Asobo, Acknowledge Our Bugs & Issues!

[Nyxx 6,992]

4 hours ago, Jimbo_in_Thailand said:

ABSOLUTELY!!!  And as a l-o-n-g-t-i-m-e flightsimmer and former pilot and aircraft owner I'm extremely disappointed, and for many reasons.  While I think everyone expected a bug or 2 at launch, it's obvious that this beyond buggy sim was released waaaaaaay too early.  I've literally spent more time diagnosing CTD problems and waiting for the sim to load and reload than I have spent flying.  I've researched and researched and jumped through hoop after hoop after hoop and still have CTD problems loading certain scenery areas.  In fact, my hometown Charlotte, NC, (airport KCLT) simply refuses to complete loading and crashes to desktop EVERY TIME.  At first I thought it must be an Azure/server problem so I manually cached the area on my hard drive.  Still no joy so it must be yet another bug.  OTOH when it works it's gorgeous so it's beyond frustrating.

I am sure your very frustrated, but to add sadly to it, I downloaded it from release and not had one CTD over 20 hours flight time now and that’s not including the hours spent setting up. If you getting CTD all the time, am afraid it more than likely your end because if everyone was getting them like you the forum’s would be full of reports.

I hope you can sort it out, but I’ve  never seen one so far.

[Alpine Scenery 1,607]

2 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

I am sure your very frustrated, but to add sadly to it, I downloaded it from release and not had one CTD over 20 hours flight time now and that’s not including the hours spent setting up. If you getting CTD all the time, am afraid it more than likely your end because if everyone was getting them like you the forum’s would be full of reports.

I hope you can sort it out, but I’ve  never seen one so far.

I've had one CTD that occurred randomly while I was messing around, but none while flying. I was on a brand new PC and had played Red Dead Redemption 2 for many hours without any issues, as well as a couple other games. So there are a FEW CTD issues, but they seem pretty rare and are probably related more to config and video drivers or specific hardware.

[Jimbo_in_Thailand 12]

2 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

You are not Asobo's customer base.

NOPE, sorry but you are definitely mistaken.  First, I merely expect the sim to work out of the box and without jumping through a gazillion hoops and still having it crash to desktop when simply loading some flights.  Any customer should expect that, wouldn't you agree?

Second,  MSFS 2020 is supposed to be a legitimate revival of the original MSFS franchise. As such, its customer base will indeed include old fart flightsimmers and pilots... like me.  Of course, M$ did try producing an Xbox style flight 'game' a few years ago hoping to milk the Xbox golden goose market and it was a MASSIVE FAIL.  It was called Microsoft Flight.  Thankfully M$ learned its lesson and MSFS 2020 is true to its roots. 😊

Now then, I fully expect M$/Asobo to fix the bugs as time goes by.  When it does I do believe it's going to be excellent.  In fact, I'm amazed at how gorgeous and realistic it looks when it actually loads a flight.  But for now, for many of us, it ain't quite ready for prime-time and was released much too early.

Cheers from Thailand! 👍😁

[MagentaChild 226]

Acknowledged.

[Jimbo_in_Thailand 12]

33 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

I am sure your very frustrated, but to add sadly to it, I downloaded it from release and not had one CTD over 20 hours flight time now and that’s not including the hours spent setting up. If you getting CTD all the time, am afraid it more than likely your end because if everyone was getting them like you the forum’s would be full of reports.

I hope you can sort it out, but I’ve  never seen one so far.

You're right, it could be from "my end" except that I'm not having problems with X-Plane, DCS, IL-2, or any other game or program for that matter.  And I've run every diagnostic on my computer that I can think of with no errors.  In fact, many others are having the same CTD problem so I ain't alone.

Cheers from Thailand! 😊

[Nyxx 6,992]

1 minute ago, Jimbo_in_Thailand said:

You're right, it could be from "my end" except that I'm not having problems with X-Plane, DCS, IL-2, or any other game or program for that matter.  And I've run every diagnostic on my computer that I can think of with no errors.  In fact, many others are having the same CTD problem so I ain't alone.

Cheers from Thailand! 😊

The joys of every PC being different sadly. I feel your frustration.

[GSalden 4,511]

2 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

Is this an Eye Candy Simulator or a Flight Simulator?  Which do YOU guys want? 

You cannot have both ; it is all about balance between eyecandy and performance.

All other flightsims have shown that and there are no miracle solutions to have both at max.

Eyecandy and slower GA will work. Fast jetliners with complex systems and Max eyecandy will have issues with Max eyecandy. The default jets with glass cockpits all show smooth gauges but with a stuttering outside world.

Beside that : it will take many months + enhanced SDK before a 3rd party jetliner will enter MSFS :

https://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/155177-aerosoft-microsoft-flight-simulator-developments/&do=findComment&comment=992224
 

Bottomline : be realistic with what you expect 🤓

[Ricardo41 5,733]

1 hour ago, carmined said:

This should be required reading before people spread misinformation:

1. We are making Microsoft Flight Simulator. Emphasis on the word SIMULATOR.
2. Designed for PC, optimized for multiplatform support (e.g. Xbox).
3. Yes. We are supporting 3rd Party Content Development and Community Content creation. We are aware of the concerns in the current eco-system and are working to address them.
4. Yes. We genuinely want to work closely with the community in the development of this title.
5. Accessibility is important to us. Whatever your abilities are, if you want to fly, we are going to do whatever we can to make that happen. Yoke and pedals, mouse and keyboard, controller, etc. No pilot should be left behind.

SOURCE:

https://www.flightsimulator.com/june-20th-2019/

Are you guys really THAT clueless.

Here's a reminder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQaVIoEjOM

[Agrajag 283]

Sorry guys, but I totally disagree with the OP's approach on this one. I also understand the frustration and do agree that this product was released too soon. Again, we may never know why, but 95% of the comments I've read surrounding that just don't ring true. The game was released on the 18th. NINE days later they tell us that a stability patch (and called it that specifically) is coming a mere week later. I think we can all understand that blockers MUST be the priority at the moment. We are mainly struggling with autopilot issues, controller issues, graphical issues and yet a large number of people still can't even get the game installed. Heck a few posts here are complaining about CTD's and they may very well be addressed in a "stability" patch. Plus they claim to be fixing the one thing, SimConnect, that will allow COUNTLESS products to extend the game as we see it. VATSIM, FSUIPC, planes, utilities, etc. 

What this update tells me is that they're busy handling the priorities in order. The stuff I'm annoyed by, as I've said elsewhere, I hope to have fixed before the year is out. I've now flown over 25 hours and the first five were a mess. After that it improved and the last 10 or 15 have been fairly pretty stable and incredibly impressive. I'm a VATSIMer and look forward to getting on there, but I won't be able to do it as I want to until we get the Dash or a CRJ/ERJ. Yet, there's ZERO way I go back to X-Plane or move to P3D right now. It'd be like going back to exclusively walking after learning to drive.

We gain virtually nothing for Asobo to say, "We know there are other bugs like, X, Y and Z." Do you suspect they don't know this? Their official twitter and discord channel are filled with those bugs as is Zendesk and these and other forums. They know. They also have to know that this product doesn't grow if those things don't get fixed in a timely fashion. We may argue about what "timely" means, but I've worked with way too many developers that put out a bug-laden product and then disappear for months on end with zero feedback about those bugs and the process. Asosbo seems, to me, to be showing us that they're working hard on things and will be releasing patches in a time frame I can work with. 

Again, I'm not even going to begin to get antsy until the end of the year -- which is when I (and 99% of us) expected this product to even remotely have a shot at being released. I'm actually glad to have gotten the game early instead of having to just make due with five more months of speculation, etc.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Agrajag

[Elvensmith 165]

The problem with this title, is just when you start warming to it again, something else pees you off.

Yesterday evening just got set up for a nice short VFR flight and found my joystick was not steering the plane, to the point where it lurched to the right off the runway. (I have P factor dialled right down). Off into the sensitivity menu to waggle the various axis and hit F11 to save. No joy, same thing. Tried it with the Xbox Controller, ditto.

Loaded up XP11 then FSX, joystick working perfectly.

I'm really starting to think MS need to pull this, give it back to Asobo and tell them to finish/fix it as at present it's barely fit for purpose (and a £60 purpose at that).

 

[Der Zeitgeist 1,575]

30 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

Again, I'm not even going to begin to get antsy until the end of the year -- which is when I (and 99% of us) expected this product to even remotely have a shot at being released. I'm actually glad to have gotten the game early instead of having to just make due with five more months of speculation, etc.

Yep, couldn't agree more.

I'm currently treating this thing mostly as a Cessna simulator, and I'm having a great time doing so. If things like VNAV, missing avionics features and correct engine and fuel burn specs are implemented over the next few weeks, I'm fine with that.

[Evros 310]

Lets take it easy on Asobo. Their are just hired guns. Development studios are often forced to push out unfinished content because marketing thugs from the publishers end (Microsoft) have their corporate agendas to meet.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Evros

[Agrajag 283]

50 minutes ago, Evros said:

Lets take it easy on Asobo. Their are just hired guns. Development studios are often forced to push out unfinished content because marketing thugs from the publishers end (Microsoft) have their corporate agendas to meet.

That's the part a lot people are missing, though it's easy to empathize with the sentiments. In the 2000s Flight Simulator dominated the sales charts on PC. People may forget that, but no matter what hot product came out, 95% of the time, Flight Simulator was still #1 in the charts month-in, month-out. The reality is it generated $50 million a year, every year -- even in the years they didn't have a release. That's a lot of cash for any entity and that means a lot of pressure. To believe Asobo was calling the shots here strains credulity. It suggests that they are incompetent (total nonsense when you look at their history -- Disney doesn't rehire slouches, for one example) or patently sinister for unleashing this as is. Asobo, like nearly all of us, had a date to hit and knowing most publishers practices, it was probably always an unrealistic schedule. Why that is involves countless variables. Perhaps Asobo was responsible for assuming FS was just another game with some minor-to-medium extra complexities (wrong) or Microsoft thought this would be easier given that Asobo would be given the keys to an existing code base (which may very well have been more an anchor than a sail since much of it would have been at least 10 years out of date). Perhaps it was a bit of both. Bottom line to me remains, I would rather have this product in this state than to have five more months of just posting about it. This way we get to see it evolve -- first hand. My thinking is that, later on we're going to look back like we have with nearly all products in this category and say, "Wow, remember what a mess that first release was? It's incredible to realize how far it's come."

[March Hare 720]

2 hours ago, Elvensmith said:

 

I'm really starting to think MS need to pull this, give it back to Asobo and tell them to finish/fix it as at present it's barely fit for purpose (and a £60 purpose at that).

 

That won't happen. Microsoft are the publisher. They wanted it released in whatever state it was in at the time. I can bet a few pennies that the development team at Asobo would have loved -- and maybe even requested from Microsoft -- to have more time.

I've said it before here, my brother is a games developer, so I know what it's like: the frustration he experiences sometimes, with their hands being tied by the publisher. And I mean to the extent that the developers are telling the publisher this game won't run on this portable system because the graphical assets are too complex for the hardware to handle (too many polygons in the model, high res textures), with the publisher's reply being no, you must use the same assets as the PC version and somehow get it running smoothly on this vastly less powerful system you're converting it to. True story.

The power of the publisher and their executives can often be absolute, to the detriment of the software (and sanity of the programmers).

Also, that's what post-release patches are for, right? 😉 You know, like you used to get on arcade machines, Spectrum cassette tapes and Sega games cartridges... Oh, wait...

Edited August 28, 2020 by March Hare

[Agrajag 283]

I'll tell you guys a true story about one of our clients from years past and how crazy things can get. Many of you (except, I find, the young members) will remember Sierra On-Line. For a decently long period they were once the top publisher in the industry having produced a line of extremely successful titles like the King's Quest series, Space Quest, Hero's Quest, a Nascar sim and even a highly-respected flight sim, Pro Pilot. Look at the image at the bottom of the post from 1997 and you'll get a sense of why it was so respected.

Anyway, out of nowhere Sierra had suddenly found themselves in an odd situation where several of their flagship products were suddenly being hammered for being riddled with major bugs on release. Title after title it kept happening and they couldn't seem to find the issue. They called my company and I decided to go out myself to see if I could find out what was going on (given that Sierra wasn't just a small shop). I got out there and watched the QA team busy at work on their latest unreleased title. I watched, first-hand as several QA department testers encountered crashes and didn't seem to record any details. Strange, but then again perhaps they already knew about this issue and were looking into something else. Happens all the time, but then it kept happening over and over. I finally got a few minutes alone with the team and asked several of the testers why this was happening this way and the response was concerning. All of them said the same thing with only the specific wording varying slightly: "If we submit that bug we know the coders won't be able to address it quickly enough and we'll miss our ship date." Uh, this is QA. If you know nothing about QA, QA people are notorious for not giving a darn about ship dates. We'd be just as happy if the product almost never ships as our goal is to release a perfect product (which doesn't exist). So this was a rather striking comment to encounter. I then asked each of them why they were so concerned about the release date and their response was utterly jaw-dropping: "If we don't hit the release date, we don't get our bonuses." WHAT?!?!?

So I started looking into that end of it. Bonuses for the QA team if they hit the release date? That's rather contrary to their core purpose. Upon further digging I found out that the execs in the marketing department had "figured out" that the gating variable to them hitting their desired dates in the past was the QA team so they ended around the system and offered them bonuses that they knew would essentially get them to look the other way -- and they were no small bonuses either. Once John Williams found out (the brother of the founder and head of development) he went ballistic and changed course. Needless to say the problem went away.

The moral of the story is, never underestimate the power and ingenuity of the non-coders to end around the system to get what they need to get done.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Agrajag