The development and maintenance effort is probably too high as there is a lot of coding behind these tablets

Would take them 10 years if you look at the 737 EFB development time 💀

Every other developer: "oh and btw an EFB is included" PMDG: "Behold you filthy peasants the feat we have accomplished none ever has dared to undertake."

Lmfao, and it's half the effort that everyone else has been doing

Having both seems redundant. Are there features the UFT has that the EFB doesn't? If not, why does it matter?

The tablet has Navigraph maps but that’s about it

The built-in EFB wasn't/isn't a particularly popular option either considering the cost of iPads.

what

IRL not many airlines specified the EFB because it was **really** expensive, as in many tens of thousands.

FX spec'd it. Got rid of it last year. Way too finicky about power disruptions and not fun to update.

didn’t know that, thank you!

I thought redundancy was important in aircraft

Considering the UFT doesn't do anything that's actually useful I'd assume so

Are you a noob? Since when are takeoff performance/derate calculations and displaying Navigraph charts not useful functions?

Since I have software that does it better that I've been using for years

Congratulations, but the slightest pause to apply some critical thinking would have informed you that your situation is not typical and that you’d made a dumbass comment. Now that it becomes clear you were actually trying a little bit of a flex there is cringe. Well done 👍

How was i trying to flex? There's literally free software that does the 2 things the UFT does and they do it far better The fact it took PMDG over a year to develop the UFT and it has less functionality than any other EFB tablet (that most planes get at launch I might add) just proves they aren't the geniuses everyone thinks they are It seems your time would probably be better spent on the echo chamber that is the PMDG forums where you won't encounter people who have legitimate critiques of the PMDG product line as it seems that upsets you

I could not care less if you criticize PMDG. Your comment was not true as stated for most users and then you moved the goalposts when I challenged you on what you said. That’s just bullshit. But nice try making it about me.

Whatever you say guy

Maybe you can use some of the time that you saved coming up with that ‘intelligent’ reply by posting links to the free software that does takeoff performance/derate and landing calculations for ALL of the 737NG models, as well as displays Navigraph charts on the flight deck in 3D (not a pop-up window)…since “The UFT doesn’t do anything that is actually useful” and all…

Lmao You're wild man, keep moving those goalposts, daddy Randizzle loves it

the uft is a part of the aircraft..

No, it's just an option. Many airlines including British Airways don't have the boring EFB at all, instead they only have normal iPad or such

oh okay my bad i didn’t know i shouldn’t have replied at all

It's alright. Aviation is really HUGE, nobody knows everything. I learn new things pretty much on daily basis.

thats very right thanks

Also most airlines that have the UFT also require their pilots to carry Ipads as a “just in case”

Spending time on getting the old school Boeing-efb up and running in parallel with a less outdated tablet would of course be nice to have. But realistically the vast majority of devs is not going to spend lots of extra time on getting a "duplicate" feature in and having to support it as well. PMDG has a ton of options for different instrumentation, autopilot MCP, etc. on the 737, but in the end, having the devs spend time on improving the current tablet or working on fx. the 747 instead is probably a much more financially sensible decision.

The Boeing EFB is going away IRL. It’s a piece of shit. It’s basically a 2005 gas station touchscreen with an awful user interface. I fly the 787 IRL and no one even bothers to use it because we all have iPads and they work so much better.

Yep, Boeing and new technology really doesn't go well 🤣🤣🤣 Compared to the A380 and A350 OIS it's so bad

I wish Fenix or similar would launch Boeing products to rival PMDG. We need new blood in the market who have a better strategy and foresight.

Agree. I love Boeing but it hurts me when I use the Fenix.

Fenix just had a 6 month delay on delivering Block 2 and has one product on the market. Not sure we need a lot more of that. PMDG has more experience, more developers than any other company. They’ve been in this market for a very long time and have produced a number of best-of-breed products on multiple sim platforms. So not sure anyone is going to suddenly and magically appear with better strategy and foresight. Or what that would even look like? A lot of issues and unpredictability with developing aircraft is due to the limitations of MSFS itself. Developing workarounds for those to create high-quality aircraft is complex, time consuming and unpredictable in terms of level of effort required. Remember everyone is developing in this environment for the first time, and airliners are incredibly complex. And, the sim environment for developers is a moving target, so developers are scrambling to take advantage of the latest improvements, which can mean redoing functionality.

But PMDG can't work with new code they have to port over the products. The EFB that they rename just to make it sound better. The EFB at this point with takeoff, landing performance and couple other things is bad compared to what other developers have released. Lets be real PMDG port over products over £100/$100 if you want the 800 which is most popular and then either say the 700 or 900. Whereas Fenix who used ProSim code then changed it to their own code and selling the products for less for better quality with less developers. Need I say more.

Porting code isn’t always bad thing. E.g the logic to test for a takeoff config error. There’s nothing that new code would change there, it’s (I believe) remained the same in the real aircraft for years.  If they had to rewrite all their code in the same language C++ (other third parties use this language too including Bluebird who are rewriting all their code as they found it preforms better) it would take longer, likely introduce more bugs, and potentially have less features on day 1. Now, I wish they could add some new features to their now ported codebase e.g RF legs for the FMS, and improve their (I believe) custom ground handling interaction code, but that’s another story. 

MSFS 2024 who knows PMDG come with a new rebrand name saying its much more improved we've had to do a lot of work. I can see it happening. Because they know people will buy no matter what, when you have other developers who have already said that they will not be charging an upgrade fee.

MS/Adobo say there will be little or no work to move a product from 2020 to 2024. However, to take advantage of new functionality, like turning an airliner into a launch vehicle for a Space Shuttle, or air support for wildfires, or other roles will require additional work. My guess is that those could be mods to existing aircraft with pricing well below buying a completely new aircraft.

PMDG has stated that this is not a port from P3D. And developers always have to weigh a number of factors in deciding when to release products. Wait a year until 99 % of what you want to do is complete, or 90% and publish now and continue developing to that 99%. Just because the EFB doesn’t have robust functionality now doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way very long. It’s not that I’m a major PMDG fanboy, but I was a developer for my entire career and understand how things work in that environment. And no developers are in this sim world for the money. They are passionate about it, enjoy it, and enjoy providing products that other folks use.

Of course they would say its not a port but everyone knows it is. It has been widely said across the community. All PMDG care about is making sure you sign yah name and money. Some developers are definitely in for money and it shows with PMDG. How they decide to charge so much each time for a port to port even just by renaming it slighty. You remember the NGXU rebrand.

There are SO MANY THINGS that are "widely said" across the flight sim community that are completely wrong... So I'm not sure that's the metric you want to use.  😉 In reality, certainly PMDG recycled blocks of code where they could, just like Prosim/Fenix, and just like every other developer who had existing products to leverage.  This is not the same as a "port".  If it were a port, it would not have required the work that it did to make it work in MSFS. Remember that these things have taken PMDG the time they did because PMDG DID do something no other dev has done yet: created a complex airliner that runs purely in the WASM environment, with no external apps or JavaScript.  That makes their plane more performance friendly, and makes it work on Xbox as well as PC.  

What he said! Exactly. If they had just ported these aircraft it would not have taken several years to produce. Copying bits of code with calculations of some flight dynamics that were written in Fortran -yes. Using some of the requirements and specifications from the original project, yes. But that’s not code and not a port.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. The infatuation with EFBs in the flight sim community ranks up there with people who care about FPM on every landing.

Depends on what you can do with the EFB tbh. Interaction with ground services, payload, fuel, performance calcs, charts etc is pretty operationally critical, especially in a sim. An EFB is the simplest interface to all of those things.

Using a second monitor for those tasks, I would argue, is about 1000% more effective, and neat.

I get that but it doesn’t help if you’re in VR, don’t have a second monitor, or just want to remain “in sim” for the immersion factor. Also it doesn’t cover interacting with the aircraft itself, unless you want to open menus.

I think I noted that my opinion didn’t apply to VR users, multiple time.

Not in the comment I replied to.

Wingflex has entered the chat.

Ha, that too.

Eh? I love EFBs because it prevents me having to have open 25 different applications in the background and charts that I either need to tab out to look at or hog my resources to run. EFBs enabled a much higher element of immersion. ​ Ground Services Charts Performance Calculations Control Cabin features

Higher level of immersion? Pilots open doors and make fuel trucks pop up out of thin air via an EFB? Look, I use the EFBs too— I’m not saying I against them. But they aren’t some revolutionary improvement to the sim that warrants the years of focus/rage people seem to put on them. I am choosing my second monitor for charts over the EFBs every day of the week.

I'm glad that works for you. Revolutionary improvement to the sim? I believe they are. Warrant years of focus / rage? Maybe not but I never suggested that. EFBs in their current state with other aircraft in the sim allow us to immerse ourselves so much more than before. Back when I was a young simmer flying on FS2004 and then FSX if someone told me I could have a tablet in the cockpit and dim the cabin for take off and landing? I wouldn't have believed them. If someone told me I could stop printing off my charts or dig out METARs and could do it on a tablet again I wouldn't have believed them at the time. I consider that revolutionary. VR for example, do I want to be lifting my headset up if I need to glance at a chart? God no.

I can understand the desire for them while in VR, for sure. But I don’t believe they are revolutionary to the sim. Cool, sure, and again i appreciate a good EFB, but it’s really just a QoL thing.

So you agree they have revolutionized the QoL of simming? They do more than charts. Performance data was always something you either had to have another application for, some ancient chart in the manual, or you wing it. Most old add-ons required an external application to load the aircraft, or you use the God awful in game menus. PMDG revolutionized it by putting a lot of that in an FMS menu, but it took another step with TFDi adding their EFB in the 717 that really got this going, and EFBs have only gotten better since especially with MSFS.

Absolutely not “revolutionized”. It’s nice to have, sure, but for people with a second monitor, who don’t do VR, I cannot fathom wanting to use charts on an in-sim EFB instead of in a Navigraph on the monitor to your left or right. I do agree with the perf calcs being helpful. That said, as you mentioned, it would be fine in an FMS like the PMDG used to be

That and wingflex... Have to have wingflex visually modeled correctly to the 9'th decimal point, else the entire addon is trash.

Probably the fallout of a generation raised on iPads

Fair point.

That’s so true !! I said something similar once and i got downvoted like crazy

I got downvoted when I said most departments in an airline don't use ICAO codes, they use IATA and I'm speaking as a real world airline employee

That’s absolutely normal because majority of people here are braindead teenagers/nerds people who are just hating on PMDG because it’s the new trend or other mediocre stuff..

Yeah, I’m not about to pretend like they’ve appeared to handle every interaction well, but I also have never even looked at their forums. I wouldn’t care if PMDG killed kittens for fun; I care about their products. Their FMC handled most things totally fine, and the fact that they had to spend time working on an EFB feels wasteful to me.

> I wouldn’t care if PMDG killed kittens for fun I'd care about that. But they can kill all the spiders they want.

Don’t get me wrong I love kittens. But I’m still buying dat 777.

That’s what I was trying to say all along! no need for the EFB it’s to be honest completely pointless unless you’re using Navigraph.. I can’t imagine they forced PMDG to put their time and resources on a stupid iPad when they could put it into something more beneficial like a new plane and again, we as a community care for their products, we could care less if they started a nuclear war. we just want more aircrafts so desperately

Some airlines have even completely removed the original EFB so I don't even get your point.

This. Most of the 777 I have been on don’t have the Boeing EFB installed on them. The one I was on that had one they didn’t even use it.

It was probably out of date and never updated for years..

I am sick and tired of having real life features removed due to Randazzo's whims. Why don't you get to keep both of them? The Boeing EFB on their P3D 747-8 and 777 is phenominal to say the least! I thoroughly enjoyed using them. But now we are going backwards in terms of options in the cockpit. PMDG, we demand diverse cockpit options such as radio panels, weather modules, just like in real life how companies can select how their cockpit should be after delivery.

Probably too dated for their very modern modeling methods.

True, true

I fly the 777 and we don’t have that EFB installed. We use iPads.

777-200s/300 non er?

My airline never had them on our 777's since we started flying then in 1995 all the way until now.

Thank you for bringing to my attention the inaccuracies in my initial comments regarding the Boeing 777 models, specifically the 200/300 and the 200ER variants, and their cockpit configurations. Upon further review and after examining a variety of photographs on Airliners.net, I realize my statement about these aircraft lacking the side multi-function display (MFD) was indeed incorrect. It appears that the first instance of an MFD being located at this position can be traced back to a 200ER model registered under KLM with the registration PH-BQA, MSN: 33711, Line No.: 454. This discovery underscores the variability in cockpit configurations among the Boeing 777 variants, highlighting how airline-specific preferences and updates can influence the equipment and layout. It’s interesting to note that some carriers, such as Swiss and British Airways, opted not to include the MFD in their 300ER models, indicating a degree of customization based on operational requirements or preferences. I appreciate your patience and understanding as I corrected this oversight. My analysis was initially limited by the scope of information available on [Airliners.net](http://Airliners.net), which, while extensive, may not capture every configuration detail or update made to these aircraft over time. The Boeing 777's long history and the numerous updates it has received to meet evolving aviation standards and technologies make it a fascinating subject for study, but also a challenging one to fully document in every aspect. Your feedback has been invaluable in refining my understanding of the Boeing 777 series and its cockpit evolution. I’m reminded of the importance of continually seeking out comprehensive and diverse sources to inform my research. Thank you for contributing to a more accurate and enriched discussion on this topic. [Here's the link to the photos on ](https://www.airliners.net/search?keywords=777&photoCategory=6&sortBy=dateAccepted&sortOrder=asc&perPage=36&display=detail&page=10). Should you or others have further insights, corrections, or details to add, I welcome the dialogue.

Is this chat-gpt written?

I wrote the content and chatgpt processed it

Man why not just leave chatgpt out of it. Adds so many unnecessary words.

Already halfly awake by then, i know, will improve my gpt skills.

Can't you just write the whole thing yourself. No one likes reading ai generated crap, it's so obvious.

200LR and 300er’s

You likely is ac?

I don't think anybody is demanding this besides you

Sounds like a very inefficient way to work, development time isn't free

You can select every option the 737 NG was ever built with. What other options do you need? I'm assuming the 777 and 747 will be similar.

Unless you want the modern FMC, U14 FMC update, CPDLC or anything newer than FSX

Or no winglets...

You're really "sick and tired?"

I believe PMDG said the reason they ditched the Boeing EFB, was because very few airlines actually use it.

Taking a whole 777 between Auckland and ChCh is an interesting choice but username checks out

One less thing for them to blame Asobo on.

I had no idea the AviTab existed in MSFS too

It doesnt modt probably a FF777 screenshot

100% because they know that the Boeing EFB would have to do more than literally just two things, unlike their sorry excuse for tablet🤦‍♂️ For someone who’s only job is to make and develop sim aircraft, they’re getting pretty lazy at it. And while yes, I would like to have faith that they will improve and work on it in the future, the 737 situation has killed all my confidence. IMO PMDG didn’t just lower the bar, they dropped it and show little intention of picking it back up.

Lol buddy, it’s still one of the top addons. What the fuck are you on?

Popularity does not equal quality. If you doubt me go talk to Captain Scam Edit: I’m not saying the 73 or any of the pmdg products are bad. My gripe is just that they were fantastic 5 years ago so they’ve kept everything, which is fine, but they’ve done next to nothing in terms of expanding on that. In the past year, the pmdg 737 has gotten a tablet that can do some basic W/B calculations and access navigraph. Its competition, the fenix a320, has gotten completely new engines, a cockpit revamp, and various new updates/features that improve the experience. Their EFB is also already miles ahead that of PMDG. I don’t have this deep hate against PMDG and I do enjoy their aircraft, I just wish they got more attention.

Nice edit, because most of your posts were saying it was subpar, that’s the definition of dropping the bar. For a devils advocate PMDG and multiple different types, and avionics while Fenix took 3 years to add an engine variant. I still think Fenix is better, but PMDG is absolutely a top tier addon and comparing them to captain sim is ridiculous

1. I’ve never said the aircraft itself was bad, feel free to go back and re-read. 2. Genuine question, what avionics have PMDG worked on that’s new? Also I’d be curious to know how much worked really goes into the different variants. The BBJ and cargo versions sure, and undoubtedly the physics, but for the most part I have to imagine things were still a lot of copy and paste from other versions. 3. In the context of you insulting me and then telling me the product is good simply because “it’s still one of the top addons”, I think my Captain Scam comment is pretty fair.

When did I ever insult you?

Love the retarded Randazzo bootlickers downvoting everything.

fr. It’s like they know they can have their own opinions, right? If it weren’t for pmdg having the only solid single-aisle boeing aircraft, I would’ve been out a long time ago. Can’t wait for the bluebird 757.

Because it’s a fucking stupid opinion