A Request for a Bug Fixing Blitz - 6 Asobo Staff Fly Each Default Plane, Inventory all MSFS functionality

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Since joining MSFS in 2022, it has become defined by what is missing (in my opinion):

A consistent level of quality, functionality, and stability across the various aspects of MSFS (1st party planes, EFB, services like ATC, performance of streaming, and so on). Since so many aspects are developed and fixed by different teams, the view of the overall User Experience often seems missing on the development side.

The developers have made great innovations, but in my opinion, Microsoft (who dictate what is worked on) have lost sight of the User Experience. The bugs and incomplete features that plague the set up for new users, break immersion for experienced users, and stand in the way of growth, have become “normalized” and accepted when they shouldn’t be — it’s time to clean up the large “technical debt”, and raise the bar on quality.

The current process of having users test and try to report bugs here is much appreciated, but also very inefficient. So much of the context is not easy to communicate, and so many issues get dismissed as “unable to reproduce”, if they are even logged at all. Over time this is burning a lot of customer goodwill, and I believe there is a much better way:

This is a simple idea and request — A complete inventory of all current MSFS functionality by a dedicated group at Asobo for a Bug Fixing Blitz. This group should focus on using MSFS as Users do — install, configure, set up, fly, and take notes of everything that is buggy, not as expected, or creates friction in the user experience.

They would see and experience many of the chronic issues that plague and undermine the user experience IN CONTEXT, see the gaps in functionality, and sometimes broken logic, and be in a much better positon to identify and categorize them for the team:

  • Assign 6 people for 1 or 2 weeks

  • 3 on PC (Low, Medium, High specs)

  • 3 on Xbox (S, X, Asus handheld?)

  • Let them install and configure MSFS themselves so they must navigate the entire experience without assistance.

  • Let them join the Insider Hub themselves, so they must navigate that

  • Let them configure whatever peripherals they want

Each group (PC, Xbox) between them should fly every 1st party plane:

  1. In free flight from cold and dark, gate to gate, using EFB, ATC, etc.
  2. They should fly systematically, checklists, with and without Live Traffic, AI Traffic, Multiplayer, etc. in order to experience the difference between expected and actual behavior.
  3. In Career mode (for planes available)
  4. The above, In VR

  • The purpose of this exercies is for Asobo themselves to take a proper hands-on “Inventory” of functionality across all aspects of the sim, to make a detailed list of things that are not working as expected and that undermine the user experience, in order to really improve the consistency of quality and functionality across the sim.

  • They should also focus on areas like Settings, and not just the complicated UX for Controllers. I’m talking about how Settings are saved. There is no Cancel Button. Clicking “Defaults” often results in something other than Defaults, for example.

  • Also testing the EFB, central to flight planning and required if you are to use in-game ATC. It is 
 incomplete at best. It shows duplicates of many default planes, the profiles have Max Passengers = Zero (disallowing use of the Fuel & Payload functions), etc.

  • It’s also a great opportunity to really monitor the graphics performance since (presumably) it will be Asobo’s hardware, and allow them to better tune the Graphics Presets, and identify things that require more optimization (such as Traffic, or EFB usage currently)

  • Each should try to buy one 3rd party thing from the Marketplace

  • Each should try to anonymously report an issue here (to test the forum’s responsiveness to user’s bug reporting
)

Finally, the Users should compare their experiences, and try to come up with a categorized and prioritized list for the team to address issues.

This 1 or 2 or more weeks of dedicated inventory would capture a good portion of the issues that have been reported on the forum but lost to the shear number. The developers really experiencing the inconsistencies from a user’s perspective is what has been missing.

Thanks for considering this request.

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Well said.

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Your suggestions appear to be about identifying bugs rather than fixing them. I think it’s fair to assume Asobo have a very long list already.

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Totally the issue - oh sure they may find a issue or 2 more - but its highly unlikely they would fix them. Look at ATC - or the time simming issue - well documented issues that still havent been fix on almost going on a year. It seems to me that studios just want to move on the a new shiny thing
.no ROI on fixing long standing issues.

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It’ll become their undoing because once the casual gamers have had enough flying and all that are left are more serious simmers there’ll be much less good-will and less interest in acting as testers for MS.

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You have to know what right looks like before you can start talking about what’s wrong. Certain things like UI are more low-hanging fruit in that regard, for sure. However, when it comes to quality of aircraft, systems, ATC, scenery, weather, and how to just perform routine actions in the lived world of aviation, the knowledge required goes way up. And that’s before you get into all the little regional variations that complicate things.

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Would those staff understand each aircraft and what is correct or incorrect behavior, I’m a pilot irl but have no experience with helicopters so unless it’s a blaring issue I would be of little to no help finding issues with the rotor raft in the sim.

Plus aren’t there a lot of 3rd party partners that built most of the aircraft in the sim? Inibuilds, carenado, working title, etc? Asobo might be able to identify an issue but would only be able to relay that issue to the dev team of the partner

There are a lot of people on this forum who fly a lot of different aircraft irl. A lot of the issues with aircraft have already been identified in threads here. Having Asobo spend 2 weeks doing this l, I don’t think it will be a good use of time for those people

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My main point is that many of the features are developed and tested in isolation of different teams, in silos, and what is missing in their internal QA testing, is seeing the gaps and problems when things are combined in the overall user experience. Sometimes there are gaps in functionality, patterns of things that don’t work, and those are only seen when you sit down and use the sim as a user does. No need to be a real pilot, most users aren’t.

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Yes, but any 3rd party partner can only do what Microsoft commissions (and pays for). Working Title (for example) builds avionics systems that are in planes, and the Flight Planner in the EFB, but they don’t do any of the artwork on the planes, or other parts of the EFB
 Those are examples of how things fall between the gaps in responsibility, and only the user experiences those gaps.

I’m lobbying for setting a better standard of quality and functionality that is consistent from plane to plane for first party planes, by having Asobo (or an outside group if need be
) systematically go through the planes, and the overall MSFS (Marketplace, Settings, etc) as a user would, taking a proper inventory of things.

MSFS has been under heavy development for over 5 years now, with multiple teams, and I’m sure people have come and gone. There are unfinished aspects everywhere that I believe are forgotten, and serve as landmines that break the user experience at every turn.

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That depends on the level of accuracy you’re looking for. We can take that to the nth degree. I can provide a lot of insight on the experience of being a GA pilot in the US, but cannot really talk about the experience of flying helicopters or airliners, or flying GA in Germany, for instance, outside of some broad generalities common to all aspects of aviation.

So whereas I might step into one of those realms and say, “this is fun and so realistic!” it would be largely meaningless. Sure, it can seem like it’s real, but folks with experience will start to notice some pretty stark divergence pretty quickly. Even moreso if there has been a lot of effort into an aspect of realism that falls significantly short - this is the uncanny valley effect. Looks great at first glance if you don’t know anything about it, but falls apart under scrutiny and can cause a LOT of noise. “You don’t know what you don’t know” is a mantra with which I caution sim pilots making the jump to real-world all the time.

In this regard, the question of how high you want to set the bar of realism is the biggest one. With the proviso, of course, that there are technical limitations that the sim cannot overcome at this time.

I agree with this 100%. This is what it seems like is happening from an outside perspective. The whole gameplay aspect is disjointed and over-focuses on some elements while ignoring others. See: career mode and flight lessons.

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I’m really focussed on bugs, and what doesn’t work in general, starting with the UX itself outside of any planes
 Example, loading the EFB to create a flight plan. Start with choosing a plane
 there are duplicates for many 1st party planes without explanation. Presumably, 1 represents the 2020 version, another the 2024 version, but with no indication of which is which. The naming conventions are random. The specs - which determin how the plane can be loaded, are either wrong or missing, so you can’t use the Fuel and Payload. Using the EFB itself seems to cause performance issues


Try conveying all that in a bug report, and it barely gets noticed. But if 6 testers all experience it at Asobo, as a central part of setting up flights, the light bulb goes off and they “get it”, and hopefully improve it.

If we can get to a basic level of consistent functionality, then there is much more room and enthusiasm for improving specific realism per plane.

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I don’t disagree in general, just pointing out what constitutes “basic functionality” to some is the “specific realism” of others. The hardest part is focusing on the roadmap, and that’s the part that seems disjointed to me. There doesn’t seem to be an overall gameplay QA angle conducting the orchestra.

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Yes, exactly - however, the current process is a focus on individual bugs, and there are giant gaps in the User Experience that are difficult to convey - certainly less efficient - than purposefully and systematically sitting down as a user would to take an inventory of the functionality of each aspect of the sim: Set up, Settings, Controllers, EFB, each first party plane, and so one.

So many issues reported here would be unnecessary to report, and much better understood by the developers, by doing this, in my opinion.

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Seems like a very sensible approach. One that you would hope would have been conducted prior to release (in beta or otherwise). It’s clear minimal testing was conducted.

The thing is, do Asobo care? Do they have the desire to fix any of the broken aircraft? Are people still buying the woeful stuff that some third parties are putting on the marketplace? They have no benefit to really fix anything at this point.

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Exactly - I’m trying to get Jorg to make this part of the road map. Currently, in the small amount of attempted flying I have done on a new PC in SU3 is just interrupted by issues that shouldn’t exist, and wouldn’t exist if the developers experienced more things from the User perspective.

The current methodology has left giant gaps in quality, inconsistent functionality, burned up good will, lowered the reputation, and delayed growth in popularity (in my opinion). I’m suggesting a blitz to really pay down that technical debt.

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Great idea. And if they lack the manpower resources to do this, I think they could easily solicit enough volunteers here to do the trick.

In a way this is already what we are doing, but the method by which we currently have to report bugs is too cumbersome. There are many things I find that I never turn in just because it’s such a PITA to do so.

But if I was somehow designated an “official" beta tester and given a streamlined means by which to report issues, I’d report everything.

Sometimes, as happened yesterday, I decide to just take the time to capture screenshots and videos and turn in a handful of the things I currently find most irritating. But this is usually just scratching the surface. For example, there are dozens of mislabeled or duplicated commands in the control settings that I just ignore for now, hoping somebody else eventually turns them in.

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You’re still assuming they’re not aware of all these issues. I don’t believe that’s the case.

Take your example of the lack of a ‘cancel’ button in the settings/options. It seems inconceivable that’s simply an oversight which made it through testing without being flagged. It must have been omitted deliberately for some reason.

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In the July Dev Q&A livestream, at 10:15 (Roadmap 2025) Jorg says,

“
 on the calendar we are a little bit more than half way through the year, we have lots and lots of cool things coming. You know we spent most of the year so far addressing feedback, fixing issues, um, I think we are slowly but surely coming out of this and the second part of the year is going to be more fun new things.”

So, yes, I am assuming that the priority is “new things” and that unfortunately, we need to constantly lobby for bug fixing, as the gaps in QA seem to only be seen by users, and the expression of priorities is “new things”.

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Yes, but that quickly leads to the missing gap. I want the frustration with the UI (the confused look, the “ugh” sounds) to be visible and audible IN the Asobo office, and inventoried in the context of trying to load and configure MSFS itself, and flights, etc. They are so used to the things that don’t work, they have been normalized and no longer seen.

If they want to improve the user experience - especially for new users, but also for experienced users, removing all these landmines and gotchas is essential.

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I get you. But it needs to be someone completely independent of the team that was responsible for designing this UI in the first place. My fear is they’d just turn it back over to them and they’d say it works just as intended.

I personally find it headscratchingly illogical in places. They should also be forced to use an Xbox controller and nothing else. I don’t, but I’ve tried it out of curiosity. It didn’t take long to formulate a rather strong negative opinion.

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