Today acclaimed third-party developer PMDG revealed the first screenshots of the upcoming Boeing 737-600 alongside an update on its future plans.
You can check out the screenshots in the gallery below, showing off the short-bodied member of the 737ng family.
Apparently, the aircraft may still be released in the middle of June despite development being a few days behind schedule-
CEO Robert Randazzo also took the time to provide information on the future plans for the 737 family, including renewed autopilot systems, the EFB tablet, the addition of new features, and the upcoming update cycle.
PMDG 737-600 Release and Marketplace Release:
We are exploring a few changes with the PMDG 737-600, one of which is rapid-entry to MS Marketplace. We are working out the logistics of how this can happen with an eye toward a rapid transition from PMDG release to MS Marketplace release for this product. We are also looking to see if we can do a concurrent release between PMDG and Marketplace- but neither of these have a clear pathway just yet. It is under exploration. Also look for some updated guidance on pricing between now and release, as we have a better scope of the finished package and what it entails- we think initial guidance on the 600 package trended a bit higher than is probably appropriate for the product scale.PMDG Lateral / Vertical Path Module:
For a few years now, we have been at work conducting a full rebuild on the lateral and vertical path modeling capability for the PMDG FMS used by all of our Boeing airliners. This project has been a bit of a “ship in a storm” in that successive planned rollouts under Prepar3D got sidelined by larger market dynamics. The good news is that we are preparing to insert it into testing within the PMDG 737 for MSFS, and it will then roll out to you in the forum of a free update. This modern path modeling has been something we have been building toward for some time and it will dramatically improve the accuracy of how PMDG airliners move through the sky in a 3D pathway. It is a thing of beauty and while we thought it would be sidelined unless/until Asobo finally delivers on their promise to give us modern debugging tools, we have continued to hammer away at this because it is important- and thus far it looks like the fruit of our labor will pay off handsomely in spite of the lack of support of modern tooling.PMDG Autoflight Director Module:
Concurrent with the Lateral/Vertical Path Module we have been working to build out a proper flight director roll and pitch module based upon input from some of the industries leading flight control logic engineers and our in in house mathematical wizzard. This has been under initial iteration testing and will also roll out as a free update shortly. One of the problems we have been trying to crack is “how to damp out the massively violent and unrealistic Asobo Atmospheric Shifts” without upsetting the control logic- and feel we finally cracked that nut once again based upon our in-house expertise in the use, operation and design of flight director control law.It is always nice to have actual engineering degrees in house so that we can crack right into code and adapt it to make the entire simulation experience nicer for you- and we have been at this exercise for nearly fifteen months. It will be nice for you to see how it fundamentally changes the character of the airplane and it’s relationship to the lateral and vertical path, restrictions and the like. It is some really great stuff and it is already ready-made for the 777 and 747!
PMDG Universal Flight Tablet:
This beauty is humming right along. Not quite ready for prime-time, but I am betting you have it in your flight deck sooner than later. The team is working diligently to get the core functionality in place and we’ll put together a nice preview of it when the time is right. (I got a stern warning about telling you too much about it last week… hence few words other than to say it is coming along really nicely with some cool features!)Next Update Cycle for the 737:
We are planning another update cycle for the 737 next week. That will get handed off to testing on Monday, I expect. We are working on a few larger issues with animations and control axis inputs that aren’t behaving in the manner we like. We are also re-shuffling some priorities around based upon the news that Asobo has had to push the SU10 update out into August. This has an impact on our workflow because there are a few things we needed in that SU10 update in order to clear up a couple of nuisance items, and it appears we will be waiting on those fixes- so some shuffling will be in order to keep the development workflow optimized.Adding New Features to 737:
I suspect this question will come up in the thread below- so let me try to answer it here: Once the PMDG 737-600 releases, we will be updating both the 600 and 700 airplanes concurrently and individually as needed in an ongoing bases. You will not need to purchase one or the other in order to have access to any new functions that we add to the product line, as those functions will be added to the entire fleet concurrently. The PMDG Universal Flight Tablet, for example, will go into the entire fleet so you will have it no matter which airplane(s) you own. The goal is simplicity and transparency.PMDG’s $350,000 Community Investment-to-date:
You’ll recall that back when we launched PMDG 737NGXu in November of 2019, we all thought the PMDG 737 for MSFS would a straight forward drag/drop/modify/release cycle that would take about six months. With that in mind, we offered a rare one-time special to all PMDG customers that gave 8,934 of you a $99.99 purchase credit to use toward the MSFS version of the 737 when it released. We built out our ecommerce system to make that process simple, easy and honest for all of you who participated, and as of 31MAY22, approximately 5,000 PMDG customers have redeemned nearly $350,000 in those store credits toward the purchase of a their new PMDG 737 or DC-6 for MSFS.
Incidentally, the previously-released 737-700 got a sizable update today. A cycle of frequent updates for the 737 family is planned to continue until at least October and likely beyond the beginning of the beta of the next aircraft, the Boeing 777.
From now on, updates are planned to be either bi-weekly or weekly. You can check out the patch notes below.
PMDG 737 for MSFS – 3.00.0020
03JUN22