It is with great reluctance I’m posting this about a developer who has created the most accurate versions of Concorde over many years.

But given the responses and their attitude I feel it’s only right I should draw your attention to their support service.

I bought the P3Dv5 Concorde back in autumn 2023. In the next few months there were a few updates fixing some bugs. All well and good.

But the last update was in November 2023 with nothing since. There’s nothing serious enough to prevent successful flights but some aspects relating to custom routes remain buggy.

I asked some weeks ago in the Concorde forum why the software in the aircraft had selected a different departure runway to the one I selected. It was so short that no passengers could be loaded as the MTOW for the 1.5hr hop to Orlando would be exceeded. The user cannot change the runway selected by the software. It overrides your choice on some occasions for no obvious reason.

With no response I raised a support ticket expecting my issue would be looked at. I was asking for KBOS runway data to be checked because whilst I had selected 04R for departure the software chose 04L - considerably shorter - hence the problem.

After no response in several days I posted a reminder. The reply from the head man was “all our efforts are going to MSFS so we can’t investigate this, sorry”.

The ticket was closed. I posted asking if some indication could be given when it would be looked at. No reply and the ticket was again closed.

The attached screenshot shows the last few events.

I’m extremely disappointed in FSL. What I was asking for wouldn’t have taken long to check. I suspected it was a data issue (no 04R for KBOS in their system) rather than a programming one.

So unless you have a separate contract for support it looks to me like they’re unwilling to even tell you when the outstanding issues will be fixed. Just silence to those questions even for MSFS products.

Those of you who buy their MSFS products might experience something completely different but the point is if you’ve paid good money for a product you should expect the remaining bugs to be resolved in a reasonable timeframe. Not be dismissed as I have been. No fixes in 18 months and a very surly attitude to customers.

A totally unecessary post - especially from a moderator

I don't think this is a unnecessary post and I definitely do not think the fact that Ray is a moderator makes it more unnecessary (but maybe I am missing some sort of causation). It is a valid point that if you buy software and there are bugs you should be able to expect those bugs will be resolved within a specific time frame (specifically when it is a quite recently released product!). To be totally honest I feel FS Labs haven't really bothered with the Concorde, they pushed it out, cashed a bit of money from it and then decided to leave it be to focus on MSFS... Hopefully I am wrong though! 

9 minutes ago, FOD said:

A totally unecessary post - especially from a moderator

I fail to understand your logic. Why should I not express my feelings about a product I’ve paid for just because I’m a moderator on a totally separate site. It’s not as if I’m on the staff at FSL.

@Blasb, thank you. Posting here is a last resort once all other options have been exhausted.

If P3D has about 1% of the hardcore sim market, how many are still even actively using the FSL Concorde? 10, 50, 100? Not much more than that. 

As you mentioned, the aircraft is perfectly flyable with some small bugs that are noticed just by the most critical users.

It has been clear for some years now that P3D has no future as a viable sim platform that attracts and retains developer support.

The sim fans have long moved on and the developers went with them.

Can’t blame FSL for this one; they have taken too long to release their Airbuses for MSFS, and now their future is at stake.  

@GCBraun, so you consider it acceptable not to correct bugs in their software? If the same bug exists in the MSFS Concorde and is not fixed is that acceptable?

2 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@GCBraun, so you consider it acceptable not to correct bugs in their software? If the same bug exists in the MSFS Concorde and is not fixed is that acceptable?

you could say about most devs to be fair, inibuilds, aerosoft, orbx,LR, asobo,WT, just flight.  You name it.   

1 minute ago, fluffyflops said:

you could say about most devs to be fair, inibuilds, aerosoft, orbx,LR, asobo,WT, just flight.  You name it.   

But FSL have a good reputation for quality software. It’s the fact that having fixed a few important ones several involving custom routes remain outstanding and the silence on progress for any of their products is deafening.

23 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@GCBraun, so you consider it acceptable not to correct bugs in their software? If the same bug exists in the MSFS Concorde and is not fixed is that acceptable?

It is very hard to find bug free software. I assume that Concorde is working well for 95% of the use cases. It would be a different story if the plane was totally broken. 

It is just a matter of ROI at this point. 

6 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

It is very hard to find bug free software. I assume that Concorde is working well for 95% of the use cases. It would be a different story if the plane was totally broken. 

It is just a matter of ROI at this point. 

I think you’ve missed my point. My ticket related to runway data which presumably is held in a table in a database. They’ll use the same data for MSFS probably.

All I was asking was for them to check what runways they had stored for KBOS. Another user reported a similar problem at KOAK airport when a ridiculously short runway was selected by the software instead of the one the user had chosen.

All they had to do was review the data and report back. If they’d closed the ticket at that point I would have accepted it.

The fact they wouldn’t even do that is what has left me so frustrated. I’m not asking or expecting remaining bugs to be fixed any time soon but surely they could have found time to check their runway data.

The Concorde forum is extremely quiet. When I asked two other posters what their experiences of Concorde were the reply was they bought it to support FSL but hadn’t flown it in a very long time. The performance is terrible unless a user-supplied tweak is applied. That user hasn’t even been thanked for his discovery. A very sad state of affairs. 🙁

Well, I have purchased this aircraft but only used it once. Not sure why FSL has opted to lock it down and prevent users from making simple choices or disabling the built-in assistances. 

13 minutes ago, GCBraun said:

Well, I have purchased this aircraft but only used it once. Not sure why FSL has opted to lock it down and prevent users from making simple choices or disabling the built-in assistances. 

Precisely. I’ve thought about this quite a bit. They should have offered two versions. One with the hand-holding and one without.

The Virtual Crew are of great value to the new pilots but for those who’ve flown it for years I really want to handle the fuel myself. That’s impossible as things stand. No indication has been given if that will change in the future.

I went back a few years ago to P3D so I could get the Concorde. I based that decision on FSL saying it will be brought into MSFS2020,which never happened. I like their Airbus for MSFS2020. I loved the Concorde but disappointed in not having that scale of simulation in MSFS.

 

Jeffg

Whilst I am not surprised that FS Labs are now concentrating on MSFS instead of trying to fix any more bugs in the P3Dv5 version of Concorde, I do feel that it would be kind of them to have a look at this issue. As Ray says, it could be as simple as a database error. I have no idea how easy this would be to fix, but I feel that looking at it would benefit FS Labs as far as PR is concerned, and earn them a greater degree of respect. Based on what I have seen and read over the years, there are times when they seem to exhibit a rather cold and indifferent attitude towards their customers.

Maybe I am wrong, but that is how I have perceived the situation as an outsider.

9 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Maybe I am wrong, but that is how I have perceived the situation as an outsider.

No Chris, you’re spot on.