In this forum, I've heard a lot of times about alpha and beta testing of an add-on, specially about the NGX. But my doubt is what are the differences between the two stages. What can be interpreted when someone says that something is in alpha stage or beta stage?Any answer (most of) is welcome.Thanks in advance.

Typically Software goes through 2 stages:1) Alpa Testing2)Beta TestingAlpha Testing: Testing a software product which is not the final version.This software does not have to necessarily contain the full functionality required for an appliation however core functionality to accept input an generate output is required.Beta Testing: Beta Testing is last stage of testing where a product is sent outside the company or offer the product for free trial download.

Credits go to http://www.geekinterview.com/question_details/26313 for a clear answer.

hello.Well it depends on many thing but basically it oges like this.Alpha testing is susually only made internally, you don't go with a lot of people, and you're reaching alpha when you have implemented all that you wanted to put in the product. Once satisfied in the alpha the product goes in Beta version.Beta testing is done with more people and often it will be externally (while there are of course still internal testing) but usually a Beat test is done on a product that is nearly completed, and is made to check the programm behavior on many combination of hardware and track as much bugs as possible.Cheers.Aurelien

It depends on the policies of the company, but in general alpha testing is functional testing done by in-house developers to verify that the code is behaving as intended whereas beta testing is done by outsiders or a sample of customers to see how well the code holds up to use by non-developers. This is where the unexpected is supposed to be discovered and fixed. Ideally, everything works exactly as intended before the beta testers get their hands on it and try to do things the developers never expected as well as put the product through its paces on many different machines.

It depends on the policies of the company, but in general alpha testing is functional testing done by in-house developers to verify that the code is behaving as intended whereas beta testing is done by outsiders or a sample of customers to see how well the code holds up to use by non-developers. This is where the unexpected is supposed to be discovered and fixed. Ideally, everything works exactly as intended before the beta testers get their hands on it and try to do things the developers never expected as well as put the product through its paces on many different machines.

This is a very nice explanation Dan!

Alpha = Development stage where all features havent been implemented yet. Beta = All features has been implemented, this is the bug squashing stage

Thanks everybody for the quick answers. No doubts remaining. Very nice explanations. Didn't expect to see so many replies so shortly.

What time would the beta of ngx take? I remember Ryan saying that it will be a lot faster then in the past, when it would take months. I believe PMDG has such a intensive alpha test that the beta would not give a lot of problems.

What time would the beta of ngx take? I remember Ryan saying that it will be a lot faster then in the past, when it would take months. I believe PMDG has such a intensive alpha test that the beta would not give a lot of problems.

Maybe they are already in beta testing and forgot to tell us.

Maybe they are already in beta testing and forgot to tell us.

we will know when the product will be in beta,coz tthe staff will tell us, then about 12 people will quote that staff comment, and the hundreds will quote those comments to other various forums around the world wide web

we will know when the product will be in beta,

I'm aware that they are supposed to tell us when beta tests start. They've said that looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooots of times.:(

coz tthe staff will tell us, then about 12 people will quote that staff comment, and the hundreds will quote those comments to other various forums around the world wide web

Agree 100%.

Answers as they pertain to us:Alpha: Features are still being coded in. Part of our alpha process other developers would probably call beta - near the end of alpha, we send the airplane out to our internal tech team that consists of real life pilots on the aircraft in question, mechanics, design engineers and so on. This is to make sure we haven't missed anything that their expertise would notice before we consider the plane feature complete.Beta: Aircraft is feature complete and essentially ready for release as far as we the developers can tell. We give it to a handpicked team consisting of average simmers, real life GA pilots, and a few partners in the addon industry to basically go and use like they would had they just bought it as a customer. We're also looking to evaluate performance here, as our testers have everything ranging from bleeding edge systems down to machines that are 4 or 5 years old. If problems arise, we address them. If none do, we release!

Answers as they pertain to us:Alpha: Features are still being coded in. Part of our alpha process other developers would probably call beta - near the end of alpha, we send the airplane out to our internal tech team that consists of real life pilots on the aircraft in question, mechanics, design engineers and so on. This is to make sure we haven't missed anything that their expertise would notice before we consider the plane feature complete.Beta: Aircraft is feature complete and essentially ready for release as far as we the developers can tell. We give it to a handpicked team consisting of average simmers, real life GA pilots, and a few partners in the addon industry to basically go and use like they would had they just bought it as a customer. We're also looking to evaluate performance here, as our testers have everything ranging from bleeding edge systems down to machines that are 4 or 5 years old. If problems arise, we address them. If none do, we release!

Which is why we should expect this thing to be "Coming SOON!"

Answers as they pertain to us:Alpha: Features are still being coded in. Part of our alpha process other developers would probably call beta - near the end of alpha, we send the airplane out to our internal tech team that consists of real life pilots on the aircraft in question, mechanics, design engineers and so on. This is to make sure we haven't missed anything that their expertise would notice before we consider the plane feature complete.Beta: Aircraft is feature complete and essentially ready for release as far as we the developers can tell. We give it to a handpicked team consisting of average simmers, real life GA pilots, and a few partners in the addon industry to basically go and use like they would had they just bought it as a customer. We're also looking to evaluate performance here, as our testers have everything ranging from bleeding edge systems down to machines that are 4 or 5 years old. If problems arise, we address them. If none do, we release!

Thank you Ryan for explaining how things work at PMDG. It's really good to know how far you take your aircrafts to ensure that they fly just like the real thing, within FS limits of course.I know people tell you this everyday, but I'll say again:YOU ARE DOING AN EXCELLENT JOB WITH YOUR AIRCRAFTS!!! KEEP IT UP! PS.: I'm also an average simmer, so if there's a blank in your list, just call me!

I'm an average simmer who used to do QA testing, can I join the team? :D