Now the FSX NDA ban has been lifted...

I can finally post a couple pictures of what I've been working on through the summer - the work had started before I left for the honeymoon and continues since I came back.

(Click on each picture for a larger version)


For those of you who'll be quick to say "but nothing seems to be changed!", believe you me: There's SO MUCH that had to be upgraded and/or gutted in order to transition to Flight Simulator X that I've been working almost non-stop since May so that the 747-400 (and Cargo) can be released for FSX. At the same time, I've been reworking our code-base to take full advantage of SimConnect, rather than depend entirely on FSUIPC. Unfortunately, since the good guys at Microsoft are now slowly wrapping up their release, there are some parts of SimConnect still missing before we can safely say that we'll transition completely to it, but I have full faith in Dave and the rest of the team that their post-RTM updates will include all our wishes and expectations.

So... what have I been doing?

Actually, there were a couple very good excuses for the apparent inactivity in my blogging:

I got married! Margarita and I have been living together for quite some time now, so we decided we would make it official! The wedding took place at a very scenic location underneath the Akropolis, among only our kids, closest friends and relatives - it was idyllic! The right season, the right time of day, the right temperature - seems that the world was conspiring to make for the perfect wedding! We couldn't resist making the perfect pictures, so here they are:




After the wedding, it's only natural to go on a honeymoon, right? We travelled to Sri Lanka where we spent eight beautiful days in a fantastic villa resort called the "Saman Villas". The resort is designed especially for people on honeymoon - a private beach, individual pools in front of each villa and romance all around. Highly recommended!
On the way back from Sri Lanka, we had a three-day layover in Dubai, for the requisite shopping and all-around tourist action. Those who think Dubai is "cheap" - think again: It offers exquisite comfort and luxurious accomodation, but it all comes at a price, however it's well worth it, especially if you're on a honeymoon and feel you can spend the extra couple Dirhams.

I've been back now for two months, so further news about what I've been doing, next!

Outlook replaced... at last!

I've been wanting to do this for the longest time... ever since it started becoming a real pain in the @$$ to have to wait 2-3 seconds everytime I wanted to read a new incoming email, or a new newsgroup posting.

I am assuming it has to do with how Outlook organizes its .pst file - all the entries in your Inbox and local folders are kept inside the one .pst file, in my case resulting in a behemoth of a .pst measuring almost 1.3GB in disk space.

I finally had enough and moved all my stuff over to Mozilla Thunderbird. I am a HAPPY CAMPER now! No longer do I have to wait, no longer do I need extra plugins for RSS feeds and NNTP news reading and most of all, the CPU usage is now negligible!

Oh- and for those Outlook die-hards who can't have it any other way: There's a neat Theme (skin) for Thunderbird called Outlook 2003 SilverTB that makes it look JUST like my Outlook looked before!

Call for MD11 advisors... wow!

I had NO idea I would generate such response through my call for more MD11 advisors. I just wanted to mention that we got some very exciting people joining the team. Thank you guys! (You know who you are!).

If there are more, please don't hesitate to contact me - we still want some!

Visual What?

I haven't written in quite awhile... I wish it was because I had been on vacation... far from it, though. The reasons were other:

1) Not much to write about (there is quite the calm before the FSX storm) and
2) Getting ready with our code conversion (we're moving everything from Visual Studio 6 to Visual Studio 2005).

Reason 1 isn't exactly true - the MD-11 is progressing very nicely and I've been trying to find some new technical advisors to complement the existing team, as we're going into beta status soon (I'll be posting a couple pics of the MD-11 panel once I get my hands on a stable alpha release).

Reason 2 is a bit more special: Being spoilt by Microsoft, I wouldn't have expected that the transition would have been so... um... not fun / easy. This was almost senseless - or I haven't found the easier way... :-) To explain:

All our code is written in Microsoft Visual Studio 6 / C++. We had skipped the transition into Visual Studio .NET / .NET 2003, as the Flight Sim 2004 SDKs were still written in VS6 C/C++ and it seemed quite unnecessary to have to bother (let alone find / schedule the time to do it).

Now that FSX is coming out, it appears that the SDKs are going to only support VS2005 - so we had to finally bite the bullet.

One might think - what's the problem - copy the code over to a different hard disk, open the workspace in VS2005 instead, and viola! (sic). Errr - nope. The workspace / project files are seamlessly translated into solutions and vsproj files, but the code itself doesn't compile out the box. In fact, it takes lots of effort and pain to translate: Apparently, the VS6 version of C/C++ wasn't exactly conformant... so there are TONS of warnings / errors that occur...

The main ones: C4244 (arithmetic conversions - float/double, int/short etc. etc.) which are a pain, but at least make sense (if you were bad enough to blindly pass one to the other indiscriminantly) and C4996 - and this one is silly, IMO: It's a warning about the deprecation of all printf/sprintf etc. type commands and their replacement with buffer overflow-safe equivalents, named _s - i.e. sprintf_s etc.

So- instead of a global setting (so we can maintain the code and allow it to also compile well under VS6) to turn those C4996 warnings off, I had to visit all the files and issue #pragma warning disables... Fun.

Anyway - rant off for now, but if someone knows how I could have skipped this pain, let me know too - at least I'll let our friends know as well.

Is YOUR product PMDG-certified?

This post made me laugh...

"I rarely post on forums so forgive my lack of fancy banners etc but I do have an opinion I wish to share. For those at Micorsoft working on the next release of Flight Simulator - your product is no longer the mainstay of the flightsim world - PMDG has become the primary product such is the excellence of the 737 and particularly the 744/F. As far as I am concerned and I urge other PMDG fans to join me on this - any future versions of MSFS should be PMDG compatible or I won't be buying it. Why should PMDG have to re-work perfection just to suit the entirely non perfect Flight Simulator software?

The days of developers modifying their products to suit Microsoft have gone - its time for Microsoft to work with companies like PMDG to ensure compatibility.

Well done PMDG, the 744 is now perfect! To Microsoft - make sure the box on your new versions of Flight Simulator carry a PMDG compatible sticker or else!"

Is YOUR product PMDG-certified compatible? :-)

Ooomph-carrying laptop

I've been promising myself to write about my new laptop - a Fujitsu-Siemens M1437G (Amilo series). It took a little bit of research to finally decide to get this one, so I wanted to explain the thought process a bit, as I went through it:

Background, first: I wanted a laptop that will support both demonstration and development purposes. Since the main work I do is Flight Simulation aircraft addon code (99% of it written in C++ on Visual Studio - all flavors), I had to find a lappy that will support debugging with Microsoft Flight Sim open as a (smaller) window. At the same time, it should be able to run Flight Sim in full screen, with as little performance degradation as possible.

All this meant two things: a) CPU, b) Graphics Card, c) RAM :-).

Reading through the web, it looked as though I should go for the most CPU I could find, which would be the new dual core ones coming out. The question was: Are they available? Well, not today, not in Athens, not yet. Also, reading along, I discovered that they suffered from a (fatal, IMO) flaw: if you plugged any USB2.0 device into them, battery time would be reduced, sometimes by 80%. Well, that's no good... scratch dual core laptops (for now).

What about a video card? Well, availability dictated decisions here as well... the "best" card available today for laptops was the ATI x700, unless I wanted to lug around a 17" beast (at 4Kg NOT the easiest thing to carry through airports, if you consider that the bag would be another 0.5 to 1kg.)

The M1437G has a 2.13GHz Centrino CPU, with 2GB of (pretty fast) RAM, a nice 15" screen (wideview, unfortunately - seems the market's saturated with those nowadays - I looked and looked, and couldn't find any "regular" screens) and an X700 VGA that would most likely run MSFS "adequately".

These are the results (for the newly released 747-400F Queen of the Skies Cargo):


Not half bad, it seems :-). I am happy with it. If you read this description and want further info, don't hesitate to contact me about it!

Gettin' ready...

(A picture is worth a thousand words)...

Relax times

Francois' comment in my Comparisons article triggered another synapse in my neural pathways :-). He mentioned that he loves to ride his BMW motorcycle with his wife Nina along and go cruising the highways... I got a bit jealous, because lately the only relax time for Margarita and I comes when we go see a movie, have a nice dinner somewhere or visit a couple friends. No longer are we willing to endure the smokey, jam-packed claustrophobic rooms that are called night clubs here in Athens, to get ripped off with overpriced, diluted alcoholic drinks and bad music.
With a seven-year-old child, it's all but impossible to think about a weekend escapade, not because we don't have "baby parking", thank her parents, but because we already see him little during the week (school, work, all) so leaving him with the grandparents for a whole weekend is a big rise in the guilt-o-meter.
Some might say "take him with you". I am sure you don't have kids, do you? :-) It will certainly be very enjoyable, but it will definitely NOT be relax time.
So- what to do? Comments welcome!

Comparisons...

Something that happened last night got me thinking...

We were visiting my godmother when Margarita reminded me that we had forgotten to ask her parents to tape a show she likes to watch on TV, as we'd be out for the evening. She wanted to call, but to ask them a third Friday in a row might be considered indelicate, so I suggested that I remotely log on from my godmother's PC onto the home PC, from there onto the sat dish receiver (it's based on Linux) and, through its web connection, program the timer to "tape" the show onto its embedded hard disk.

Just a measly two years ago, this wouldn't have been possible: My house didn't have a permanent Internet connection (now we have ADSL), we didn't have a remotely accessible sat dish receiver (most dish receivers were using proprietary software written just for them) and there was none of that "connectivity" that makes the world a much smaller place...

Yet, this connectivity doesn't necessarily provide the requisite freedom, does it? Since my computer is always on the Internet, my friends bitch more when I am not online, because they know that I work from home, so I have no excuse for not opening Messenger to chat.

If anything, it provides even less freedom than before: My guilt levels go up anytime I consciously turn it off so I can relax and watch a bit of TV or play a game. So I've resorted to taking Margarita out to the movies, as a means of not feeling so bad about not being on the computer working, if I am at home...

What's the point of having so much "help" from gadgets and technology, if all it does is make us less free?

(DONT)README.TXT

[Rant mode ON]

I cannot figure out any good way of making users READ the friggin README.TXT file. You know, the one that BEGS you: READ ME! READ ME! READ ME!

Some installers will automatically open the README.TXT file as the last step before finishing the product installation, but even then, the user is not guaranteed (read: 95% of the time, won't do it) to actually put some effort into making sense of what's been written in there.

Can we get an installer that will pop out a semi-automatic, point it to the PC and play a .wav to say "If you don't ACTUALLY read the stupid thing, I am PULLING THE TRIGGER"?

Actually, bad idea... we'll get even more support calls that way, with people bitching that there was a huge explosion and a hard disk fragment popped their eye socket out or something...

[Rant mode OFF]

If anyone has any good solutions on this, I am all ears...

I'd like to go flying again...

The weather around Athens has been so bad lately (25-30kt winds blowing constantly, drizzle, cold weather and general misery) that I had to unthink my desire to go flying these past two weeks. This is bad for a variety of reasons: a) I will have to spend an hour with an instructor again, as it's been almost two months since last time I flew, but more importantly b) I don't get to reset the craving levels, so the amounts of craving are increasing to almost unbearable limits. ;-)

Meanwhile, Margarita and I are keeping ourselves busy watching the entire second season of 24 - the TV series, that we got on DVD, all in a period of a week or so (yes, that's 2-3 episodes per night). There's something to be said about good TV series productions and this is one of them. One major complaint though, now that we've finished with the second season series: Could they not have ended it without a cliffhanger this time? We'd watch Season 3 anyway :-). (Well, I can't complain - we've got Season 3 on DVD as well - starting next week).

Why next week? Well, we're going to spend the weekend at Euro-Disney with the kids. 4 days, in fact. Hopefully, this will be an unforgettable experience to them: at 10, 9 and 7, they're at the right age to enjoy this as thoroughly as possible - hopefully the weather forecasts will turn to be wrong (-3 degrees projected and rain/snow for the entire duration). At least the crowds will choose not to go :-).

Lastly, this is something I've wanted to do for awhile: Post a picture of myself and Robert Randazzo, so PMDG customers can put a name to a face. (I am the guy in the white shirt / blue shorts).

While the thing compiles...

Waiting idly, while a build is taking place for the PMDG 747-400F (The Cargo) can become very boring, very quickly, so I was trying to find something of interest to look at in the mean time. A full rebuild usually takes about 10 minutes, so in just that time, I bumped onto a couple web sites that made me laugh:

The first was one of those "now, how didn't I think of that first" types, where for ten seconds, you might consider that this is a cool idea, but afterwards you know that it won't work, now the novelty has worn off: The Million Dollar Homepage. I call this my "simple redistribution of wealth" principle: Money flows from those who have no ideas to those who have an idea, however stupid it might be.

The second was a derivative, that actually came from one of the advertised sites through the Million Dollar homepage. Now, you might have seen this a gazillion times before: The "Get Rich Quick" scams, that offer to make you a millionaire in no time, by just buying and reading this book, etc. etc. (obviously, the author is the one getting rich quick). This site, though, has a twist; it insults and cajoles the reader in such a way that it might just work enough to make them part with their money... Well, make up your own mind on it: Here's the Rich Jerk's home page. Amazing what people do for fame...

Users... users...

I was perusing our support forum the other day, checking to see if I could help someone by responding to a call for help or by showing new cool features that will be in the 747-400F (our Cargo product), I bumped onto a post that wrote (in reference to us deciding not to do wingviews):

I bet that when they re-write it they will also loose the ability for wing views like the 747. In that case, I definately won't buy it.

Please, I do not want any replies about other payware that can do this. It should be standard. Period.

I don't know about you, but it kinda ruined my day... Thankfully, it seems that our customers and friends feel otherwise, so I am grateful for them coming to my support (for a change :-)).

Click here to view the entire post...

How to whine creatively...

From time to time, we receive some odd-ball requests via our support@ email. Robert Randazzo alerted me to this one, sent by a guy I'll call "JT" - does it not win the whiner of the month award, considering that our customer account details are held entirely on our servers?

Subject: Frustrated

Hello PMDG,

I have recently had a large computer crash which tore down my accounts on Support, eCommerce, and my 737 and 747 are gone. I have been talking to this service about this for almost a month now, but have only gotten my 737NG back. That was on a seperate computer which my eCommerce account was not deleted. The 747 was deleted off this computer and I keep trying to get it back and locate my eCommerce account used on this e-mail address. Kudos for getting me my 737 back, but I keep getting denied another link back to my 747. It isn't my fault that my eCommerce accounts were wiped out, and I have been trying all the time to find it again. No success. So it would save so much hassle if I could just get my 747 back without the pain of spending another $54.99. I just think spending 109.98 is ridiculous and not worth my time for one 747. There is absolutley nothing wrong with the product but I would at least like it back!

Thank you,
(JT)

Historians, take note!

Reading a post by tdragger about a site that listed a compilation of toys from the 60's and 70's (and really, of the 80's as well), I bumped onto a picture of a ZX Spectrum computer from 1982 - what do you know, my first computer!

It's funny how the brain works - the synapses triggered into overload mode and got me itching to once again get my hands onto one of them smarmy little things. Even with its rubber keyboard, the smaller than expected keys, the easily breakable power supply connector and the necessity for a tape recorder and TV screen, for lack of storage and display facilities, the ZX Spectrum was a miracle in its time.

By 1983, at the tender age of 13, I had already learnt what a floating point number is, what the words mantissa and exponent mean and how to program in ZX Basic. The year after that, I was already hacking my peeks and pokes into the Speccy, ultimately getting my first job as an editor for "Pixel" magazine, writing articles on "how to add infinite lives in your favorite games".

Looking around to purchase the Spectrum again, I found there's an active web ring of ZX Spectrum lovers, you can find it here - there are also several places that sell them (RetroTrader, Clive.nl etc.), used of course, and you can even get them on eBay, if you're willing to go through the auction process, which I find excruciatingly painful, because I've never been able to succeed in winning one. ;-)

There's also something even funkier: A site where people discuss making their own interfaces for modern-day hardware to their beloved Spectrum. Check them out - they have even connected an IDE Flash hard drive to their Spectrum for storage! Spunky!

More cool videos about the PMDG 747-400

Robert Randazzo alerted me to some more cool videos that our friends in Japan have created, all featuring various 747 liveries and paints. I wish I were so creative, sometimes!

Take a look at them, here.

And so it began...

It's been a very interesting couple of months.

Our current flagship product, the 747-400 Queen of the Skies, has been receiving great reviews by almost every flight sim site out there. We're actively working on the Service Update at the moment, so I get to spend quite a lot of time reading our forum users' comments on what they perceive as "bugs", trying to actually figure out where those critters might have slipped into the code. A lot of times, what a user might report as broken turns out to be proper functionality of the 747. How do you tell them, without making them feel stupid or ignorant? Usually, a direct approach I find works best!

I am also working on some very interesting stuff: Interfacing the Engravity CDU with our 747 and 737 FMC code. This is a nice side project which, even though it has already taken up more time than I originally envisioned, I hope will prove helpful for those hardware cockpit builders and/or hard-core enthusiasts out there who want to go a step further with their simming. I'll be posting more details about that, along with some nice pictures, later on...

Hey- having loyal customers is really nice sometimes: Here's a beautiful video that one of our friends (goes by the nickname "The Arkitekt") made about the 747-400 - he's a post-production video editor, by profession, and his work shines. Give it a looksie - it's really great!

Also- make sure you take a look at some friends' blogs, over at Microsoft FS team HQ - I posted them on the right hand side column, for your viewing pleasure. These guys ROCK!