FAZZ3

Thank you both for the incredibly insightful responses. It gives me, and hopefully the rest of us, a much better experience of seriously how tricky reproducing and fixing bugs can be. I've requested a logger tool feature on the official forums, which basically takes a snapshot of all the system specs and sim configuration, as well as traces the UI and sim path the user may have taken leading to the bug/crash - like an activity logger of sorts. The purpose of this tool is to simply and unionize the bug finding and reporting for the average simmer who isn't technically savvy. Do you think a feature like this can be helpful to you developers gain more information about bugs/crashes more easily and accurately to assist with bug fixing?

I find myself having the exact same issue with these Q&A’s. Either they are not testing the game at all, or there’s a language barrier which prevents them from understanding the questions. I wanted to believe it’s the second issue, but there’s simply no way they could’ve acted clueless when they were asked about terrain spikes and the excessive lightning issues unless they didn’t test the build at all before giving it the green light to push to all users.

The community always asks some awesome and important questions as well highlight some technical findings, only to see Martial Bossard act surprised and completely clueless on the topic of the questions like he’s never seen a flight sim before. He promises to follow up or update us on the next Q&A, which never really happens of-course so we all end up back to square one.

Maybe you're right in terms of their B2C sales, but the fact that they've partnered with Asobo to help develop default scenery may keep them afloat for a long time to come. Those who haven't will find it harder to justify their products though.

Don’t forget the Middle East. Dubai looks like an autogen case study. Edit: I’d love to see some SE Asia too, as well as Africa and SA.

Your posts are indeed a breath of fresh air. You're right, perhaps a better way for Asobo to communicate is to explain the depth of the software and engineering challenges they face when implementing (or not) certain features or solutions. This way, people can have a better understanding of what we're dealing with as opposed to just assuming 'Asobo isn't hearing us at all'.

Not when it's available in the marketing version of the sim and not in the one we paid for. This looks like a deliberate move, and I hope it won't take months before 'watermasks in their servers take time to reach us'

I guess the only way to show them what is actually wrong is to actually have lots of comparison shots of the coastline glitch, because there have been many times in the previous Q&A's where they were completely oblivious to an issue or were simply not aware that what they were seeing is an issue. They finally addressed the night lighting issues only after that topic had lots of comparison picture as visual proof that they needed improvement.

Now is the time for all those ‘SDK is very limited’ experts to step up.

Although I would love MSFS to be awarded GOTY, I too agree with the others here that the amount of missing critical features and bugs should be enough reason to disqualify it. However, I wouldn't be surprised at all if MSFS won, and if it did, it's a threat to the gaming industry as a whole as it would reaffirm all game developers that messy and buggy games are acceptable and pretty looks are all that's needed.

I too can't wait for the newer software's like the one demonstrated in the video. All devs in the flight sim sphere are in the middle of a paradigm shift in the industry wherein they have to relearn their entire coding languages and pipelines. I believe this will take a lot of time, probably well over a year, but I'm hopeful.

I’ve asked for the rationale behind this 300 person beta program. Be sure to vote for it here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/please-explain-the-300-beta-testing-program/386824

We could absolutely benefit from an internal in-sim bug reporting tool that can simplify and unify the bug diagnosing and fixing process. Be sure to vote for it here. https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/will-we-have-an-in-sim-bug-reporting-system-at-some-point-so-that-things-like-performance-issues-might-be-diagnosed-quicker/385550/4

Just checked the Q&A, it's indeed WU5 and SU4 that's combined, not WU4-SU4.

They mentioned in the previous Q&A that WU4 and SU4 will be released together to reduce version control issues. So I’m guessing sometime in June.

The left and right most screens are tilted inward in the real cockpit. Here they appear to be all straightly aligned. Sorry for that little OCD rant, but I'm very excited for this project and I hope it really goes well.

I'm from the demographic that's part of her core audience, and I absolutely can't stand that lady. I don't hate her, but that personality is just plain superfluous. Maybe it's a YouTube thing. So don't be too hesitant on passing us the torch 😂

Best in mind that these are just base textures. They haven’t yet added PBR textures, where the real eye candy lies.

I’d much rather prefer these developments to catch the attention of qualified third party developers and give them the motivation they need to enter the flight sim space. We can really do with some competition in this market as it’s mostly just one prominent developer for certain classes of high fidelity aircraft.

Captains,Our close friends at Aerosoft released their new CRJ for Asobo's MSFS this week- (congratulations, Hans!) and this has of course set off an expected flurry of anticipation, desire, speculation and unfortunately, conjecture, as to when more complex aircraft will be made available by other developers including PMDG.In my (more-or-less) weekly updates, I try to give you a view that focuses on the product that is about to, or has just released, and then shift back to a higher-level view to give you a sense of the broader what is happening longer term in our development agenda. I think most of our customers track these updates easily enough, but occasionally it does sew some confusion because very little of what we share with you is linear. What I mean by "linear" is that we only very rarely tell you "we will do A, then B, then C."There is a very specific reason for this: The workload of developers on the PMDG team can fluctuate quite dramatically throughout the development cycle, and thus we very frequently move tasks around on the calendar in order to maximize productivity and minimize down-time. If a project gets hung up due to a modeling problem, we won't let the downstream coders sit idle while the modeling problem gets resolved- we simply move them on to some other task in order to keep the general ship-of-progress moving in the right direction.Likewise- sometimes we simply find that it is necessary to adjust the development schedule due to some external factor and this can open up a gap in the schedule that wasn't planned. We can insert a project, part of a project, an expansion package or some new feature into that down time, thus improving the overall quality of our product line.Which brings me to the subject of MSFS.PMDG Products for MSFS: =====================This week, with the flurry of excitement about the CRJ, we have gotten a bunch of folks asking "well, where is PMDG?"We're right here. We are at work converting our entire product lineup into MSFS. It is taking some time, primarily because we have to completely reinvent our development process. It isn't simply a matter of adjusting a few lines of code and throwing a new model and texture exporter at the mix and calling it complete. We are building new development tools, shuffling around our entire development process, and turning our products upside down in order to make them as real and lustrous and lifelike as the new platform will allow. We aren't simply porting products in, using the same models and textures and animations. We are completely re-imagining them in order to leverage every ounce of what the new MSFS engine will give us. This means all-new models, all new texturing, new sound recordings (which are expensive and time consuming to make) entirely new lighting capabilities, in some cases requiring entirely new photo-surveys and the rebuilding of source material in order to bring you cockpits that don't look like we dragged an FSX cockpit across twenty years and stuffed it into a really nice rendering engine. We are bringing you incredible, new, feature-rich environments that really shine in the new MSFS platform.For a while now I have been giving guidance on the release of PMDG 737NG3 as "very late 2021" and even hinted that it might drag into 1Q22. This guidance is a bit softer now- as we are really starting to see our work accelerate in MSFS. I'm going to hold off offering any projection right at this moment, as there are some things that have to happen before I become comfortable saying "yeah- we have cleared all of the hurdles." We have hit our share of knee-knockers, worked through them with some help from our friends at Aerosoft and Asobo- among others- and I fully expect we will hit a few more before we are finished. This is our first, full, jetliner product in the MSFS platform after all- so we don't entirely know what to expect from beginning to end. But things are beginning to accelerate nicely.On the topic of MSFS and PMDG:I have been mostly-mis-quoted ten thousand times this week as having said something along the lines of "the MSFS SDK isn't capable of supporting what we do" or "MSFS isn't capable of supporting what we do." I want to be very clear in stating that this new sim is highly dynamic and changing continually. What may have been true in June of 2020 is not necessarily true any longer. From the standpoint of development, we are not currently seeing any major limitations to prevent us from bringing our product catalog into MSFS.To put that another way, quoting me as saying "MSFS isn't ready for PMDG" is a bit like someone in 1971 using a 1959 quote of the NASA administrator saying "We don't have the technology to land on the moon." Sure- that was true at the time it was uttered- but no longer a factor. PMDG 747 and PMDG 737 Product Line Updates: ======================================As we have been working on the 777 product line, there are a number of small changes that we made to some core logic that is common to two or more of the airliner product lines. For example, we have a bug that is in all three product lines that got cured during the 777 development cycle, so we push those changes to the other product lines immediately in order to ensure that the problem gets exterminated all through the product catalog. For this reason we will be pushing a series of updates for the 747 and 737 product lines over the next couple of weeks.You will know those updates have pushed because we will announce them here, and/or you will see a notification in the PMDG Operations Center.PMDG Global Flight Operations: =========================We are currently refining the public-facing aspects of our new simulation environment. We have had our beta teams for the 737, 747 and 777 programs working in the Global Flight Operations environment for some time and effective with the release of the updated 777, all three main PMDG products lines are connected and able to use the data interchange appropriately. Much of the work taking place here has been un-glamorous and related to server load sharing, active load balancing and those sorts of critical-but-boring tasks. The good news is that you don't generally worry about those until you have a full product specification in place and know what to expect of it in terms of use. Read into that what you will.I have been promising a preview of what the environment is like but just haven't gotten around to creating it... I'll chat with the team and see what we are prepared to show you as we start rolling toward moving Global Flight Operations into the live environment cycle.Updating LNAV, Flight Director and NAVDATA: ====================================Now that the 777 is finally out of the hangar, we are preparing to roll a test-case airplane out to our beta teams so that they can begin working with our LNAV 2.0 process. This long-awaited update will replace the LNAV module currently in the 737, 747 and 777 product lines with a new, refined version based upon years of research, industry input, client feedback and improved modeling techniques. Coupled with an updated flight director, we will give providing you with an industry leading lateral navigation process that will bring this aspect of our simulations up to the level of refinement we have been seeking for all of our products. In conjunction with this change, or immediately following this change, we will also change the navdata process in our 737, 747 and 777 product lines to use a database driven system provided by Navigraph, rather than the outdated, customized structure we have relied upon for 20 years. This will allow us to implement a number of modern navigation practices that our products don't currently support gracefully. We'll have more show-and-tell on this as it gets into testing with our beta teams.PMDG DC-6: ==========If you have hung around the PMDG forum for any length of time, you know by now that I am a sucker for vintage airplanes. Of all of our products, the one nearest and dearest to my heart is the DC-6, as this product represents a hard-working, classic era of aviation where the mere act of intercontinental flying was barely short of a miracle. The sights, sounds, smells of this era of aviation have long since departed the common travel scene, but our DC-6 keeps them alive by giving PMDG customers the finest Douglas propliner simulation available.We have not pushed any updates for this product due in large part to the fact that it wasn't in **need** of immediate attention with all of the larger products going on. This has caused some users to wonder if the product line had been ended, and I assure you it has not. (Internally at PMDG, there is a constant discussion about adding the PMDG DC-3 to the classic propliner hangar, since PMDG allegedly knows some guy who operates one and might actually give access to it if asked nicely... I dunno, tho... )We have been hard at work on the DC-6 of late we think you will be blown away by the improvements. I promised the team that I would do a bit of flight testing with it this weekend, so here is a quick screen grab from my desktop of the DC-6 of her awaiting an evening test flight...And with that I am off to join my four-engine, fire breathing, smoke belching, oil dripping mistress... I hope you all have a very nice weekend!-RSR Source

Yesn’t

They did announce an A380 end of last year "We are proud to announce we will be developing a freeware A380 for MSFS, built from scratch. It is currently in the early stages of modeling, but its development will not affect progress on the A32NX whatsoever. We will be answering questions about this in our next episode of In The Hangar. We hope to have some more exciting updates in the far future! If you are a skilled modeler or have worked on A380 in real life and wish to help out, please feel free to reach out to the mod team! https://discord.gg/flybywire" Source

Don’t forget the Dev Q&A which is tomorrow at 18:30Z. The last weekend update mentioned that Jorg has a special announcement for us tomorrow. Possibly World Update 4 announcement?