As a Flight Sim enthusiast, like many here, flying on our desktops is the only way we got to feed out passion for aviation. And that´s why I´m writing these words.

The more you value the importance of a well made Flight Sim, and the effect it has when you you love every part of flying an airplane, the more worried you get when you see a trend of behaviors that can have detrimental effect on the development of such sim.

The luck we have, to have Devs such as MS and Asobo Studios, clearly so focused like I have never seen before since ACES team, and consequently, so eager to please the community, is something I couldn´t have imagined before E3. And there is where I´m most afraid.

Like comedian Louis CK once said, we have people at comfortable seats flying over 900km/h, 10.000m above ground, crossing oceans, which is such an amazing feat, and they are all complaining their OnBoard WiFi is too slow. The magnitude of what we acomplished is completely forgotten these days.

And here´s my point. How luck are we, to get such motivated developers, trying their best to please this huge community, listening to our every request and desire. And I see already a trend of people getting angry because this and that feature isn´t coming with the final product at launch day.

Who am I to say which feature should or shouldn´t be a priority for the team, that´s for the community to decide. But I also think, we have great responsability in what we transmit being of greater importance.

After taking for granted we had MS forever building our favorite simulator, it was just gone, and we had, for over 10 years, use what they left and try to improve in every way we possibly could. And that is something that can´t be forgotten. We HAVE to make sure these amazing Devs spend every bit of their time working on features that MATTER, and will guarantee the best possible future, even if they stop working on it someday.

- I get that people are super enthusiastic about VR, it´s such a cool technology. But when we see that only a minority has the powerful PC Build it requires, and also a VR Headset, how more important don´t you guys think it is ask these guys to put every effort into optimizing the heck out of this engine, to allow everyone, even with modest PCs, to have a great time without the Stutter and Low FPS that previous FSs made us live with? If between taking thousands of hours adding VR, or using those making sure every Core of our CPUs are used, isn´t that WAY more important for everybody, now and into the future?

- I understand Season is such a big deal for many people. They already confirmed the technology is there, and it´s just a matter of proper implementation. But let´s face it, if they have to ship this Sim initially without the seasons, and they guarantee it´s coming in the future, do we have to make it a deal breaker, and rant this sim is useless, and would rather stay in FSX, P3D because of it? The time they put until now in stuff like Atmospheric Conditions have resulted in the MOST stunning images we have ever seen in ANY sim in this area. It was time so well spent, they clearly knew what they were doing. Is it SUCH a deal breaker, to have FANTASTIC atmospheric conditions, in a true to life Flight Model for the first time in a MS Flight SImulator, while we wait for cosmetic upgrades?

Every minute these guys spent on something, is a minute taken from something else. There´s no team in the world, not even Google, Apple, that would have the man hour necessary to cover everything the community asks and make it the perfect Sim. So I ask to everyone, before we ask for something that we think it´s a must, is there something way more important to get it right in the Base Sim first?

If they don´t get the BASE SIM working as well as possible, with all the must have features and systems 100%, we will have to hear developers in years to come, complaining that X and Y is crucial for something to be modeled correct, and the Devs never got it into the code, so it´s impossible to make. And that´s a story I think we´re all tired of hearing!

Thank you for reaching this far on these words I had to talk to this wonderful community 🙂

I agree. Focus on the Base product to maximize the usage of the hardware and make sure addon features can be smoothly added later. 

 

What is the base product though? What are features that matter? Maximise usage of what hardware? What is a true to life flight model (other than an oxymoron 🙂 )? All of these things are relative. We don't yet know where the lines are being drawn. One person's 'this is amazing' is another person's 'this could be improved', even within the development team. Asobo will have list upon list derived from this exact process, it's what development is.

We should accept whatever the roadmap covers and appreciate the decision making that went into steering the project along it. That doesn't mean people shouldn't feel free to voice their thoughts though, even if others judge them less worthy, else why bother with forums/feedback at all...

I'm sure the team are more than capable of collating internal/external opinions and using that information as they deem appropriate, indeed it's why we have what we appear to already have, and why it is vastly superior to any current offering.

Edited October 4, 20196 yr by viz

2 hours ago, viz said:

What is the base product though? What are features that matter? Maximise usage of what hardware? What is a true to life flight model (other than an oxymoron 🙂 )? All of these things are relative. We don't yet know where the lines are being drawn.

I agree.

We may not know what will be released, but we do know where we have been and as long as we don't stay stagnant or go backwards, all is good.

'progress has no patients'

Of course, I understand your point. But I feel there´s a looong way between , using VR as example, "it would be great to get VR when possible so that I can use all the great hardware I have" to " VR is a MUST HAVE, CAN´T LIVE WITHOUT, MAKE IT HAPPEN" that I see soo often. The same holds true for other areas that while I understand makes a difference in a Sim, covers a small percentage of the user base.

While I believe the team is able to make their priorities as they go through development stage, they have been doing things silently for the past 3 years, and let me say, they did an amazing job already, without the input of the community. They know what they´re doing. And now, suddenly, there´s the weight of thousands of voices, each louder than the other, shouting what they want. Which is fine, and that process often make Devs see that some things they thought wasn´t a big deal, actually is for a lot of people.

But on the other side, we have seen entire multi million dollar movie projects going to halt because of the way the community reacted to a trailer, an info, etc. And when I see over 500 replies regarding VR, which should cover no more than 5% of the users who will continually use this sim, and almost nothing about the importance of Multicore/threads optimization within engine, to make sure modern CPUs work the most efficient way, that scares me. Because everyone, including those VR users, will be affected if the team doesn´t have the time to put into these Key areas. And let´s not go into discussion, how we know what is Key Area, what isn´t. After over 20 years of FS, we should all know that Optimization has been one of the area Flight SImulator lacked the most within the years, and no amount of money has been ever enough to make it run stutter free with good frames.

That was just one example. I feel it´s OK to ask for features we think it´s important in our opinion, and that alone. But it´s much stronger, and possibly dangerous, to go around the forums ranting on why something isn´t there, when we can talk and get into agreement, as a community, on the priorities and what will affect most people if missing.

Anyway, everyone feel free to disagree 🙂 That why Forums are for, I´m here to talk! about it!

Edited October 5, 20196 yr by Alec

Guys, once again, like I said in the other thread; actually listen to all the dev interviews and actually read the dev roadmap.  Most of these issues will be revealed at those times if they haven't already been addressed.

They are previewing each area of the sim.  We already know about the visuals, atmospherics, and flight models to a pretty good degree, and more info on those areas and more are coming.

@pracines:  I'm pretty sure they aren't going backwards from what I've seen.  I mean 1000 points of contact on the aircraft versus the old 1?  Need I go on?

3 hours ago, Alec said:

they did an amazing job already, without the input of the community.

Correct, they have done an amazing job so far!

Without the community's input? This is not exactly true. This community has had many publicly available topics full of wish lists, along with scores of complaints about what is missing, lacking, and still broken. These posts have been ongoing daily for many decades in many different forums. MS said it themselves, they are back because of the passion and determination this community has.

We all need each other. We need them to develop, they need us to buy...a symbiosis.🙂

3 hours ago, Alec said:

I feel it´s OK to ask for features we think it´s important in our opinion, and that alone. But it´s much stronger, and possibly dangerous, to go around the forums ranting on why something isn´t there, when we can talk and get into agreement, as a community, on the priorities and what will affect most people if missing.

I agree with you concerning performance, this has to be focused on and always the main consideration. This is where options/sliders are such a wonderful thing. 

But there is such a thing as fact and absolutes, not just opinions. For example, long ago in FS2000/FS2002 the prop control on the C182 was wrong. I think I remember correctly that I noticed it in FS2000 (prior to me being on the test team), but waited for a fix. The problem was that decreasing (pulling out) the prop control was increasing the RPM's. I knew this was wrong (true fact) but waited for a fix. When the patch was released the RPM problem remained so I sent a quick email to tell FS and figured they would know what I meant, but they did not because the problem remained in FS2002. So I sent a much more detailed email (wondering to myself how could this basic be missed??) explaining the function and technicalities, why it was wrong in the sim, and what I would expect as correct behavior. It was not too long after that I was invited to be on the test team and the prop control was fixed. To this day I still wonder how could a basic like this be missed? This is why to this day I leave nothing to chance and I don't assume because pilots are on the development team, that everything will be ok. I (and many others) could give you many such examples in flight sims before then and since then.

In the case of the importance of features, as long as we all stay centered on realism, we cannot go wrong. That is not an opinion, that is a true fact, because of the word "simulator" in the title, description, and the intent of the product. So as long as its a feature that is as close to (within reason) reality as currently/technically possible, then it should be considered much more than an opinion. 

The opposite is also true. If one thinks something is too realistic then that is an invalid opinion and/or is not applicable to this project. The reason is because it nullifies the word "simulator".

There is more danger to remaining silent about things. Just look at all the things that are still missing in our current simulators. Also, the fact that seasons/ATC/AI were not displayed this past week at the Global Preview Event concerns me, but I can only hope that MS understands how important these long standing features have been & are, and how much they will need testing.

I think its best for this community to remain sharply focused on performance and reasonable realism 100% equally.

 

You have very good points there.  But I am confident that not only is the team incredibly talented in what they have put forth so far and and what is upcoming, they do also have sharp discernment to be able to draw lines about peoples reactions.  There is alot of level headed people on here, but at the same time, many are all about self interest, me first attitude, want it now, or if not done a certain way to their liking, its the end of the world for what they are targeting. Simply cant please everyone, whether my technical limits, resources, or priorities.  So why full engagement with the community is an absolutely wonderful thing that should be fully praised (never seen any other dev team from anywhere be this engaged), it is approached with alot of balance. 

In the end , there is so much better aspects to this sim already than what we have ever experienced, if someones specific feature is not in or fully incorporated yet, I am willing to bet they will still buy it at launch.  We are flight simmers with a very strong passion. Heck I would love to just fly around VFR right now even with all the bugs and non workings things in it right now if I could. And Im an IFR guy mostly. 

2 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

2000 3rd party developers are a much larger resource than 200 Microsoft/Asobo engineers ... Microsoft don't need to provide everything, just the tools (SDK) and a core product to allow the existing 3rd party community of payware and freeware to fill in the gaps.  The vision hasn't changed, it's always been there, the core has been improved and the cycle starts again ... this is good for all those serious about flight simulation and even those that consider it just a "game".

Cheers, Rob.

You nailed it right there. You have to start from the ground up. The better the roots ("World, Sky, Aerodynamics, Cockpits"), the better the fruits (aircraft, airports, etc...).

Hey Alexis

I do not remember another sim put to the public eye at the pre-alpha stage. Asobo and MS say they did that to get early feedbacks from the community including  about their priorities now (Seasons, ATC, VR etc.). It is not when they are at the beta stage that anything we can say will matter, it is now.

Should we be patient ? Yes ! Should we  be vocal ? Yes.

 

Edited October 5, 20196 yr by domkle

Very well put Alexis, and I fully agree!

I sincerely hope FS 2020 can bring me back from the Dark Side ( War Thunder ) back to civil flightsimming which I completely got fed up with after so many disappointments... starting with the fate of MS FLIGHT in 2012...

P3d is rusty... mostly useless for me these days because I no longer use PSX and even ELITE just for beta testing, and P3D served basically as a "World Simulator" for those sims... 

X-Plane was a permanent cycle of enthusiasm followed by deception - a kind of simmer bi-polarity 🙂

Maybe FS2020, maybe.... Some part of me want's it to really become an Alternative!

How are you gonna make a gatekeeping wall of text full of false information and assumptions?

This is getting ridiculous...🤦‍♂️

People are really believing in their own minds whatever they type and then trying to pass it as factual points for others to believe I see. 

This seems to be a very common behavior on these forums unfortunately.

If I don’t know something from first hand experience I can actually prove..then  i’d rather not speak on it because it can be false misleading information. 

 

 

Edited October 5, 20196 yr by blueshark747

50 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

How are you gonna make a gatekeeping wall of text full of false information and assumptions?

This is getting ridiculous...🤦‍♂️

People are really believing in their own minds whatever they type and then trying to pass it as factual points for others to believe I see. 

This seems to be a very common behavior on these forums unfortunately.

If I don’t know something from first hand experience I can actually prove..then  i’d rather not speak on it because it can be false misleading information.   

 

 

Absolutely ! Avsim should restrict posting here to Microsoft press releases or quotations  from them .We can add also people who know the truth in their heart. Everything else should be severeley censored. It has worked well in the USSR after all.

According to Microsoft they have been reading the forums for years!

3 minutes ago, rjfry said:

According to Microsoft they have been reading the forums for years!

Hope nobody got blind !