MrNuke

Your initial contention in this thread is that not having access to this data for Forecast Decent profiles could be the big limitation that is holding PMDG back. What @JRBarrett and I are saying is that they don't need access to that data at all to implement VNAV. Correct, that isn't the point, nor was it my point.

I'm not sure I follow. In real life a plane, ergo its VNAV system, knows its current position i.e. location, speed, altitude, and the current weather conditions at its current location i.e. temperature, wind speed, and wind direction and of course derived calculations from both sources like ground speed. In MSFS all of this information can be obtained or derived for developers through simconnect. I have yet to see any developer claim otherwise. In real life or in a simulator environment, wind data from weather models could be used to augment the decent profile. The important thing to recognize here is that data in real life and in previous simulators is coming from an external source i.e. a weather model or flight planning software using data derived from a weather model. So in terms of weather or not PMDG can see the actual internal weather conditions of the simulator outside of the current position of the plane, I really fail to see how that is relevant. All that should matter here is if metoblue's winds aloft are relatively plausible compared to model data, and for the most part that seems to be the case. Yeah you may need some sort of external source to get the data, but you also needed one to do the same thing in FSX or P3D as well. The 3° rule of thumb correction is +/- 1 nm for each 10 knots of head/tailwind, which means for a 100 knot tailwind (something you were unlikely to have the entire way down) you'd need to start your descent 10 nm sooner or worst case scenario you'd presumably need to deploy speed brakes at some point. With a headwind throttles may briefly not be at idle during decent, the horror. You can decide whether or not that is a "big" difference yourself. I think the ability to enter wind forecasts is nice, and it certainly simulates real-world operations, but 1) the changes in profiles aren't typically as big as what you seem to think and 2) as discussed in this post the ability to simulate this is likely already there from the same or similar external sources used previously.

Actual single pilot approved business jets in real-life is a pretty niche market so it isn't too surprising, to me at least, that the options in the sim are limited.

I'm confused here. I have an email receipt from the Microsoft store, another from PayPal, and can access a digital receipt/order support through my Microsoft account online...

The 2020 results were released January 11, 2021, the 2019 survey was released on February 3, 2020. I wouldn't expect anything yet based on that, although I do know they had been targeting December 17th for the release based on the survey link. The results will be on Navigraph's site when they are ready. The survey is always released publicly. https://download.navigraph.com/docs/flightsim-community-survey-by-navigraph-2020-final.pdf

If they're essentially having to cross develop their MSFS stuff in P3D right now for debugging purposes it seems like the incremental effort to release whatever they're doing i.e. potentially new/improved features for the NGXu is pretty low. If the need to use P3D to do that goes away at some point, I think you are likely correct.

That would be news to me.

Only if you've installed the program in the default location.

Randazzo had a post in their forums in response to someone yesterday that MSFS currently is lacking the debugging tools they'd like to develop directly in the platform. So they are basically having to build everything in P3D to test it first. A situation he admitted wasn't ideal... At that point given you've already developed it for P3D you might as well release it there too. I'd imagine if the debugging tools for MSFS improved (something I'm sure developers want and are working with Asobo on) you'd likely see their willingness to develop for two simulators change.

According to who? As others have pointed out, we have multiple other big name developers that seemingly feel confident enough in the state of the simulation to develop on the platform either internally via the SDK or via external solutions. The latter of which had been employed by developers to various extents in previous simulations as well. I think we've had this conversation before on another thread, but while that is certainly a good sign I'm not sure all how much it actually means. FSLabs like any other developer or business for that matter has a limited set of resource that they can allocate. In pure economic theory, the time they've spent on Concorde is a sunk cost and shouldn't impact any future decision going forward. The marketing case for Concorde in P3D isn't the same as when the product was announced. Other developers i.e. their 4 letter Boeing counterpart that put out equally detailed quality products in FSX or P3D have decided MSFS is in a state they can work with. As such, the longer this draws on without Concorde being released the more I'd be willing to bet on the potential that said resources are going to be diverted. This really makes no sense at all. Concorde in P3D isn't going to be a huge seller because of the price point either and more importantly a good chunk of the simulator market has moved on with more moving by the day. If PMDG or Fenix get their products to the market before FSLabs can get Concorde to P3D the situation is going to look even worse. Weather in the simulator ISA and wind wise is currently good to 150 mb or roughly 43,000 feet; obviously just below Concorde's cruise block. However, you still be good for nearly the entire climb and decent. My assumption (perhaps incorrect) would be that metoblue's weather model forecasts above this. If so that would be seemingly easy fix. If not it becomes a bit more problematic. Understanding the more locked down nature of MSFS' weather engine, developmentally speaking this still seems like a bit of a redherring given in P3D to accomplish this you'd be relying on a third party.

I'm limited in what I can say, but let's just say this caught me by surprise today.

I trust that they'll get this ironed out assuming it is some sort of European developer/ European weather provider metoblue overlooking what 10 SM means in the U.S., but yeah, this isn't great.

It is a good step forward but still needs work. Flying in SoCal it looks awesome when it is working, but can quickly unrealistically drop in an out of it times presumably due to some metar stuff. So metar smoothing may be needed. I'm also seeing haze in the sim right now at KOMA (where I'm located) and the metar and actual sky out my window is clear, which has me a bit concerned they may have over-done it.

Delta is the largest current operator in the world of the A220 and has the largest total order. JetBlue is #3 in the world in terms of orders currently...

I just took off and had photogrammetric grain elevators to the North as expected. As had previously been mentioned, I'd check to make sure you have online data and photogrammetry enabled in the simulator. And no, they haven't removed anything photogrammetry wise in the simulator. I also doubt they ever will. Yes, but in the context of this thread, they're not going to revert an area that has it back to autogen. It is a continuous process in the sense that bing and thus Asobo is continuously getting data on new locations or updated data on existing locations.