VERY Bad Reviews so far on Steam

[JNS 106]

On 5/21/2017 at 3:21 PM, RichLP said:

Sometimes this community suffers from a touch of self importance.  As others have said, flight simming, in general, is a niche hobby.  And this community is a niche of that niche.

To be commercially viable, let alone successful, FSW must appeal to consumers far beyond this community.

Did DTG listen?  I'm sure they did.  Then they used the feedback they received here, and factored it into their ultimate goal of making a widely appealing sim.

Only time will tell if they've struck a successful balance between 'hardcore' simmers and people who just want to give flying a go.

+1

 

[TechguyMaxC 516]

I'll jump in with my thoughts on this subject by way of linking to a thread I created specifically regarding bad reviews/negative posts as they relate to the early access sales and development model: 

 

[188AHC 2,138]

TechguyMaxC - these sentiments have been stated time and time again. Hopefully if we do it enough times, it will have some affect .

[bedgie 12]

A roadmap would be great. At least we would know where its heading and direction 

But DTG at the moment are treating their paying customers like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed full of ######.

Maybe the reason for no roadmap at the moment is because they dont have the 3rd party support they anticipated.

lets face it most of the aircraft in it are payware addons the scenery is mostly orbx another 3rd party addon so what did DTG actually do. The only thing that I see DTG actually did was change FSX to 64bit and tweaked it a bit and also changed the UI and thats about it. This is also what others see and have commented on and they wonder why they are getting such negative feedback. 

Look at the likes of star citizen for example (yes millions of dollars were poured in to it but it was all crowd funded and we only wish that FSW had that kind of funding imagine what we would have) its in open alpha they have a roadmap that is constantly updated but at least  when they first launched it it was a work of art,  not like FSW a abstract painting of 3rd party dev work slapped on a old canvas that has been washed and DTG calling it their own masterpiece.

I really  want to see FSW succeed, but currently the way I see it  its teetering on the fence at the moment and  DTG needs to pull their finger out and start addressing some of the issues at hand. 

Edited May 22, 2017 by bedgie

[TechguyMaxC 516]

bedgie, you must not have seen Cryss' post earlier today:

 

 

[Howiefly 10]

So far, I am really enjoying the missions.  They are well thought out and very well done and challenging.

[Chock 17,769]

3 hours ago, bedgie said:

The only thing that I see DTG actually did was change FSX to 64bit and tweaked it a bit and also changed the UI and thats about it.

Doing that is no small thing, it's not simply a case of retyping a few lines of code, really, it's a very complex and time-consuming undertaking to rejig 32 bit allocations and calculations into the increased width of 64 bit, because there is so much interdependency between stuff, it really does require a lot of work and a lot of testing not to break something. Not forgetting of course that DTG have also made FSW more geared toward using the GPU as opposed to the CPU, which again is also no small thing, if it were easy, you could have been sure that ACES would have done so when they still had Bill Gates happy to pour money into regular incarnations of FS owing to his interest in aviation, particularly since FS tended to be Microsoft's showcase demo program which we would see running on PCs in computer stores, since it was already apparent that was something FS needed by the time FS2002 came out, let alone the two versions which followed it.

To explain a bit about why that all went arse end up and we got left in 32 bit CPU-bound land...

From around about the time of FS2000, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the old FS code was going to get left behind by the way computer architecture was going, in that loads for graphics-heavy games and sims were being offloaded onto GPUs rather than CPUs, this proving necessary not least because of the limitations in processor speeds which were being run into at the time: MS had been hoping, as many had, that some CPU developmental miracle would occur which would mean the CPU could maintain its traditional ability to handle all the work, which did not transpire: Traditionally, computers had regularly been made faster by the relatively simple expedient (from a technological standpoint at least) of adding more memory and simply making the processor parts smaller so that you could fit more components onto a CPU to enable it to run more calculations. For example, there are around 7.5 million transistors on a Pentium II, and that was up to aroud 9.5 million on a Pentium III. Clock speeds - i.e. the rate at which all those transistors work - are another means by which CPUs can be made faster. So, more parts on a smaller CPU to make more calculations; and since those parts were getting smaller, less distance for data to travel physically, and as a consequence faster, and less chance of a signal degradation because of those smaller distances data travels. What could possibly go wrong? Surely CPU companies such as Intel and AMD could simply keep on doing that couldn't they?

Well, unfortunately, nope, because there is a physical limit to how small you can make anything, and that includes a CPU, before you run into problems with dissipating heat generation and signal leakage through the gaps between individual transistors being in such close proximity to one another. The solution was to basically glue multiple processors together, effectively sidestepping the issue, which is why we started seeing dual core processors and now have ones with large multiples of cores. This is fine for programs such as Word and Excel which do not need to swap calculations at a rate to facilitate 60 frames per second for fancy visuals, but not quite so great for graphics-hungry games and sims; you have the problem of splitting the calculations onto multiple cores, because that data has to be recombined to have the program run with all the data it needs, i.e. if you have one core work out what the wings in your flight sim are doing, the sim as a whole still needs the other info being calculated on the other core (perhaps what the engines are doing in your sim) before it can recombine all that info and move your aeroplane in a suitable fashion with all the necessary data, if that process is slow, there goes your frame rate. You also have the problem of all the fancy anti-aliasing and other graphical whistles and bells being offloaded to GPUs with the notion that all the other non-graphical calculations get done by the CPU. Sadly, before ACES were forced to address that by the way hardware was already very obviously going by the time ACES folded, MS bailed on flight sims as Bill Gates went off to pastures new leaving Steve Balmer in control of what MS would do (i.e. not flight sims). and we were left with a base sim which was not only frozen in bit depth, but more seriously, frozen in a very 90s way of utilising PC hardware.

What all that boils down to, is that making 32 bit FS into a modern 64 bit capable sim which can also make use of GPUs, means an almost from the ground up rework of everything it calculates, with non-graphical calculations optimised for modern multi-core CPUs. To suggest such a task is going to be easy, or was no small undertaking, is akin to suggesting that converting a model T Ford into a top fuel dragster is going to be a doddle.

You can say that all DTG have done is 'change FSX to 64bit and tweaked it a bit' but really, that was the hard part and it was also the only part they needed to do in order to move us forward.

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

It's gonna be question for me is how the SDK is setup and we can make our own add ons. Some users like building small airfields with thier freetime and adding thier own unique touch. 

Just rather see optimization and fixes for now than add features because fsx autogen popping, and blurries, stuttering, trim wheel spike items that need addressing as do some other ones not mentioned here.

FSW needs months of fixes and optimization before you can really discuss adding features and even with adjustments gonna be things dovetail does I agree with and others I do not. 

 

Steam is not the place for objective reviews as lots of know that already. 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2017 by gizmosellsbunnys

[anden145 2,285]

Well - if it's true, what AirDailyX is hinting - that DTG plans on implementing trueSky into FSW, that would indeed be exciting! 

[JDWalley 354]

15 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I'm amazed that DTG hasn't included a built-in block for this kind of thing, to avoid sending mixed messages.

As you point out, a search for FSW content on YouTube will now show things like that ported 737, instead of default content. This will compromise the ability to gather feedback and track down bugs. 

Did DTG know this would happen, and are tacitly allowing it to spur interest in the new sim? That's one possibility. Or maybe they just couldn't figure out how to block add-ons with DRM limiting "non-official" content without compromising the sim's performance. I suspect it might be this, but I'm just guessing.

You do realize that, if DTG had implemented such a "built-in block," it would be getting roundly condemned here as proof-positive of their eeeeeeeeevil intentions to lock-down the sim and not allow any freeware or uncontrolled-by-Dovetail third-party development…

[Chock 17,769]

To be honest, as far as porting things over goes, it's not quite as simple as a lot would have you believe. Sure, at this early access stage where people are cheerfully nosying around the installation folders, I and a few others have managed to shoehorn some FSX aeroplanes into FSW, but I must point out here, I did that out of curiosity, not out of an attempt to circumvent a EULA and get something for nothing.

And whilst that proves it can be done (sort of), lots of things don't cross over well, notably VCs appear to lose their clickspots and some hard coded panel commands don't work, and a few other issues. This to me is actually good news, I've no wish to jib Aeroplane Heaven or Virtualcol (two payware aircraft I put into FSW to see how they fared), or indeed DTG  out of an additional licensing fee. I'd be happy to throw another, say 10 quid, at an extended FSW EULA for already purchased aircraft in return for a tweak to the add-on to get those VCs working. To me this says that a vast back catalogue of add-ons could be tweaked to add to a library of available stuff for FSW in fairly short order, and it seems to me that if DTG and or other developers said: 'okay, we'll make the necessary tweaks and previous owners can pay to upgrade to additional FSW compatibility, or, you can buy it completely if you'd never previously owned it with that additional sim compatibility for perhaps a little bit more than what was the previous price', then I'd have no problem with that at all.

This I see as one of the major plus points of using most of the base structure and folder heirarchy of FSX. It's not backwardly compatible per se, but it is close enough to allow developers to convert their add-ons for FSW without too much hard work or too big a learning curve, it being different enough to not allow DIY ports to be easy to achieve, but not impossible to accommodate. And it of course means we won't have to wait years for FSW to catch up in terms of available add-ons, which would provide a new revenue stream for DTG, and developers. After all, DTG deserve to make some cash from sales for having finally tackled a problem we've been enduring for well over ten years, and I've no objection to being someone who coughs up that cash.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

The method for rendering gauges in the sim has (thankfully) been transitioned away from GDI to Direct3d.  That's a huge boon for performance (and is likely a large contributor to the shift towards the GPU DTG has cited).  

[Paraffin 2,197]

8 hours ago, JDWalley said:

You do realize that, if DTG had implemented such a "built-in block," it would be getting roundly condemned here as proof-positive of their eeeeeeeeevil intentions to lock-down the sim and not allow any freeware or uncontrolled-by-Dovetail third-party development…

I disagree, because DTG has said for months that the new sim would not be backwards compatible with existing FSX add-ons. We were expecting that. 

Normally when a new IP hits the market, the content of things like YouTube clips is tightly controlled. What you see is what you get. With YouTube flooded with all these experiments jacking in older FSX content, what you see online is no longer what you get when you buy FSW. 

It just seems weird to me from a marketing angle, considering DTG's previous statements about no backwards compatibility, and no use of names, trademarks, logos etc. without a license being paid. Unless, as I said earlier, this is a sort of tacit approval to spread the word about the new sim, without officially endorsing the experiments.

Has DTG made any statement about this yet? Maybe I missed it.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

1 minute ago, Paraffin said:

I disagree, because DTG has said for months that the new sim would not be backwards compatible with existing FSX add-ons. We were expecting that. 

Normally when a new IP hits the market, the content of things like YouTube clips is tightly controlled. What you see is what you get. With YouTube flooded with all these experiments jacking in older FSX content, what you see online is no longer what you get when you buy FSW. 

It just seems weird to me from a marketing angle, considering DTG's previous statements about no backwards compatibility, and no use of names, trademarks, logos etc. without a license being paid. Unless, as I said earlier, this is a sort of tacit approval to spread the word about the new sim, without officially endorsing the experiments.

Has DTG made any statement about this yet? Maybe I missed it.

I'm sure many add-ons (especially scenery) will work just fine.  Since no add-ons have yet been created for FSW however, DTG doesn't want to mislead people by saying "sure, install whatever existing add-ons you want" only to have any number of them fail to install, or produce unexpected errors in operation.  They have enough work on their hands creating and testing the sim, let alone taking on the burden of tech support for 3rd party add-ons which were designed before FSW hit early access.  

[HiFlyer 9,358]

On 5/23/2017 at 1:09 AM, Anders Gron said:

Well - if it's true, what AirDailyX is hinting - that DTG plans on implementing trueSky into FSW, that would indeed be exciting! 

TrueSky?!

Wow! That would be exciting!