4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

At release, common wisdom was like ‘wait 6 months or maybe a year for the dust to settle’. Now it is a couple of years  ? Or even a decade  😸 ?

Common wisdom..... which I suspect probably means (mostly) guesses. 

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Asobo said once that they begun to work on it some three years before the announcement so the project is already four to five years in the making.

What some may forget, is that Dovetail games first had the chance to practice on FSX starting in late 2014, and planned to also release its own sim based on that tech, which gave us Flight School I think in 2016.

Which of course led to DTG sim in May 2017, And the failure of the Far-from complete project one year later.

So approximately five years for a much less ambitious, far less advanced, and actually far less complete sim, and even that sim, if I remember correctly said that full development might take about ten years......

Why therefore, would anyone then sensibly credit any common wisdom about MSFS dust settling in a few months......?

Though I would posit that in those 7 months or so, judging by the flood of mods, the near total buy-in by third parties, and the eruption of independent efforts such as FlyByWire, Salty Simulations and others (not to mention the sims progression from simple GA to the release of the CRJ within that period) represents a far faster growth pace than any sim we have ever had......

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

And to say they still work frantically on its innards is conjecture.

They are working hand-in hand with multiple 3rd parties, Developing the Xbox version, making the switch to DX12, hiring at a rapid pace, producing updates on a monthly basis all while coping with the pandemic and possible delays/slowdowns from that..... If they are not in near permanent "crunch mode" then I would say something is wrong.

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

We are ready to accompany the product and accept its imperfections if we see real progresses : in the simulation (flight, aircraft motoring, avionics), in methodology (quality control of the patches, no saying that a problem is solved when it is not, no downgrade of the product as a palliative to something wrong ). We don’t.

In this I myself see simple tension amongst those that see the glass half full and the glass half empty. From my side, if people really see no progress made (for example) from the original jetliners on release (which Asobo has stated they never intended to be payware quality) to the approaching payware quality driven by efforts from Flybyware and others, now in cooperation with Asobo....

Well then I would ask, In what other sim did we have an aircraft as advanced as the CRJ being released within 7 months of a sims initial introduction......?

How much "advancement" did FLiGHT have in that time frame? How much advancement/progression did DTG sim have in that timeframe?

For myself, I stand by believing that giving them at the very least a year or two, can be logically supported.

Edited March 17, 20215 yr by HiFlyer

I don't know whether to be glass half full or half empty..

Would I rather have the build on my PC now or the build from around Christmas?  Of course, the build from around Christmas..  So we are going backwards..  I am still here though..  And will things improve?  It's literally like betting on the stock market, and it shouldn't be. 

17 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Common wisdom.hat period) represents a far faster growth pace than any sim we have ever had......

 

For myself, I stand by believing that giving them at the very least a year or two, can be logically supported.

As a rule, I am not so very fond of the gregarious thinking aka common wisdom😏. I certainly not claim as my own view what was said by the early defenders of the sim brushing off the sorry state of release. 

I predicted the explosion of freeware and payware on this forum long ago when  scaremongering P3D mercenaries or cheapskates filled with glee of not to have to buy an addon ever again were telling us of the death of the cottage industry.  So I am not surprised and I am glad that  MS didn't close the door on that. That the only lesson that Flight taught them.

To know if the glass  is half-full or half-empty is really not the issue.

The product is already nice even in its half-finished state. I have fun flying the XCub and the Spit'. A credit to the Asobo's team who obviously had no inkling  beforehand of what a flight sim was or of what the FS community was expecting.

What I find aggravating is the process of its evolution. MS has decided that the Xbox and thus DX12 were the priorities instead of completing the released product and setting up a decent quality control for patching it up. That they release a SU3 empty of the promised content  is one thing but that each of their updates brings bugs and downgrades is shameful.  Neuman and his gang of merry communicators telling us that we, the users, drive the ship and they have serious simmers in mind add insult to injury 😂. 

I can wait two years too, my feline friend, if I see that they move in the right direction. A feeling  that I do not have these days. 

Love the moving of goal posts. How come the release was better than what we have now?
 

Only thing that works a micron bit better is the “live” weather. 

17 minutes ago, UAL4life said:

Love the moving of goal posts. How come the release was better than what we have now?
 

Only thing that works a micron bit better is the “live” weather. 

Hm, talking about moving the goal post. 🙂 You invent stuff like "the release was better than what we have now" and hope that it sticks, right?

4 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Well then I would ask, In what other sim did we have an aircraft as advanced as the CRJ being released within 7 months of a sims initial introduction......?

How much "advancement" did FLiGHT have in that time frame? How much advancement/progression did DTG sim have in that timeframe?

Well if we're being picky, Dovetail's FSW did actually have a Just Flight PA-28 Arrow III out for it quicker than MSFS did. 🤣

Edited March 17, 20215 yr by Chock

11 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

The thing that occurs to me, is that the sims that you go back to, each have had a decade (or more) of development, spanning multiple versions.

Which is being compared to approximately 7 months from release of what is probably, arguably, an insanely more complex endeavor, considering all of the things MSFS is doing at the same time, and the different sources its streaming and combining data from, even as Asobo is (still) frantically working on the internals and the SDK and the imminent XBOX release as well as working with multiple partners.

I think any reasonable person would cut them some slack for this, and not expect a fully-developed, perfectly working sim 7 months after release. I'm actually relieved they didn't push out a helicopter without developing the separate flight model required to do it right. I can be patient for many things.

On the other hand, they have an abysmal update process that deserves full criticism.

There is no separate public beta branch for testing, no way to revert to the version previous to the latest update if there are problems. It's a terrible design, and it doesn't take 7 years to figure out a workable update process. That should be part of the initial design even before release. Many games on Steam include opt-in Betas and backing out to previous versions. X-Plane does it. Why can't Asobo do it?
 

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

It comes with the territory, I suppose. Difficult to imagine a streaming distribution without having all the clients at the same level. 

Not sure I buy that as a reason. We have to assume they're running separate Beta test branches internally, and they must be doing something similar every time they give a Youtube "influencer" an advance copy of an update patch.

 

37 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

We have to assume they're running separate Beta test branches internally

They're running ~30 branches internally as per their last Q&A. That's probably the crux of the issue.

Edited March 17, 20215 yr by DylanM

33 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

 

Not sure I buy that as a reason. We have to assume they're running separate Beta test branches internally, and they must be doing something similar every time they give a Youtube "influencer" an advance copy of an update patch.

 

If they let their customers free to cherry pick the updates (6 to date), they’d soon have a gigantic number of different clients to serve. That wouldn’t be reasonable.  

As to running beta test internally... 

20 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

If they let their customers free to cherry pick the updates (6 to date), they’d soon have a gigantic number of different clients to serve. That wouldn’t be reasonable.  

Why would they have to do that? Just one opt-in Beta branch is all that's needed, with one reversion to the last official release. That's how Steam games do it, and it's how XP does it.

Some folks here might like to go back more than one patch, sure. But an opt-in Beta for the next patch would at least solve the worst of the current problem, which is that we're forced to accept each update as a de facto public Beta test, without being able to go back even one version if there are issues. 

 

On 3/16/2021 at 3:55 AM, Dominique_K said:

No listening to the user base dressed up in a fake transparency  and ludicrous voting process.

Yeah this just isn’t true. We’ve been pushing hard for a Scenery Gateway system which was not at all on their radar, and they already have a prototype of the system and have been reaching out to community members who have experience with it for input on the high and low points of other systems. They literally hired Working Title after we pushed hard for real Garmin systems and they realized that they just would never be able to compete with what they have to offer and wanted to get the base stuff in the sim. People pushed hard for an instant replay system, which is also in the prototype phase and is coming sometime soon.

 

How is that “fake transparency” or “not listening”?

Edited March 17, 20215 yr by FlyingInACessna

8 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

But an opt-in Beta for the next patch would at least solve the worst of the current problem, which is that we're forced to accept each update as a de facto public Beta test, without being able to go back even one version if there are issues. 

 

Sounds very reasonable indeed if we are talking of the last update only. 

A good practice would also be not to sneak unadvertised changes through the streaming. 

Un-usable for me and I think it`s down to a sound issue, I can select a flight and the loading moves across but the default music is still playing then just before finishing the sound crackles and stops and CTD bang. I will have to stick to flying my other sim and see if the next fix works.

1 hour ago, G-RFRY said:

Un-usable for me and I think it`s down to a sound issue, I can select a flight and the loading moves across but the default music is still playing then just before finishing the sound crackles and stops and CTD bang. I will have to stick to flying my other sim and see if the next fix works.

I have noticed for the last two weeks or so, the loading music hits a spot where it quits for a second or two. Made me nervous thinking that the sim was going to crash, but it didn't, and the music began again and everything was normal. Not sure why this is happening, but it didn't happen when I first got the sim a bit over a month ago. 

Personally I did not expect that the "dust would settle" within a few months, especially considering the complexity of the application, the fact that the rendering engine is completely new and not based on any older simulator, as well as the fact that it is being developed by a studio that do not have any prior experience in flight simulation. And to clear up the matter of development time, Jörg said that they previewed the Seattle tech demo in 2017, which means probably a little less than 4 years of development so far.

And I was fine with that. Except for the sorry state of the installation manager and some obvious glitches which I guessed would be patched very soon, I was fairly satisfied with the state of the simulator at launch (I must admit I'm not much into airliners though), and I was willing to give Asobo all the time they need to make it grow.

However, after the technical marvel, even if work-in-progress, they delivered us at launch, I did not expect all the regressions like the completely degraded level of detail, anti-aliasing, and several other small visual glitches and silly issues that keep popping up with nearly every patch. I also did not expect that just two months in I would be told that my GPU is obsolete, that I should just fly with no clouds, and that I would have to spend so much time in the official forums explaining to people why their clouds are flickering (which was something that they wouldn't even bother to acknowledge in the minimum system requirements), and to ask every single one to file a ZenDesk report and to upvote a few threads, then have to inquire with the community managers several times to get them to do something about it.

They can take their time when it comes to implementing new features and improving the accuracy of the simulator, after all it is obvious that they are committed and trying really hard to learn. But the state of the patches and the fact that the community have to scream for a major issue to be hotfixed does not reflect the behaviour of an AAA studio/publisher. They need to change something in the quality control process, even if it means ramping up the amount of testers, and create a beta branch as soon as possible. It's Microsoft, they have the resources.

Reducing the massive amount of branches seems like a good first step, but I really hope it will not take much longer until we finally have some general stability (which will be even harder once they have to actively maintain the Xbox build as well).