>>>Fact is that there are NO critical problems with the>product.>>Seasonal CTD>Reboots for no reason>Crashes when exiting>Crashes when switching views>Crashes on initial positioning>>Looks like a semi "critical" list to me and many others>experiencing them on a regular basis.>So far..... With the new three or four month old P4 2.8 laptop, it's one CTD when the specific date mentioned for a crash was entered. Other than that, the sim is running with NO crashes.........period.No excessive crash problems with the Athlon either. L.Adamson

>Putting policeman's hat on...>>Ahem, please limit your signature to one graphic per our>policies, and clean up the language. There is no need for it,>and there are countless young folk reading these forums that I>frankly feel some responsibility to. Clean it up.What language? what needs cleaning up Tom? I have not used bad language in any of my posts. I may have used poor standards of english but nothing that warrants a clean up. Well not that I can see.I will Fix my Sig now.Jason

I think it refers to this one:Imagine all the Guys n Gals out there getting a CTD and thinking "oh **** my PC Is at fault", :DAnyway, about the CTDs, if something is caused by the game itself and not hardware nor addon textures of something like that, OF COURSE MS should fix it up with a patch or service pack whatever they would like to call it.Anyone can agree on that beeing a right way to respond.Smaller issues like fixing bridges and cloud-stutters and such more visual issues, I think we will be waiting in vain for really.Fixes for things that hinders or obstruct the usability of the program no matter WHERE the sliders are at in other words :)Anything envolving the term "improving" such as ATC and stuff like that; FS2006.

Hi,funny that noone is talking about the severe wind changing problems in FS9. So severe it makes the airplane uncontrollable and crashing. If it's not a bug, then what's a bug? For me it's very annoying and I've seen a lot other people complaining about it too. There are more bugs, like ATC vectoring you away 60-70 miles from the airport and there gives you the vector to final approach and ILS. If it's not a bug, then what's a bug?The well-known flaw that makes the sky blue above you when you just passed through the thick cloud layer. If it's not a bug, then what's a bug?And so on.../Jan Bergwall

Really, one needs to also back off the issue that a CTD is the only reason for a patch or to use Jeroen's label (which is likely more appropriate) a "service release". I agree that the one situation that was posted in the forums always produced a crash. OTH, I had COF up for sixteen hours yesterday as I was working on two A/C design projects... I was pretty ruthless in my session--I'd compile a new .mdl file, reload it, compare it against the original, etc.... No problems and hours of driving COF really hard--on a Win98 system too... Still, I won't disrespect those who were hit with the CTD issue, as much had to do with where and when they flew in the MSFS environment. Very few simmers tend to fly outside of their own preferred areas. Some areas were ripe with the Seasonal CTD issue.But examples of issues which don't bring CTD's, but seriously hurt the functionality of the sim, are those related to the Autogen memory drain, overcast, and as someone else reports, wind changes. Many simmers went out on faith and purchased the sim thinking the weather engine would be an improvement over the previous one. It is, and it isn't--and the two issues (overcast and winds aloft) are a problem enough for some that THEIR simming experience is adversely hurt. Mine isn't, but that's no reason to disrespect those who enjoy the product less than they expected too considering they paid for it with the same money the rest did.... I am not pointing fingers at any person here, just the general comment I see in the threads where because it doesn't happen to us, it isn't worth mid-release attention from Microsoft.Our community has offered fudges for many of these issues. I've offered one for the overcast, others have offered solutions for the Autogen issue, and still others for the seasonal CTD's. I've applied all the fudges as an insurance policy--I had a stable sim before, but I won't take any chances. But fudges are just that--fudges. They work around issues, but also reduce functionality. I think it worthwhile of any software vendor to address issues which the user community has to workaround--which is why I feel a CTD alone shouldn't be the litmus test for a product patch. 99 pct. of my team's post release patches fix functionality issues even in the presence of a stable application...

My honest findings, which you will never accept because they don't correspond to your preconceptions that Microsoft deliberately puts out a broken product time and again just to make people buy the next version, is that the vast majority of users - including the hardcore users of which I am one too, just not the variety that will try their hardest to make things crash just so they have something to complain about - do not experience any problems at all, or at least none that can be attributed to the product Microsoft FS2004 and not to external conditions or faulty addons.Most of those 'hardcore' simmers that have problems have entirely themselves to blame for them, in that they will run the product on inherently unstable hardware which they themselves brought in that condition by overclocking.The same is true of the software they run, which they think they have optimised for performance but is in fact only making their machines more unstable for a tiny performance boost in the short run.You cannot expect Microsoft to create a product - and certainly not one as complex as the one under discussion - on machines that have been made deliberately (though possibly unknowingly) unstable by their users because they want 100fps with every slider turned up...

Jeroen...You are entitled to your opinion, but it is my opinion that this post and the other you made in this thread serve as examples of denial, disrespect, and distortion of the real topic. Before you get stuck on thinking this is an attack or flame, I am talking about the post--not you as a person.Why denial? Because you continue to blame systems by blending issues not proven as being in the code with issues that are. I agree, if someone's reflections don't look right, or if someone gets a rendering of 4fps inside clouds, chances are more likely it's a system, unrealistic expectations, or both. I will go out on a limb saying that I am living proof that someone with a bottom end system can have beautiful MSFS graphics, very stable performance, and very smooth performance.But back off of those issues, and you have a seasonal CTD that is proven to be in the code. You have autogen issues that are proven as being in the code. Overcast and wind change issues. How the heck can you spout out standard first level support "it's the system" rhetoric? Even if these problems don't happen to us, they happen to other simmers who didn't try their hardest to make them happen. But people here have worked very hard to reproduce the issues so posts like yours get recognized for what they are. I almost suspect you or someone would reply with the standard "show me the code". I've done enough mission critical QA to know that the code isn't needed--only the smoking gun.The "blame the system, there are no bugs" disrespects all members of the community, and serves to distort the discussion away from whether a company would benefit by release of a patch or service release. It creates a fog around the issue--and software firms love such users. For ME--and I hope the patch crowd doesn't jump all over me--I'd tell anyone to purchase the product who enjoys simming. You can't go wrong if your system is well maintained, even under Win 98. But I would qualify that by saying that if the user expects perfection or a company seeking it, don't look at the product. That's not Microsoft's culture when it comes to entertainment titles...they really don't need the extra P.R. it could provide. Casual users outweigh the serious one by what?--10 to 1, 20 to 1?For Microsoft--a patch or service release would benefit the product by helping add more to the legions of free press you receive on the product. A few dozen of us here are loyal to the core, but I see new faces here waiting in the wings that probably have higher expectations than I do, and could go a long way promoting the sim in their circles. My words don't carry much weight anymore--I've been too domesticated by my wife and child to get out much in the hobby, other than this site :) And most here are already hooked....-John

Apparently you've not read a single thread on the seasonal CTD issue, or you have read them and just think everyone is making all this up.This is a completely reproducible crash. It happens on fresh installs with no add-ons. It happens on all varieties of computers, store-bought, home-built, ATI, Nvidia, Intel, AMD, you name it. It happens with NO overclocking. It happens without using the no-CD hack.Do you just not believe any of that?

Hi John,Great HONEST REPLY, written with INTEGRITY and TRUTH.The denial being exhibited here as well as the OBVIOUSLY FALSE UNPROVABLE Claims by those supporting MSFT are simply a joke.If the NEXT PATCH is MSFS2006, I certainly will be looking at another platform, and not buying this one, because if this is the way they want to treat clients, then they don't deserve EITHER RESPECT or MY MONEY, unless they fix these well documented PROVEN ISSUES that need to be patched. Anyway, thanks for at least pointing out the HYPOCRISY.Regards,Joehttp://aboutpolitics.net/images/bannerav.gif.About Politics.net - FORUMShttp://pub162.ezboard.com/baboutpolitics.Contribute to the Richard Harvey Scholarship Fund.http://www.avsim.com/pages/scholarship.shtml

JohnCi for President.well said Sir.

That's a good point on the wind changes in FS9. Right now I'm cruising at 15000ft with the DF C310, and I'm getting those random changes every 5-10 minutes. My flight has about 2hours left. My airplanes no longer fall out of the sky, because I realise that the realism settings with respect to airplane stress were too high....I usually fly with everything on hard. So that's a sacrifice I've had to make to compensate for the wind shift BUG.But this also brings out another flaw in the thinking of a lot of us in this Hardcore community. The Wind shift problem was present in FS2002. I wonder how many or you remember that? I guess most of you dont....why? .....because FSUIPC provided a "fix" for the problem. Everyone was happy and no one demanded any fix/patch from Microsoft. The only reason why this wind shift problem is still being mentioned here every now and again is because no one has figured out how to fix it yet.And therein lies the problem....we in the community always think that if someone can fix the problem then Microsoft doesn't have to do anything about it. That is probably one of the reasons why Microsoft is so hessitant to release patches because they figure that if there are any problems with the sim, someone in the community will always come up with a "fix" or "work around". And we are the ones who has trained them to think like that.I am not saying that people in the community shouldn't try to fix problems with the sim. What I am saying is that even if these problems are "fixed", (and I use quotes because in MOST cases these "fixes" are just "bandaids"), we should still be demanding an official fix/patch from microsoft. If you did a survey of the main reason why FSUIPC was downloaded during the FS2002 era, I'm sure that a lot or people would say that it was to help with the wind shift problem. Yet no one made any noise to MS about it because FSUIPC was there to "fix" it. Now, FS9 is released, and guess what.....the wind shift problem is still there. Together with some other bugs that have been present from earlier versions. With their current policy on patching bugs, and the fact that some bugs do not get fixed in new versions, I cannot see how Microsoft can justify charging more than $35 for the next version of FS.People in the community do great work helping to refine and fix problems with FS. We should thank them, but at the same time, we should also keep demanding patches from Microsoft.

>My honest findings, which you will never accept because they>don't correspond to your preconceptions that Microsoft>deliberately puts out a broken product time and again just to>make people buy the next version, is that the vast majority of>users - including the hardcore users of which I am one too,>just not the variety that will try their hardest to make>things crash just so they have something to complain about ->do not experience any problems at all, or at least none that>can be attributed to the product Microsoft FS2004 and not to>external conditions or faulty addons.>>Most of those 'hardcore' simmers that have problems have>entirely themselves to blame for them, in that they will run>the product on inherently unstable hardware which they>themselves brought in that condition by overclocking.>The same is true of the software they run, which they think>they have optimised for performance but is in fact only making>their machines more unstable for a tiny performance boost in>the short run.>>You cannot expect Microsoft to create a product - and>certainly not one as complex as the one under discussion - on>machines that have been made deliberately (though possibly>unknowingly) unstable by their users because they want 100fps>with every slider turned up...Again, you blame the user, so very typical. I do not need to Overclock and dont much care to have 16X AF and all the rest, just so long as it is above 10-15 Im happy.The simple fact is I would beleive you, I dont think MS went out of their way to put out broken code, infact I take my hat off to them as FS is amazingly good. However you can not deny that the CTD is not an issue. Please proove that the above files dont hang your system, If you im sure some will offer bug bucks for it. :) On a serious note we are not here to whip MS, we are here tp plead with them to FIX the most serious of bugs.You can not go near SION after or before summer otherwise CTD. it be acceptable to only be able to use windows in the fall?Wind Shifting / Flickering or lost runways in VC views are fine, they are annoying but fine. A CTD in for some the most enjoyable time to fly is not!!!Please learn to accept that MS are at fault and that the last thing a simmer wants is to be moaning, but rather flying.Jason

Almost all of you have missed the point.A patch, service release, or whatever, is a business decision. Microsoft's Sim division, is only so large, and they have three products that they primarily maintain.Fighter Ace (The online WW2 game)Flight SimCombat Flight Sim.Each of these products have roughly a 2 year product cycle and are alternating.The patch for FS2000 was unique. The performance issues that were generated were easily reproducable, the "fix" was of low risk, there was no known "work around" and a significant number of people experienced the problem.Fast forward 4 years.The CTD problem is easily reproducable, but only in certain locations. And it is quite easy to see how it got past testing.A significant number of people have experienced the problem.However,What we don't know, is how deeply imbedded is the bug. Currently the "fixes" so far, that are out there, severely affect the appearance of the airport, to "FS98" standards. So it's possible that a "patch" would only do the same as what has already been done, because it's the only safe way, and how many would accept THAT?Secondly. It is easily worked around. If we can Sim anywhere, we can sim anytime. The areas which contain the CTD can be simply flown later in the year, with no ill effects.As a result of the probable High Risk and the fact that the user can work around it, means that as reproducable and widespread as it is, it is unlikely that a business case can be made to fix it.Many have claimed on how other companies such as Janes and such did "fixes" ad-nauseum on their products. Yes that is true, Jane's and all the others are also now out of business. The plain and simple fact is Patches cost money. Money that noone in this community is willing to spend. If the product can be enjoyed by a majority of the people without the need of a patch, none will be granted. That is how you ensure you keep any profit you have made on the product.Since the Seasonal CTD has a work around and can be avoided, It is not a critical fix from a "sales" standpoint.I really don't see how people can continue to bash Microsoft for providing continuing improvements on Flight Simulator, without charging significantly more for the product.When EGA Flight Simulator for the PC XT was out, the software was $49.95. Compare Flight Simulator of 1984 to Flight simulator of 2004, and see what a $5.00 change in price (without accounting for inflation) has bought you.I guess it's easy to criticize when you don't have the big picture and instead focus on the negative and ignore the positives.

Well Wathomas your response is a hell of alot more convincing than wentings.Ill give that to you .. and if that was sincerely the case then its more understandable (from a strictly business point of view) Jwentings responses seemed just too biased and subjective.From my point of view a patch would certainly be nice although i havent had any problems with my sim ..(save the winds changes my IAS from 280 to 370 in less than a second :) )

Good post, but I think many of us who work in the business have a grasp on the "big picture". It promotes a fallacy that someone suggesting Microsoft patch a product is being "negative", a basher, unappreciative of the bargain MSFS is, etc.... Some are here simply suggesting Microsoft patch the product.... It's curious you mention outfits that went out of business. I've cited outfits that are very much in business, my own included, which have provided a notch higher service to the community they serve. A patch or service release won't bankrupt a company... Not one that easily sells a million units of product at $49 a head.... Not even my own, although it's harder to gauge how much our product earns us since there's no direct cost to our users, only indirect profit by our releasing a product that functions at critical phases of our sales and support process.I applaud you for not bashing the testers, myself included, for the CTD issue. With millions of sq. miles of real estate to fly over, no team could have been big enough to catch all potential problems. But a CTD isn't the only test for a patch. Autogen XML features cause a known problem in the sim--one has to kill them to avoid the problem. I recall heavy promotion of the improved autogen prior to release. I think the lack of true overcast is an error in the product. As someone also noted, winds aloft were an issue in FS2002...I don't know--I think it unfair to play Microsoft as the heavy in this. I call it the "have nots" targeting those who have... But it is also unfair to generalize the many here who run businesses and have sound business sense in with those who are still learning the ropes in life. I do not see anything wrong with suggesting that Microsoft patch a product or even make a mid=term service release part of the release cycle. $49 a head against the units sold justifies that, I think, but I won't swear on it since I'm not privy to Microsoft's entertainment plans and budget...-John