Checked that sim units were set to “hybrid” - started the TBM “sim” - noted that baroscale is STILL in Hg. Checked G3000 PFD to see if changing it has finally been supported in there - nope. I live in New Zealand - we don’t use Hg for altimeter settings!
Pressed the timer button on the yoke to start the timer on the MFD. Moves nicely - makes all the right sounds - but STILL doesn’t start the counter.
Put the throttle into High-idle - noted how ITT STILL goes to 1400 deg C+
Moved throttle to low-idle - noted how we’re now getting ITT over-temps in low idle (so they’ve made it WORSE)
Really struggled to move the throttle back to high-idle with the mouse - tried about 20 times. When it finally moved … the engine shut down. So something else that’s been mucked up.
Started engine again. Did more testing. Getting LOW VOLTAGE alerts in HIGH idle - shouldn’t happen.
Noted that battery voltage on MFD isn’t changing anyway.
Turned on panel lights. Overhead floodlights also come on (as expected) but they don’t illuminate any controls (only the labels for the controls) making it very difficult to find the correct hover point to adjust things like altitude - especially in turbulence.
Still no way to dim the PFDs and MFD - ridiculous brightness at night.
Panel dimming is hopeless; it goes from “medium” (at full CW) to “full” (on CCW rotation) quickly - and remains at “ridiculous levels” all the way through to fully CCW.
At this point I just shut down the sim; this rubbish is completely unflyable. Feeling ■■■■■■ off. Back to X-Plane + TBM 900 (where ALL of the above works properly out of the box).
Come on Asobo - this is absolute rubbish. It’s supposed to be a SIMULATOR not “a flying game”. At this point I’d gladly accept my money back if offered.
I’m sure they’ll get to your issues eventually, hopefully sometime in the next 6 months. Development takes time. If it was easy to get working correctly, it would be. In general, this software is going to be a work in progress for at least the next two years (I was initially thinking by the end of next year, I forgot they are releasing X-box version). With further development and bugs beyond that as well.
(p.s. I’d stay away from hybrid units if you can. FSX where this came from is heavily US based in units, so trying to use any other units will be problematic at best until they can actually spend some time on it. They have other priorities at the moment, clearly.)
They have your reported bugs and wish list scheduled to be fixed in 2025!
I feel the same way. Nothing I’ve reported was corrected
I’m guessing Asobo is already focused on the XBox launch. Microsoft will be pushing them to do so, as that is where the next big income opportunity will be.
X-plane works properly out of the box? Hah! if you enjoy watching AI tumble down the runway trying to take off How many years has X-plane been in development again? Wait, you’re telling me it’s been perfect all along? I dunno, I had so many issues with it I gave up and went back to FSX (last year) (ground handling, sea planes, payware developers abandoning development of their products, I couldn’t get Ortho to compile after days of trying, and on and on). And I put several hundred dollars into purchasing products for it. I did want it to work.
Well no - not really. You can see for yourself that I wrote “X-Plane + TBM 900”
Look - the TBM 930 isn’t study-level - I get that. But that doesn’t give them any kind of pass for functionality that they’ve included that doesn’t work properly and - if anything - appears to be getting worse not better.
When they released an update to allow us to choose things like hPa over Hg then I expect those updates to now give me hPa instead of Hg when I choose the appropriate setting.
If they’re going to put a clickable button on the yoke - and a timer on the MFD then I expect the timer to start when I click the button.
If they’re going to allow the throttle to be moved into high-idle then I don’t expect to quickly get a massive ITT overheat.
If the ITTs were previously OK at low-idle I don’t expect them to now also overheat at low-idle.
I don’t expect an engine to shut down moving from low-idle to high-idle
If a floodlight can be turned on then I expect it to properly illuminate the instrument panel so I can fly at night.
And it 3rd parties can produce mods that allow display dimming then why the heck can’t the developers sort it; it’s not rocket science.
Why would anybody wanting a simulation experience be using AI to take off?
X-Plane has been in development about 25 years. Using the same yardstick MSFS has been in development 38 years. If you’re talking only about latest versions then MSFS2020 and XP11.50 have both been available about 3 months.
Please keep in mind that I wanted MSFS to work too; I spent several thousand dollars on an i7 10700K, 64GB, NVMe SSD, RTX 3080, 3 screens, an Alpha Flight Yoke, a Bravo Throttle Quadrant. It was by bitter disappointment in what MSFS delivered that DROVE me to X-Plane.
Look - I get it - nobody expects bug-free code right off the bat, but when something this major is released the types of issues we discover should only be the types of things that come from obscure combinations of things that just aren’t likely to be discovered by beta testers; it shouldn’t be possible for someone like me to discover upwards of a dozen glaringly obvious basic functionality issues in the first hour. And if all of that wasn’t enough, their response should have been more along the lines of “hey folks - sorry about those bugs - frankly we’re pretty embarrassed that we let the product be released with them - but be rest-assured we’re burning the midnight oil to get them patched before we go any further - apologies again” - but instead we get ZERO action on glaringly obvious bugs that affect basic functionality - but major world updates. Frankly I just find that insulting.
I accept that there will always be things that are left out of stock aircraft, but I expect the things that are there to work ‘ok’.
Do I expect that a turbine engine is modeled with PhD level supercomputer code from Pratt and Whitney? Nope. I do expect that the broad strokes of how it works and behaves are within some reasonable boundary of correct, in a ‘simulation’. The alternative would be to not display the values at all, just show a throttle setting from 0-100% and leave it at that.
I worked for a company once where I found out they had added a bunch of random number generator numbers to a lab test user interface to obfuscate what what actually being done in an attempt to protect trade secrets. This is how a lot of the engine displays feel to me right now.
Bingo. I couldn’t care less that they’ve “tweaked the power of the C152 by 5%” (actual example). I DO care that significant functionality that should work “in the ballpark” bares little resemblence to reality.
These systems were designed over many years by countless software engineers, all of whom are experts in aviation software development, and tested and tried and supported for many years afterwards. Not to mention, these systems are independent computers or data units, each of which cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Sorry to hear you’re disappointed that a team of 400 video game developers couldn’t perfectly emulate the same experience on your personal computer within 6 months while spending the same effort doing the same for 2 airliners, 2 business jets, a bunch of GA aircraft, and all the while fix a physics engine and better simulate snow accumulation, and somehow do all this while working from home during a pandemic that has shut down most of the Western World.
Would you like me to ask the developers to focus all their effort on your TBM?
Nobody expected perfection. As previously stated, what I DO expect is for them to not release software with glaring basic functionality issues.
Either it’s not been tested by people who know what they’re doing (unlikly) - or they knew about the issues and released it anyway. That’s not a good look.
If they’ve got the financial resources to employ 400 game developers then assigning just one or two of them to fixing their embarrassing issues would go a long way; but it seems that they’re not interesting in doing that (given that it’s been out nearly 6 months) - and yet they have the time to release world updates (UK due next month).
So again - if they want to market it as a “flying game” then fine; give me my money back and we’ll call it quits. Just stop marketing the dam thing as a simulator when it isn’t.
You’re right; I’m not sorry at all. I’ve had no issues “simulating” flights in the A320, CJ4, and C172. If you’d like, I’ll happily fly an unmodded TBM on a full IFR flight and stream the whole thing.
X-Plane was built on the older X-Plane engine. P3D was built on the FSX engine. All these software standards have been around for decades now with minor improvements here and there. MSFS is using a whole new engine built from scratch. Honestly, I’m expecting it to take a year before it’s fully stable; the fact that they are where they are right now is impressive to me, but apparently I’m far more impressionable than you are.
And the UK World Update, USA World Update, and Japan World Update have all been scenery updates, the majority of which were done by contracted third parties. Tell me, how does this detract from the resources of Asobo’s aircraft developers? Most of whom, like I said, are torn between the TBM, A320, 787, 747, CJ4, Longitude, and all kinds of various fixes to the smaller GA aircraft?
I feel like it is worth pointing out, a lot of the people involved in producing world updates are in different companies outside of Asobo, like Bing. These are people who could never be tasked with fixing bugs or adding features.
The graphics engine may be built from scratch, but that is one of the things most people seem to be extremely happy with, me included. Some of the terrain stuff is entirely new, and while it is mainly great it has some very serious teething troubles, terrain spikes being the most glaringly obvious one. Sound is all new, and is absolutely amazing and in my opinion the biggest success of this sim.
But huge parts of the sim remain from FSX and beyond. Most scenery stuff (other than terrain), most offline AI traffic stuff, the flight model is a new way of computing behavior based on mostly legacy format data. Furthermore, the legacy code was available for Asobo to build upon.
Reading threads like this one (and man have there been plenty!) it seems one of the biggest disconnects is between people thinking “the sim is all new, have some patience, in a couple years they will have it right” and those thinking “this is just one more generation of the MSFS franchise, why is quality so much lower than the previous three or four generations of MSFS”.
That is an excellent point. That is the advantage, and disadvantage, of adding such dependencies. All in all, I am sure adding those dependencies is ultimately a good thing.
But it is still Microsoft who decide whether the quality is good enough to release a new update. Whether the problem is due to Asobo, Bing, Meteoblue, Azure, Navblue, someone in the ecosystem I am forgetting about, someone in the ecosystem I don’t even know about – it is still Microsoft’s product.
The TBM mood has been abandoned unfortunately. It’s ok and fixes a few of the big problems, but the core TBM is still pretty broken, as is turboprop logic. It’s on the roadmap to be fixed, but as always, I’m skeptical until I see results.
I don’t know why some people are being so hard on you. You are absolutely right in demanding this and being frustrated. I too am downloading the full game third time, because I did not turn on my PC for 2 months and now it wont download 03 updates simultaneously correctly.
I have multiple titles to play at the moment, and my friends tell me to do so. I can see how you feel when someone tells you to use another plane for flying in game.
How many years has X-plane been in development again? Wait, you’re telling me it’s been perfect all along? I dunno, I had so many issues with it I gave up and went back to FSX (last year) (ground handling, sea planes, payware developers abandoning development of their products, I couldn’t get Ortho to compile after days of trying, and on and on). And I put several hundred dollars into purchasing products for it. I did want it to work.