Brought back? Hey, that worked out well the first time.

9 minutes ago, Adrian123 said:

Brought back? Hey, that worked out well the first time.

+1²

1 hour ago, Chock said:

So, they wouldn't invite me to the beta or the alpha, but now after I've paid 120 quid for the thing, the company with a market cap of $750.6 Billion, want me to help to test their product, which I gave them money for, for free? 🤣

Well this bit of news could only happen in the year 2020. I admit, I have had my doubts from the very beginning about how easy this was going to come off but, I never imagined that after they tricked folks into thinking that they were "selected to be on the Beta Team" and now they have screwed the pooch and the new call to action will be something like "If you paid for this thing and you are one of the lucky ones and it actually downloaded for you then let's call you a Beta Tester Redux and we are having some PR problems with this mess so lets do the NDA thing again. You just can not make this stuff up! OH and Chock, Congrats on being selected as a "Beta Tester" at the $120  donation level!! 🤣

First, I am writing this comment as a retired ICT Program Manager , and as a developper of many freeware FSX/P3D addon's.

Second, another user (sorry, I couldn't find back the exact posts in this mess of FS2020 threads) tried to explain 'agile SW development' and it's consequences.

Now, whatever one's personal opinion is on the quality of FS2020, if you like it or not and why, and how Microsoft deals with it's  initial release/'updates'/'patches':
The term 'agile SW development' perfectly fits the development/support cycle of FS2020.

But If one tries to grasp the meaning the terms alpha and beta testing in Sw development (just do a google search), you will understand why those terms makes no sense in the way that FS2020 is developped / released / supported.

Lastly: my personal opinion on FS2020 ?
Not relevant....
Except for one thing: I detest the formal name 'Microsoft Flight Simulator'.
As if nothing existed before that, or Microsoft is trying to make a clean break with any Flightsimulator involvement before.
Which I don't understand; being a flightsimmer since FS95 was released, 

But I'm a simple, technical guy, not a marketeer ....LoL

Rob

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Chock said:

So, they wouldn't invite me to the beta or the alpha, but now after I've paid 120 quid for the thing, the company with a market cap of $750.6 Billion, want me to help to test their product, which I gave them money for, for free?

So based on what has been seen so far are you not fearing you have been set up?  With all you have to offer the result for them should be a breeze.  And then if it is not?  It's "his" fault!

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by fppilot

Fortunately, I have uninstalled XBox Insider Hub and will never install it again! Betas nunca mais!

1 hour ago, rcbarend said:

Except for one thing: I detest the formal name 'Microsoft Flight Simulator'.
As if nothing existed before that, or Microsoft is trying to make a clean break with any Flightsimulator involvement before.
Which I don't understand; being a flightsimmer since FS95 was released, 

But I'm a simple, technical guy, not a marketeer ....LoL

Rob

Microsoft are moving towards a 'software as a service" model the same as Adobe have with Creative Cloud. 

The fact that they are trying to use a generic name like 'Microsoft Flight Simulator' without a year or version number is a pretty big hint to me that eventually you will not be able to buy it at all and will be paying an annual subscription the way you now do wit Adobe Creative Cloud and office 365 . 

Many Alpha /Beta testers just wanted a free game pass for a year or more, I know several that were on this gravy train, They had little or no experience as flightsimmers, Go figure, And now they want to do it again.

My understanding is, these so called Bugs are all present in the "alpha" testing. Could they not have been resolved then. And 16000 tester? That's a cluster Bleep. I am pleased they want to fix it.

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by Adrian123

2 hours ago, rcbarend said:

Except for one thing: I detest the formal name 'Microsoft Flight Simulator'.
As if nothing existed before that, or Microsoft is trying to make a clean break with any Flightsimulator involvement before.

 

I'm pretty sure 'Flight Simulator' isn't just a description, if I recall correctly, it is actually a Microsoft registered trademark. Hence all those not very intuitive and somewhat clumsy other product names such as XPlane, Prepar3D etc.

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by Chock

I find it incredible that the  current/previous issues never surfaced while under Beta testing, without knowing what parts of the Sim the Beta testers we allowed to test, it is hard to be judgemental. Did they get to test the A320 and report all the shortcomings, or were they just allowed to fly it under certain conditions/settings and go no further and report only on that part. Did they not report that having a guy with push cart at every airport for every selected aircraft was a real pain and totally unrealistic, or that the ATC vaguely resembles real world procedures , or that the Nav database is missing so many RNAV approaches.

I thought that with regular updates and progress reports during the development of MSFS 2020 Asobo was adopting a really professional approach which would result in a quality release to the Users. I cannot understand how the disconnect from this to the product in it's current. form occurred. The latest 1.8.3.0 patch has removed my Joystick sensitivities adjustment, which worked perfectly before this - this should not have happened, annoying little things keep surfacing, which finds me constantly returning back to Prepar3d v4.5 for my realism 'fix'

Yes, the visuals are amazing, and 12 months hence FS2020 will leave the other Flight Simulators in catch-up mode. But having purchased the Premium Deluxe edition on day one of the release and having flown it for several hours each day since in Airliners and GA, VFR, IFR conditions, I feel it was not quite ready and could have undergone more refinement and testing.

I won't even go into the illogical file/folder installation process, smarter than me might see why, I will continue to go through the myriad file tree structure to locate my community folder for addons and mods.

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by JustanotherPilot

Yeah, no. As an Alpha tester I'm not going through that again. 

MS/Asobo needs to get their heads out of their (word not allowed) and learn from how other devs handle this on platforms like Steam. Offer an opt-in Beta test branch that everyone can download or else ignore. And make it easy to revert to the official release if it doesn't work. That's how X-Plane does it, and it works. 

Why are they making this so complicated?

Just now, Paraffin said:

Offer an opt-in Beta test branch that everyone can download or else ignore

You have only you had to pay them!

Edited September 25, 20205 yr by Adrian123

I now feel fully redeemed for broaching this subject several times, both here, and in the other well-know Forum:  

A year of Beta and Alpha tester's feedback?  Into the good old circular filing drawer?  Certainly seems that way.

And to me NDA's = No disclosures on bugs.

 

 

2 hours ago, Chock said:

I'm pretty sure 'Flight Simulator' isn't just a description, if I recall correctly, it is actually a Microsoft registered trademark. Hence all those not very intuitive and somewhat clumsy other product names such as XPlane, Prepar3D etc.

Not sure about that:

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/trademarks/en-us.aspx