Does anyone test the new patches at ASOBO ?!

[Noel 4,505]

If you're on that tight of a budget might as well wait until the dust clears in case you are one who might have troubles w/ MSFS.  Me, no troubles thru 3 patches now, and I remain blown away at the experience and quality already.  You do need good bandwidth though--how's that for you JC?

[Mark VII 26]

1 hour ago, dilore said:

It might not be Asobo's fault. MS pays their salaries and decides what and what not has to be done. 
I strongly suspect that it is MS that is to blame for the too early realease, and the resulting mess.

I seriously doubt MS ordered Asobo to release 25% complete Garmins or half functioning jet A/P or 40% inop switches or a partially broken live wx or a 15% working ATC or even that MS forced Asobo to invent ATC phraseology from scratch or teaching planes the dolphin dance etc etc...... why on earth ????

[Noel 4,505]

5 minutes ago, Mark VII said:

I seriously doubt MS ordered Asobo to release 25% complete Garmins or half functioning jet A/P or 40% inop switches or a partially broken live wx or a 15% working ATC or even that MS forced Asobo to invent ATC phraseology from scratch or teaching planes the dolphin dance etc etc...... why on earth ????

I would guess they round table and decide what makes sense to do right now for this gargantuan dual-platform project, including assessing for potential damage and how to manage it, versus everything else they need to do to get this ready for holiday launch on XBox, which presumably will be where more of the rent comes from.  Many Xbox users new to flight simming may not have a clue about ATC, inop switches, or much else so getting scenery loading and all that entails w/ server management, along w/ atmospherics & porting to DX12 those are the most important priorities for the moment is my guess.   I'm ultra confident they will continue to improve and learn as they go, depriortizing hard-core simmers for the time being.  

   

[Biggles2010 343]

13 minutes ago, Mark VII said:

I seriously doubt MS ordered Asobo to release 25% complete Garmins or half functioning jet A/P or 40% inop switches or a partially broken live wx or a 15% working ATC or even that MS forced Asobo to invent ATC phraseology from scratch or teaching planes the dolphin dance etc etc...... why on earth ????

I suspect both parties were responsible. MS want to see results for their investment as quickly as possible. Asobo want to keep the project going, and need to keep MS onside by demonstrating that things are happening. So corners are cut to make deadlines. It happens in every business, and when the sh*t hits the fan they look at what they need to do to minimise the backlash. 

 

[johncott 177]

33 minutes ago, Noel said:

If you're on that tight of a budget might as well wait until the dust clears in case you are one who might have troubles w/ MSFS.  Me, no troubles thru 3 patches now, and I remain blown away at the experience and quality already.  You do need good bandwidth though--how's that for you JC?

Bandwidth is no issue, fiber right to my house. Just SSD space meaning that I would have to remove my existing sim, which is running very well with many add-ons to experiment with MSFS. I may take the plunge at a later date and purchase a new SSD, but decided I rather be flying than experimenting.  I have been fixing gauges, scenery, airports, etc, for the last five years to get my sim where it is right now.

[johncott 177]

58 minutes ago, DylanM said:

Hi John - if you can somehow manage the install size, you can try it yourself for a lot cheaper on GamePass:

https://www.xbox.com/en-CA/xbox-game-pass/pc-games

 

Cannot manage the install size, would have to delete my existing sim which is running very well.

[marsman2020 1,310]

I'm "guardedly optimistic" after the last Dev Q&A, we'll have to see if the next patch actually improves things or not.  I'd rather they take an extra few weeks if they need to vs trying to touch 700 different parts of the sim on a 2 week cycle.

I am mystified how with 40 QA testers they aren't able to find some of these big honking bugs before release.  I'd question what tests the testers are being asked to run and if they are being provided with enough information/understanding of the actual aviation aspects of the sim to even act as effective QA testers (do the QA testers know APs aren't supposed to porpoise, or do they think it's all "part of the game" and that every flight should be constantly fighting the controls like a Hollywood movie?).  That's enough testers to have a dedicated person assigned to each aircraft testing nothing but that aircraft all day every day, plus another ~10 or so people testing generic features.  On a two week cycle, I have to imagine if you sat me down in front of 1 aircraft for a week I could fully test it in the first week and work with the devs on any regressions in the 2nd week....

 

[Neutrino Flux 64]

5 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Let me make this clear. People are perfectly entitled to voice their frustration about any product providing they provide evidence. This post has been reported but there's no way I will be locking it. For those of you frustrated by these type of posts just move along.

I've already given one person a holiday for antagonistic comments towards someone frustrated by the patches breaking things. Make helpful suggestions or stay away. And just a tip, telling someone to delete or uninstall is not helpful.

Ray you are a star 🙂 When this is all over ( Covid ) I'll buy you a toasted sandwich at ' The Airport ' ( pub ).

[ShawnG 1,823]

1 hour ago, Mark VII said:

I seriously doubt MS ordered Asobo to release 25% complete Garmins or half functioning jet A/P or 40% inop switches or a partially broken live wx or a 15% working ATC or even that MS forced Asobo to invent ATC phraseology from scratch or teaching planes the dolphin dance etc etc...... why on earth ????

Some of that is intended.  The 25 percent Garmin and inop switches aren’t bugs.  That’s what they meant to include in default aircraft, as has been the case for default aircraft in past sims.  In the q and a Jorg mentioned they are having a rethink on the Garmin.  You still probably aren’t going to be able to operate the inop stuff unless some modder does it.

[Marco Manieri 194]

5 hours ago, JDWalley said:

Frankly, as a former programmer, I have to wonder at Asobo's code-design skills.  A properly-designed application should be compartmentalized enough that revising one section of the code shouldn’t affect other parts of the program but, with MSFS, it seems that fixing one part of the program breaks something completely different. Fixed sluggish performance?  Now, the A320 engines shut off.  Fix that? Great, but now the LOD is drastically reduced.  Is this just totally what we used to call "spaghetti code," where modifying one place changes all sorts of unrelated behavior?

That is what worries me. I've been lucky that my way of enjoying the sim has yet not put me against any of the major flaws and regressions, so it's not the specifics of those bugs and regressions that lowered my optimism.

It's the fact that yes, they do look very motivated, but they start to look - to me - a little bit out of the correct "technical" path to achieve the results we all dream to get in the future.

Ok, they'll go implement a testing procedure for patches. This will hopefully catch regressions.

But will they also be able to track down to the reasons for those catched regressions to have happened? Or will they just keep redoing stuff infinitely?

If their code is somehow "spaghetti" right now, how will they improve it if they'll only try to catch the effects in time? Is there any plan in place to establish a code review process to progressively remove the regressions' reasons? When they fixed the disappeared Setting screen, didn't they checked to see why a given code change somewhere else caused it? Could that have lead to a refactoring that could then have allowed to avoid the VRF map crash when touching who knows what somewhere else?

Hope Microsoft can give them some support.. they should have deep knowledge in stuff like software architecture, code review and refactoring patterns, etc etc.. 

[ShawnG 1,823]

OMG they need to fix this NOW!!!! Unflyable!!!!! Could fix it in 5 minutes.

Don’t these idiots even bother to take the time to test their patches!!!!

 

Somebody reconcile these statements for me please.

[dilore 126]

2 hours ago, Mark VII said:

I seriously doubt MS ordered Asobo to release 25% complete Garmins or half functioning jet A/P or 40% inop switches or a partially broken live wx or a 15% working ATC or even that MS forced Asobo to invent ATC phraseology from scratch or teaching planes the dolphin dance etc etc...... why on earth ????

Because MS people have no idea how Garmins and APs work?

Edited October 2, 2020 by dilore

[Mark VII 26]

16 minutes ago, dilore said:

Because MS people have no idea how Garmins and APs work?

Asobo had no clue on aviation stuff until recently.

MS desperately tried to quickly teach them something, even paying for Asobo to have some GA flying lessons but no one becomes an expert in few months if you lack both the time and the passion, which btw all we simmers throw at this hobby since... decades.

Results are just the proof, I think that since a few months ago someone within Asobo ignored jets had a FMC, infact A320, 747 and 787 have been done externally 😉

[ShawnG 1,823]

13 minutes ago, Mark VII said:

Results are just the proof, I think that since a few months ago someone within Asobo ignored jets had a FMC, infact A320, 747 and 787 have been done externally 😉

Behold: the FMC for the default jets in FSX.

[Mark VII 26]

10 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

Behold: the FMC for the default jets in FSX.

Yes ShawnG, you are right but since Asobo inserted a FMC into default planes it was expected to work, while just like the A/P is lame and pretty much arcade oriented.

They should have avoided to insert it if it plays Super Mario instead proper flight speed restrictions f.i., just to mention one of thousands missing stuff