January 28th, 2021 - Development Update

[Steku 158]

Regarding spikes introduced with VR update:

1. Total silence around Christmas.

2. Hot fix promised "in a few days" beginning of January, promise forgotten.

3. Linked to UK update for no apparent reason. UK update delayed twice already.

Regarding water triangles creeping up the shores introduced with US update:

1. Never acknowledged by Microsoft.

2. No response to Zendesk report.

3. My question for the Q&A session deleted by the moderator, official forum policy threatens with a ban any attempt to discuss moderators action.

The visuals are (were?) the hallmark feature of the sim. Hard to understand why they don't care to fix it to the initial release state, when broken.

 

Edited January 29, 2021 by Steku

[Tuskin38 6,491]

18 minutes ago, Steku said:

Total silence around Christmas.

Because they were on holiday break. They were totally silent on everything around Christmas.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Tuskin38

[JBDB-MD80 1,473]

1 hour ago, Tuskin38 said:

Because they were on holiday break. They were totally silent on everything around Christmas.

How dare them to take the holidays off. I'd wish people would let them concentrate more on the simming aspect instead of perfection scenery after all its supposed to be a flight sim isn't it.

[neil0311 366]

1 hour ago, jbdbow1970 said:

I'd wish people would let them concentrate more on the simming aspect instead of perfection scenery after all its supposed to be a flight sim isn't it.

I’ve been enjoying things as they are and am in no way complaining, but a large percentage of “simming” is the scenery. VFR flying in the sim, as in real life, depends on keeping your head on a swivel. Navigation depends on accurate scenery, and the immersion factor is made or broken by the scenery.

I’ve been using Flight Sim since the 1980s, so I won’t complain about a few temporary anomalies. This is still the most realistic version of the sim yet. 

[Shack95 2,658]

5 hours ago, Steku said:

2. No response to Zendesk report.

3. My question for the Q&A session deleted by the moderator, official forum policy threatens with a ban any attempt to discuss moderators action.

They never respond to zendesk reports. That’s normal.

Idon‘t know why your thread was deleted but I can‘t imagine it was because you were asking about the coast issue. There‘s another one there covering the same topic that hasn‘t been deleted. So it was probably for a different reason.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Shack95

[BaronKen 144]

I wonder if the water "triangles" issue on coastlines is caused by the same bug that created the terrain spikes. I guess we'll find out when the UK update becomes available...

[ryanbatc 12,850]

12 hours ago, CJ1045 said:

Those pictures of photogrammetry London look pretty bad. The tower blocks look awful - all wobbly sides and smeared textures. Not impressed with the look at all.

CJ

I assume it was showing a WIP as there was a large tear in the scenery.

[abrams_tank 7,411]

20 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

It is concerning that this new one-month cadence seems to have made matters worse. We are still getting major bugs that should have been caught by the QA team, and now we just have to wait longer for relevant fixes. It's making me lose my confidence in the progress and overall stability of the simulator. After two months of flashing clouds and two months of terrain issues, I cannot remember the last time I could just fly freely and enjoy the view.

I doubt the one month period between updates will be changed.  It causes more testing and more work for Asobo if they have to release an update very two weeks.

What the community should be pressing Asobo to release is the beta testing branch of the game.  If Asobo won't change their one month cadence, then the best solution for this is the beta testing branch.  Stuff like the spiking terrain bug are more likely to be caught in beta testing, before the patch is released to the general public.

[Steku 158]

12 hours ago, Shack95 said:

They never respond to zendesk reports.

Not true. I received several responses to my Zendesk reports, my reports are quite detailed with the reproduction steps.

[Steku 158]

15 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

Because they were on holiday break. They were totally silent on everything around Christmas.

I also work in IT. We never introduce significant change prior a planned vacation period. Just after the change we call it "hypercare" and keep staff ready for a couple of days to rollback or to hotfix.

[Steku 158]

11 hours ago, BaronKen said:

I wonder if the water "triangles" issue on coastlines is caused by the same bug that created the terrain spikes. I guess we'll find out when the UK update becomes available...

Water triangles introduced by World Update 2 (US), spikes introduced by December VR update. According to feedback snapshot on the official forum, coastline glitch has ca. 380 votes, status started, release backlog, so fix not expected antytime soon.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/blog-january-28th-2021-development-update/358603

Edited January 30, 2021 by Steku

[Shack95 2,658]

32 minutes ago, Steku said:

Not true. I received several responses to my Zendesk reports, my reports are quite detailed with the reproduction steps.

Ah okay, thanks for clarifying this. I never received an answer, only the standard email.
I have zero programming experience, so this might be a stupid question, but can‘t they just write an algorithm that defines that water surfaces that are larger than X square meters can‘t have a curvature of more that 0.X degrees or something like that?

Edited January 30, 2021 by Shack95

[pmb 5,137]

2 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

What the community should be pressing Asobo to release is the beta testing branch of the game. 

This has been often requested, and early on since release, but seems to get being forgotten those days. Albeit it would help Asobo in a big way with testing, feedback, and relaxing all development.

Kind regards, Michael

[superspud 450]

I had a look over the Japan update vs the US update last night. I don't know if different groups did it but the Japan one in general is a notch higher, though most of the airports are vastly smaller so got more attention. If the UK one is done in a similar manner it'll be great. 

The only small US airport is Friday Harbour and that's a fair bit less carefully done than the Japanese ones of a similar size. 

[Blackthorn 12]

Slightly random observation this ..... but there's one thing about flying MSFS in the UK that's rarely mentioned: the Bing aerial images are probably the best in the world. They're certainly far better than most of the US ones in my experience, particularly in terms of resolution. OK they drop off a bit in quality in some parts of Scotland etc, but on the whole they're excellent.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Blackthorn