August 27th, 2020 - Development Update

[tweekz 2,165]

3 minutes ago, Slides said:

Time to learn German to get the latest updates on the sim lol

I can translate any time. 🙂

[Slides 1,552]

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Bill, is Asobo present in any shape or form here ? That is a scoop ! 

BTW there are a couple of the heinous type here, not more. The debates are often robust, rarely toxic.

We already know they read the forums.

[tweekz 2,165]

Just now, Slides said:

We already know they read the forums.

We need CSI Avsim to find out who they are. 😄

[pstrub 998]

15 hours ago, tweekz said:

For our german friends:

For the non-germans, here is a translation from the reddit post I stole it from: 😄
[...]

 

Watching right now, looking good! Most of what he's saying has been mentioned in earlier interviews (e.g. 14 Aug on the official MSFS youtube channel), but some details seem new to me. Anyway, one of the important things is he doesn't stop mentioning their dedication to the flightsim community, and their intentions to achieve a realistic simulation of aircraft. In another interview they also said that they're taking pilots' comments seriously.

Feel free to take this with a grain of salt or two (I do), and keep in mind that somewhere else he mentioned that their effort as the developers of the flight engine is better spent on improving the base of the simulation than modelling airplanes at study level, which is they leave to the specialists such as PMDG. I agree with that decision, but there might be some disagreement between us and them as to where the "cutoff point" of realism should be in the default aircraft. 

I for one hope that at some point the default GA aircraft receive some more attention to fix certain issues with the G1000 etc, like their weird behaviour when editing the flight plan, so that they can be used for true-to-life IFR operations. 

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by pstrub

[tweekz 2,165]

55 minutes ago, pstrub said:

I agree with that decision, but there might be some disagreement between us and them as to where the "cutoff point" of realism should be in the default aircraft.

This bothers me as well...

[Paraffin 2,197]

1 hour ago, pstrub said:

I agree with that decision, but there might be some disagreement between us and them as to where the "cutoff point" of realism should be in the default aircraft. 

It bothers me too. It's the right approach in theory, but they have to deliver. In at least one case with turboprop engine modeling, they haven't delivered. Apparently they just copied the FSX modeling as is.

So should 3rd party payware developers of turboprop planes wait for a better engine model from Asobo? Or should they start doing their own separate improved versions? Or worse, just start shoving out payware turboprop planes using the FSX engine model, with a hope that Asobo will eventually improve the turboprops?

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by Paraffin

[tweekz 2,165]

30 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

It bothers me too. It's the right approach in theory, but they have to deliver. In at least one case with turboprop engine modeling, they haven't delivered. Apparently they just copied the FSX modeling as is.

So should 3rd party payware developers of turboprop planes wait for a better engine model from Asobo? Or should they start doing their own separate improved versions? Or worse, just start shoving out payware turboprop planes using the FSX engine model, with a hope that Asobo will eventually improve the turboprops?

They should contact ASOBO if they plan on improving the turboprop model in the near future. Then they can maka e decision.

[pstrub 998]

32 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

It bothers me too. It's the right approach in theory, but they have to deliver. In at least one case with turboprop engine modeling, they haven't delivered. Apparently they just copied the FSX modeling as is.

Yes, they have to deliver. But I think we can all agree that it was a rushed release, and this means there are many open issues left to solve. There are plenty of reasons to criticise them for it, but right now it is what it is. I'm going to hold my judgement back until I see how they handle it the next couple of months. For now I have to admit I'm really enjoying the VFR experience... 

Which turboprop engine is it? And are there any turboprop engine aircraft in MSFS that use a different modeling than the (apparently) copied FSX one?

Edited August 29, 2020 by pstrub
typo

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

4 hours ago, tweekz said:

We need CSI Avsim to find out who they are. 😄

Jayne and Skeedorr, the two community managers, are registered on AVSIM. I don't know about anyone from Asobo, but then you don't need an account to read the threads in here.

3 hours ago, pstrub said:

I agree with that decision, but there might be some disagreement between us and them as to where the "cutoff point" of realism should be in the default aircraft.

I'm wondering if right now people would prefer if they pushed their resources into improving the airliners, which are most definitely going to be replaced with add-ons for those who need study-level aircraft, or into further improving the GA aircraft that are already so close to payware quality. Personally I'm leaning towards the latter, assuming that enough functionality is exposed for those study-level aircraft to be delivered by third-party developers.

[SlowFlyer 78]

I know they had (have) 200 people working on MSFS, I wonder when they will start to scale back that number? I hope it's not for a while.

I like the idea they are focused on making the base program stable, and hopefully, they will continue to add and develop as many perimeters in the base that will allow 3rd party developers to make greater aircrafts.

I don't expect the default airplanes to be totally study-level as long as they fly believable, and can come close to stated published numbers for the particular aircraft.

As long as they provide the tools, the base, etc to push this sim forward, I am sure in another 6-8 months, we will be even more impressed. The modders and 3rd parties will make this sim even better.

The cake's frosting will make people take a bite, but the foundation of the cake needs to taste good to get people to take another bite. 

**Half-full/half empty view can change by the hour depending on what people are focusing on. 

[kaosfere 3,115]

8 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

The debates are often robust, rarely toxic.

Sorry, but I wonder how you can have read the sturm und drang around this release here and not see toxicity oozing out of the pores.  There have been many people showing a massive sense of entitlement, impatience, and perfect willingness to rage while demonstrating they don't remotely have any understanding of software development or the realities of the video game industry.

Don't get me wrong:  Avsim is a great place, a valuable resource to the community, and I've been happily coming here for years even if I usually read *much* more than I post.  And I think we have the most intelligent, experienced, and informed userbase in the flight sim community.   But we also have a reputation elsewhere for arrogance and toxicity and sometimes it shows.

If you've looked at reddit over the past week, for example, its been full of folks sharing fun content and the joy they've had playing with the new sim.   Here, though, has been page after page after page of people wanting to take Asobo to The Hague because their favorite feature isn't working right.

This place is usually really great.  But sometimes it's really not.  I'm sorry if that's an unpopular statement, but it's how I see it.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

We should stick to the topic at hand and the the things that matter (the sim itself) and stop discussing whether or not people have the right to a negative opinion, that is what is getting old (not the fact that some people have contrary opinions). This forum is no different than 95% of every other forum, someone says something someone else does not like, and then they start trying to 'mute' that person's opinion. It's hardly toxic to point out issues or to state an opinion, toxic is when people start name calling over someone's opinion (which is silly).

The truth is this sim has some aspects in it that are almost a masterpiece, but other aspects that are a bit frustrating. Every forum and every debate in history has conflict (whether politics, sports, flying, etc...), that's just part of life. Some people are just venting from frustration, and sometimes rightly so.

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by SceneryFX

[BigDee 119]

Just my 2 cents on the translation, to give a second view: Not complete, but the main points should be there:

 

00:25
Question: The game has released but that doesnt mean that you have finished, the whole game is made for upcoming many years But to be precise, what will happen next what will be improved?
Answer:
You are right, this is the start of our path, we are very happy how good everythig has arrived (translated: how well the people have welcomed the game). This moment, we listen very much, we are watching a lot of videos, we read a lot. That is mainly what we have done the last year. We had the Alpha. We have listened a lot. We had helpher and they gave us a lot of feedback and this will continue in the future. We will listen a lot the upcoming months and we will make updates what people will show us. There are so many examples, there are people, they fly the simulator and tell us, "Hey something is not right with the airplane and then they tell us, "Hey I`m flying this weekend the real airplane and I will let you know what the differences are. We receive E-Mails and phones and we really do that. It`s about everything beeing accurate and to make things the right way, just like with the planet. People say, this building looks different. Thank you, we will do this.

We have basically three categories where we will make something new. We want to make every month something new, I call it something that has substance. You can imagine, the world is scanned right now and we get new data... The world will be improved. We will make new regions every few months. We pick every few moths a region in the world, where we will have new data and this will look better. We will build hand-made airports or bush strips.We make new activites, We want people to motivate to see parts of the world that are not very well known.

The second category, we call this sim update.
Meteoblue, weather data, We get weather data by Meteoblue, flight data from Flightaware.
We receive charts from Navblue, we look at turbulence data. We have a lot of data and we look on it. We have the digital twin, the planet earth.

The planet is big, and we know there are many things we can do for the next months. We know the charts are coming, then there is obstacle data. This are the things that are coming from the next months. ...The winter is coming, this is in our roadmap.
So that is basically this what we are doing. This is our priority list.

04:35 min:
Question: How are things looking concerning the extensions? Will you focus on the technology and the main data and modder and  partner for airplanes and airports? Will you put this to the hands on those external people and you stay on the ground structure of the game? How should one image this?
Answer: You have to imagine it this way: There is a SDK, this are exactly the same thing that we are working on. People are very creative, we are excited to that. Those people have made over the years 1500 planes and there are 1000 airports. This is their hobby. They want to put the plane to the new simulator, this is what we want to offer, we are trying to help them. You have to expect a lot of airplanes and airports. And you must know we listen to them and we try to offer them the software for their creativity. You know we have to do things like supersonic or if we want to do something with helicopters we have to do it.
... There are 10 000 heliports in the world. Then we have to do it, who else should do it? It`s difficult to make this at whole. This is what are totally focusing, likely almost like a new sim.

...

Question:
FS is a long term projects, that will be developed for further years. How many active people are actually developing the game now?
-Thas is difficult to say, the main team contains about 200 people, but we need the external people, the weather guys from Schwitzerland the ML team from Austria, the Bing guys from Seattle, but not only in Seattle, we work with our Microsoft China team, for voice simulation and it`s called voice congnive services. If you look at the credits, you will see there are 1000 people and there are more coming. We need experts.

 

 

---

 

Contentwise not fully translated and. the YouTube translator is actually quietly good, plus the masterchief mixes sometimes or better say too many times English words.

Edited August 29, 2020 by BigDee

[PurdueKev 159]

On 8/27/2020 at 5:28 PM, David Mills said:

Asobo is now focused on the XBOX version. That's where their attention is. That's where their time will be spent hereafter. If you want major updates to the sim, buy an XBOX Series X and the XBOX version of Flight Simulator when it's released. Our current PC version is simply the continuation of the beta testing.

I'm shocked, shocked that there is idle and completely uninformed speculation on an internet forum...

[JNS 106]

On 8/27/2020 at 5:08 PM, snwboardn said:

Auto pilot, real world weather. this is just the announcement for a patch next week... Doesn't bode well for the future for sure. Could be October or later before we see substantial updates to the sim if this gives us any glimpse into their cadence. 

It seemed to me that most people thought this sim wouldn't be released until the end of the year anyway.  I don't understand the big deal.