just wanted to say what a wonderful job you did on the profile and scale of the tires! Anyone who works around the real beasts will attest to this being the first 747 to have correctly modeled gear! Bravo.

If I recall correctly, DLC sales are different to main-game sales. @Zoran, there's no way we'd sell 10x more copies of $50-$90 DLC for a 10 year old game. It takes many months to years for the average Flight Simulator user to become 'invested' enough to spend more than $20 on an add-on. So even if there is some hidden FS market ten times the size of the current market, it will take years before those users become invested enough to spend that sort of money on 'just a plane'. I also doubt many of my fellow developers would want to deal with Dovetail Games when it comes to publishing, seeing as how they've done business in the Train Simulator world for the last 5 years. Just go have a look at the list for in-house produced DLC for Train Simulator 2015: Class 66 EWS £11.99 Class 66 Freightliner £11.99 Class 66 Freightliner Special £11.99 Class 66 DRS (Unreleased ATOW due to licensing) £11.99 In case you're wondering, the above products are IDENTICAL apart from the livery. Yup, you're paying for the whole product over just to get another livery. I could just be being overly pessimistic, but having developed for their TS platform for nearly 5 years, I'm all too familiar with how they do business, and unless they show a change of heart I really can't see many top-tier developers pushing to work with them.

Also you guys do realize if you publish DLC via DTG/Steam, for each sale the dev only get 25%* of the revenue? Steam take 50%, DTG take another 25%, so for it to be worth it the dev has to sell over 4x more copies than elsewhere! (*Going off what other Devs have said, and the fact its an identical setup to how their 3rd Party 'Partner Program' was set-up for Train Sim).

Considering the sort of things being listed here, does SP stand for 'Separate Product'?

This can be done via simconnect, you can attach another MDL/aircraft to the user aircraft. The specifics I'm not so sure on.

Developers have been trying to overcome the 1024 restrictions in FS9 for many years, I'd be very surprised if iFly are the first to do it. And even if they did change the textures for FSX, it would require the smaller 1024 textures be atlased into larger sheets- this process of remapping would likely have to be done in a way that'd destroy the animations, so the entire cockpit would have to be re-animated (a VERY time-consuming job). I'm basing this off what I can see on their screenshots, and what they've done in the past with the NG. Someone take my tinfoil hat already... :ph34r:

This is only my opinion, and I rarely get a chance to be debbie downer so here goes... Looking at the screenshots of the VC, in both FS9 and FSX, one thing I can't help but notice is the resolution is identical...Seems good right? Not quite, the only way I can imagine they achieved this is by using a maximum texture resolution of 1024x1024; the highest supported in FS9. To achieve the resolution I'm seeing in those screenshots they would need A LOT of 1024 textures (talking 40+). This in turn means lots of materials/drawcalls to render, which alone could potential bring the sim to its knees. I am also seeing some insanely detailed modelling (check the COMMS panel on the center console; the 'notches' to the volume knobs are modelled). It looks fantastic, however that many vertices in such potentially small screen-spaces could mean the model will be highly transform-bound (another large performance hit). Hopefully I can be proven wrong, but I remember the 737NG from iFly had a VC with half a million vertices (most virtual cockpit models do not exceed 200,000). They will also no doubt be drawing the gauges in GDI+ rather than better performing, but FSX-only alternatives such as D2D. TL;DR: A visibly high vertex count, up to 16x the normal amount of textures, and not so ideal gauge-drawing for FSX = I'm extremely doubtful the performance will be acceptable. However I would be EXTREMELY happy to be proven wrong when this bird releases!!

So I see we've reached the coveted level of scam-site replicas- how charming. Thanks for the heads up chaps, we are aware and the men in suits have been notified.

Thanks for the interest chaps! At this point I really have no idea. As much as I'd love to say it'll be out next week with full systems etc, I honestly doubt you'll be making space on your HDD for it anytime in the next three years. Time is hard to come by for a lot of the people working on it, especially if they have other more pressing projects. Your best bet is not to hold your breath until you see some in-depth system demonstrations.

I think there's already a triple seven for FSX that functions on that basis... :ph34r:

After landing in Maastricht.

Nothing to do with QualityWings, as the project was started before any collaboration with them was discussed- Not sure where it'll go but there are a few of us working on it. The VC is in early stages, but still nothing too serious until more time becomes available. Posted with the relevant permissions of everyone involved in the project.. (and just to reiterate again, this is NOT a QualityWings project)

Considering you're about 20ft above the ground and the distance from the center of the cockpit in either seat is less than 3ft, the center-line should appear pretty much directly below you when taxiing. This is not a problem with FSX, or the PMDG 777, its exactly the same in the real world. Only when flying small aircraft should one ever need to compensate for taxiing to the left/right of the line.

Hi Rob, I have actually just flown into EMA from Liege- never had any issue with the T7 (or any other aircraft for the matter) at UK2000 East Midlands. I know its not a solution to your problem, but I certainly haven't experienced anything untoward. There is always the standard suggestion of turning your mesh complexity down, but I'm sure you've already tried that. Regards,

Chaps, I'd just like to apologize to those affected by this issue, it will be corrected ASAP. Expect qwsim.com Service Pack 3 some time next week. Kindest Regards,

Howard, By 'major aircraft devs' I assume you mean the likes of PMDG, in which case this thread may be helpful.

True refraction? If that's the case, that's very exciting. I'd assume such a thing would be P3D only?

Bradley, You posted on our forums less than 12 hours ago, you have to allow for timezone differences of those who can offer support. As to your problem, I have made a reply to your original post over at the QWsim forums.

Care to explain Jonathan? I remember reading one of your FSX-related posts on a DirectX development forum, and IIRC you were basically asking how to hack into the game while it was running? This is not an acceptable commercial development practice, or any way to go about implementing a stable feature for FSX/P3D IMO.

Howard, If I remember correctly PMDG reached the animation limit with the NGX and as such had to cut down 'nice-to-have' animations, sticking with operationally required animations. I have no doubt a talented team like PMDG could easily create some fantastic window rain effects (as proven on the JS41 and some GA aircraft by other developers), however there is (in my opinion) little point in putting much effort into this effect until a proper refraction shader/technique is available (not least one that doesn't downgrade you to flying in PowerPoint)- otherwise any rain effect is just changing the opacity of some areas on your windscreen, not causing the blurry distortion that is the true annoyance when flying in precipitation. However even if the above was achievable, it does not negate the issue of the hardcoded animation limit, so the only option (for FSX at least) is to use a gauge file...remember I said something about flying in PowerPoint? Perhaps with Direct2D utilization, or some very clever cubemap trickery, something that looks nice/performs acceptably would be possible- however if the fundamental issue of precip, being a distorted and blurred view, isn't at all possible within FSX/P3D at the moment, there's really little point in putting much effort into it in my opinion. In the future if LM allow us to execute custom shader code, and support refraction/real time reflections etc then the idea of rain on the windscreen is more of a possibility. TL;DR: This effect currently requires heavy use of animations or performance crushing gauge files. Core 'effect' not even possible due to requirement of advance shader functions not present. In future LM may introduce these and the ability to make custom shaders. Let me know when its time to dig out FX Composer.

Sky News here suggesting experts are going to 'review' his flying activities in FSX to see if he did anything unusual... Although I doubt that's possible on any level (perhaps with some 3rd party replay save utility or something). I just hope my flying activities in FSX are never reviewed, or else I'll never be allowed within 500nm of the Golden Gate Bridge...

Perhaps it was for the best that it never made it off the ground.

David, this is the thing that makes me laugh when I see the phrase "Pilot Shortages" smeared across the media. There are more than enough pilots and students willing to fly for regional airlines, but these airlines effectively price themselves out the market. Some will argue the airlines have to do this otherwise the RJ business becomes loss-making; when you look at the requirements however, verses the pay/time off/work schedule & conditions it just doesn't make sense.