You all have fun being the first to test all the kinks out and report bugs.
I'll be enjoying MSFS2020 for a while. Appreciate all the volunteer testers, I hope every bit of feedback and bug reporting is actually considered this time.

4 hours ago, penta_a said:

During SDK Dev update, they mentioned that SDK will be released 21 Oct as ALPHA version.

Now they are asking users to sign up for tech ALPHA test version.

we have merely 40 days to official release date, is this time enough to test ALPHA, then BETA then RC and finally a final release version with in this short time?

Am I missing something?

Yes. You are missing what a technical alpha is. 

A small part of a client designed to test specific things. 

It has nothing to do with the progress of the full product, 

4 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

Diviértanse todos siendo los primeros en probar todos los problemas y reportar errores.
Disfrutaré de MSFS2020 por un tiempo. Agradezco a todos los evaluadores voluntarios. Espero que esta vez se tengan en cuenta todos los comentarios y reportes de errores.

That's the key, some people enjoy trying new things and all that but I will wait for others to do the dirty work. Nowadays we have an incredible amount of good simulators and great addons to enjoy, I'm not in any hurry.

36 minutes ago, Sethos said:

My God people read a neurotic amount into absolutely everything around here 😅

 

Just because they call it an alpha anything, has absolutely NOTHING to do with the primary branch of development, has nothing to do with where they are in development or even if that alpha moniker is correct for its state.

From my experience with a few good developers during testing and evaluation, alpha was for only internal use, and beta was available for volunteers before release. Of course, many during initial release had issues ironed out, with patches to follow. 

From what I read based on Q&A, they acknowledged that in the "early trailer," many issues were not fixed as they hadn't addressed them in alpha. 

It is disappointing that many developers have started charging money for alpha and beta versions and very slow or no improvement after that, while many customers have started paying money for unfinished/buggy software. 

Actually, people are to blame for allowing this to happen and for being taken advantage of.

38 minutes ago, Sethos said:

My God people read a neurotic amount into absolutely everything around here 😅

This. I expect a good amount of panic threads from here to November. Some of then will be caused by actual irrational panic, some designed to cause panic in others. 

No, MSFS2024 is not being released in an alpha state

It's taken me four years to get MSFS to a stable state, full of AI traffic, butter smooth frames, and looking perfect every flight. I imagine FS2024 will be perfect for me in about 2028!  

3 hours ago, Greazer said:

The one from the preview event at Grand Canyon was an ALPHA. Bad fps, frequent crashes.

They fixed the crash on the day. And the bad FPS was just in the videos caused by the recording software, people who went there said it was fine.

Also usually in the gaming industry, press event builds are already a month or 2 old. They branch off from the main build before the event to be cut down and curated for the event.

So the build at the Grand Canyon was probably a month or more old.

Edited October 10, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

Other than some minor bugs, i don't expect any game stoppers. It's not a new sim, and more of upgrade. They also have 4yrs of experiance now compared to the launch of 2020.  And if i'm wrong, there's 2020 to fall back to if needed.

1 hour ago, martinboehme said:

I assume they're calling the Technical Alpha an alpha because it purposely doesn't contain the full set of content that will be in the release, and because they're only testing specific aspects (mainly the servers). I don't think it follows from this that MSFS 2024 as a whole is currently only "alpha quality".

Neither, of course, does it follow that it will be bulletproof at release -- we will just have to see. But I think people are reading way too much into the name "Technical Alpha".

You are certainly right on the whole, but I am sure that everything is under enormous time pressure during development and I think there will have to be massive updates precisely because of this time pressure to meet the deadline.
Of course it will probably (hopefully) not be as bad as the release of the MSFS 2020 but it certainly won't work without updates on the first Go !!!

But that's just my view of things..

cheers 😉

7 minutes ago, Langeveldt said:

It's taken me four years to get MSFS to a stable state, full of AI traffic, butter smooth frames, and looking perfect every flight. I imagine FS2024 will be perfect for me in about 2028!  

🤣

It definitely won't be solid on day one. My hope is that I can find something stable in 2024 to keep me busy while they are fixing things. Maybe the Twin Otter? 737 Max? I seriously doubt either of those will be ready. I just hope something works. Otherwise, 2020 it is.  

11 minutes ago, RobJC said:

🤣

It definitely won't be solid on day one. My hope is that I can find something stable in 2024 to keep me busy while they are fixing things. Maybe the Twin Otter? 737 Max? I seriously doubt either of those will be ready. I just hope something works. Otherwise, 2020 it is.  

I'm going to do career mode stuff in light aircraft, admiring this supposed enhanced detail.

FS2020 was always better for GA stuff until the last year or so, when the airliner releases and technology came into their own.  

55 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

They fixed the crash on the day. And the bad FPS was just in the videos caused by the recording software, people who went there said it was fine.

Also usually in the gaming industry, press event builds are already a month or 2 old. They branch off from the main build before the event to be cut down and curated for the event.

So the build at the Grand Canyon was probably a month or more old.

This. (at least most of it)

If people believe the issues at the preview event weren't par for the course with any non-simplistic software at a preview event over 2 months from release, they have likely never been at a preview event. 

Incidentally, let me dispel the myth about the recording software. There was *no* recording software.

All the recording was done via hardware on Ninja Inferno external recording cards. They have absolutely no impact on performance. 

These things even have their own separate SSD, so they don't even affect your PC's read/write performance. They're monsters.

The stutters were there (and anyone who said there weren't either wasn't paying attention or was lucky to fly over location that someone else had already cached before them), and the reason they were there is because of two factors:

1: optimization was obviously not finished. With a build that's already old over 2 months before a product launches, that is normal. 

2: more important, we were at the friggin *grand canyon village* which is *a village in the middle of nowhere in Arizona* at a hotel. With 25 clients taking bandwidth at the same time, it's a miracle that there weren't more stutters due to constricted bandwidth affecting streaming. 

I don't know whether Microsoft arranged for separate internet access from that of the hotel (otherwise we'd have had to share bandwidth with the whole hotel), but even in that case, zero doubt the internet was suboptimal even compared to your usual household in a city.

I understand that some may have felt the need to justify the stutters in consideration of the usual irrational panic and/or intentional FUD, but there's really no need for it.

Edited October 10, 20241 yr by Abriael

4 hours ago, Greazer said:

The one from the preview event at Grand Canyon was an ALPHA. Bad fps, frequent crashes. I was pretty shocked actually.  After everything that was said about multi threading and performance gains, we saw a buggy version with stutters etc.   And it's all going live two months later?  Feels like FS2020 again.

I don't remember seeing that feedback from the preview event. The main bug anyone spoke about was the hilarious red error guy showing up in every cockpit, which they patched out in under an hour. I definitely didn't hear about frequent crashes to desktop. The version they used at the event was the first stable version, not the latest version Asobo was working with.

2 hours ago, RobJC said:

🤣

It definitely won't be solid on day one. My hope is that I can find something stable in 2024 to keep me busy while they are fixing things. Maybe the Twin Otter? 737 Max? I seriously doubt either of those will be ready. I just hope something works. Otherwise, 2020 it is.  

I think it's going to be fine, unless you're looking to fly a particular addon in a particular manner.

When I think back to the launch of v2020, I was flying about like a mad lad, trying all the Defaults and figuring out what was good and what wasn't. And yeah, that meant a LOT of Hand Flying and Alt/Heading Hold AP flights. Which is always just fine with me. 🙂

What I DIDN'T do was evaluate it through the lens of Prepar3D or X-Plane.

I'm confident that v2024 will be eminently usable for content native to the game. And yeah, I'm gonna be all about the missions and new Hi Fi aircraft for awhile. So if the 3PDs need some time to iron out compatibility, it won't affect me much.