The point being made about Microsoft is they released a product that has bugs. That is fine. It happens. The thing that ####### me off as well as a LOT of other people off is they have no support afterwards. Patches? what are they, they ask. Do i feel sorry for microsoft dev's? No. if you dont like you job, find another one. always said that, always will. We ALL had rpobs with 2K4 but it SEEMS like microsoft has the attitude that their SH-T don't stink and in their mind they released a flawless product. whatever. all we ask is for support after the product was released. I think we deserve it since a lot of us support microsoft with hundreds of dollars spent each year on their products

Anthony and folks,I think we're getting a little off topic from the original post to other issues, but that's ok. It's still good to hear people's opinions good or bad. As I said in my previous response, I'm sure that even the FS developers can only do so much; as the FS team I'm sure, is just a department within MS itself. If it were up to us, it would be our whole world and FS would become it's own company. I think that's what we in the FS community would really like :-) Rest assured that even we as beta testors won't let up on MS, even if there is some kind of "brotherhood" as you say. I do suggest that you as the customer let them know as often as you can. You can find their tell FS email on the site. Even if you feel that it is futile please continue to write them.As I'm sure most of you are aware, we, the folks that post in these forums are probably the hardest of the hard core simmers. For every 1 of us that visit this site, there are probably 10-20 more who just surf to read and find out general info. These are the people we really need to keep in mind also. These are the ones you'll never hear from but who really appreciate and benefit from the hard core simmers who write to MS and other add-on devers (like us). I hate to sound cheesy, but don't give up the cause. This is still our sim. :-) Feel free to post your negative comments as well.

>it just seems to me that most Beta>testers are a bit too defensive of Microsoft. >snipped >>Its the silence that has a lot of people up in arms. A few>simple statemens, admissions, acknowledgements would go a long>way into calming some nerves here.>snipped>Microsoft is not the victim here....we the customers are.SPARE ME, as I'm running out of violins!!!! Perhaps you can see how I feel about simmers, who's life appears to depend on 50 bucks worth of simulated reality....L.Adamson --- beta tester :-violin :-violin :-violin :-violin

The seasonal crash is easily avoided by flying elsewhere for a few days or weeks.Most likely it was never even found in testing because none of the testers flew from or to the airports where it happens during the days that is happens.With 24000 airports to choose from and 52 weeks a year a problem that occurrs only at maybe 10 airports during 2 weeks a year has a high likelihood of never being found during testing.You have 2400*26 is over 60000 permutations of airport-week, bit much to try them all with a limited team in a limited period...If you then consider that not all users will actually encounter the problem at the same location or consistently, you have an impossible task at hand to find out that there is a problem and then analyse what exactly the problem is and how to fix it.It's so easy for the ignorant and arrogant, those who've never been involved in software development and can't grasp the scale of a product like FS2004, to say that something is so easy to find and fix and then flame those who didn't find and fix it in complete ignorance of the truth (and won't even accept that truth when they get confronted with it, suspecting a conspiracy against them where the problem was deliberately not fixed in order to spite users like them).

>Personally if it were up to me, there should be only ONE>person who buys 2k6 and they can report to the rest of us ifGo play somewhere else...>it is worth buying. After that HUGE amount of support>Microsoft gave us (VERY VERY sarcastic) we should not buy 2k6Microsoft gives a lot of support when needed. In fact, their support is some of the best in the industry, but you wouldn't know that as you have no interest in finding the truth.>until the bugs are out of it. It SEEMS they ignored everyones>email and posts for support. Why should they just put out aThey don't ignore real questions if voiced properly. The WILL ignore rants and raves with loads of swearwords.>should they reap all the benefits and offer no support. Why no>us show them that we won't take that crap anymore. It BS if>you ask meYes, your attitude is utter BS indeed. If you don't want a product as bad as FS2004, just don't buy any other product and hope Microsoft goes away.Then you can pick from the many competitors on the market and complain about the problems with those.

>>>>>SPARE ME, as I'm running out of violins!!!! Perhaps you can see how I feel about simmers, who's life appears to depend on 50 bucks worth of simulated reality....<<<<

Well said, and good to see another software professional in here (I'm on the other side of the house usually but I've done my share of testing large applications).At one point we had an application that was tested for 2 months by a team of 20, then for another month by a customer team of 50, and that only after we (the development team) had ourselves tested it for several weeks, crash the first time it was run in production.Big embarassment to everyone involved. The problem was that one single race condition which could theoretically exist had never come up in testing but just happened to appear the first time the application was fired up in a life environment.And that was an application running on identical hardware and software from all our test environments.FS is run on as many different hardware/software configurations as there are users out there, each of which can introduce instabilities and incompatibilities that cause people to have problems...

Jim, I couldn't agree more. This is what I think:1. Microsoft should have put out a patch that fixed at least some of the well-documented defects in FS2004.2. FS2004 is a superb flight simulator. These two statements are not contradictory. Suppose you bought a brand-new Porsche and found that the radio didn't work. With a dead radio it would still be a superb car. But there is one difference that's a bit sad. Any reputable garage would immediately fix or replace the radio. They wouldn't tell you that the car still basically works so you'll have to live with it. Look at the support for LOMAC - there's another announcement on the front page today. I repeat: I regard FS2004 as a superb flight simulator. I just wish Microsoft could just do a little extra, like so many other companies. The extra cost would be small - but it would make a vast change to people's perception of Microsoft. Best regards, Chris

"the next time you pay your yard boy $50 to mow your lawn.....and you find that he only did half of it, I hope you reward him with milk and cookies......after all, he made a great effort to do half of it didn't he?"Perhaps your analogy should be:The next time you pay your yard boy $50 to mow your lawn-and he does one of the best jobs anyone has seen done, throws in extra landscaping that you were not expecting, takes your advice on how to cut it, and also is the only person who will mow lawns in your neighborhood-find the 1" by 1" square he missed because it was under a rock and complain bitterly about it. Also, blame the neighbors that were watching him mow.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Geof,You notice exactly what I do! Here we have a piece of software that has to replicate the entire world & actually does a very credible job right out of the box. In fact, right out of the box, it has far less problems than ANY other "whole world" flight simulator I've ever used. Afterall, I've run FLY, Pro-Pilot, and X-Plane........so it's not like I'm in the dark!But then there are always the moaner/groaners who can't appreciate the 95% perfection & feel that Microsoft ought to hold their hand for the remaining 5%. If not...................it's "up in arms" & feeling "victimized". How sad..Here I've got this base sim, and added some exceptional 3rd party aircraft & FSGenesis mesh. I'm sometimes astonished just how well it seems to duplicate reality & realize that I've gotten a lot for the money. I guess I just look at the positives that far outweigh the negatives here. Besides, there was always a refund & no one forces you to buy it in the first place. Surely...........I'm not "victimized"!L.Adamson --- leaving town for a few days

Oh gee, here we go with the usual horse'pile' about "don't expect anything, you only paid $xxx".I was fine with you all beating up on him about his tester comments (being an Alpha Tester myself), but now you have crossed the line.Hmm, I can see myself at the GM dealership after a multiple fatality head on accident where the airbags didn't fire ... "you didn't expect them to work did you? Thats our economy model"$$$ does not allow Microsoft off the hook for their complete closed door policies. Quit making excuses for the way they treat customers.I am so tired of people sticking up for them. They have completely destroyed the marketplace in multiple countrys, forced smaller companies who employ people out of work, been caught so many times and been in court more times then OJ + MJ put together. Quit with the excuses. Microsoft offers #### poor customer support. Period.I have nothing against the small team who actually does the development work, they are just as bound by company politics as we the victims are.

Could it be that the angry anti-microsoft posts are really driven by the MS policy of not communicating directly with the marketplace? That's what this last post is about.I wonder if folks have taken that frustration and vented it by declaring the product flawed.I wonder if MS would have decided to put a human face on the product, whether the same folks complaining in this thread would have been satisfied, even thou the flaws would be unchanged.If this were true then the annoying anti tester comments would never have been made. hmmmm__________________________________________________________Second thought......I see tv commercials that show car companys opening and closing the doors repeatedly, and the caption is about how much we test the products, so you can be sure they're good. I suspect I've seen this message before this also. I suspect this sends to the uninformed the mis-information that testers and quality control departments in general are the people that influence quality.Unfortunate that the advertisers can't find a more accurate way to send an image of quality into the minds of the viewers. An engineer completing a study makes for very poor tv commercials.Quality control is a sorting function. Testers attempt to remove quality errors. They don't have the design authority to put quality into the product. That can only be done by folks that understand the interactions between the feature of interest and the rest of the product function. _______________________________________________So, my conclusion is that folks with a problem seek the only human connection they have to the product to vent their angst, and are influenced by the media to believe that quality sorting (testing) activity at the end of the line influences basic product quality in a significant way.understandable.Doesn't make me like being unfairly tagged with the angst, but at least its a natural human error in logic that could have lead to this thread.Bob Bernstein

L.Adamson and Geof,At what point would you accept the fact that customer service from Microsoft truly stinks? Your solution to the bugs is to wait till the next version for them to be fixed.......but we have seen that that doesn't work as per the examples I cite above. I wonder what you will say if the CTDs appear again in FS2006? At what point will you stop apologizing for Microsoft? No wonder some people are putting some blame on Beta testers. Because when you are flying and are constantly getting CTDs and BETA TESTERS are telling you that you should stop your Whining and complaining and just accept it because 95% of the sim is "perfect" what are you to think? You know, I can't imagine either of you ever filing a lawsuit in your entire life. I could just see you in a hospital all broken up and in casts but not blaming the mechanic who didn't repair your brakes properly because he did the other three exceptionally well. Its just with the last one that he messed up....but you're not gonna bother.....next time you visit him, (aka...next version)...hopefully he will fix it....oh wait....you and your car are already totalled.Anyway, your have your opinionns and I have mine. I'll just agree to disagree with you both. We're obviously aren't gonna get a patch and you obviously don't think the game needs one since problems can be fixed (hopefully) for the next version. Now, I'm no doubt sure that you both will be on the beta team for the FS2006 again. If you are......as a personal favor to me could you test for the wind shift problem, the timezone problem and the CTD problem? If that is not your area on the team, then maybe you could get word to the testers who are working on those areas? Of course I know that NDAs will prevent you from letting me know if you did or not, but I know you're both good guys at heart so I will just assume that you did.That way, if these bugs crop up again in FS2006, and people start blaming you guys, I can stick up for you and say "lighten up guys, I know for a fact that the beta team reported these things. Its not their fault that its still there."

The conversation has shifted now to not testers doing their job, but Microsoft needs to issue a patch.Ok, granted. Microsoft should issue a patch. Who will do it? The development team. Ok, so now we hold development of FS2006 for a year so that we can patch FS2004 to everones satisfaction, and then we moan and groan on how FS2007 is not out in time.....No... We hire MORE developers. So we hire more programmers who happen to live in one of the more expensive areas in the US and make them work.... Who pays for their salary? Are we willing to pony up $75.00 for flight sim so that we can pay for the additional manpower? No, we would hear how MicroShaft is taking it to the consumer.The reason many other companies offer patches for their "multiplayer" games, is that "cheating" online offers a very credible threat to future sales of the product. If Unreal Tournament can't be played online because of easy ways to "cheat", then online players don't buy the game. Makers of games like Everquest and other online ONLY games have an even bigger stake. Most patchs have dealt specifically with these type of issues.The "bugs" mentioned do not, by in large, threaten the sales of the product. I have not yet seen or heard someone who won't buy the product because if you fly out of "said airport" at "said time" you will get a crash to desktop.For a patch to be economically viable, and remember we are dealing with a business case here, the patch has to provide some sort of value to both the customer AND the company. If the company stands to make additional sales, or prevents a significant loss of sales due to a patch, the patch is developed.As much as some folks are upset about some of the issues of FS2004, none of these "bugs" meet that criteria. A company finds that many times, it is more economically sound to fix bugs in the next release, where that "work" will result in the profit gained from the next version, and not count against the bottom line of the previously released product.And to say that Microsoft does not listen is ludicrous. There are many user initiated improvements in FS2004 over FS2002, such as better ATC and a better weather environment. (Although those clouds do come with a price).Comparing Microsoft FS2004 with a person who does half your lawn is silly. It's more like refusing to pay the lawn cutter because you saw three to four blades of grass that he missed.And the reason this argument still lingers is because many people who are not testers or a part of the "brotherhood" you speak, don't understand the size and enormity of the code that sits on their computers.A 4 gigabyte installation on their hard drive does not easily translate into the 100's of millions of lines of code that must be created and tested. Numbers of this magnitude are hard for us to image, so then we don't understand the scope, of the issue, and when we don't understand the scope, we tend to oversimplify.I am not asking the community to accept substandard product. I am trying to ask the community to look at the product and the scope it entails and then look from that perspective.

Will, your comments just strengthen exactly what I said about Microsoft.As they have a monopoly, they can adopt the "screw you" attitude and never fix the problems in the shipping product. They know we can't go elsewhere. They know they have us over a barrel. Since they know this, they continue to ship version after version with the same old set of bugs and never address any of them after the fact.If it was anyone else, you'd be ripping the walls of AVSim down with the level of abusive posts, but because it is Microsoft we are expected to sit back and take our 2 year dose of bugs for multiple years because correcting them just is not a priority. It is about customer service, and Microsoft doesn't care because they don't have to provide any until they loose another court battle and are forced to pony up.The dev team probably has fixes for every one of the current issues, but is prevented from going to market because of the corporate implications of doing so. You make it sound like it would be additional work load for them, you are completely wrong on this account.Any software developer ***EXPECTS*** bugs to not be located during the development life cycle and ***EXPECTS*** to have to correct issues that come to light once the product reaches the mass market because it is completely unrealistic to think that a small pool of testers have the time to completely test a product in a short period of time. Microsoft, unlike every other company out there chooses to do nothing after the fact instead of producing a post retail collection of fixes. This is their choice. This is why they will never get respect from the community apart from a few flag wavers.