I feel you guys but the participants respect the NDA so you wont get any info. Nice try though

2 hours ago, bashope said:

Well this guy just described the alpha in great detail (albeit in portuguese).

What does he say?!

24 minutes ago, Noooch said:

What does he say?!

I'm watching it using youtube subtitles (automatically translated in english). He is more or less confirming what already we know: you have the globe where you can select the airport, there is the real weather, you can see the real world traffic (but it is disabled for the moment), the flight physics...

At minute 8:00 circa, he is talking about interaction with ATC, but the subtitles are not perfect, therefore I'm not sure I've understood exactly.

3 hours ago, Baber20 said:

Someone posted pics of Tampa and Atlanta airport on facebook today. I downloaded the pics because I knew it would be removed as soon as the mod sees it. All I can say is that the product is very much in alpha and it will be long time before it is ready. Or they can leave that segment to the 3rd party devs.

Can you dm a brotha the pics?

9 hours ago, strider1 said:

A lot of people will be disappointed that XP did not die, but variety is the spice of life! XP will continue to be my simulator of choice for reasons I can not talk about. What XP needs to continue its momentum into the future is a revamp clouds/weather, an ATC fix and maybe some autogen tweaks along with some more region specific tress/scenery... It's foundation is solid!  

Agree on the foundation being solid!
My main gripe with XP is that some aspect of the simulation are reproduced extremely well while others totally ignored for no apparent reason.
So you have a simulator that excels in many things but with a few major downfalls which the developers or Austin never even want to talk about.

I'm part of the Tech Alpha 1 group and all I can say is that I have not uninstalled X-Plane yet 😁 (nor I plan to)
 

All those people who signed the NDA and are now breaking it should be ashamed of themselves. Microsoft trusted them to honour it and they are breaking that trust.

Should any be identified they should be thrown out of the program immediately. As a beta tester of other products I have always kept quiet about my involvement until the NDA was lifted. 

@Ray Proudfoot confirming to be part of the TA1 group is not breaking the NDA. Just in case you're referring to that.

Just now, peroni said:

@Ray Proudfoot confirming to be part of the TA1 group is not breaking the NDA. Just in case you're referring to that.

Were those who were accepted into that group required to sign an NDA? I’d be amazed if they weren’t.

Now you're asking for information I cannot share 🙂

 

good, bad, true or false returns from an alpha should not be taken seriously.

If the program could be perfect the first time, then there would be no need for a forum or alpha testers.

As Lionel says in Episode 1, the world is a big, big, big place. In addition to graphics, there is also weather, cockpits, physics, checklists, sound, IFR, etc.....

They are only 110-140 developers, and even if 20% of them spend time looking for bugs or defects, it would take years. And so there is alpha test 1, 2, maybe 3, then beta etc.... The objective in these tests is not to play, but to establish as complete a list as possible of what is not working.

And even when it comes out, the game won't be complete. that why we have a sdk and partnerships with third-party developers.

Many points of view are biased by will has taken everything to compare a robust game with 20 years of existence (x-plane) and an alpha vanilla of a new simulator, a new area that has just started and that will not be fully mature for several years.

What we have to look at, and this is the most important thing:
it is the foundations on how the world and the physical model are built: does it bring something new, and does it have potential?

 

2 minutes ago, peroni said:

Now you're asking for information I cannot share 🙂

 

I’ll assume you are a member of that group and have signed an NDA. You are an honourable person.

Those who are members of the TA1 group must surely be restricted in what they can say publicly. Screenshots would be a no-no I would have thought otherwise mayhem would follow. But stating they are members of the group may be as far as they are allowed to say.

Are there any other groups with different rules?

47 minutes ago, azulkb said:

good, bad, true or false returns from an alpha should not be taken seriously.

If the program could be perfect the first time, then there would be no need for a forum or alpha testers.

As Lionel says in Episode 1, the world is a big, big, big place. In addition to graphics, there is also weather, cockpits, physics, checklists, sound, IFR, etc.....

They are only 110-140 developers, and even if 20% of them spend time looking for bugs or defects, it would take years. And so there is alpha test 1, 2, maybe 3, then beta etc.... The objective in these tests is not to play, but to establish as complete a list as possible of what is not working.

And even when it comes out, the game won't be complete. that why we have a sdk and partnerships with third-party developers.

Many points of view are biased by will has taken everything to compare a robust game with 20 years of existence (x-plane) and an alpha vanilla of a new simulator, a new area that has just started and that will not be fully mature for several years.

What we have to look at, and this is the most important thing:
it is the foundations on how the world and the physical model are built: does it bring something new, and does it have potential?

 

This is exactly why I think the hype train needs to slow it's roll a little bit, when it comes to speculating about MSFS as some sort of high-fidelity Planetary Simulator of Everything (TM).  People are just setting unrealistic expectations that will ultimately disappoint them.

MSFS is still ultimately going to be constrained by the limits of satellite imagery, the swaths of the planet that have some photogrammetry data available, and whatever additional bits of detail the Azure AI can extrapolate from analyzing both.  The planet is 510 million square kilometres in size, with tens of thousands of airports.  That's going to leave a lot of places where the autogen or imagery isn't the best, or where the airports/surrounding scenery are spartan or generic.

Do I suspect it's going to look a million times better than P3D or XP "out of the box"? Absolutely.  At it's best, is it going to look better than either of those sims with all of the expensive visual add-ons in the world?  Yeah, I suspect it will - and it'll probably run way better too.  Will the flight model probably surprise people with how good it is - especially those expecting "a game"?  I'd put money on it.  I think the people expecting Microsoft Flight v2.0 are being condescending and arrogant about their platform of choice (the x-plane.org forum is an absolute riot to read, when it comes to this).

But like I said - I think people expecting it to come out and just become a quantum leap on all levels, are setting an impossible bar.  It'll come out, and Asobo will spend years cleaning up rough areas, iterating on the flight model, adding new manually-tuned scenery to the world, refining features, and so on.  And third parties will get to work filling in a lot of the gaps that are left too.  But all of that will be an endless work in progress.

Ray wrote: "

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Should any be identified they should be thrown out of the program immediately.

I am NOT part of the Test group, and I whole heartly agree with you. If they break the NDA, they should be banned from it, BUT if they (MS) decide to cut them out, how will they do it ? Can they somehow block the connection or remotely remove it from their HDD's or how is it possible to check that they can't use it anymore?

10 minutes ago, jlund said:

Ray wrote: "

I am NOT part of the Test group, and I whole heartly agree with you. If they break the NDA, they should be banned from it, BUT if they (MS) decide to cut them out, how will they do it ? Can they somehow block the connection or remotely remove it from their HDD's or how is it possible to check that they can't use it anymore?

They can. Trust me.

35 minutes ago, jlund said:

Ray wrote: "

I am NOT part of the Test group, and I whole heartly agree with you. If they break the NDA, they should be banned from it, BUT if they (MS) decide to cut them out, how will they do it ? Can they somehow block the connection or remotely remove it from their HDD's or how is it possible to check that they can't use it anymore?

We all have an IP address. That's one way of blocking it. Or a login name is another/ Microsoft will have thought of all this. They've been doing it longer than anyone else in all probability.

I really don't see the point of this topic. People will be under strict instructions as to what they can and cannot say. I don't see how anything not already in the public domain could be made public knowledge by any who have signed up for the Alpha testing. Hence why any screen shots have watermarks on them. Microsoft have thought of all that as you would expect them to.

And just for those of you thinking it - no, I did not sign up for the testing.