PMDG 737 for Microsoft Flight Simulator updated – Marketplace release due “next week”

PMDG has updated its Boeing 737 line for Microsoft Flight Simulator, with Robert Randazzo saying the team hopes to have the 737-800 in the MSFS Marketplace for PC “next week”, following the -700 release in January.

The recent changes to the Marketplace approval process have “really helped”, Robert said, adding however that the Xbox-specific release timeline is still somewhat unclear, despite recently saying that this was estimated to happen by the end of April.

“We don’t yet know precisely when the 737s will appear in Xbox. We had a few hiccups (our side) that have slowed down the 737 testing in the Xbox environment. We are hoping to have the 700 and 800 in Xbox testing this week- and from there we can make a decision as to whether they are good to release or need some work”, he said.

Despite this, he did confirm that Xbox users would have access to “all (or nearly all) of the liveries available in PMDG Operations Center” for free.

Meanwhile the existing 737 update comprises of “under the hood” tweaks, including “drawing routines, computations for drawing images on displays, dimming lighted segment LEDs and some other logical improvements to support the work we are doing across the entire spectrum of PMDG products from the tablet to the 777 and beyond.”

Finally, the long awaited ‘Universal Flight Tablet’ is not yet ready for release. Randazzo commented that the team was “pushing quite hard on internal testing of the communications technology that we had to develop in order for our script based table…This has been a task we never anticipated, but the good news is that the work is nearly finished and we have mostly validated that it works and is robust.”