Do developers fly the sim ?

[Dominique_K 10,138]

I don't mean, do they fly real aircraft, do they have a PPL or the like. That we know for most of them.

 I mean, do they take time to fire up the sim and just enjoy a good flight over a good scenery with a good simcraft from time to time ?

Developing is an obsession requiring a lot of work including testing within the sim and I suspect that  when they get tired of a long work session, they 'd do anything but simming.  But I wonder 😊 !

 

[vadriver 247]

1 hour ago, domkle said:

requiring a lot of work including testing within the sim

i am sure that most developers do spend time testing ..... but against stock / default scenarios in the sim.

there's a lot of incompatability hidden under the surface that's not checked, particularly with aircraft & the options for atc / control functions / hardware etc.

few ever publish what they have "tested" ... & most can't publish an SDK to review / consider.

[Lorby_SI 2,038]

4 hours ago, domkle said:

I don't mean, do they fly real aircraft, do they have a PPL or the like. That we know for most of them.

 I mean, do they take time to fire up the sim and just enjoy a good flight over a good scenery with a good simcraft from time to time ?

Developing is an obsession requiring a lot of work including testing within the sim and I suspect that  when they get tired of a long work session, they 'd do anything but simming.  But I wonder 😊 !

 

I do, albeit not as often as I would like. Maybe 2 hours every 2 weeks. And I buy a lot of addons. We all are customers, no matter what the real job is, and it is important for a programmer not to forget what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

Best regards

[hs118 707]

I was a freeware scenery developer for a bit and interfaced with many folks in the community. Most developers do not spend much recreational time in the sim. The sim time that is not taken up with actual projects is consumed with system maintenance, updates, and other operational details of their systems. Most developers have at least 2 computers. One is more or less stock, the other is more likely to have a complement of payware add-ons.

For testing, particularly as projects begin to mature in their timeline, a beta test group of other simmers is vital. All of the major developers have hand picked beta test teams who do a tremendous amount of work to make sure the add-on performs as it should. The beta testers frequently include real world pilots, or former real world pilots, of the aircraft being tested. This is especially important with military and large commercial aircraft. 

Good beta testing is tedious, time consuming WORK. It is not getting an add-on for free to play around with. One of my friends who is a beta tester for a prominent developer does over 3 dozen standardized flights (many as long as an hour) each time there is an update. 

The quality and thoroughness of a good beta test team is so important to the finished quality of an add-on. The best developers have the best beta test teams.

I would venture to say, the developers that bring products with issues to market are the developers that have minimal beta test teams or are doing the testing themselves. 

Regards developers publicizing their testing procedures, there are a couple of considerations. First, not all add-ons have the same degree of accuracy relative to their real-world inspirations. An add-on designed to be a "lite" version will not have the same testing procedure as a "study" version. Second, because the beta test procedures are so important, many developers consider them almost as intellectual property. This is especially true of the developers making add-ons which are very high accuracy relative to the real world. 

Here is a form I developed for my purposes that might give you some idea of what is involved in detailed testing

https://uchisworld.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cessna-c208b-capabilitybasedanalysisworksheet1.pdf.

PS I see that Oliver has also commented. 

Edited June 23, 2019 by yurei

[Dominique_K 10,138]

3 minutes ago, yurei said:

 

Thank you for a most interesting insight ! I know how tedious  testing can be, from experience of making small sceneries for me or friends. But do you enjoy a good flight without any work involved 😊 ?

[hs118 707]

8 minutes ago, domkle said:

Thank you for a most interesting insight ! I know how tedious  testing can be, from experience of making small sceneries for me or friends. But do you enjoy a good flight without any work involved 😊 ?

Now that I no longer develop scenery, I have time to build a cockpit, study aviation, and fly the sim 🙂

[fluffyflops 1,858]

depends if youre aerosoft, they certainly dont test afcads

[overspeed3 410]

If developers did actually thoroughly test their products for both accuracy and possible hidden flaws before release, then why is there both constant complaints by us consumers, as well as all too frequent updates of those paywares?  I mean one can never find every existing issue, but it is called payware...

As an aside, even in freeware offerings, I find myself fixing many issues in the config files that prevent many aircraft from ever appearing in the selection lists, let alone flying ... It's as if the designer never tested it all.         

[Dominique_K 10,138]

Could we stay on topic, please ? This is not a thread about degorging bile on testers.  If you've any complaint why don't you set up a thread for that purpose ? The question is do developers play the sim like we do, for fun ? Simple enough.

To the moderators : if it goes on like that, please close it.  

[simbol 5,819]

I try to fly very often as I want to keep being a flying simulator user..

But I must admit I used to fly way more before starting to developer 3rd party add-on's, I am planning to release something very soon and take a break to re-connect with my flying hobby which is actually private jets and routes..

S.

Edited June 24, 2019 by simbol

[JB3DG 225]

18 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

If developers did actually thoroughly test their products for both accuracy and possible hidden flaws before release, then why is there both constant complaints by us consumers, as well as all too frequent updates of those paywares?  I mean one can never find every existing issue, but it is called payware...

As an aside, even in freeware offerings, I find myself fixing many issues in the config files that prevent many aircraft from ever appearing in the selection lists, let alone flying ... It's as if the designer never tested it all.         

Well for starters, some devs are single-handedly reverse engineering and recreating an aircraft, and individual avionics components that each took entire teams of engineers years to design, build, and test. Others have smaller teams doing the same task, but are still vastly outnumbered by the collective size of the teams of engineers that designed all the components.

As a dev, I know some devs who are somewhat slack, while I know others who can sing with Rhett and Link: "I gotta make things right, make it the way it's supposed to be! It's my OCD!". The latter often rigorously test their stuff more than the best beta testers do and still bugs slip through. I trimmed down my T-38C code considerably from what it was, and it still tops out at 30 000 lines. Stuff happens at that scale.

Back on topic: Yes I do, but don't have the time to do so all that often.

[overspeed3 410]

    I did not mean to disparage any and all developers, and I certainly went off-topic - but  I took that opportunity to vent some frustrations knowing there might be a good crowd of developers viewing this post.  And, someone would surely have an OCD to catch every bug there is...

       

[Nickbe 401]

Hi All!

I'll tell you a little about the EZdok Software developers.

The main developer - Marniftarr tries to fly a lot on these aircraft GA (RealLife), and often flies as passenger on large aircraft 737 and 320, and in all flights trying to get different information about how these aircraft react to the environment, the air (He wrote and uses a special program on Android that takes all the data from the acceleration sensors). So he tries to turn all the information into formulas that describe the behavior of the aircraft, then to bring it all into the simulator. Ordinary flights for the sake of pleasure, he no longer does in flysim. He's the brain doing the miracle. 🙂

I fly very often (P3D4.5 now), long and short flights, on large and small planes, jet and turboprop, piston, and I like it. I love to explore the planes, carefully read the POH and AFM. I buy a lot of planes to test them out as they get along with our EZCA, and just for the fun of flying. Many hours are spent on various tests, but the usual flights for the pleasure of flying I have a very long time, since 2005, never stopped.

I'm familiar with real flying, too. I flew in the cockpit on AN2, Tu154, Tu134, An24, L410, B737-500 as an observer, I never was a real pilot, but I was familiar with the pilots and they let me feel the sky from the cockpit.

I wish you all good flights on good planes and in good simulators! 

Edited June 24, 2019 by Nickbe

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Speaking for myself just finishing a multi-year project,  I would have to say I generally fly a lot less.  Still luv the hobby, the immersion, the challenge, the fun.  But after, say a 10-12 day of testing, coding, developing, the last thing I want to do is crank up the FS again.  😕  Plus, I can feel a little guilty of "why am I flying and not putting that time into developing".

I think once these new products drop I will set aside 1-2 days a week to just FLY.  But it can be hard.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Back in the days when I was creating Landclass Assistant, I was sweating long nights because I knew there was a problem in my initial launch of that freeware application.  I did not sim nearly as much as I wanted.  I would landclass, sim for a few minutes, landclass, sim for a few minutes, trying to work out a bug in my program which created a blue set of tiles at the edge of a scenery area. 

Finally someone helped me by identifying what I had done wrong, I was using a 256x256 bitmap when I was supposed to use a 257x257 bitmap, a special bitmap of course because embedded in it were landclass "change-up" codes" and landclass "ignore" codes,  Us simmers worked long and hard to create a freeware landclass updater because some developer wanted to franchise it and charge godzilions for landclass updates and a tool for users to update their own landclass,  As we were on the Microsoft beta team we felt that went a bit too far, someone was trying to sell public knowledge that Microsoft documented in its own SDK. 

That is also why I gave out FS9 and FSX "Soft Horizons" for free, because what I did was taught to me by one of the MSFS developers whose name I cannot recall, it has been too long ago, but we had a good rapport with one another and he gave me the idea for Soft Horizons. 

Again with that project I would doodle, sim, doodle, sim, doodle, sim until I had Soft Horizons perfect.  It is so darn hard to be a simmer, developer, and your own QA all at the same time, and I dare not invite beta testers to join me because some folks were ruthless in those days, stealing freeware devs ideas and extorting the community for them, but now in the modern age commercial devs are leaps and bounds better than we could ever be in the freeware community, with one or two exceptions maybe.

John