What the heck was going on in Alpha/Beta?

[MattNischan 3,778]

44 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

How do you gain access to the SDK? I’d like to edit the taxiway names at my home airport.

To get the SDK, you need to:

• Enter Developer mode in the sim by going to Options -> Developer -> Developer Mode (switch it on)
• That will display a dev mode menu in the sim. Go to Help -> Download SDK
• A browser window should open and should start the download of the SDK. When that's done, run the file to install it (it is an MSI installer file)

I haven't tried the scenery editor, but you might not even have to download the SDK for that, I'm not sure. I think it might just be in the dev mode menu.

[Paraffin 2,197]

52 minutes ago, robert young said:

The solution is to divide testers up into specific tasks. A person might be interested in scenery and might even design some, but doesn't care too much for other aspects. Another tester will be a formidable pilot and interested solely in flight model assessment. It would be easy enough to direct these people into a "sub-forum" for testers so that important observations are not lost in the noise.

FYI, that's exactly how the Alpha test was set up. The private forum for testers started out as a "flat" design with all posts mixed together, but was soon changed to offer subcategories, so people could respond based on their interest or experience in different parts of the sim. There were subcategories for the aircraft models, for the weather, for the scenery, and so on. 

It may have ended up as functionally a stress test for the servers, since Asobo wasn't able to process the feedback in time for release. But at least from the tester side, it looked like the potential was there.

[MattNischan 3,778]

51 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Good.  In your opinion, can the current crop of default aircraft (at least the GA stuff) be "fixed" to be better than just "good enough"?  Have you done any experimenting?

It seems that way to me, so far. I've just been jamming on the DA40, as it's been my fav aircraft so far in the sim, and I've been able to get better pitch stability, more adverse yaw, a touch more power for more accurate climb rates, much more decreased control authority during slow flight and stalls so it mushes out a bit more. I've also been able to adjust the idle RPM down to 710 per the POH.

Looking at the gauge and glass panel files, I can see where I would add the ECU simulation so that the RPM properly auto-adjusts with the power setting. Haven't tackled that yet. I am a seasoned developer, but not of flight simulation software. So, that's the background I'm coming from, as far as gauging how difficult these adjustments are.

[RamonB 449]

3 hours ago, norman_99 said:

The real question should have been was anyone listening during Alph/Beta? From what I can put together seems the answer to that was a resounding no.

Correct!

[mtr75 653]

1 hour ago, LHookins said:

Our function was not primarily as bug finders.

Clearly.

[RamonB 449]

30 minutes ago, Flying Fisherman said:

16,000 people now flying in the officially released version and they didn't have to pay for it! I'm so envious. 😉

Correction: 15999 🤣
After the great experience I had with the Alpha, I'm still with P3D, and will stay here for a while!

I posted this many times here: MSFS2020 has great potential, but not just yet.

Edited August 19, 2020 by RamonB

[robert young 2,897]

51 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Good GRIEF!!  I don't care about TESTERS, I care about DEVELOPERS!  In this case, that would be YOU, Sir.  The initial testing has already been done.

Asobo had plenty of developers.  Probably every problem you can think of to come up with was covered at some point.  It's not that Asobo didn't know about them, it's that they couldn't fix them for whatever reason.

One thing I'm fairly certain of is that Asobo did not have any real experts in FSX/P3D flight model tuning, not experts to the extent they exist in the P3D world.  Those experts should be able to do a better job than Asobo if given the right tools.  So... are you in or are you out?

Hook

I'm not brimming with health at the moment so I'm limited in what I could do. It's as much as I can do to post here and there and run the sim before it crashes for some reason or another. But thanks for the vote of confidence.

[ShezA 176]

3 hours ago, B777ER said:

Based on the feedback about the controller assignment mess, I am pinning my hopes on FSUIPC as well. Curious, can you shut off your controls so the sim doesn't assign it anything like we can do in P3D so you can route it all through fsuipc?

Yes you can. Set up a controller profile called blank or whatever and remove all assignments. Then use this all the time. You have to do this with all the controllers or you will get interactions.

Word of caution there are a lot of default assignments which cause issues with controlling the aircraft. You have to do a seek and destroy on them or the flight is a mess.

Remember the sim allows multiple assignments to a key or joystick button so be careful.

[Adrian123 1,015]

I found the Controller assignment are the only struggle I'm having. Believe it's just a steep learning curve. I've thought to myself, how many people thought they were going to get an FSX with updated graphics. IT's A WHOLE NEW Sim. Just need to learn.

[ShezA 176]

1 minute ago, Adrian123 said:

I found the Controller assignment are the only struggle I'm having. Believe it's just a steep learning curve. I've thought to myself, how many people thought they were going to get an FSX with updated graphics. IT's A WHOLE NEW Sim. Just need to learn.

Agree. But once you have assigned the controllers it is great to fly. But FSUIPC is still a must.

[Holdit 551]

13 hours ago, buspelle said:

So many words of truth! I agree completley! This is, and what we see is the "danger" whan a developer sets a date i this case the 18 of augusti... This sim should have stayed under futher developlment for at least 4-6 months more! Thats for sure. 

This is why the "we'll release it when it's ready" approach, while it can be frustrating, is a better way to go. If MS really did release early because they were going for the virgin simmers market segment, I think that's a grave mistake. Buyers like that are likely to get frustrated, write the game off as a pile of poop and move on to something else, but leaving the MSFS reputation permanently tarnished. Only dedicated simmers are likely to stick around to see it become what it promises to be. IMHO, of course.

[shivers9 1,174]

14 hours ago, David Mills said:

I was an alpha/beta tester from day one. What disturbs me is that the performance issues many are experiencing -- including myself -- did not exist in any of the alpha or beta builds. This time two weeks ago, I was flying along at 4K on High settings and getting a good, steady 30FPS. Now, I suffer horrible stutters even if I lower my settings to the lowest possible resolution and level of detail. I didn't complain about performance during the testing because the performance was great during testing. I would truly love to know what happened in the final build preparation that led to these obvious setbacks. Many problems were reported and fixed. Many were reported and not fixed. But why would the release version contain performance issues never experienced in any of the test builds? We kept hearing about how "the release version will be optimized."

Thank you! As usual a straight and honest report. Very refreshing and thanks for trying to make things better.

[LHookins 3,103]

14 hours ago, David Mills said:

But why would the release version contain performance issues never experienced in any of the test builds? We kept hearing about how "the release version will be optimized."

What do you want to bet that they used our stress test for network and program optimization, then didn't fold all the changes into the release version? 😄 

It's also possible that the additional server load from all the new people caused more problems than expected.  Well, let's see how it goes from here.

Hook

[HiFlyer 9,358]

2 minutes ago, LHookins said:

t's also possible that the additional server load from all the new people caused more problems than expected.  Well, let's see how it goes from here.

Well.... Steam was reporting over 60,000 people on at once.......

[Paraffin 2,197]

1 minute ago, LHookins said:

It's also possible that the additional server load from all the new people caused more problems than expected.  Well, let's see how it goes from here.

That's what I've been wondering about -- how much of this is unoptimized code vs. server stress in the first days of the release.

In the Alpha, I had almost perfectly smooth flight with no stutters or pop-in, as long as i was flying over areas with photogrammetry-based buildings. It would occasional pause for a microsecond if I banked quickly, but not in level flight.

Oddly enough, I saw more stutters and very obvious terrain texture pop-in when flying in areas with just autogen or no buildings at all, which one would have thought should be easier on the graphics processing.

And now I'm seeing all these reports of bad stutters which seem to go beyond what many of us were seeing in the Alpha. It leads me to think at least part of it is server stress, which should be an easy (if expensive) fix for MS.

I remember saying in the Alpha that the make-or-break for at least some of us, was smooth liquid flight with no stutters or pop-in, even if we had to dial back the eye candy to get it.