Having spent a lot of time with Rob and team for the first 737 release (and the 747) I can tell you that he has a remarkable understanding in relation to developing time-frames.
PMDG have learned a lot over the years and I, like many others, understand the need to produce an aircraft in a very good state and up to the expectations of PMDG quality.
Yea thatās what I was basically getting at, but you stated it much better than I explained it.
My guess is both Asobo and PMDG devs took some interesting new thinking home with them. Which is exiting! Frustrating as all-get-out to witness lol because of the downtime, but yeahā¦ could be some very interesting things coming in the next 18 months.
I liked your post because it is real. That said, it is terrible that all of these NDAs are being signed. It screams āI have something to hideā to anyone looking at it from the outside.
NDAs and non-competes are the scourge of the modern IT community.
The great thing about NDAs is the freedom to not sign.
Not much freedom if you want the job. In the U.S., that comes with critical things like health insurance that no one can really go without.
I do look forward to simflying a 737 againā¦ very much looking forward to a study level bird for me to tear my gray hairs out with.
But there is freedom to take another job. No one is forced to do it and itās not as if a monopoly exists in simulator aircraft developement. Comparing signing NDAs for MSFS related products (which by the way all beta testers do) has nothing whatsoever to do with obtaining company health benefits.
People often donāt realize all that goes into creating a functioning FMC from scratch for a Boeing aircraft. Level D sims cost multi millions of dollars yet we have that kind of simulation from some developers for less than 50 dollars. The Level D 767 was the first sim to actually get pretty ā ā ā ā close to the real aircraft in terms of funcunality. PMDG were a close 2nd but had some early conerns with their initial 737 release. I spent 100s of hours testing their systems and for me was a fulltime job (although for free). PMDG always strove to impliment full systems as much as the sim would allow. Little things that the normal person wouldnāt even notice were often a priority for them. I respected this. Rob cared about making the most realistic 737 sim and it was this vision that molded the 737 NG and 747 into the amazing desktop aircraft we had for many years.
To me, although disappointing right now, overall I see this as a big positive as the knowledge that PDMG have will be intergrated with what ASOBO are doing, and this should really drive ASOBO towards producing a much better sim than it is right now at a deep technical level.
PDMG are not going to tolerate any fudged workaround solutions which just donāt work right in practice.
And ASOBO who are great at the general platform and environment programming will get to consult with a plane developer who really knows what they are talking about.
All good for everyone I say - but we just have to be patient for a year.
Asobo would be wreckless to pass up the opportunity of working with PDMG and other good addon developers towards a common good.
Thank you Sled, I couldnāt agree more.
Note even CLOSE to a level D simulator!
Not even close to the price 
I hope this serves as a wake up call.
Asobo: this sim needs to be able to support high fidelity airliners. This needs to be a priority. All of the wonderful international airports being sold by your partners are of limited use without some high quality airliners to go with them. Please, please put some (additional) resources into the SDK elements that PMDG and others need to bring their products to MSFS. Waiting a year to get a high quality airliner due to SDK limitations is really not ok.
My first PMDG experience goes back to fsx times and it really makes pilots dumber because of its working systems. Yoh just oress LNAV, VNAV, autoland. Now i can imagine you could let AI taxi to gate while enjoying scenery.
Im not saying this is negative
Every coin has to sides, so on the other hand, the more half-baked default systems are, the sharper pilot they make out of you Agreed ?
Anyway looking forward for the release. By the time i will be enjoying my 50-th Carenado plane
I knew many 737/747 pilots who actually could use PMDG for unfamiliar flights just like the real deal. if weāre talking IFR simulating, PMDG and Level D 767 were as close as one could get. Even rivaling PC training software sims given by airlines to their pilots.
Iāll have to disagree. Automation never suspends pilots from being in control. You must have a full understanding on how such systems work to be able to fully intregrate them into your flight plan.
Thatās certainly the case for the 737. There just was not enough demand after Zibo offered a decent version for free.
While 3PDs struggle to deliver addons due to the SDK, we can be really happy to have the FBW A320! On the other hand I suspect MS fears the same Zibo fate to an A320 addon and thatās why they are hesitant of cooperating with FBW. Due to their partnership with Aerosoft mainly.
Zibo was part of it, but the real big issue was Laminarās pace at releasing updates, which frequently broke addons.
Their DC-6 (Which I own) was released at the tail end of XP10ās lifecycle, which while protected PMDG against further incremental updates by LR, it didnāt protect them in terms of sales when everyone left for XP11 soon afterwards. XP10 had a complete mess of an UI to the point where even experienced simmers avoided it, and XP11 was a huge leap in user friendliness that practically everyone abandoned XP10 when it first came out.
And thatās unfortunate thing, because I can honestly say that the PMDG DC-6 for XP10 was the most well polished piece of software that ever came out for X-Plane. Compared to those beta/early access addons from devs like FlightFactor, the DC-6 was so well made that it didnāt even need a patch. Unfortunately XP11 broke a lot of the features of the DC-6 such as the automated flight engineer, and PMDG decided against updating their aircraft for XP11, so it literally became abandonware a few months after release as the underlying platform died a sudden death. And thatās how PMDGās short venture in X-Plane development ended.