20 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

It's difficult to justify Asobo wasting their time with contrails, FSX liveries and world updates when basic stuff still isn't working 7 months after the release.

and the Pisa tower is not actually leaning

 

It's also hard to justify people thinking that if something is added to the sim, it means something else was delayed. There are different developers with different tasks and skills. Just because something is put out doesn't mean it stopped something else from coming.

Also what you, or anyone else find a MUST is subjective so i'll rather honestly have MS, who developed platforms before which were successful in the flight sim scenario, handle how to develop a simulator instead of me, a client.

As for the tower of Pisa, since i am from there, i have to report to you that currently it's a horrible grain silo 😛 Thank god there are photogrammetry addons from Google for the city, tower included.

AVSIM quoting does not appear to support the feature I require so use your imagination:

2 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

Asking for a working autopilot after 7 months is now "extreme" and "hardcore"? 

 

 

This is what you get out of my response?  Of course a working autopilot isn't anything but an expectation of a simulation product (where applicable).  They have been very close at times and then backed away with screwy code from this update or that.  They are obviously trying to do a whole hell of a lot (e.g. make everyone happy) and at a very accelerated pace.  If they slow down too much 1/3 of the community will rise up in protest, if they continue making mistakes much of the community will do the same.  They are stuck between rock and hard place IF they are going to be run by the "extreme" voices in the community.  (Ergo, they likely are not)

 

 

15 hours ago, omarsmak30 said:

Yep, I absolutely agree with that. So people now upset about the performance bug and start labeling it as game. Fun fact, MSFS is actually based on FSX which is in the game category and same goes for P3D based on FSX

Absolutely, why on earth should bad performance make a game out of a sim? This is just comical because sims tend to run at lower performance than games.

5 hours ago, sightseer said:

I really don't think the earliest pioneers of flight would be welcome on these forums by some.  They just want to fly...what a concept.

 

The pioneers of flight simulation at least  didn't want just to fly, they wanted to fly right. I should know, I was already flying FS1 in 1981 and Bruce Artwick  was our God 🤣. MFS is an incarnation of what we were dreaming of then, in many aspects and that makes the present messy state of things so frustrating.  The  FPS problem is not the only issue, there are many more and it is time they put their acts together. 

Edited March 24, 20215 yr by Dominique_K

Honestly, I just find the hand wringing about whether Asobo really want to make sooper-serious sim, or if they want to make a "game", to be tedious at this point.

They've said it more than once, that their aspiration is to make MSFS the best sim it can possibly be, for the sim audience.  They've also taken pretty obvious steps to this effect, with the most recent being literally hiring the people making one of the most beloved sooper-serious add-ons for the sim, to work on things like the Garmin implementation.  Not to mention what sounds like an inordinate amount of time from people like Seb - the FOUNDER of Asobo - working overtime to directly help companies like Aerosoft bring their add-ons to the sim, and work through blockers they encounter.

And if you're not gonna believe their statements and actions, then believe raw business interests.  Core simmers are going to be the people that bring in the majority of money for MSFS in mid-to-late term, well after sales of the sim have eventually slowed to a trickle.  Simmers are going to be the ones still buying add-ons and content expansions, and giving Microsoft their 30% cut of marketplace sales.  Joe Xbox who buzzes his hometown for a few hours on his console and then gets bored, is not.  If they want that money, they need to convince the simmers to migrate from platforms like XP and P3D.

If they just wanted to make Pilotwings for casuals but with realistic visuals, they wouldn't bother to have introduced even 5% of the complexity that exists in the sim.  They wouldn't care about aberrant AP behaviour, or missing features in the Garmin, or the fidelity of the IFR experience.  They'd make it seem real enough to the untrained eye, then get to cranking out DLC.  Instead it appears Asobo have pretty much backburnered the first paid expansion content for MSFS (helicopters), for perhaps a year or more, to work on the core experience.

Does this all mean that we should just be happy with what we get, and not be critical, and simply thank them all day long?  OF COURSE NOT.  Simmers should be giving them feedback every step of the way, and that includes some hard criticism where it is warranted.

But what is getting wearying, is this perceived hostility towards Asobo - assertions that they are incompetent, or don't care, or just want to make a Fisher Price scenery gawking game for babies.  Or accusations that Jorg Neumann is just a BS artist, instead of a guy who seems earnest and passionate about what they are making, and whose lofty mission statements may not always sync up with the current state of the product (which isn't the same as lying, by the way).  Or complaints that the frankly unprecedented amount of transparency they try to provide their community means that not every weekly update is going to be a banger.

We are slightly more than half a year into this journey, and Asobo have confirmed they are staffing UP on the project, not down.  We just got our first complex-ish tubeliner add-on last week.  In another 6-8 months we can hopefully look back on most of this as nascent teething pains, and remember fondly the days when the AP tried repeatedly to send you into a mountain side.

Edited March 24, 20215 yr by Scottoest

34 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

 

But what is getting wearying, is this perceived hostility towards Asobo - assertions that they are incompetent, or don't care, or just want to make a Fisher Price scenery gawking game for babies.  Or accusations that Jorg Neumann is just a BS artist, instead of a guy who seems earnest and passionate about what they are making, and whose lofty mission statements may not always sync up with the current state of the product (which isn't the same as lying, by the way).  Or complaints that the frankly unprecedented amount of transparency they try to provide their community means that not every weekly update is going to be a banger.

 

It is not just Asobo that are copping this sort of ranting and attacks.  The Golden Ages Sportswing was withdrawn from sale despite what was clearly months of work bringing out a product that filled a gap (we have virtually no historic aircraft) because some of the textures were fairly ordinary, particularly at 4K, and needed work.

Now fair criticism and asking they work on the textures may have been reasonable but what ensued was a series of rants and attacks that basically accused the company of extortion and stealing from customers EVEN THOUGH they had released a video of the product beforehand that clearly showed what the cockpit textures were like, because apparently the product needed to have 100% MSFS native textures at 4K or it was shareware quality.   Separate from that, there is another major developer whose response to ongoing, occasionally justified criticism, but mainly nit picky attacks seems to have been to cancel/suspend development of the real life aircraft they were working on and move towards releasing fantasy and experimental aircraft that have no real world analogy to engender criticism.

I said early that a some simmer's are "elitist" but I must admit that is not the right word, those simmers are entitled.  I am not sure what the end result of all this negativity will be, but for sure it is NOT going to be the sudden appearance of lots of free updates that fix all the sims issues accompanied by an explosion of free and bargain priced "study level" aircraft. More likely we will see a reversal of Asobo's attempts to be open and converse with the community accompanied by the exit of a lot of small one/two man enthusiast 3PD companies who just find the whole MSFS environment too hostile to be worth the money that can be made.  We will be left with a few big developers who can charge $US100 for a product and get away with it  and a handful of dodgy operators prepared to throw anything on the market half finished or not and not care about criticism and attacks.

Edited March 24, 20215 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

52 minutes ago, Scottoest said:

Does this all mean that we should just be happy with what we get, and not be critical, and simply thank them all day long?  OF COURSE NOT.  Simmers should be giving them feedback every step of the way, and that includes some hard criticism where it is warranted.

But what is getting wearying, is this perceived hostility towards Asobo - assertions that they are incompetent, or don't care, or just want to make a Fisher Price scenery gawking game for babies. 

Fair points, but they are too focused on delivering and adhering to a very strict update timeline over QC issues. I would have set update calendar to a 2-4 week possibility, and they need beta testers before deciding to release code that takes a major step back. It doesn't matter what kind of political back and forth or ranting goes on in the end, the above is just a factual observation in their release process. The SDK releases are a prime example of this, creating lots and lots of headaches and troubleshooting for 3PD's and adding features that we didn't even need (like redoing parts of the SDK UI and causing new bugs while still retaining most of the old bugs). So these are issues that are very commonly seen in business software releases, but not normally seen in AAA gaming releases (it happens now and then, but it's exceedingly rare as code is thoroughly tested before patches).

The fact the above is true doesn't make me lose hope they'll get it together soon, but we shall see. It seems like some of their product or dev managers come from a business software environment where hitting deadlines is more important than causing a few new bugs, but this isn't generally true in gaming updates (adding graphical or performance bugs in games is bad for both sales and perception, it will tank your reviews).

Edited March 24, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery

2 hours ago, Scottoest said:

 

Does this all mean that we should just be happy with what we get, and not be critical, and simply thank them all day long?  OF COURSE NOT.  Simmers should be giving them feedback every step of the way, and that includes some hard criticism where it is warranted.

 

The opinion and assessment that you do not share are tedious and wearying , hey ? And the proof is that they come from hand wringers. Of course.   

No I do not take at face value what they say anymore. I only believe what I see on my computer with a long background in flight simming and the FS franchise. Neuman  in particular has said too many things which are untrue.  You said BS artist ?  He certainly has exhausted the capital of credibility he had with me.  

Well at least we agree on what I quoted from you.

 

2 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

 

 

I said early that a some simmer's are "elitist" but I must admit that is not the right word, those simmers are entitled.  

Am I entitled ? Another trendy word which does not mean much. Just a sophisticated name calling .  But lets try to answer. Yes I feel entitled to see the sim that I dream of and was promised to, become a reality. It won't course but I would be satisfied if it was close enough. So you see elitist and entitled. Bad boy 😅 ! 

Edited March 24, 20215 yr by Dominique_K

10 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

The opinion and assessment that you do not share are tedious and wearying , hey ? And the proof is that they come from hand wringers. Of course.   

No I do not take as face value what they say anymore. I only believe what I see on my computer with a long background in flight simming and the FS franchise. Neuman  in particular has said too many thing which are untrue.  You said BS artist ?  He certainly has exhausted the capital of credibility he had with me.  

That's a bit harsh, to make it in the corporate world of cancel culture, you kind of have to be that way, cheerlead the product at all costs. It's just the way things are, I don't necessarily think its always the best approach, but it is the defacto standard of how most things work in corporate america. There is also a real fear culture in tech jobs as the turnover rates are often high, though much less so at giant companies like MS than some others. So people have to watch what they say, sometimes to a dizzying fault, and tech companies are particularly bad about PC culture. Perception being more important than reality is unfortunately a common thing in life.

Edited March 24, 20215 yr by Alpine Scenery

1 hour ago, Scottoest said:

They've also taken pretty obvious steps to this effect, with the most recent being literally hiring the people making one of the most beloved sooper-serious add-ons for the sim, to work on things like the Garmin implementation.

You can also see their focus here:

Careers | Asobo Studio

Looking at the open flight sim job positions, their focus areas are (with the order not reflecting priority):

- UI improvements
- Mission design
- Devops (cloud administration)
- Tools
- Vehicle art
- Data managment
- Flight sim engine (several positions)
- Cloud programming
- Outsourced art
- Project management (Professional aviation background required for this one)
- Machine learning & computer vision
- Aircraft engines
- UI art
- Autopilot programming
- ATC and Flight planning

 

3 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

And I reiterate: the concern is not about the fact that there are still bugs but the fact that there is no NET improvement throughout the development and the various patches.

MSFS is probably the only case in the software / game industry that gets worse patch after patch and this is a big concern. 

Hmm, we must be playing different simulators. IMHO the sim is smoother now than it was upon release.

And with the WT and FlybyWire mods etc. - no "net improvement"  - yarite. 

Just for your info (I know that everone was asking): I play MSFS as a G-A-A-A-A-A-M-E, even if I fly the CRJ with carefully hand-crafted flightplan data.

1 minute ago, crimplene said:

Just for your info (I know that everone was asking): I play MSFS as a G-A-A-A-A-A-M-E, even if I fly the CRJ with carefully hand-crafted flightplan data.

There will never be a debate more facile than the whole sim vs. game thing.  Feels like it has more to do with egos and labels, than coherently defining things.

41 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

You can also see their focus here:

Careers | Asobo Studio

Looking at the open flight sim job positions, their focus areas are (with the order not reflecting priority):

Yep the good thing is, they are dropping the French language requirements on many of their positions (some still required French) but also I think that is depending on the team.

For me always was a videogame.

The menus, the planes, the feeling...

And more video game will be when it hits the console.

Sorry, just my opinion.