Captains-
Long time patrons of the PMDG community know that when you stop hearing from us, it means we are busy- and that means lots of stuff pending for your enjoyment in the near future.
This remains true.
Things have been a bit chaotic around PMDG the past few weeks, with a higher-than-normal level of entropy creating some unexpected twists and turns in our development cycle. In case anyone thinks that is a bad thing, it isn't- we are really enjoying this moment as we are finally seeing the end-goal pieces drop into place in lots of different areas of the 737 product line.
We have been at work on some complex changes to the 737 core logic and with the arrival of the SU11 beta we saw some significant pending changes in the MSFS platform- so we opted to keep half the dev team working with the stable market release of SU10 in order to facilitate testing, while the other half work with the new beta drop for SU11. We did this in order to keep forward progress on the PMDG Universal Flight Tablet, some core functions of the 737 and the pending 737-900, while also also preparing to ensure forward compatibility with the pending update to the MSFS platform.
SU11 is the first platform change we have worked with that has some evolutionary changes that require product level changes on our end in order to keep customers flying during the transition- so we have been working through those, while also exploring some of the pending changes that SU11 brings in order to map out a strategy for continued product growth and capitalizing on the improvements Asobo continues to make to the platform.
This sounds really dry- and in some regards it is- but it also represents a true "first" for all of us at PMDG. Most of our development careers have been spent working on dead platforms or slow-change platforms that didn't require much planning or thought to get through update cycles. With MSFS, some of the things that we asked of Asobo a year ago with the DC-6 and then with the 737 development process are finally coming through the pipeline- and it is great fun to step backward, make changes to improve functionality and see the benefits of having Asobo as involved with the developer community as they are. Over the long run, this will be great fun- but it does also increase our workload quite a bit so we are adapting to change the way we manage product development in concert with this momentum.
New Update Just Handed To The Beta Team:
Just this moment we have pushed into testing a product-wide update that will improve cross-compatibility between SU11 and SU10 for the 737. This will eliminate some nuisance issues that have been disruptive for SU11 Beta users- which should improve testing feedback to Asobo from 737 users overall. This new build also includes the usual smattering of small fixes and cleanup details, but the *big* change is that this pending update brings a significant improvement in stability of the flight director in both roll and pitch, while also improving control logic for the yaw and thrust channels. This leads to greater realism in all phases of flight as our F/D and aircraft control law are now able to work with the aggressive dynamics of the MSFS atmosphere while still delivering a realistic flying experience for the user. We have effectively eliminated the "fight" between the thrust channel and the pitch channel that resulted from pitch coupling as the thrust channel worked to keep speed in an overly dynamic environment. This represents a huge amount of work that has taken most of the summer, but we are really happy with the change.
Once our beta team has had a chance to sign off on these changes, we will roll them out to you in the form of a micro update. We anticipate that will happen in the first half of the coming week.
PMDG Universal Tablet Is Next In Testing:
We continue to work on some core technology with our pending tablet, as detailed previously. The tablet has been under internal testing over the past six weeks or so and once the beta team signs off on the new product build we give them today, we anticipate handing them the tablet enabled build so that they can start evaluating that new piece of kit for eventual release.
I *am* planning an update focused solely on the PMDG Universal Flight Tablet but at the request of the dev team working on the device- I have held off doing so until it gets through it's transition into beta testing- as the dev team rightfully wants to keep the focus on functionality and not have to rush through a layout cleanup just to create pretty pictures for a preview.
A couple of important points related to the tablet- since there is quite a bit of misinformation running around:
With so much focus on maturing the pitch/roll/thrust behaviors of the 737, SU10/SU11 and Tablet- the 900 has languished a bit- and I apologize for that. Right now we are deep at work on the flight models and performance behaviors for the 900 and 900ER- and right now if I squint a bit and tilt my head to the side it looks as though we will hand the 900 series to our beta testers within two weeks. One word of caution in that I thought the same thing three weeks ago- so please do understand that this is guesswork... Based upon our experience with the other 737s in testing, I don't expect the 900s will remain in testing long- so there is some positive news there.
PMDG 737s in MSFS Marketplace:
They day the SU11 beta dropped, I was in the process of creating the builds we would send to MSFS Marketplace- and in a moment of very poor planning I forgot to disable the beta intake. It created quite a bit of chaos in the build process, resulting in re-installation of MSFS (always fun!) which then immediately updated itself to SU11 because... yes... dummy forgot to delete the beta tag from his steam account before reinstalling.
While I continued to thoroughly entertain the team with my ability to aggressively disrupt my own workflow (contrary to what they might tell you, there was no profanity. Okay maybe a little. Alright- I succeeded in stringing together a Guiness Book of World Records winning sentence using only profanity
) we decided it might be advantageous to Marketplace users if we ensured the 737 would survive the SU11 transition smoothly before pushing it to Marketplace.
We are now hoping to make that push next week...
What Else is Going On?:
The fun meter at PMDG is definitely on max. We have lots going on- and we really enjoying the challenges now that we have a solid and stable product line from which we have been learning. The 777 is beginning to accelerate nicely and to say it looks spectacular would be a mild understatement. I am not prepared to give you too much information on that yet because we are still making some interesting decisions about the product release flow and how that will all work- but suffice to say that our experience with the 737 line is coming to play here and things are going well.
Okay- so that the current state of things this week... I'll see you later this week with the latest updates for the 737 and I'll let you know for certain the Tablet has finally gotten into the hands of the testers.
Have some fun flying this weekend!
Long time patrons of the PMDG community know that when you stop hearing from us, it means we are busy- and that means lots of stuff pending for your enjoyment in the near future.
This remains true.
Things have been a bit chaotic around PMDG the past few weeks, with a higher-than-normal level of entropy creating some unexpected twists and turns in our development cycle. In case anyone thinks that is a bad thing, it isn't- we are really enjoying this moment as we are finally seeing the end-goal pieces drop into place in lots of different areas of the 737 product line.
We have been at work on some complex changes to the 737 core logic and with the arrival of the SU11 beta we saw some significant pending changes in the MSFS platform- so we opted to keep half the dev team working with the stable market release of SU10 in order to facilitate testing, while the other half work with the new beta drop for SU11. We did this in order to keep forward progress on the PMDG Universal Flight Tablet, some core functions of the 737 and the pending 737-900, while also also preparing to ensure forward compatibility with the pending update to the MSFS platform.
SU11 is the first platform change we have worked with that has some evolutionary changes that require product level changes on our end in order to keep customers flying during the transition- so we have been working through those, while also exploring some of the pending changes that SU11 brings in order to map out a strategy for continued product growth and capitalizing on the improvements Asobo continues to make to the platform.
This sounds really dry- and in some regards it is- but it also represents a true "first" for all of us at PMDG. Most of our development careers have been spent working on dead platforms or slow-change platforms that didn't require much planning or thought to get through update cycles. With MSFS, some of the things that we asked of Asobo a year ago with the DC-6 and then with the 737 development process are finally coming through the pipeline- and it is great fun to step backward, make changes to improve functionality and see the benefits of having Asobo as involved with the developer community as they are. Over the long run, this will be great fun- but it does also increase our workload quite a bit so we are adapting to change the way we manage product development in concert with this momentum.
New Update Just Handed To The Beta Team:
Just this moment we have pushed into testing a product-wide update that will improve cross-compatibility between SU11 and SU10 for the 737. This will eliminate some nuisance issues that have been disruptive for SU11 Beta users- which should improve testing feedback to Asobo from 737 users overall. This new build also includes the usual smattering of small fixes and cleanup details, but the *big* change is that this pending update brings a significant improvement in stability of the flight director in both roll and pitch, while also improving control logic for the yaw and thrust channels. This leads to greater realism in all phases of flight as our F/D and aircraft control law are now able to work with the aggressive dynamics of the MSFS atmosphere while still delivering a realistic flying experience for the user. We have effectively eliminated the "fight" between the thrust channel and the pitch channel that resulted from pitch coupling as the thrust channel worked to keep speed in an overly dynamic environment. This represents a huge amount of work that has taken most of the summer, but we are really happy with the change.
Once our beta team has had a chance to sign off on these changes, we will roll them out to you in the form of a micro update. We anticipate that will happen in the first half of the coming week.
PMDG Universal Tablet Is Next In Testing:
We continue to work on some core technology with our pending tablet, as detailed previously. The tablet has been under internal testing over the past six weeks or so and once the beta team signs off on the new product build we give them today, we anticipate handing them the tablet enabled build so that they can start evaluating that new piece of kit for eventual release.
I *am* planning an update focused solely on the PMDG Universal Flight Tablet but at the request of the dev team working on the device- I have held off doing so until it gets through it's transition into beta testing- as the dev team rightfully wants to keep the focus on functionality and not have to rush through a layout cleanup just to create pretty pictures for a preview.
A couple of important points related to the tablet- since there is quite a bit of misinformation running around:
- Tablet is not linked to release of the 900 and never has been linked to release of the 900. Tablet releases as an update to the whole product line when it is ready.
- Tablet is not a "release and be done" feature, it is something that will grow and change with the release of additional updates. Initial dev work was focused on navigraph charts integration and simbrief integration. These functions are about to transition from internal to external testing and the dev team is shifting focus to finishing up other tasks such as operational performance, product settings, product options and some other stuff we haven't mentioned yet.
With so much focus on maturing the pitch/roll/thrust behaviors of the 737, SU10/SU11 and Tablet- the 900 has languished a bit- and I apologize for that. Right now we are deep at work on the flight models and performance behaviors for the 900 and 900ER- and right now if I squint a bit and tilt my head to the side it looks as though we will hand the 900 series to our beta testers within two weeks. One word of caution in that I thought the same thing three weeks ago- so please do understand that this is guesswork... Based upon our experience with the other 737s in testing, I don't expect the 900s will remain in testing long- so there is some positive news there.
PMDG 737s in MSFS Marketplace:
They day the SU11 beta dropped, I was in the process of creating the builds we would send to MSFS Marketplace- and in a moment of very poor planning I forgot to disable the beta intake. It created quite a bit of chaos in the build process, resulting in re-installation of MSFS (always fun!) which then immediately updated itself to SU11 because... yes... dummy forgot to delete the beta tag from his steam account before reinstalling.
While I continued to thoroughly entertain the team with my ability to aggressively disrupt my own workflow (contrary to what they might tell you, there was no profanity. Okay maybe a little. Alright- I succeeded in stringing together a Guiness Book of World Records winning sentence using only profanity
) we decided it might be advantageous to Marketplace users if we ensured the 737 would survive the SU11 transition smoothly before pushing it to Marketplace.We are now hoping to make that push next week...
What Else is Going On?:
The fun meter at PMDG is definitely on max. We have lots going on- and we really enjoying the challenges now that we have a solid and stable product line from which we have been learning. The 777 is beginning to accelerate nicely and to say it looks spectacular would be a mild understatement. I am not prepared to give you too much information on that yet because we are still making some interesting decisions about the product release flow and how that will all work- but suffice to say that our experience with the 737 line is coming to play here and things are going well.
Okay- so that the current state of things this week... I'll see you later this week with the latest updates for the 737 and I'll let you know for certain the Tablet has finally gotten into the hands of the testers.
Have some fun flying this weekend!
Danny Z.Cebis
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