September 17th, 2020 - Development Update

[snglecoil 1,828]

Everybody just needs to relax. If you listen to all of the interviews that Jorg and Sebastian are doing, they have made if very clear that this is a 10 year project.

....and it looks like they fully intend to use ALL10 years to deliver everything we thought (or was it "lead to believe" from the feature discovery videos?) was going to be included on day 1 🙃

 

[Ted Striker 338]

9 hours ago, rtodepart said:

My few encounters in real life with Textron had been nothing but good experience... one thing i can tell you im pretty sure they just didn’t made a pretty video to full people for fun there has to be some future plans . 
we know this thing was released a bit early then we expected so lets wait and see..

I agree with you but I am surprised that Textron released that video about how realistic the planes are considering how the current issues with them. I would love to see an interview with Textron and Asobo about the plans for the flight characteristics and systems programming of the default aircraft. I know that Asobo is not intending to produce aircraft with complex systems but the current ones have serious basic issues. I just hope they intend to make them functionally better than the default FSX planes with regards to the systems and flight characteristics.

Ted 

[snglecoil 1,828]

11 hours ago, Ted Striker said:

How do you get the version with the planes that fly like the real things that those Textron engineers have?

Ted

To be fair the video really highlighted how realistically the Textron planes look. And I have to say they do look exquisite!

Now the poor test pilot they briefly featured in the video might be wishing he wasn’t included in the final cut.

[Ted Striker 338]

15 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

To be fair the video really highlighted how realistically the Textron planes look. And I have to say they do look exquisite!

Now the poor test pilot they briefly featured in the video might be wishing he wasn’t included in the final cut.

I agree that it was focused on the appearance of the planes except for the one test pilot's comment. I do like the enthusiasm that the Textron staff has for the new sim and the fact that the test pilot has been flying MSFS since 1995. I just hope he got on the phone with Asobo after the release and said "What the heck the happened? We can't have our name on planes functioning like those from FS95. Let's get these right."

Ted

[snglecoil 1,828]

Next month's Partnership Series: Garmin Aviation. ☠️

[FlyingInACessna 656]

7 hours ago, JDWalley said:

I read...

The team is actively working to provide updates for these issues, along with an updated Feedback Snapshot (expect updated Feedback Snapshot to be released on 09.24).

...as meaning that updates (hotfixes) would be provided outside the schedule of larger, once-a-month "patches."

I hope you’re right 🙂

[Paraffin 2,197]

7 hours ago, eaim said:

Next to nothing gets released these days that is the finished product unfortunately.

Yes, but there is a way to do that and avoid too much customer blow-back. It's called a paid Early Access release.

Everyone who buys into an Early Access game understands that you're paying for a preview of the final product. it's not finished, there will be bugs, and patience is required until the official release version.

I will never understand why MS/Asobo didn't take that path, instead of the extended closed free Alpha, the short Beta and then an official "gold" release. They could have avoided most of this drama in the official forums. 

[marsman2020 1,310]

7 hours ago, eaim said:

Hopefully we'll get this provided in some form from Asobo/MS in the fullness of time.

I'm not holding by breath.  Documentation for the actual users of the program should be higher priority than even the SDK.  They are spending time on the SDK before that.

Maybe they are trying to "not step on the toes" of "third party creators" so they can act as a "platform" for the "lager community" and people can pay extra for FS2020 For Dummies or FS2020: The Missing Manual

[NovemberUniform 156]

3 hours ago, snglecoil said:

Now the poor test pilot they briefly featured in the video might be wishing he wasn’t included in the final cut.

Haha! 

[abrams_tank 7,397]

56 minutes ago, marsman2020 said:

I'm not holding by breath.  Documentation for the actual users of the program should be higher priority than even the SDK.  They are spending time on the SDK before that.

Maybe they are trying to "not step on the toes" of "third party creators" so they can act as a "platform" for the "lager community" and people can pay extra for FS2020 For Dummies or FS2020: The Missing Manual

Nah.  Now that the game is out already, there is enough documentation on the web for the game.  Of course not having a user manual for the game is not ideal, but for most users that play the game, they have been able to figure out how to operate in the game given the documentation on the web, forums, asking questions on Discord & Twitch, etc.

So the priority now is the SDK, which will add more value to the overall community.

[NovemberUniform 156]

55 minutes ago, marsman2020 said:

Documentation for the actual users of the program should be higher priority than even the SDK.

Each to his own, it's a valid request. Documentation is about the last thing I've been missing, personally. I also haven't seen too many threads in the MSFS forums about missing documentation but maybe I didn't search hard enough. 

[marsman2020 1,310]

2 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Nah.  Now that the game is out already, there is enough documentation on the web for the game.  Of course not having a user manual for the game is not ideal, but for most users that play the game, they have been able to figure out how to operate in the game given the documentation on the web, forums, asking questions on Discord & Twitch, etc.

So the priority now is the SDK, which will add more value to the overall community.

So you're trying to introduce people to an incredibly complex topic, hopefully onboard a lot of new users who will provide the critical mass needed for this to be a long-term product and not dead after 2 years, and the only documentation provided with the simulator is like 4 "training flights" that don't even cover all the basics, and it's up to the user to go and search all over the internet to try and figure out how things work (and maybe find totally wrong information from other uninformed people, old info from prior patches, info about how the G1000 works in other simulators, etc in the process?).

The amount of Stockholm syndrome the flight sim community has is amazing....the willingness to put up with word not allowed releases.

They could have literally copy-pasted the "into to flight" content from the 1984 Flight Simulator 2.1 manual and updated the screenshots and it would have been a useful intro.

The freaking official forums require a login to even see the contents of the forum, so those "how to" posts can't even be easily referred to.

[abrams_tank 7,397]

1 hour ago, marsman2020 said:

So you're trying to introduce people to an incredibly complex topic, hopefully onboard a lot of new users who will provide the critical mass needed for this to be a long-term product and not dead after 2 years, and the only documentation provided with the simulator is like 4 "training flights" that don't even cover all the basics, and it's up to the user to go and search all over the internet to try and figure out how things work (and maybe find totally wrong information from other uninformed people, old info from prior patches, info about how the G1000 works in other simulators, etc in the process?).

The amount of Stockholm syndrome the flight sim community has is amazing....the willingness to put up with word not allowed releases.

They could have literally copy-pasted the "into to flight" content from the 1984 Flight Simulator 2.1 manual and updated the screenshots and it would have been a useful intro.

The freaking official forums require a login to even see the contents of the forum, so those "how to" posts can't even be easily referred to.

Yup.  The users that couldn't figure it out and found it to complex either got a refund or just gave up on the game.  The users that have stayed on are the ones that figured out how to play the game.  The time for the user manual was before the game came out. A user manual right now wouldn't move the needle much, compared to prioritizing the SDK.  The SDK is needed by 3rd party developers to get "study level" airliners out.

Having said that, the team working on the SDK isn't the same skill set as the team that would write the user manual.  The team working on the SDK are software developers whereas the team working on user manual would specialize in writing and documenting.

[abrams_tank 7,397]

1 hour ago, NovemberUniform said:

Each to his own, it's a valid request. Documentation is about the last thing I've been missing, personally. I also haven't seen too many threads in the MSFS forums about missing documentation but maybe I didn't search hard enough. 

I have seen a few complaints about a missing user manual but to be honest, it's very sparse.  The majority of the flight sim community want to see "study level" aircraft, especially "study level" airliners, and for that, the SDK needs to be more comprehensive.

[pmb 5,137]

As already stated, I doubt MS/Asobo will provide manuals if they didn't so until now.

Just for completeness, if anyone is looking for manuals I know two of them.

1. The SoFly Guide 

2. The RDPresets Guide 

I bought both of them (they are cheap). The SoFly Guide looks nice but is rather elementary and I doubt most of those around here at AVSIM will benefit much of it. The RDPResets Guide, which I only bought today, on the other hand is less visually appealing but has a host of technical detail which I for one will find useful.

Kind regards, Michael

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by pmb