1 hour ago, Noel said:

Please Ian, it's hardly under the same roof with one developer.

I believe 41 years ago it was Microsoft, and I believe now it’s Microsoft. Isn’t that why the last dev update was watered down, because it was thanksgiving and a lot of their staff were with family… I don’t believe they celebrate thanksgiving in France. 

21 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

I don’t believe they celebrate thanksgiving in France. 

don't need to, they celebrate all the time.

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2021/11/18/france-s-beaujolais-nouveau-festival-brings-joy-to-wine-lovers-after-pandemic-blues

6 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

I believe 41 years ago it was Microsoft, and I believe now it’s Microsoft. Isn’t that why the last dev update was watered down, because it was thanksgiving and a lot of their staff were with family… I don’t believe they celebrate thanksgiving in France. 

Let's go back in time to see how these two platforms jive in terms of development to see if it's truly a valid comparison.  We have LR which has been under the direct active development by one man, Austin Meyer and his company LR, which initially launches XP in 1995. He and LR have taken it to where it is today along with their relatively small staff.  Meanwhile MS sold off licensing rights of its ESP engine to Lockheed Martin in 2007, after which MS essentially stopped developing FSX, did a weak run at MS Flight, and then disappeared until sometime around 2015 or so I've heard when initial development for 2020 started.  So we really have 8 years of total development time for MSFS under the parent company MS.  It seems like some people here seem to believe the incredible piece of work we have been steadily enjoying now for 3y was a matter of simply taking their old code and tweaking it, therefore why haven't they solved (the relatively rarely in my experience) messed up runway signs?  What MS/A released in 2020 was vastly different and innovative; XP has been a methodical build from one brain, to where it is today, for 24+ straight years now.  Very differen trajectory.  I have no idea if XP has any runway sign errors in it, but again, when LR decided to debug a certain feature, for example runway sign positioning etc, very likely that change would transfer forward without exception to the next and future versions.  If instead of spending all of what it took to create what we have now in cloud-based streamed ortho imagery largely world wide, with a massive improvement of default airports and airplanes over FSX and every other thing they have done right and it's a ton, they could easily have addressed some of the more mundane, but useful and valued things, like perfecting all runway signs.  In fact we see many things that appear and may well be simple fixes, that MS/A doesn't address at the moment.  Why is that?  I give them the benefit of the doubt:  they know their long term goal, they just expanded their staff base dramatically now 3y post launch, they know a whole lot and are aware of these sorts of things, they don't live in a vacuum.  I say that because with this size of a work group even if some aren't noticing it's a foregone conclusion some are paying close attention to users, and that spreads through MS/A.  And there are many other issues they have to prioritize to meet their long-term goals, whatever they may be.  We were all duly impressed at launch, blown away as it were, and that is why we now see 6,800 MSFS users in-sim (Steam dB) now and XP only 360 or so.  And those are only Steam users, and no Xbox users as well.  So yes, I assume they have the big picture and will eventually get there on some of these desirable core features.

 

10 minutes ago, Noel said:

Meanwhile MS sold off licensing rights of its ESP engine to Lockheed Martin in 2007, after which MS essentially stopped developing FSX, did a weak run at MS Flight, and then disappeared until sometime around 2015 or so I've heard when initial development for 2020 started.  So we really have 8 years of total development time for MSFS under the parent company MS. 

1981 to 2007 is not 8 years under MS. 

 

10 minutes ago, Noel said:

Why is that?

They focus on other areas. Like world updates. Making things look pretty. Which is fine. As long as you’re happy with incorrect taxi ways and runway signs. And broken ATC. And popping LOD. And broken ground tiles. And DX12 issues. Etc etc 

 

10 minutes ago, Noel said:

I give them the benefit of the doubt

We know, like others in here. That’s fine. I did at first. Now I don’t. 

 

10 minutes ago, Noel said:

they know their long term goal,

Which is? I’m not aware of it. Is it to  Make lots of £$€?! 

Edited November 28, 20232 yr by Ianrivaldosmith

1 hour ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

I don’t believe they celebrate thanksgiving in France. 

The dev updates are put together by Microsoft's community managers, and they go by Microsoft's schedule so yeah they had Thanksgiving off, even those on the team who don't work in the US (like SeedyL and Chewwy)

Edited November 28, 20232 yr by Tuskin38

4 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

They focus on other areas. Like world updates. Making things look pretty. Which is fine. As long as you’re happy with incorrect taxi ways and runway signs. And broken ATC. And popping LOD. And broken ground tiles. And DX12 issues. Etc etc 

They focus on many areas, as one does when one develops a sim meant to cater to various needs. Sure didn't look like they were focusing on world updates and "making things look pretty" when they:
- hired WT into the core team to develop default avionics to unprecedented fidelity levels
- got WT to increase the FM/systems/etc fidelity of default aircraft like the CJ4, Citation, 787, 747, and soon the SR22 via multiple AAU updates
- contracted iniBuilds to provide higher fidelity aircraft like the A310 or A320neo in the default fleet
- bothered to add computation fluid dynamics simulation to the FDE (sounds like some very unnecessary bother to get into the business of computing Navier Stokes equations when their "focus is on making things look pretty")
- enhanced the atmospheric airflow to use CFD
- added heli and glider support
- etc etc

Yes areas like default ATC, incorrect taxiways and runway numbering, DX12, ground handling, AI traffic, etc need looking at.. and for those which these are important, they can definitely complain... but so can others who've got issues with scenery not being good enough and they could I suppose moan about MS/Asobo focusing on "aircraft and avionics updates" too much when world/scenery updates should be even better.

As with any software development house managing a complex software system like MSFS meant for a widely varying audience, multiple priorities have to be juggled and looked at. And they also source userbase input and upvotes to help them prioritize. It just so happens areas like default ATC/etc were both lower on the upvoted list by users and internally to MS/Asobo and it's just starting to be looked at given they've now addressed the higher upvoted items. And some other areas warrant enough re-work to only debut in the next major version of the sim.

One can complain and moan, and probably the most useful thing to do is to upvote on wishlist and bugs items. But just because an area of importance (or pet issue) to you is not being looked at doesn't then mean MS/Asobo are only focusing on certain areas like making things prettier. I realize that is an easy go-to scapegoat, but ain't gonna help. MS/Asobo will prioritize and develop various areas of the sim as they see fit, guided partly by our input, and that's that. Stating the obvious, If certain issues are deal-breakers the only practical way is to either use the sim despite those issues, or use other sims that don't have these issues 🤷‍♂️
 

Edited November 29, 20232 yr by lwt1971

44 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

the only practical way is to either use the sim despite those issues, or use other sims that don't have these issues 🤷‍♂️

or be the squeaking wheel until it gets its oil, as we did with improved atmospheric scattering.

3 minutes ago, turbomax said:

or be the squeaking wheel until it gets its oil, as we did with improved atmospheric scattering.

For sure, and while squeaking on avsim is cathartic, only the upvoted wishlist and bugs lists count as squeaking at MS/Asobo 🙂
 

3 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

1981 to 2007 is not 8 years under MS.

Which is? I’m not aware of it. Is it to  Make lots of £$€?! 

Under completely different guidance from the very early years, and completely disrupted with a long interlude--ULTRA DIFFERENT than XP's development trajectory.

That's right, you and I aren't aware of HOW they intend to make as much money as possible, and absolutely it needs to make money or it will die.  MS could have developed another version of XP/P3D but that would have gotten everyone a grand total of nada, zip alreadythere.  Instead they wisely took a chance and won big time and this is why YOU, me and the vast majority of other flight simmers use MSFS 2020 today.  Plus, they owe you absolutely nothing to you, me or anyone else.  I've already gotten far more out of my $119.99 than in any other FS related purchase in my 30 years at this, bar none of 100's over the years. 

This one was impressive.

Even if the 37 was actually a 10 it is still wrong.  Must be a runway with a bend in the middle I suppose, or maybe crescent shaped.

 

 

Maybe it is something like this:

 

 

Edited November 29, 20232 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

My word. People are actually trying to act like Asobo coming in with their new engine was not a massive disruption? Stop acting like MSFS was the continuation of business as usual. Not everything in the old engine was able to easily mesh with the new one. MSFS also has a lot more airports than FSX did. We can't assume everything would just work or else Asobo would have done it from day one. Why wouldn't they?

This is nothing new. This problem has existed since the initial release of MSFS in 2020. Most of the default airports were built using a mostly automated process with some “manual touchup”. Evidently that process did not have access to the details of taxiway naming because initially, all but the very largest airports had completely fictitious taxiway names that bore no resemblance to the actual taxiway nomenclature. Since release, through the course of numerous sim and world updates, quite a few mid-sized airports have been fixed by Asobo, but by no means all of them. 

Since 2021, I have been using Just Flight’s “Real Taxiways USA” which corrects almost all Class B, C, and D airports in the US. The fact that this product exists proves that taxiway signage can be fixed programmatically, but I don’t think it is as easy as X-Plane, whose airport data files (created by WED) are more straightforward than the complex BGL file structure used in MSFS (and previous MS-derived sims).

Edited November 29, 20232 yr by JRBarrett

17 hours ago, turbomax said:

that's the difference between real pilots and sim-pilots. simpilots like to play with FMC and demand proper turboprop simulation, tons of circuit breakers, ITT and N1% down to the last percent and what have you. proper taxi and runway signs are boring, though taking off from the wrong runway can be and has been deadly. taxiing as a GA pilot can get very confusing without todays advanced panels like Garmin's SafeTaxi or ForeFlight at airports like O'Hare or Midway etc. Not Gatwick or EGLC 😁. I am speaking from real world experience.

Can supplement more! Remind arriving at KLAS with a 172 and being directed to the 26R with Atlantic as my FBO. Thanks to my Foreflight 😉

One part of the solution for this fake taxiway signs is the... MSFS World Hub. That should be somewhere around SU1... hum, was that SU14? Where is the now dead Alpha process ?

 

4 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

Evidently that process did not have access to the details of taxiway naming

again, thread title and my post was re. dual runway numbers at runway end/start showing also the opposite runway number, not taxiways.  FllightOne's BKSQ product didn't address/fix/mention any runway signs.

Edited November 29, 20232 yr by turbomax

8 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

And they also source userbase input and upvotes to help them prioritize.

I was actually taking everything you wrote serious until I seen that bit. They don't care how many things get votes. It's a fad. You can argue back all day, but just go over the official forums and look at things that have been upvoted many times and left without any response from Asobo, or politicians answers in a controlled Q&A. In fact I wish they would remove that voting option, it would save all the false hope. 

I mean look at it https://forums.flightsimulator.com/c/msfs/wishlist/163/l/latest?order=votes

So yeah, great sim, but it has major flaws. No one wants to see terrain morphing in front of them whilst on approach, and a catering truck taxing over the runway when ATC have cleared you to land. And as you get down to 500 feet, cars and pylons start popping in to view. That's a poor attempt at simulating a flight environment. 

 

Anyways back to the topic, the runway sign system is abysmal as is the taxiway signage system. But I can spot my local school on takeoff. Again, whatever floats your boat. I enjoy MSFS greatly, but man does it frustrate me sometimes. 

Edited November 29, 20232 yr by Ianrivaldosmith