45 minutes ago, robert young said:

Not quite. I do remember getting 5 frames per second on FSX's first launch. And you are right, it had to wait until CPUs and graphics cards caught up. But it did have a replay, you could plan flights and see navaids, and the B737 wasn't too bad for its time. The smaller aircraft have exactly the same issues as now - absurdly unstable in pitch and not very good flight models, but there was a lot to very easily tweak and all of that was sorted quite quickly by freeware tweakers and 3rd parties.

The big problem with this sim is that marketing skills, and the use of largely word not allowed gamers as content admirers with almost no discernment or critical faculties, has driven the hype on this sim to ludicrous heights. And because everyone WANTS it to be wonderful (including me) we arrive at a seminal example of group think, where the slightest criticism is met with disdain or disapproval, as though Asobo was some charity bent on some altruistic intent.

NDA's which block honest assessments by some quite capable people are a bad idea. NDAs originated through the desire to protect genuine innovation or methodologies that needed to be protected. But the methodologies here have been fully publicised, except that some of them turned out to be not quite so revolutionary.

It will mostly be ironed out in time, but it is just another example of marketing overwhelming objective observation.

 

 

You're describing what all game development is. Who would you rather review this sim? Someone with an audience of thousands or dozens? All of this is needed for flight sims to survive. You can't live inside a bubble built by Austin and expect flight sims to evolve.

Beta is an understatement. I had 17 tickets opened, got response to one and it was so poor I literally LOL'ed and gave up.This whole process was a total sham. I'm chilling with a popcorn in my hands for the next several days. 

20 minutes ago, langly said:

After spending 24 hours with it now, the excitement honestly wore off after exploring my hometown (which looks amazing) and boredom kinda sank in. This is probably due to the lack of 3rd party addons right now, but it will not be my main sim (although I won't stop playing it, either).

The Good:

• The sim has amazing scenery, lighting, and weather... the best we've ever seen and it's not even remotely close.
• The flight modeling is also top notch and the possibilities of 3rd party developers looks bright
• The default GA planes are fun and beautiful (despite a bunch of INOP switches)

The Bad:

• The UI is complete trash when it comes to usability; although it looks nice, it's completely unintuitive in a lot of places. For example, when binding a key that's already bound, it doesn't unbind the original, leaving you with 2 actions bound to 1 key. In what world was this missed during the alpha/beta?! Then there's the camera system which could have a 200 page manual written for it and you'd still not know how it all functions. 
• There's no (obvious) way to change your plane or airport other than exiting out to the main menu and restarting your flight, which is a 2 minute endeavor just to load in (hint: the dev menu allows you to change your plane mid-flight).
• The sim stutters and textures are slow to load, with blurries appearing all around the aircraft. As mentioned in the OP, the autopilot is a complete crapshoot on whether it even works depending on the plane you're in. 
• I was unable to customize weather mid flight while in a Group which sucked. There's no way to see on the VFR map where my friend was when flying, so we had to enable the large and ugly nameplates despite the world map showing their exact location

The list goes on and on with very basic things that I'm sure were reported during the alpha and beta. This game was simply not ready to release but I have to think Asobo knew this but was under pressure from MS to get it out the door.

Interesting post. And interesting because not a single one of those glowing YouTube videos ever mentioned your reasonable observations. This is exactly what I meant earlier by the Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone is allowed to comment in advance but only if they are utterly uncritical. All that does is store up resentment in the future. Some might disagree with some of the points you make, but that's fine - they can counter-argue or point out workarounds.

And to be sure, I REALLY DO want this sim to be successful and I recognise its merits. But as usual in this business, the marketing and control freakery based around marketing hype is censoring intelligent discussion, and that will backfire, as it already appears to be doing. You cannot release software which is fault free. So the solution is to stop the hype and simply announce what is achievable and what needs fixing. Honesty is the best policy and in the end will make more friends who will put their hands in pockets.

2 hours ago, MattNischan said:

There's definitely something funky going on here. I have yet to have AP not work in an aircraft.

There are definitely things to be improved. The vectoring and capabilities exceed the P3D and FSX ATC at the moment. The phraseology and voices are a bit basic, though. Overall, it's a step up.

This is definitely an accessibility issue for sure. The nav data is up to date though, so using AirNav or SkyVector you can get any radio frequencies you might need.

In the G1000, you need to set the CDI properly. In order to do that, click the G1000 softkey on the PFD (the left big screen display) labeled CDI (or Active Nav on the G3000) until the thing that you want to track (NAV1, NAV2, or GPS) is what is selected. Then, pressing NAV on the AP with the AP enabled will track that.

Note that the G1000 does not auto-tune radios to VORs. So, if you have VOR waypoints and you want to follow those instead of just the GPS, you'll need to tune those yourself (as in the real planes).

That one I haven't seen yet.

First attempt at a 'proper' flight for me today.  In the TBM, using ATC.   

 

No matter what I did, I could not get the autopilot to engage.  The button on the panel wouldn't work so I tried binding it to a button on my joystick and that didn't work either.  I don't know if it's just the TBM, something I'd done wrong or whether they're all like that. 

 

The ATC was a bit of a shambles.  More often than not there was no sound from the ATC, nor my response but every now and then it worked OK but very rarely.  When flying near to airport's ATC would (in silence) constantly ask me to contact a different frequency, and then back again and then back again until I was far enough away to just stick with one. 

 

Really disappointed that the ap didn't work on the TBM (I tried shutting down and restarting) and that there was limited sound from the atc.  

 

Just hope this gets fixed soon. 

I find myself nodding in agreement with some of the critique mentioned.  So much needs fixing and patching, which I guess should be expected, but not to the extent we now need. There appears to be a complete lack of common sense in terms of navigating the user interface. I thought after the install fiasco it would be plain sailing but actually the install was a sign of things to come. It’s great to have the game but I’m so glad I didn’t pay the full amount for it from the get go. I’ll dip in from time to time to keep an eye on progress but realistically await nearer Christmas before it might be fit for purpose. 

16 minutes ago, robert young said:

Interesting post. And interesting because not a single one of those glowing YouTube videos ever mentioned your reasonable observations. This is exactly what I meant earlier by the Emperor's New Clothes. Everyone is allowed to comment in advance but only if they are utterly uncritical. All that does is store up resentment in the future. Some might disagree with some of the points you make, but that's fine - they can counter-argue or point out workarounds.

And to be sure, I REALLY DO want this sim to be successful and I recognise its merits. But as usual in this business, the marketing and control freakery based around marketing hype is censoring intelligent discussion, and that will backfire, as it already appears to be doing. You cannot release software which is fault free. So the solution is to stop the hype and simply announce what is achievable and what needs fixing. Honesty is the best policy and in the end will make more friends who will put their hands in pockets.

We all knew there were bugs but is it the end of the line for the sim? Absolutely not. Some of his concerns are subjective as far as the ui being bad. I don't have any stutters or blurry textures and I'm running 4k on high settings. I7 10700k @ 5ghz, 32gb ram, nvme and 2080 super 

14 minutes ago, Slides said:

Chill on the CTD forum for P3D.

P3D v4.5 is very stable - no CTDs.

P3D v5 was stable after HF1 (2 weeks after release?), and even more so after HF2.

The noise about CTDs with P3D v5 was mainly due to substandard hardware and incompatible addons inappropriately used, plus a bit of trolling from fans of another upcoming sim (plus people repeating that trolling as though it was fact because 'they heard it on the internet').

I haven't had a P3D CTD in over a month, but I've had two with MSFS so far in 24 hours (one after removing a USB device, one after an hour of 747 flying). It's significantly less stable than P3D v5, and that's without any addons.

Interesting comments, some people having fewer issues than me with the game. Does anyone know what the issue is with autopilot altitude? My planes literally plummet out the sky when autopilot is turned on. If I can fix that it would be a huge improvement! 

23 minutes ago, badger2000 said:

First attempt at a 'proper' flight for me today.  In the TBM, using ATC.   

 

No matter what I did, I could not get the autopilot to engage.  The button on the panel wouldn't work so I tried binding it to a button on my joystick and that didn't work either.  I don't know if it's just the TBM, something I'd done wrong or whether they're all like that. 

In the simulated (and real) TBM, there is an autopilot master switch in the overhead console that must be turned on for the autopilot to function. This is not the standard autopilot engage/disengage switch. The overhead switch is turned on before takeoff, and turned off after landing. 

34 minutes ago, Slides said:

You're describing what all game development is. Who would you rather review this sim? Someone with an audience of thousands or dozens? All of this is needed for flight sims to survive. You can't live inside a bubble built by Austin and expect flight sims to evolve.

I would rather someone reviewed any software who is 1) reasonably intelligent 2) is not swayed by marketing 3) has no vested interest, or the minimum vested interest 4) Has no discernable agenda based on prior preference or bias towards a competing product 5) is not blind to obvious flaws that need to be observed 6) is not influenced by any statement made by anyone else but can make his or her mind up 7) And most important is a torch bearer for the rejection of group think or fear to express through fear of disapproval.

All of which can be expressed in a perfectly civil way without offending anyone.

I have no idea what the Austin comment is about. I have no agenda or in-built preference for anything in this context.

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by robert young

31 minutes ago, Drumcode said:

Beta is an understatement. I had 17 tickets opened, got response to one and it was so poor I literally LOL'ed and gave up.This whole process was a total sham. I'm chilling with a popcorn in my hands for the next several days. 

It's pretty clear at this point that Asobo was overwhelmed with this project and the agressive release timing. The beta period was a joke, and basically all of the bugs are in final. Thank Microsoft.

1 minute ago, robert young said:

I would rather someone reviewed any software who is 1) reasonably intelligent 2) is not swayed by marketing 3) has no vested interest, or the minimum vested interest 4) Has no discernable agenda based on prior preference or bias towards a competing product 5) is no blind to obvious flaws that need to be observed 6) is not influenced by any statement made by anyone else but can make his or her mind up 7) And most important is a torch bearer for the absolutely unacceptable notion of group think or fear to express through fear of disapproval.

All of which can be expressed in a perfectly civil way without offending anyone.

I have no idea what the Austin comment is about. I have no agenda or in-built preference for anything in this context.

Like i said you don't understand the YouTuber and streaming community. They're not doing official reviews. Your issue is not with MSFS but with gaming culture and media. That's fine but you're behind the times. 

The review proccess happens right here, right now, and it's pretty mixed I'd say.

4 minutes ago, robert young said:

I would rather someone reviewed any software who is 1) reasonably intelligent 2) is not swayed by marketing 3) has no vested interest, or the minimum vested interest 4) Has no discernable agenda based on prior preference or bias towards a competing product 5) is not blind to obvious flaws that need to be observed 6) is not influenced by any statement made by anyone else but can make his or her mind up 7) And most important is a torch bearer for the rejection of group think or fear to express through fear of disapproval.

All of which can be expressed in a perfectly civil way without offending anyone.

I have no idea what the Austin comment is about. I have no agenda or in-built preference for anything in this context.

In other words you want someone to echo your thoughts. Interesting.

Just now, Colonel X said:

The review proccess happens right here, right now, and it's pretty mixed I'd say.

Lol the reach of Avsim vs the general gaming media is a bit skewed. And not in Avsim's favor