You can see this is very evident in the quartering image below: The light mapping and surface material tools that Asobo has given developers are truly spectacular, and they allow us to work really without having to use the traditional tricks of the trade to hide imperfections and failures in the rendering model. In a static screen capture, it looks exceptional, but it looks significantly better when you see it in motion within the sim. Likewise, looking at the upper wing surface, you can see a similar quality of reflection.
In this image you can see how well the reflection already carries from the darker paint surfaces, showing you the reflective effect of warped surfaces, compound curves and the like. The images I am sharing with you hear are an in-development model upon which we are still resolving some small alignment issues in the texture mapping, as well as cleaning up the various reflectivity and surface mappings to ensure that they work correctly and capitalize on the great visual capabilities of the MSFS platform. This is evident when you start taking screen shots for a presentation like this one: They may reflect some incomplete pieces and items still in development/adjustment.)įor this update, I am going to walk you through our expectations for the product’s shape and form, with some images of the 737’s external model mixed in so that you have something fun to look at! For all of the complaining you will hear me transmit about the platform being in motion and the slow delivery of development tools, etc- you won’t hear me complain about how the platform LOOKS. So lets get into the meaty bits, shall we? (DANGER: The following images are all in-development images taken with a current alpha build.
I will show you a few examples when we get around to late beta testing if they haven’t been addressed already by Asobo. There are still some risk factors we are concerned about because they require changes to the platform, but they are mostly visual artifacts that affect the look of certain display drawing aspects and we are comfortable that Asobo can fix those post release if they don’t actually get to them prior to our release… They are nuisance, in other words. Earlier in the summer we were making really good progress through deliverables, but things slowed to a crawl in July/August in part due to vacation schedules in Europe and in part due to the massive, unexpected refactor of the platform so that the XBox community could be brought into the fold.Īs September has progressed, we have seen an expected increase in development speed and as of this moment our schedule guidance is that the 737 will release to you in the current quarter. When we announced back in August 2020 that our schedule guidance for the 737 was looking like “late 2021/early 2022” it made me exceedingly unpopular in some spaces- but here we are in 4Q21 and I remain steadfast that our decision to speak truthfully about our schedule expectations was the right decision- in spite the political blow-back it created. Often what we need done doesn’t line up well with their development agenda and this leaves us working to find ways to ensure functionality while simultaneously prioritizing our requests to get attention to important items without clouding their environment with unrelated or meaningless requests that might only be beneficial to PMDG and not the platform as a whole. Developing the 737 on the MSFS platform has been a difficult road thus far, in part because the platform is so very different from what we are used to, it is still very much in motion and we are heavily reliant upon the Asobo development team finding time in their already jammed agenda to implement the things that we need to get the airplane operable within the sim. “As we start 4Q21, we finally feel that the PMDG 737 for MSFS is beginning to look and feel like a product rather than a science experiment gone awry. You’ll find the screenshots under the wall of text, so don’t go anywhere. Without further ado, I’ll let PMDG boss Robert Randazzo take the stage and deliver the speech. If things go according to plans, it should release this quarter. Today third-party developers had a lot of goodies to share about upcoming aircraft add-ons for Microsoft Flight Simulator.įirst and foremost, acclaimed developer PMDG finally decided to pull the Boeing 737 out of the hat, showcasing some really fetching screenshots on top of an extensive development update.