Update voor de PMDG 777

Naast het nieuws dat de PMDG 747 in de Beta fase is aangekomen heeft PMDG zojuist ook bekendgemaakt dat er een update is uitgegeven voor de PMDG 777 serie. Deze update bevat diverse fixes en als belangrijk punt een grote optimalisatie voor wat betreft het geheugen verbruik (VAS).

Leuk nieuwtje speciaal voor P3D V3 gebruikers, door een model update kan je nu met je avatar onder het toestel doorlopen.

De update is direct te downloaden via je PMDG account. Je kunt de volledige beschrijving van PMDG hieronder teruglezen:

Captains,

As you are no doubt aware, we are wrapping up development on the PMDG 747-400 Queen of the Skies II for beta testing. One of the normal routines that we go through during product wrap up is to take a good solid look at optimization and efficiency improvements that we can make once the entire product is in place.

This process started a few months ago, and continues today- but something happened along the way that caused a bit of a stir internally at PMDG: We made some discoveries that allow us to exert a much greater control over how much memory our products use within FSX than was previously possible.

As we explored this potential, we were continually comparing the 747-400 to the 777, which is our most memory intensive product- and we were able to drive the 747’s memory footprint down quite far below the 777. We drove 747 memory use so low in fact, that we began to target getting the 747 into the same memory footprint as the much lighter NGX product line that was released back in 2011.

We were so pleased with our success in this arena, that we decided to take a bit of a detour out of the 747 hangar and back over to the 777 hangar, where we made a number of changes to the product using the same processes that we had developed to aid the 747-400 in minimizing memory use.

The results were somewhat astounding: When we finally recompiled the entire 777 product line, we found that in both FSX, FSX-SE and Prepar3D, we were consuming about 250MB less memory than we had been in the version currently on user machines.

While we are generally quite protective of developer time this late in the development cycle of a new product, we felt that taking the time to build/test/release this updated version of the 777 would provide a tremendous benefit to all users of the PMDG 777-200LR/F and PMDG 777-300ER.

As of a few moments ago, this new version was made available to you via your download accounts in our ecommerce system

How To Get The Update: Download from PMDG eCommerce if you are a PMDG download customer. If you obtained your version from Aerosoft or on DVD, you will need to wait until Aerosoft returns from Christmas vacation and has a chance to enact their usual customer update process. (They don’t have this update as of right now- as it wasn’t finished in time to get it to them earlier…)

How to Install the Update: We recommend that you uninstall your previous version of the 777 and then run the new installer downloaded from your account. You can just run the new installer if you wish and it will evaluate whether it can update your installation or not… Follow the instructions that it gives you.

What You Should See: The 777 runs much more efficiently now than the previous version, and we are able to release significantly more memory to all of those massively memory hungry scenery packages/cloud textures/traffic programs that you all love.

What Else Will You See?: There are a bunch of minor changes in the product, mostly related to efficiency and functional memory improvements. For users of Prepar3D, we have added the GMCS functionality to the Virtual Cockpit for users of v3.x or later. (For v2.x the GMCS cannot be made functional, sorry!) We also updated the models so that you can walk underneath them in the P3D avatar mode if you desire.

OOMs ARE CURED FOREVER!!!!!
No.

No.

No.

We have given you back about 38% of the memory previously used by the 777, but that amount of memory pales in comparison to the amount of memory used by many other packages users are trying. Let me make this as clear as I can:

An OOM in FSX/FSX-SE/P3D is the computing equivalent of inviting 4 friends to the beach when you only have 3 other seats available in your car. The last one to arrive is going to get let behind.

At PMDG we are alarmed by the massive growth in memory consumption being driven by high resolution texture packages and poorly optimized scenery packages- and we are doing everything we can to remain within our already small memory footprint… but you as the user have to make smart decisions about what you want your sim to accomplish. It cannot do everything- but it can do almost everything… You gotta use your noggin’, however!

Okay- so grab this update and go enjoy the addition 250MB of available memory space…. We think you will find it runs better overall.

Alright- now back to the 747!

Oh yes- I nearly forgot: Happy New Year, everybody!