Latest Asobo update has radically changed the a/p

[Eclex 102]

Sometimes I hope MS takes control of this word not allowed . Fire ASOBO !

 

And take control..American programmers know algebra. French know arithmetic. Control systems

are designed by engineers who know calculus.  I am one.

 

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by Eclex

[JRBarrett 3,193]

I noticed this problem on my very first flight in the 172 after installIng the new patch, while doing a 180 degree turn in heading select mode with the autopilot.

The extremely slow roll out and capture of the selected heading was immediately obvious.

I know that Asobo says they have an entire team working on the autopilot, and perhaps they do, but that is of little use if not one single member of the team has any experience working on real autopilot systems in real aircraft, or no technical understanding of how an actual autopilot functions internally.

They also claim they have real world pilots acting as consultants, but I find that difficult to believe, as there is no possible way that any actual pilot, with even a minimal amount of experience with actual autopilot systems in real airplanes would not have immediately noticed the glaringly obvious problem with the rate of turn in this new version, and squawked it before it was released to end-users.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

45 minutes ago, Eclex said:

And take control..American programmers know algebra. French know arithmetic. Control systems

are designed by engineers who know calculus.  I am one.

I don't know if they know arithmetic, there are some pretty strange bugs where it looks like they mixed up the 0/1 boolean value.

Maybe I am being too harsh, but as a programmer, I don't understand some of these bugs that are still here after 3 months.

Edited November 27, 2020 by SceneryFX

[Noel 4,572]

18 hours ago, robert young said:

Asobo need some proper pilots and people who know what they are doing. 

I might not be a proper pilot but I have no problem seeing it needs fixed again.  The prior sensitivity and capture was violent, now this is mush, and so they just need to turn the screws a little more the right direction.  Any experienced SIM pilot could probably get it to be pretty good based on experienced w/ properly modeled AP.  One might think whomever let this slide wasn't even a sim pilot, or was just not paying any attention.

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by Noel

[sd_flyer 6,108]

when people were involved to alpha/beta testing there were plenty of commercial pilots and flight instructors. But they were treated same as another xbox gamers and have never been utilized or used as consultants. I mean they could have  picked Baron owner with couple thousand hours and just work with him, and at least get some feedback. 

As mentioned before I don’t know Adobo listen. They say they do, but obviously they listen to wrong people . Like in real life, if  you have problem with airplane you don’t seek feedback from aviation enthusiast you look for a good mechanic preferably with solid experience in that type of airplane and good reputation  

[Jetman67 517]

1 minute ago, sd_flyer said:

when people were involved to alpha/beta testing there were plenty of commercial pilots and flight instructors. But they were treated same as another xbox gamers and have never been utilized or used as consultants. I mean they could have  picked Baron owner with couple thousand hours and just work with him, and at least get some feedback. 

As mentioned before I don’t know Adobo listen. They say they do, but obviously they listen to wrong people . Like in real life, if  you have problem with airplane you don’t seek feedback from aviation enthusiast you look for a good mechanic preferably with solid experience in that type of airplane and good reputation  

Yep spot on post

[Noel 4,572]

19 minutes ago, sd_flyer said:

when people were involved to alpha/beta testing there were plenty of commercial pilots and flight instructors. But they were treated same as another xbox gamers and have never been utilized or used as consultants.

That seems so odd for a project of this magnitude and potential longevity, and begs the question how did they get as far as it currently is, which is arguably mostly made it to the in the medium to fine tuning stages.  Plausible explanations:  1, project managers have ascertained these things don't matter when it comes to selling the product.  Getting it 'right' as a flight simulator is secondary.  But now again, there is a lot there is already very good.  How'd they get it this far?  Read about it?  Surely there was considerable experience involved else I see no way to have gotten it as far as they have.  Perhaps it's not to late to higher a pilot consultant to fine tune the various flight characteristics more than they already have.  And yet again, we have real pilots who rave about MSFS.  

[Republic3D 1,232]

I've had this problem in all the planes including the Carenado Mooney and the Seminole. It's just too slow and sluggish, sometimes I'm even wondering if it's gonna turn at all. And the ILS approach I tried, it didn't manage to line up to the runway several miles out in a slow moving airplane. 

[SlowFlyer 78]

2 hours ago, Jetman67 said:

Certainly mistakes are being made and it's frustrating but it's clear they will get fixed and asobo will learn valuable lessons

From your mouth to god's Asobo's ears... 

In all honesty, it's probably truer that things will probably get fixed a whole lot faster if they stopped tweaking things that "work" good enough and focus on issues on the the list in the MS website that people are upvoting.

I fear they are making changes to "fix" issues, and it's causing other areas to be affected causing other issues.

I had an uncle who would "fix" things too, and then he would need to hire a professional to fix what he fixed, lol. 

Maybe the FD, flight engine, whatever, is not up to the same "beauty" as the scenery. Maybe they need to now just focus on the "under the hood" engine now that we have the beautiful world. (It really is amazing even with some issues around).

I used to fly around in GTA5 because of the living, breathing world it had, and wished that was available to a FS.

10 year time frame, might need all 10 years 🙂  I am not bashing, but maybe they bit off more than they thought. 

The fact that they don't email/pm the EXPERTISE here and other places, who will most likely lend their expertise willingly, distresses me...why not? Maybe they don't read the forum anymore unless they need a one-liner? 

[Ricardo41 5,965]

2 hours ago, fppilot said:

 

They are not reaching out to subject matter experts and proven developers, and not putting SDK material out there in a timely manner.  And as Robert correctly identified they do not seem to have an adequate level of core aviation understandings. 

And you base these assertions on what kind of verifiable evidence and facts?

[RaptyrOne 1,462]

3 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

verifiable evidence

Go to your sim PC, fire it up and fly any aircraft you desire. Hit the AP. The evidence you require will be slapping you in the face like a wet fish. 😉

The ‘proof is in the pudding’ and this pudding is as Robert aptly put it, is slapping lipstick on a pig. The more you do that, the worse it gets. For a sim that was released several months ago and has has several patches, look just how far backwards it has gone. Small mistakes you can forgive but this AP issue is a mind boggling blunder.

[Ricardo41 5,965]

What "slaps me in the face" is that this is a superb simulator, three months out, with bugs, many steps forward, and a few misfires and steps back.

Edited November 27, 2020 by Ricardo41

[RaptyrOne 1,462]

2 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

Hyperbole does not equate to a  factual statement. 

Theoretically, you are right of course. However nothing is more ‘factual’ that the product itself. It is there for all to see. How we got here is debatable. 
 

So here’s my little idea for Asobo - when everyone on the team reports back that they are ready to go live with their section of code, call a meeting. Call a time out. Tell everyone to go home, have a good nights sleep. Next morning absolutely everyone on the Asobo team gets tasked with doing a minimum 2 hours of flying in the sim. Tell this one to fly from A to B in the A320, that one to fly from C to D in the Cub etc. have them report back. Then decide if it is ready to go live. If not, delay the update until it is. Is that really so hard? If one of them comes up to the boss and says, “sir, I don’t know how to fly from here to there and do an ILS landing” - make them learn.

This AP error should not have made it into the patch. It is such a glaringly obvious failure affecting the entire sim experience.

[RW1 615]

1 minute ago, RaptyrOne said:

Next morning absolutely everyone on the Asobo team gets tasked with doing a minimum 2 hours of flying in the sim.

They reinstated the beta testing team specifically to deal with these patches before public release. So it's a fail at both ends of the testing spectrum. Common sense is obviously null and void. Would be better to open the patches to the public for 14 days than mess around for months on end achieving little as far as aircraft coding is concerned. Asobo is hell bent on fixing miniscule things like start buttons as such.

[robert young 2,897]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

And yet again, we have real pilots who rave about MSFS.  

As we go past three months from release, that is becoming a misconception. The initial "surge" of approval was confined to pilots who had youtube channels hungry for subscribers and the deal was "we'll give you an advanced copy and in return you say absolutely nothing critical". I have to say I have a fair amount of contempt for many of those youtubers who became willing victims of PR. I get that they attracted lots more subscribers and could fly around in a new sim for a while. But there were a couple of well-known commercial pilots who could quite clearly see glaring shortcomings in the way aircraft were flying and said absolutely nothing about it.

There were a few pilots of varying experience who popped up here now and again to say how wonderful the sim is/was, but gradually they have been eclipsed by others who are now in a large majority. It's fair enough to want this sim to be successful and of course it does have some remarkably good features. But it is a simulation of FLIGHT above all (it's in the name!) and I think the consensus has entirely reversed since the early days.

It's perfectly understandable to have a few cock ups on the way. None of us can escape that. But this is now becoming a repeated theme of sheer incompetence followed by multiple updates that create more issues than they solve. This autopilot update is a classic case. The Asobo staff member declared it was "an improvement" because it solved the problem of sim pilots who were doing quite bizarre things in the first place. Whereas a competent pilot who simply wants the a/p to capture an elementary, bog standard turn now cannot do so. It beggars belief that anyone could suppose that this update is anything but sticky plaster.

Frankly, Asobo could re-implement the standard FSX autopilot coding and it would be five times better than this. I've just flown a standard 60 degree heading change under a/p in a default aircraft and barely one second after the initial bank was completed, it started banking back to level again FIFTY DEGREES before the selected heading! This is utterly ridiculous, and the person who implemented it needs their head examining. It indicates just how removed from any basic understanding of how aircraft operate it is possible to be - and it wasn't an inadvertent mistake - it was actually decided that it was "an improvement".

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by robert young