My first day as a beta volunteer

They gave me a brush and a can of white paint, "go paint all the clouds". 😒

Hmmm, isn't everything in our lives Beta ? 

So, ASOBO / MS 's decision was pretty much like - give'em LIFE, as opposed to... give'em food for their thoughts but with the frustration of waiting for something to get released and, in the end, most probably find it still has it's ( many ) quirks...

Ask yourself ( OP ) if you would rather be waiting these 2 years for a release... while kept informed about the progress, but with absolutely not taste of what you have other than, some shots, videos, interviews...

And... at least it isn't even subscription-based, a new payware model that many adopt to get their income based on their user expectations. We paid once and been getting the best civil flight simulator experience presently available ( at least IMO, since so far it has given me the joy of virtually flying over the World with a sense of realism I had never experienced before ).

Edited July 12, 20223 yr by jcomm
typos and details...

12 hours ago, abranpuko said:

That is precisely the argument: they make you think that you are not forced.

But, what makes a user try a beta is the hope that the product works much better than it has.

Example: I give you a product that doesn't work very well, but you ve already paid for it,  and I tell you: do you want to try the beta?

Actually, this reflection is due to the fact that I have been seeing for two years how MSFS is full of bugs, and problems related to performance and other aspects. This made me wonder: how is it possible that a product on the market has so many errors? But obviously, being a good candy, we all ate them.

I see it differently.

The purpose of an open beta is to spot bugs in the new release more quickly, because we (users trying the beta) are thousands, Asobo testers can be maybe a dozen.

Also, any "open world" game has bugs and inconsistencies. MSFS isn't perfect and never will be just because it is THE. OPEN. WORLD. Literally.

It depends not only on its code and a set of polygons and textures on your SSD, but also on the availability of online data covering satellite imagery furtherly elaborated by AI algorithms, real time traffic and weather, plus thousands of interactions between all this and aircraft systems. It is literally impossible to test all of this in every part of the virtual world and make sure it's 100% bug free.

If you expect The Witcher 3 level of perfection in a complex project like this, you are condemned to be unsatisfied for the rest of your life.

We have the right to criticize Asobo and MSFS for its shortcomings but we also have to admit that at least since SU6, significant progress has been made with every sim and world update.

And sometimes also looking at the alternatives we have can help get us with feet on the ground and happier of what we have. Youtube is there 🙂

7 hours ago, abranpuko said:

My reflection has nothing to do with feeling forced to try a beta. Because we have bought a beta.
It's a sophisticated beta. But many times it is more of a beta than a final product.

My reflection is because the product should work better than it does when it is sold, when it is brought to market to be sold. And, of course, if there are then 1000 betas to try, I'm in!

In other words, there is no beta of MSFS, but the new beta, and the beta that the rest of us use until that beta is tested.

you got it?

According you your vision, every piece of software must be beta then, since there is no complex software without bugs. If Asobo would have released MSFS only when it was free of bugs we would never had seen it, ever! Neither would we have had X-plane or P3D.

Even if Asobo had 500 internal testers they would not be able to find all bugs since a single end user can try things no sane developer would have thought off.

MSFS was released earlier than I expected and probably a bit too soon but if they had waited two more years we would not have been able to enjoy MSFS for that time. The major developers would have only just have started on their addons so we would still need to wait until 2024 for the first commercial jets to be released, and the software would still contain a lot of bugs and we would still be having this discussion.

It is also possible that Microsoft would have cancelled the MSFS project two more years of development is expensive and they would only know whether MSFS would be a success after those years. The moneycounters might not have taken that gamble. Besides, the release of Xplane12 would be very close to MSFS which might have axed one of the two. Off course, without MSFS, there might not have been an Xplane12 just yet because without competition, Xplane 11 would still be the latest and greatest.

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

Hmmm, isn't everything in our lives Beta ? 

Well said!  I have never known a fully finished software product, and as you say, my whole life seems a 'beta'...  Always learning and tweaking - I am getting a bit sick of the wife lately, so I might have to think about beta version 2022.8.    Meanwhile I am enjoying my really smooth DLSS and DX12 MSFS beta experience with no CTD's.

I don't care about the "It's just a paid beta" discussion that regularly comes up. It's rarely a useful discussion because "beta" is just a label and "Is MSFS a beta?" is just a subjective assesment based on where you decide to place the goalposts on the field. There will always be bugs. There will allways be features that are very important to some users that should have been added long ago. There will always be something that should be done before it is "complete".

But fortunately we have MSFS released in a state that a lot of people can enjoy. Much like a hugely ambitious undertaking like Star Citizen that's been in develeopment for over 10 years now and it's still anyone's guess when it will actually be finished (or run out of money at some point), but at least you can download it and mess around with it in it's current state, and a lot of people seem to get plenty of enjoyment out of that.

I'm not sure what point the OP is trying to make, but on the topic of MSFS being released "unfinished", my biggest complaint regarding this is that each update tended to be HUGE*, and as someone with limited bandwidth, it's frustrating to have put everything on hold for hours and hours to download yet another update, which were quite regular awhile back. It also didn't help that back then the updater software itself was utter rubbish, often getting stuck in an endless loop while pegging my GPU at 100%. Thankfully this seems to have been fixed since last I played. Add to this the fact that, at least back in the day, updates were just as likely to break things as fix things (to the point where it broke the entire sim for me and I had to uninstall), and I've grown to dread updates rather than look forward to them. I'm hoping, however, that things have improved since my hiatus.

* why does some code tweaks require a 40GB download, and has this changed recently?

19 minutes ago, Keto Ketchup said:

* why does some code tweaks require a 40GB download, and has this changed recently?

You don't download only what's been updated, the game is divided in packages (big files) and even if one single line or byte has changed in a package, you have to download the entire new package.

Having said that, the last two updates have been very fast for me (200 Mbps average with peaks at 500, of course plus the time needed to decompress) and they are not a big deal anyway, you can also leave the FS window in the background.

A fast Internet connection is required to enjoy all the features of the game anyway, and it was clear since before release.

I welcome updates personally, since in the last months I have seen a net improvement with each one.

33 minutes ago, Keto Ketchup said:

I'm not sure what point the OP is trying to make, but on the topic of MSFS being released "unfinished", my biggest complaint regarding this is that each update tended to be HUGE*, and as someone with limited bandwidth, it's frustrating to have put everything on hold for hours and hours to download yet another update, which were quite regular awhile back. It also didn't help that back then the updater software itself was utter rubbish, often getting stuck in an endless loop while pegging my GPU at 100%. Thankfully this seems to have been fixed since last I played. Add to this the fact that, at least back in the day, updates were just as likely to break things as fix things (to the point where it broke the entire sim for me and I had to uninstall), and I've grown to dread updates rather than look forward to them. I'm hoping, however, that things have improved since my hiatus.

* why does some code tweaks require a 40GB download, and has this changed recently?

Hours and hours to download 6-10  GB. Are you using a dial up phone modem? 

Edited July 12, 20223 yr by Bobsk8

2 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Hours and hours to download 6-10  GB. Are you using a dial up phone modem? 

Not everyone is as lucky as you (or me), Bob. 😉 Some people have an 'old' connection or even have to pay per MB. It all depends on where you live. Not everyone lives in the US, you know. Or Western Europe. And even then you might be unlucky when it comes to your internet connection. I am sure there are thousands and thousands of MSFS-users who don't have fast internet connections like we do and who have to deal with hours (if not days) of downloading every update.

MS: Here, you can choose if you want to see the beta. 
 

People on Avsim: buhuuuuu Microsoft bad :‘-(

6 minutes ago, tup61 said:

Not everyone is as lucky as you (or me), Bob. 😉 Some people have an 'old' connection or even have to pay per MB. It all depends on where you live. Not everyone lives in the US, you know. Or Western Europe. And even then you might be unlucky when it comes to your internet connection. I am sure there are thousands and thousands of MSFS-users who don't have fast internet connections like we do and who have to deal with hours (if not days) of downloading every update.

Then maybe MSFS isn't for people in that situation, they should think about getting  a sim where it doesn't get updated at all like P3D. 

Edited July 12, 20223 yr by Bobsk8

4 minutes ago, tup61 said:

Not everyone is as lucky as you (or me), Bob. 😉 Some people have an 'old' connection or even have to pay per MB. It all depends on where you live. Not everyone lives in the US, you know. Or Western Europe. And even then you might be unlucky when it comes to your internet connection. I am sure there are thousands and thousands of MSFS-users who don't have fast internet connections like we do and who have to deal with hours (if not days) of downloading every update.

So and because there are users who didn’t reach the modern world yet, Microsoft should push out updates only once a year?

Or what’s the expectation?

6 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Then maybe MSFS isn't for people in that situation, they should think about getting  a sim where it doesn't get updated at all like P3D. 

Easy for you to say. I wonder what you would do if you were still on a dial up phone modem. 😉 I know I would get MSFS regardless!!!

5 minutes ago, MySound said:

So and because there are users who didn’t reach the modern world yet, Microsoft should push out updates only once a year?

Or what’s the expectation?

Er... did I say or imply anything that would make you say this...?

Edited July 12, 20223 yr by tup61

@tup61 should I repost your post about people who don’t have good internet? 🙂

Or at what else did you aim after people complaining about some gigs to download?
 

This whole thread could be closed and nothing of value would be lost.