MSFS has X broken why don't they just fix it......Why is there so many updates in MSFS.....

I'm generally in favor of continuous development and frequent updates but I will admit that it's been more tiresome here lately.  I've crashed to desktop on my last two flights in a row and clouds almost never show up with live weather anymore.  As a result, I'm not really enjoying the sim right now.  It's mostly just frustrating and makes me want to go play something else or watch a movie.

I'm very excited about all the new releases and all the buzz right now...PMDG 737, Fenix A320, Maddog 82, etc.   But the sim is running so badly and unreliable right now that it's hard for me to take any of it very seriously.  It's a shame really.  I'd buy all three in a second without even thinking twice if I could just get through a flight without crashing...and have clouds.

I love MSFS and think it's an amazing achievement...a dream come true after 40 years of flightsims.  But I might have to go do something else for awhile.

10 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Such an incredibly funny thing to say. Granted, previous sims looked better with addons, but with all the previous excellent aircraft for those sims make them still valued software today.  I 100% love MSFS, but XP-11 on my system still looks and flies great.

 

Sorry but thats not what XP11 looks like out of the box and when it does look like that, the performance isnt too great... still doesnt look close to modern day graphics. Just my opinion. 

Also to the OP, I rather us simmers have a say in which direction the sim goes and get a lot of updates, in which we can give feedback... rather than wait for a botched update every six months and then wait again for a fix. I think the way Asobo does it is perfect! just right and regular...

Every game I have gets regular updates on steam... I own MSstore version of MSFS but when I do open up steam to play my other games they almost usually all have some updates, whether its a few hundred KB or many GB.

Also, I've never had an issue with an update, empty out the Community, let it rebuild the content xml, empty the cache and its been a breeze.

3 hours ago, Sunshine13 said:

It's really getting crazy with all these updates, I feel, it really stops u from playing the sim., and enjoy just flying.  What is the purpose of having a beta team before the release of an update, such as #9.  I never saw any game or simulator with so many updates.

I have been flying since the mid 90's and never had this issue.  I can  understand once in a while u need an update, but this is just getting out of control, every update itseems needs a patch, then why do u have a beta team ?

Sorry, folks, I am just venting out, and want to enjoy this fabulous, gorgeous sim.  Shortly willl \have PMDG in town, and now we have the Maddog, the BAE 146, the Fenix coming shortly  Please stop with all the updates! or try to cut them down a bit.

I hear ya.  That 20 mins to update is a real first world problem.

4 minutes ago, Ridvan Celik said:

20 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Such an incredibly funny thing to say. Granted, previous sims looked better with addons, but with all the previous excellent aircraft for those sims make them still valued software today.  I 100% love MSFS, but XP-11 on my system still looks and flies great.

 

Sorry but thats not what XP11 looks like out of the box and when it does look like that, the performance isnt too great... still doesnt look close to modern day graphics. Just my opinion. 

I did say 'granted, previous sims looked better with addons'.  Did the performance of my XP11 video lookpoor to you?  Of course an older sim isn't going to look as impressive as a more recent sim, but it looks fine and flies great. My love of the aircraft in XP11 didn't evaporate when MSFS was released.

One of the tradeoffs of a sim that connects to a server - you have to be on the latest version.

I suppose they could hold back and issue 1-2 updates a year instead of the cadence they use now, but that's a six of one half dozen of the other situation.  Do you want more frequent fixes and improvements, or do you want longer periods of stability.

It's worth noting that I think this cadence will eventually slow down anyway as the sim's code is considered to be more mature and they don't feel like they need to get fixes and improvements to the sim's systems into the release code as quickly as they can.

No updates, i would very much doubt you would be seeing any of the recently released aircraft. There has to be sim updates to keep moving forward.

And now...another outage.  Are we having fun yet?  Exciting times indeed...

I love the idea of cloud based streaming of the entire world, on paper at least.  It's brilliant, and very cool.  But Microsoft's infrastructure is so bad that it takes something away from it.

Where I work, if we had two back to back outages spanning a great many hours...we'd all be fired.

 

just a short question: Are those updates based ( or some of them ) on top Wishlist and bugs  suggested by users?

if yes, means that for the first time you have a professional gaming company that is listening their customers instead making 1 or 2 updates each year and working on other projects. 

I am ultra satisfied with all updates so far, and if something is not working correctly or broken , i have patience until they fix it.

Flight simulation gaming  is one of the most complicate development project and in my opinion it will be always on "Beta" mode which shows a continuously research on new elements, code and optimization.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If he says “in my opinion MSFS is a sight seeing sim” then yes, you have to accept that is his opinion and that is how he perceives it. Those three words are the difference between stating a fact and stating an opinion.

It’s very important that people make it clear they’re expressing their opinion and not stating a fact. There’s a world of difference as I’m sure you know. 👍

 

That's just the thing.  He stated that the sim was "good for sight seeing but I'm not here for that" as a fact.  the response was p3d and xplane is dead FOR ME.  which is obviously stated as an opinion.  and you cracked down on the second thing.

 

It's alright tho, Ray.  None of us expect you to be objective about msfs.

2 hours ago, edpatino said:

Hi Greg, but so many frequent updates makes up the need for hotfixes or patches too. Less frequent updates makes the sim more robust and the need of hotfixes disminishes.

Hope you're doing great!.

Welcome to the modern videogame industry

1 hour ago, Scottoest said:

I suppose they could hold back and issue 1-2 updates a year instead of the cadence they use now, but that's a six of one half dozen of the other situation.  Do you want more frequent fixes and improvements, or do you want longer periods of stability.

Actually both can be provided. Just requires quality control by withholding premature releases.  Still cannot fathom how so many beta viewers do not find issues that present themselves on release.  Appears to say that they are not allowing all changes pending in an update to be tested,

Personally it looks to me like there are two parallel tracks.  One is a path to fix identified issues (beta tested) and the other based on a predetermined development path (not beta tested). And SU's seem to include work on both.  It seems like two teams are working independent of each other.    "word not allowed " (OK Avsim), "darn"  the torpedoes....  keep up with the "objectives driven" development path.

We will identify when this is nearing completion with the announcement of a monthly paid-subscription basis.

Edited May 8, 20224 yr by fppilot

Let’s hope the hot fix will appear soon - and preferably before the release of the much anticipated 737. In a sim this complex, with the added complexity of cloud gaming, it seems inevitable that updates will cause issues. I’d rather have frequent updates and a constantly evolving sim than the opposite.

The updates are appreciated by folks who knew what they were buying into exactly...AN EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER!🤣

Does frequent MS/Asobo updates break things and leave simmers in a constant state of emotional frustration, paranoia, feeling of being on borrowed sim enjoyment time with things that aren't broken, and impending doom?

YES

Did some of us understand we were buying an unfinished, ongoing WIP cutting edge flight simming evolution platform that would undergo several graphical/technical changes for the next 5 years?

YES

Frequent updates can be an emotional rollercoaster, but I feel less frequent quarterly bigger updates would simply have the same users crying about things not being fixed fasted enough. No way to please everyone, for me the good outweighs the bad in MSFS development by a landslide and I prefer the frequent smaller SUs even if it means breaking the sim's comfort and enjoyment at times temporarily. For folks enjoying the older sims until the MSFS roller coaster is where you would like to hop on, I feel it's the most logical sound decision to avoid frustration and headache, but meanwhile such a decision expressed here at Avsim has been met with torch and pitchfork by certain biased user's since MSFS release as if others are obligated to delete their old sims and endure what they see MSFS simmers going through. Quite ironic seeing the very same users who now turn their nose up at others enjoying older sims turn around and make these huge whiney tantrum filled doomsayer threads about MSFS updates and how the overall direction of the sim's progress isn't in their favor...HA...HA...HA...HA 🤔....🤣

 

Edited May 8, 20224 yr by blueshark747

1 hour ago, fppilot said:

Actually both can be provided. Just requires quality control by withholding premature releases.  Still cannot fathom how so many beta viewers do not find issues that present themselves on release.  Appears to say that they are not allowing all changes pending in an update to be tested,

Personally it looks to me like there are two parallel tracks.  One is a path to fix identified issues (beta tested) and the other based on a predetermined development path (not beta tested). And SU's seem to include work on both.  It seems like two teams are working independent of each other.    "word not allowed " (OK Avsim), "darn"  the torpedoes....  keep up with the "objectives driven" development path.

We will identify when this is nearing completion with the announcement of a monthly paid-subscription basis.

Longer periods of testing means fewer releases, means longer periods between updates.  Much longer QA periods might mean less need for hotfixes, but it would have no effect on the monthly cadence of updates to the sim which have never been about only fixes - they're also about building out current systems, improving them, and adding new functionality.

As for issues discovered in beta testing, 1) the betas aren't long enough or wide enough to exhaustively QA all of the scenarios that may present themselves in a flight sim (especially one with who knows how many add-ons looped in), and 2) bugs are not all prioritized as hard blockers to releasing an update.

The big difference between MSFS and other sims is that if P3D releases an update with issues, people can just decline to install it or roll back.  With MSFS you basically have to grin and bear it until an issue is fixed.  The only resolution to that is far more exhaustive QA, which means longer periods of time between updates.  MSFS is also still undergoing far more active development of it's systems than sims with older, more mature codebases.

A better solution might be to let people opt-in to "beta" or "stable" branches of the sim that can connect to the servers, with stable getting updates many months apart after things have been thoroughly tested in the unstable branch.  But I have no idea how feasible that is with how MSFS hooks into Azure servers, or how the MS Store infrastructure works.

I don't know what the line about a paid subscription means.  Seems like baseless conspiracy, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding.