All our 744's have a PVD except perhaps, two or three aircraft we purchased second-hand from other airlines (these airlines had already deactivated them or never had them fitted).
They are fitted to some 747-400ER's, so they are obviously still in production
Whilst the primary reference is the localiser signal, the PVD's need the Inertial Reference System to compute lateral (sideways) acceleration.
I don't know how intuitive they are, but you steer the aircraft in the direction the display appears to be moving towards.
Rgds.
NSEU