42 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Surely the watermasks were working when the update was passed for release, so how are they suddenly not working now? Insufficient testing of the final release version? Is there any other logical deduction?

The latter;

• God awful Quality Control - has been since day dot.
• Not listening to Testers reports (when they have Users help Beta Test that is), no idea if they even have an internal test team.
• Deadlines & specific dates to meet in order to release Updates, they could've delayed this WU quite easily knowing full well there's a major issue but.....nah the suits want it out the door pronto and it's "free" so we get what we got.....again.

They do acknowledge here the water masking isn't good (nothing at all?) in the upper Caribbean. 
 

I assume there’s water masking in the lower parts?

 

3 minutes ago, NZ255 said:

I assume there’s water masking in the lower parts?

Their chart denotes it clearly where everything is good and where it isn't.

1 minute ago, Farlis said:

Their chart denotes it clearly where everything is good and where it isn't.

Right, but I haven’t looked for myself. 
I was more talking to the people saying there’s no water masking anymore. 

1 minute ago, NZ255 said:

I was more talking to the people saying there’s no water masking anymore. 

No one said it was completely gone. The people initially reporting that, happened to have picked areas within the red zone.

Oh come on people. I know it may be the cool thing to bash Asobo but this has nothing to do with bad QC. They tried a new method to make masking look even better but it doesn't work well over very vast areas. They decided to launch the update anyway and will revert to the old method for the northern regions in the coming days.

Edited February 4, 20242 yr by Krakin

7 minutes ago, Krakin said:

Oh come on people. I know it may be the cool thing to bash Asobo but this has nothing to do with bad QC. They tried a new method to make masking look even better but it doesn't work well over very vast areas. They decided to launch the update anyway and will revert to the old method for the northern regions in the coming days.

I was looking at this persons post, and looking at all of the gorgeous scenery (and stuff) we keep getting for free, that third parties would gladly have charged us quite a bit for, and thinking to myself, instead of being happy with that, we look for something wrong and then spend pages commenting on that while all the good stuff we got seems to be taken almost for granted.

 

Just completed a flight around the island of Aruba. The water masking there was absolutely amazing. Very Happy 😀👍🧡

 

9 hours ago, Krakin said:

Oh come on people. I know it may be the cool thing to bash Asobo but this has nothing to do with bad QC. They tried a new method to make masking look even better but it doesn't work well over very vast areas. They decided to launch the update anyway and will revert to the old method for the northern regions in the coming days.

Its not cool to bash Asobo mainly because the responsability of the release and this includes QC which should be independent from Asobo in my view, is Neumann’s who is Microsoft’s. Asobo are the technicians - they do their best within the time line imposed to them -  Neumann is the project manager. 

It is not cool either to deny that users can have their say by the way. Blurry masks because of the imagery is in some places of inferior quality, uncured boat ghosts (photoshop anybody ?), unblended straight linear borders between the mask and the plain sea are not nice and I don’t see why we shouldn’t say it 😉.

This WU has strong points like the mesh and a better terrain imagery than before for instance.  Its a pity that they didn’t take the time to finish the job. 

Edited February 4, 20242 yr by Dominique_K

Anything that shouts "not real" at me shatters immersion, and that is why I will always call out stuff like poor blending/misalignment of runway centreline markings/those annoying land bars etc. If we do not say anything, then nobody will do anything about it. The response I received from MK Studios regarding the runway centreline markings that are all over the place at EINN Shannon was that they were surprised that nobody had mentioned it previously!! So, let your voices be heard when you see something that needs to be addressed. Just make sure that you do it politely

Edited February 4, 20242 yr by Christopher Low

47 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Blurry masks because of the imagery is in some places of inferior quality, uncured boat ghosts (photoshop anybody ?), unblended straight linear borders between the mask and the plain sea are not nice and I don’t see why we shouldn’t say it 😉.

That's a bit unfair because I dealt specifically with one issue and that was the absence of water masks in the northern part of the Caribbean. I was responding to someone referencing the lack of QA with respect to that. I have no problem acknowledging the things you have pointed out and I made no attempt to silence anyone either. I simply gave a clarification. Like @HiFlyer, though, I do see the positives of this update outweighing the negatives so I am not ready to trash the entire thing like some people are.

9 hours ago, Krakin said:

Oh come on people. I know it may be the cool thing to bash Asobo but this has nothing to do with bad QC. They tried a new method to make masking look even better but it doesn't work well over very vast areas. They decided to launch the update anyway and will revert to the old method for the northern regions in the coming days.

Nothing "cool" about it whatsoever, they tried a new method it's clearly not working correctly and they should've delayed release until they fixed it properly, not yet again releasing something that is half broken. It's everything about QC and as above poor management decisions, again.

Hooray it's free, that doesn't mean criticism should be swept under the carpet like their QC procedures. We all want the best from this product, so we should speak up when things are not right in the slight hope they ever listen, even when it's free.

6 minutes ago, Krakin said:

That's a bit unfair because I dealt specifically with one issue and that was the absence of water masks in the northern part of the Caribbean. I was responding to someone referencing the lack of QA with respect to that. I have no problem acknowledging the things you have pointed out and I made no attempt to silence anyone either. I simply gave a clarification. Like @HiFlyer, though, I do see the positives of this update outweighing the negatives so I am not ready to trash the entire thing like some people are.

Not unfair, my friend, mistaken, I didn't understand what you were referring to. Sorry then 😇.Nobody that I read have trashed the entire WU so far by the way. 

26 minutes ago, Krakin said:

I am not ready to trash the entire thing like some people are.

I haven't seen anyone trash "the entire thing", we're merely pointing out the blatant obvious when it comes to a major issue within what is overall a decent update.

22 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Nothing "cool" about it whatsoever, they tried a new method it's clearly not working correctly and they should've delayed release until they fixed it properly, not yet again releasing something that is half broken. It's everything about QC and as above poor management decisions, again.

Hooray it's free, that doesn't mean criticism should be swept under the carpet like their QC procedures. We all want the best from this product, so we should speak up when things are not right in the slight hope they ever listen, even when it's free.

Nothing is perfect, and it will never be.

Of course everybody can point out things that could have been improved.

But criticism a QC or ‚poor management decisions‘ is something completely different.

first, you have no clue how much QA effort can be spend to such a WU nor what needs to be considered for any management decision.

Microsofts commitment and investment into this franchise is just mind blowing.

It sounds like little children sitting at mom‘s lunch dish, nagging around whatever is being served.