I am an avid flight sim enthusiast who has download numerous free ware products as well as purchased numerous pay ware products from many publishers. I enjoy this 'hobby' a great deal and it does, frankly, compete with other hobbies of mine which are predominantly flight related.My questions relate to beta testing of products and how one becomes a beta tester, what is considered by the software publishers to consider one as beta tester of their products and how beta testers are compensated. I would assume those individuals are compensated for their testing and documentation in some way. whether it is by actual cash payment, advances on new software, low cost or free 'gold' editions of the final release, etc..I would like some guidance in this area to consider offering myself and my system for beta testing. I am also seeking guidance in this area as often I have purchased what is supposed to be final release software for flight simulation that was not completely functional, and ends up being 'patched' numerous times by the publisher to make it fully functional.I don't understand why I have to pay for this type of software that is not fully functional as advertised and feel I am being used as a beta tester without any compensation, indeed, having paid up front for it.Have others had similar feelings about their pay ware? I had numerous free ware products I have downloaded and needed some 'fixing' as well, and usually an email to those publishers proved very fruitful with a new texture file here, or a new air file there being forwarded on to me. I've been very thankful to those artists who have offered their creations at no charge. At times I don't hear from them but rarely, and I don't fault them in the least, after all, it WAS free.I don't feel that forgiving with pay ware. I paid my money, and expect FULL functionality.Any comments????

Well there are many varied ways to become a beta tester. I have been a beta tester for a couple of addons, mainly because I was already a user of some version of the product and/or in fairly regular contact with the authors.Not all beta testers really bother with "testing" unfortunately. You ask about compensation and it is mainly that you get a free copy of the product and you get to play with it before most everyone else. Some people want to be beta testers just to get their hands on it, only to shelve it and forget any effort of testing.But ultimately beta testing only gets the product to "good enough". There are almost always more things discovered in 'Release Testing'.

Trust me when I beta test I put the program through h=ll. Just hope I can beta fs10!:-samurai

Hi there,while some products may have been released extremely prematurely, a lot of the time the developer has no choice, but to release the product with a known bug. There may be a situation where one beta tester has discovered some issue, but no-one was able to reproduce it. So, do you employ a lot more beta testers, hoping that someone may have the same problem, and give you some clues as to how it may be fixed? Problematic, because you could end up with a huge chunk of your potential customer base being employed as beta testers, thereby severely reducing the sales potential of your product.As to the process itself, it seriously cuts into your simming time. It's basically an exercise in collective troubleshooting, and you may end up having to take off from the same airport time and time again, aborting the flight after two minutes, and starting over again, changing a parameter here and there, and note down your findings. This will go on for quite a few weeks, and when it's all over, you'll be amazed to discover that it is actually possible to choose an aircraft, location etc. in FS and complete an entire flight from startup to shutdown (that's if you can remember how it's done... :)).So, it's not a convenient way to get free software, but involves quite a bit of commitment and willingness to give up your hobby for a while (You may be able to squeeze in the odd recreational flight, but I wouldn't count on it).Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

I think each individual company has different requirements for beta testing. Our Company (Online Simulation Solutions - OSS) was involved in the last half of the FS9 beta...we had about 5 of our members (as OSS employees) enrolled in the program. It seems MS was limited only by their budget for the beta. MS did ask for input on just about every thing we could dream up and had newsgroups for each area in place. Their beta system, IMHO, was pretty good and they kept in contact with everyone in a fairly timely manner. And yes--they could not fix everything..so I'll nip any potential flamming in the bud right now. LOL.As far we are concerned, our FS scenery addon beta program consists of private in-house and/or sometimes by invitation (people we know and have physical contact with) only. This is mainly because sceneries are smaller products in the scope of things and we risk loosing potential sales (review copies to media outlets are bad enough), as well as any possible security concerns. When we beta a scenery we look mainly to see if the installer works efficiently, the files are properly placed, we ask beta's to look for any holes or missing items (general we forgot's, etc.), and of course the most important..the WOW effect. We also want to know that our product will work on a variety of customers systems and environments (we generally know ahead of time whether or not our product will work and work well, as it is tested for smoothness (frames, etc.) as we go along). As far as what we would look for? I guess that is a situation of who we know and who we meet. The requirements for someone to beta depends really on what needs to be beta'd in the developers or company's mind. It could be any user or someone with specific skill sets. It also depends on the product. Generally we don't seek outside beta's unless we want to leak information..:-) grins..Maybe this helps :-) Thanks for the question.

My original post was born out of frustration with one of our largest and prolific publishers of Microsoft Flight simulator add-on's. Recently, many of those purchased add-on's were incomplete products with many functions not working including animation's and core flight characteristics. What I was realizing was that products I paid for was, and is being beta tested by those of us who PAID for a complete functional product then finding it was not complete, were posting the problems in their forum. After many issues were entered on their forum were they then rewriting code and uploading patch after patch for the add-on to make it functional.I have purchased many products from this publisher and this trend finally hit me! We were paying customers doing the final beta testing of their products!Has anyone else had similar feelings with their PAID product?

The reason many programmes have to have patches, is that often it takes thousands of hours of use by simmers to find a fault - or it takes peculiar computer set-ups before they develop. As such it is impossible for a beta test to cover all such possibilities. Therefore they will release the product having tested it as much as they can - and just hope it will work on everyone's P.C. And if not, they will release a patch to solve it.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/36121.jpgStill waiting for my new PC

FragmentumMan you are opening a real can of worms.I think knowing the mindsets of most of the simmers here I will respond to you via email.Bill

Bill,Don't be shy. Post your opinion here for all to see and respond to, that's why I brought this up in this forum.It really shouldn't be a 'can of worms' and needs airing out. I would think it would be difficult to presume you 'know the mindset of most simmers' as we all have the ability to change our minds from time-to-time.If what I preceive to be a problem is not correct, then I stand to be corrected, but I don't know unless I ask or comment on in this open type forum.I appreciate it.Don

The same people that complain about incomplete products seem to be the same people that complain when there are delays in releasing updates. Everyone wants the product that is:1 - Released early2 - No bugs3 - Very cheap priceYou can only have two.Matt