Any Fix Yet For Disappearing Aircraft ?

[JSkorna 137]

Hi All,Please don't take this the wrong way, but maybe pretty soon the design team could show up at your front door, you could invite them in, and they could design a personal copy of FS just for you! That way every user would have exactly what they wanted. Or maybe a web site where you have hundreds of dropdown menus. Design your copy of FS and in a few years it could be delivered to your door. Kind of like ordering a car online, but much more complex.Let's see..... I'll take a FS deluxe, with high detailed clouds, blue colored planes only during the day, red planes only at night, heavies that fly in the rain/snow only, a Coke to drink, but hold the fries. Oh, and hold the pickles.(Sorry it's been a long day)

[scott967 62]

In my experience, the term "patch" refers to a byte-by-byte replacement of the image file. In the old days, we would do this with "hand loads". After the code was loaded into memory, there were front panel switches which could be used to set specific values into memory locations. Now patches are commonly distributed as small files which essentially hex-edit the program files. The scope of program faults which are fixable by this process is minimal. A patch is conisdered emergency and temporary, as often in parallel the source code modules affected are opened and permanent fixes developed. Most SQA programs require a fairly rigorous level of documentation, review, and testing for any source documentation changes, and due to costs, sets of changes are ususally developed prior to generating a "build" (complete recompile) for system test. Data files may receive a different configuration management process, but at some point need to be tied to the "build".scott s..

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Good post Scott--reminds me of my first devel shop..... I'm in my fourth devel shop since the mid 80's, and I've seen the definition of "patch" evolve. Very similar to what you say in the beginning, especially when much of our code was in assembler. Now the word "patch" in my current shop is closer to Jeroen's definition, although it is broadened to include things that are perceived by our consumers as showstoppers even while our team knows the code is sound. Our consumers can get upset with us, and demand what they call a "patch", if we change the tab sequence too much to accommodate new fields. We call it a patch when we promote it to the field, to make the users think they've won a concession from the team :) I think in this discussion, it doesn't matter whether it's called a patch or not. I think the autogen issue caused people to lose core functionality in the sim--they expected fancier autogen but can't enjoy it because of a well established problem. That would have constituted a patch in our book, and we have fewer paying customers than the MSFS base with roughly the same devel costs. But read on before jumping on this comment!As for AI, that would be borderline service release/update. The standard AI on the sim is how it was designed. The add-ons take it away from baseline. OTH, the add-ons had already "become" the standard in FS2002...The soundest argument I've heard against a patch is that of one causing a lot of grief with third party apps/aircraft. The time for a patch would have been within weeks of its release--before third party development was in full swing. Problem is, the autogen issue is the closest thing to a showstopper that was found in that window. The CTD's didn't surface until later on. In any case, solutions were offered to both issues which--although they reduced functionality--offered a means for MSFS to stay in a "state" that add-ons expected. A service release now wouldn't make sense--in a year since release, technology has changed and it would be throwing good devel time away--we'll all be bored of FS2004 come the release of FS2006 (or COF+3?). Better to move on to the next sim in the series. We should continue to pool suggestions, and not label anyone "stupid" or a crybaby for being nit picky (some great ideas come from suggestions and gripes). We should also see if we can get the MSFS team to allot more time and/or select a broader user base for beta, even if it delays the release six months. Any faults that FS2004 contains are there in part because the "Are we there yet" crowd really pushes vendors, including Microsoft, to produce product. -John

[Guest mikado]

yarvellingThis need not necessarily be the case. Since each AI a/c has a tag to show at which % and above it appears by adjusting this tag for a/c originating at your small airports you could, for instance, make them all appear at 50% whilst a smaller number of a/c originating at your larger airports would remain more manageable.AITM has the facility to tag AI appearance %s and under the Timetable tab you can also select % to show you just which a/c will appear at that %. So have a fiddle and see what you think!I'm from Cambridge by the way so my local airport is Stansted.Tony

[Guest]

Yes, that is the old description and should hint at the use for them: emergency maintenance and certainly not functional changes and enhancements!Shame the FS community (including the addon developers) don't use the proper terminology and understand what is what, calling major version upgrades patches...

[mrmertz 1]

Oh Boy...What did I start? I have been away from MSFS for a few months now (work and blah, blah, blah) and was just wondering if someone had come up with a work around for my original post.The reason I put this vanishing airplane bit on MS was because I had contacted Flight One thinking it was their program doing it (Ultimate Traffic) for some reason, and THEY said that Microsoft had it built into THEIR flight sim...it was not Flight One's software. They told me somebody would have to get in their and tweek some coding or such in order to change that perhaps with the SDK's coming out. They did mention that the time for an aircraft to simply vanish from the tarmac had been reduced by Microsoft from MSFS2002.But let's face it, if I don't want to wait in traffic for TO, I'm not going to set the sim to 6PM EST at Newark International and have to taxi to the active. On the other hand, if I have the time and don't mind doing some plane spotting in the meanwhile then I'll do it specifically some times just for that while sitting in line.And yes, as some have posted, I do love this sim! Especially with the Radion 9800 Pro installed. Moves faster. Thanks for all of your post!

[Guest wathomas777]

Again I apologize for the name calling.But my point was that no designer, company or manufacturer can be held accountable for a modification that takes something past it's design limits.Ultimate Traffic does that. The timeout was a stopgap placed in the program to prevent an airplane from effectively closing an airport due to a race condition. This phenomenon could occur even without third party addons, and as such, they decided to put into code, if an aircraft didn't move in a set amount of time, it must be locked up, so eliminate it.As for the "patch" debate. Only one of the "showstoppers" mentioned above fit my requirement for a patch, and that is the autogen/XML release that has been documented.I used to be in test for Microsoft, and I agree, they are not as patch intensive as some other companies. Mainly because they do not have the resources. Now before you go off on the thousands of employees, MS has, it's game division is VERY small compared to the rest of the company. Microsoft traditionally only patches "show stoppers" like the performance issues with FS2000. (Which by the way was a design configuration, that was ill thought out). Microsoft thought that the direction of Flight Sim was more accurate panels and gauge fluidity. FS2000 was the first to include IFR only panels, and at release, there was talk that they would be seeking some sort of certification.As a result gauge movement was given priority over all else. The Flight Sim community loudly responded and a patch was generated. This case was different because the "performance issue" was actually a threat to sales of current and future versions. FS2000 released in the midst of stiff competition from at least 3 other major software titles. The current litany of complaints does not nearly hit the severity of the FS2000 problem, and quite frankly the business model does not justify it either, as there is little competition in the market.And to be perfectly frank, Flight Simulator is not Microsoft's Bread and Butter. People bring up other game companies as providing better or more often updates. What folks fail to realize, is that games ARE the bread and butter for an Electronic Arts, or Sierra, or ATARI. Microsoft's "Bread and Butter" is in Operating Systems, and productivity software, and they have proven that they do much more "regular" updates to those products.