I really don't follow game development, but I for one can't really think of another that will stream a significant amount of its core content. 

2020 is on the periphery of this which has of course has worked fine for most. 

Because of this, I think there's going to be some sadness. 

Not sure how much attention should be paid to the Alpha reports as it's an older build, but I will not be buying it and will try it on gamepass first as I'm pretty sure my connection, which is right at the bottom of the required specs, will make it a major grind. 

 

1 hour ago, flightyjoe said:

I can do that now in MSFS 2020, why didn't you get it?

I did. Flew to Kiribati to be one of the first. Had same experience as above. 😂

On 10/13/2024 at 2:28 AM, RobJC said:

Pulling for these guys but i can’t help but think (based on a lot of project experience) that this project is seriously in trouble. At least short term. 

What 'serious trouble'?

43 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

What 'serious trouble'?

I just don’t see it releasing in a state that most will find acceptable, for a variety of reasons. This team is awesome so eventually they will sort it out, but just not by November 19th imo. Fortunately 2020 is pretty amazing, so we have something to tide us over while they fix everything. Hope i am wrong but it isn’t life or death either way. 

1 hour ago, RobJC said:

I just don’t see it releasing in a state that most will find acceptable, for a variety of reasons.

"most" doesn't mean what you think it means.

"most" will fly, have fun, enjoy the sights, do the career, etcetera, etcetera.

A vastly (and I mean VASTLY) outnumbered minority of neverhappy will nitpick and complain about every imperfection, and be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Edited October 15, 20241 yr by Abriael

38 minutes ago, Abriael said:

"most" doesn't mean what you think it means.

"most" will fly, have fun, enjoy the sights, do the career, etcetera, etcetera.

A vastly (and I mean VASTLY) outnumbered minority of neverhappy will nitpick and complain about every imperfection, and be irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

You really are triggered lol. 

53 minutes ago, RobJC said:

triggered

That's another of the things that doesn't mean what you think it means. 🙄

Edited October 15, 20241 yr by Abriael

On 10/12/2024 at 6:27 AM, kerosene31 said:

I predict that I'll be sitting back watching all the chaos unfold.  Server issues, a million questions on compatibility for every add-on, etc.  

People are going to just copy a massive community folder over (or use a manager) and start the sim and then start posting "my sim won't load, HELP!"

Anyone going in day 1 - all I ask is, "Are you sure?".  I'm giving it a couple days at least to see how the dust settles.  

For people going in at launch - good luck.  People need to have realistic expectations.  

Ha ha ha - yes, you've got it exactly right! 

Most tech problems are "PEBKAC" 😁

///

Yes, I'm sure I'll give it a try almost immediately.

But I'll keep it entirely stock and not mess about with any add-ons at all.

Had no trouble keeping myself busy with v2020 at launch, and with all the new (and genuinely improved) Default add-ons, and YES, I'm hitting the missions 😎, so no worries about using "just" the base game.

Yep - there will be issues. And if they affect me, well, I've got several other flight sims upon which I can pass the time until fixed.

4 hours ago, RobJC said:

4 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

What 'serious trouble'?

I just don’t see it releasing in a state that most will find acceptable, for a variety of reasons

What are these various reasons?

56 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I've got several other flight sims upon which I can pass the time until fixed.

I'll have MSFS 2024 + MSFS 2020 upon which I will pass time until the other flight sims get fixed or at least add some of the basic features they are missing for several years now.

Edited October 15, 20241 yr by turbomax

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

What are these various reasons?

Let me first start by saying the stuff these guys are doing is hard, and they have done an amazing job with 2020, and I fully expect them to do an amazing job with 2024. But when I look at this project from a software project manager perspective (my primary role the past 15 years) I see the telltale signs of a project that will not meet expectations. What might some of those things be?

At a high level, I have never been a fan of naming a product using a year. That doesn't mean anything in and of itself, but Microsoft largely went away from this naming convention long ago because it causes unnecessary pressure. If, for example, they had named it "MSFS 15" none of the marketing info would need updating if the release date slipped. So now we have unnecessary pressure to release, regardless of the state of the product. That isn't to say that the product couldn't slip into 2025 and still be called 2024, but it isn't ideal. Second, where is the beta? All these changes and they didn't even have a beta, yet I thought we learned with 2020 that betas are good? Now why would they not have a beta? Time constraints would be my guess. They can't have a beta, gather feedback, fix those issues, and still meet the launch date. Somebody decided to skip the beta, which again based on 2020, would have been really helpful. Okay so let's assume that they didn't have a beta because they are super confident that the product is stable. But the preview event showed a lot of issues, including people at the event not even being able to load the sim because the router at the event was overloaded. They also had to patch a few critical bugs during the event, and it still showed a lot of rough edges. And then we had the tech alpha. People like to claim that the code used for the alpha was much older, but they really have no way to validate that claim. I would argue that using anything except a recent build would sort of be pointless, since we are trying to gather info about the sim we are releasing. The build date was two weeks before the alpha, so without any other factual data to go by, I am going with this is a stripped-down version of what they had then. So no, I do not subscribe to the magical release version that nobody has verified. I also think there is a high likelihood that the router issue at the preview event is the reason for the tech alpha. I would also add that there have been a lot of bugs in 2020 and it literally took the better part of three years to get really sorted, and some would argue we still aren't there four years on. While the team have done an amazing job and this is next-level stuff, it has been a pretty bumpy road at times. I think we can all agree on that. 

Jorg at one point said the code was pretty much locked down, then we get the preview event followed by the tech alpha. It seems to me that the tech alpha would have been done months ago, then we'd have had a beta for a few months, finally leading up to the release. The lack of the beta is a real red flag. Then Jorg cancelled an event that was scheduled to focus on 2024, and he said there were a lot of things to do. I thought we were at code lock down. Again, as a project manager I see this and just get the feeling that things are not in the best shape. I watched many videos and read a lot of posts on the official forums (and here) and it seems like there are a lot of obvious issues. Cruise ships clearly in the wrong places. Controls that are almost impossible to bind. Serious connection issues. Crashes galore. Career mode seems pretty broken in places. Errors about DirectX cards not being recognized. The number of problems I have read and seen cover almost every aspect of the sim. Again, where is the beta? Have we learned nothing from 2020? 

I have huge respect for the team. These guys are doing amazing work. But the PM in me sees this stuff and sees problems. Hey, we have 2020 so it could be worse. But I for one have tempered my expectations for the next few months. Hopefully I am wrong, because it is no fun for the team dealing with disappointment (and anger) from the community. A lot of people forget this is entertainment and not life and death.  

Edited October 15, 20241 yr by RobJC

4 hours ago, RobJC said:

I have huge respect for the team. These guys are doing amazing work. But the PM in me sees this stuff and sees problems. Hey, we have 2020 so it could be worse. But I for one have tempered my expectations for the next few months. Hopefully I am wrong, because it is no fun for the team dealing with disappointment (and anger) from the community. A lot of people forget this is entertainment and not life and death.  

A lot of avsimmers who want to cosplay as MSFS PM it seems 🙂 ... bottom line, we really don't know what level of code was used for the tech alpha nor the global preview event, when they were branched off the main codebase, etc... Proof will be in the pudding when we get the final release of course. That said, as has been repeated by many here already, on many threads, I would say at least these following points fall in the highly-plausible category:

• the current state of the MSFS is *NOT* in alpha state in the traditional sense of software releases.. that would be insane given that final release is in ~4 weeks
• if there was a beta stage(s) it was obviously internal, for the core dev team and likely also their 3rd party dev partners contributing to MSFS 2024
• just because they didn't have a public beta doesn't mean their development cycle didn't do betas, or go thru a typical development cycle
• just because sim updates go thru public betas doesn't mean new sim releases have to also go thru public betas
• for the tech alpha, the addition of telemetry code both on the client and server side likely could've caused bugs/CTDs, and impact on performance

 

4 hours ago, RobJC said:

People like to claim that the code used for the alpha was much older, but they really have no way to validate that claim. I would argue that using anything except a recent build would sort of be pointless, since we are trying to gather info about the sim we are releasing.

Conversely, the point you're arguing has no real way of being validated either. The purpose of the alpha was to stress test specific server-side functionality and services.
 

4 hours ago, RobJC said:

The build date was two weeks before the alpha, so without any other factual data to go by, I am going with this is a stripped-down version of what they had then. So no, I do not subscribe to the magical release version that nobody has verified.

Nope that is a pure assumption. You keep repeating this (and ignoring what lots of people keep telling you), but as has already been said, the build date says nothing about the state of their main codebase as it stands now. The two preview builds' codebase could have been branched off the main codebase months, weeks, or days ago. There is no way to tell at all. If you want to go with the worst-case assumption that it got branched very recently then sure 🤷‍♂️
 

4 hours ago, RobJC said:

I also think there is a high likelihood that the router issue at the preview event is the reason for the tech alpha.

You can definitely think that, but that's pure conjecture.
 

4 hours ago, RobJC said:

Jorg at one point said the code was pretty much locked down, then we get the preview event followed by the tech alpha. It seems to me that the tech alpha would have been done months ago, then we'd have had a beta for a few months, finally leading up to the release. The lack of the beta is a real red flag. Then Jorg cancelled an event that was scheduled to focus on 2024, and he said there were a lot of things to do. I thought we were at code lock down. Again, as a project manager I see this and just get the feeling that things are not in the best shape. I watched many videos and read a lot of posts on the official forums (and here) and it seems like there are a lot of obvious issues. Cruise ships clearly in the wrong places. Controls that are almost impossible to bind. Serious connection issues. Crashes galore. Career mode seems pretty broken in places. Errors about DirectX cards not being recognized. The number of problems I have read and seen cover almost every aspect of the sim. Again, where is the beta? Have we learned nothing from 2020? 

More conjecture, and once again the lack of a public beta for a release of a whole new sim platform is not a red flag.. and the rest IMO is unreasonable fear. But of course you are free to fret, hopefully you'll be relieved of this stress soon.
 

Edited October 15, 20241 yr by lwt1971

1 hour ago, RobJC said:

I also think there is a high likelihood that the router issue at the preview event is the reason for the tech alpha.

Jorg mentioned at the time of the Preview Event there'd be an Alpha, the router issue was - as said to you before - an issue dealing with 10+ PCs all connected at the same time.

1 hour ago, RobJC said:

.....That isn't to say that the product couldn't slip into 2025 and still be called 2024, but it isn't ideal.

...Second, where is the beta? All these changes and they didn't even have a beta, yet I thought we learned with 2020 that betas are good? Now why would they not have a beta?  ...I would also add that there have been a lot of bugs in 2020 and it literally took the better part of three years to get really sorted, and some would argue we still aren't there four years on....The lack of the beta is a real red flag.  Again, where is the beta? Have we learned nothing from 2020? 

But I for one have tempered my expectations for the next few months. Hopefully I am wrong, because it is no fun for the team dealing with disappointment (and anger) from the community. A lot of people forget this is entertainment and not life and death.  

The first point is just too weak to score.  The second:  you mean public access beta?  With a team of what, 400, no can do a huge amount of testing at very high quality levels, we'll call it professional beta testers (or alpha testers).  IOW, are all testing cohorts identical?  Just hypothesizing unless we really know WHY they chose to not have public access beta it's pretty weak as well, IMO.

As for bugs, since this build is so closely tied to 2020 which came essentially out of nowhere as a mostly brand new release of FS, the old bugs are known and largely solved, bugs that is not feature changes per se.

I really have no expectation except I'm confident no matter when I buy 2024 it will deliver at some point.  I'm so stoked using 2020 it's just a low priority for me.  I kept and flew P3D for maybe 5 months or so post 2020 install.

As for 'entertainment'...I'll go one up on that and call it crack entertainment for its addictive potential to those so disposed, like yours truly 🙂

2 hours ago, RobJC said:

Let me first start by saying the stuff these guys are doing is hard.... long word salad.

The more you write, the more you show that you don't know what you're talking about... or maybe you know and you're doing it on purpose, which at this point would be easier to explain. 

You keep completely ignoring the fact that the build date does not indicate the date the technical alpha was branched from the main branch. That's simply not how it works. Anyone who "led software projects for 30 years" knows that a build date is the date in which the build has been compiled for the last time and has gone into final testing, which has been successful.

If anything was changed afterward, there'd be a new build, and as such, a new build date. 

This means that, unless you really believe that the work of turning the primary branch of the simulator into the technical alpha (including all the feature stripping, the UI work, the likely several rounds of testing, and so forth) took someone just a few days, which is as realistic as flowers on the sun, you should know pretty well that the moment in which the branch happened and work started on that branch to make it into the technical alpha started much, much earlier than September 25. 

This is development 101, and someone with 30 days of experience should know, let alone "30 years." Nothing of this kind of magnitude in development is done in a few days. Let alone tested and made ready to go on people's private computers by a company like Microsoft on a network that has more layers of security than a WW2 battleship.

Someone with any real software development experience would also know that "code pretty much locked down" does not mean at all that the simulator has "gone gold" (IE: the code for version 1.0 that will be released is actually locked, and that's what is going on the disks/will be downloaded by players). 

It simply means (assuming that's what Jorg actually said) that the main features are in place and there won't be major changes like the addition of a new mode, or something of this magnitude. 

In modern development, even when a game "goes gold" (IE: the code is actually "locked down" which isn't the case because it would be announced) work continues in earnest on the day-one update. Developers aren't required to twiddle their thumbs for two months while the disks are being printed anymore, so whatever Jorg may have said or meant with that mention of the code, it doesn't mean what you think it means and it doesn't prove anything you're trying so desperately to prove by waving it around like the flag of doom and gloom. 

 

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

Jorg mentioned at the time of the Preview Event there'd be an Alpha, the router issue was - as said to you before - an issue dealing with 10+ PCs all connected at the same time.

25. 

Edited October 15, 20241 yr by Abriael