A 100%! The sheer amount of features missing, no rain/windshield effect for example and even basic plane model bugs and LOD issues for almost every plane that’s not from a third party dev. Can’t be a coincidence, they fully aware on how this was released. And coming from a long lists of bugs that in fs2020 never got addressed or even pushed to „fixed on 2024“ and then being even worse in fs2024 only to be abandoned AGAIN, I do, and many others have very little to no confidence in this sim… I mean game anymore. The navigraph survey is a hint here:
Purchasing habits are shifting: MSFS Marketplace use dropped to 35.9%, while iniStore (38.3%) and Contrail (22.6%) are rising rapidly.
Started up FS2024, all control customisation gone, helis feels like fidget spinners with no weight to it, exterior models mostly broken, navigation sometimes useless or very unreliable for flying on vatsim, mouse control/joystick input issue, stuttering with freelook AND SO ON(yes the Beta, but that doesn’t matter, since it doesn’t mean more bugs, JUST different ones) and I was done with it.
FS2024 is an indefinite mess, no doubt, and maybe there’s a tortoise and hare type race going on here. Microsoft sprinted ahead with reckless abandon, but it’s a marathon and the tortoise keeps plodding along.
However, even if Microsoft dropped out of the race today, and depending on the type of flying you do, XP is still YEARS behind. In areas like scenery and graphics, some of the most important aspects for VFR and bush flying, XP looks like FS2016 if there could have been such a thing. A local using FS2024 would probably be able to navigate with pilotage alone using just those peeks, but without the lakes or roads you’d probably have no idea where you were with that XP scenery.
I think they care but bit off too much… They need to focus on improving the core platform, the SDK, and underlying scenery issues (like weather, AI, etc.) that impact everything/everyone.
There are SO many aircraft and airports. I can’t imagine them ever getting around to fixing them all. On these forums, you read specific issues like a plane with a switch that does not work or the missing papi lights at some far away airport and you just know that will never make the prioritized list and get fixed. Should it really?
In my book, if they get the platform right, we can at least rely on the 3rd party developers to work on planes, airports, etc. We can choose to fly what we know works with the platform. I know that won’t please a lot of folks who paid for a zillion stock planes but…
Ground detail is its definite weak point, but it can be somewhat mitigated with one of those auto Ortho streaming services. At ground level though, even with that, the terrain is very flat, and without detail. Certainly none of the procedural ground clutter you get with 2024.
If anyone from Asobo sees this, I think we all agree here: you guys have one responsibility: ensuring the base of the sim is good, and allowing 3rd party devs to do the aircraft, weather, and airports. Don’t get sidetracked and think “well if we just made another 30 planes then everyone would be happy”, because 95% of those planes are buggy and barely flyable. We want nothing more than a working program, and adding another 50 planes won’t help that.
As the core developers, Asobo needs to ensure the base sim is stable enough for devs to work with, and for it to perform well. Everything else can be done by others, but not this.
Fenix isn’t about to make an airport, and Inibuilds is not announcing a new weather program, nor is HiFi creating yet another Airbus. We’ve got to stick to what we’re good at and what we’re meant to do.
It’s like the plumber yelling “I want to do the electricity” and the electrician saying “fine, I’ll do the plumbing”. Each of us has a role in this amazing franchise, and if we stray from it things can go south quickly. I am no developer, so it would be ludicrous for me to quit recreational flying so I can develop a high-fidelity E190-E2. And I’ll dare to say the folks at PMDG know close to nothing about coding a weather program.
As a year and a couple of months (about) have passed since MSFS 2024’s release, it has left me quite bemused that many of the bugs I wrote up and/or contributed to in those early months post-release have all begun to be closed due to inactivity for a year.
A perfect example of how “procedure” has become more important than “content”. To be fair, I believe Asobo and MIcrosoft banked on AI doing the grunt work of (whatever needed doing to implement) the new dynamic LOD system on the world scenery, new activities, and Play Anywhere mandate (PS 5, Asus handheld), and they fell behind - by a lot…
But, I’m hoping the whole focus up to now was on the base sim, and that the backlog of issues with aircraft, ATC, weather, career, VR, etc are waiting on a list, for the next big round of fixing, even if unacknowledged here…
I have to admit the base sim is starting to be selectively enjoyable - and my biggest hope is that the Mandate is to continue fixing and really for the first time, to bring most of the (rapidly increasing) scope of things in the sim, up to a consistent level of quality. That means siphoning all the reported bugs - not just selectively - and caring more about the content and user experience of the platform, than the procedure.
That’s how I’ve always used it. Career mode is bad in some ways? I don’t use that so it doesn’t affect me. If it were better I might, but there is plenty of other things for me to do in the mean time.
Same here. I had a flight the other day, saw like 10 different bugs, mostly minor, 2 major, I haven’t seen them reported, I made a few screenshots and then just abandoned it. Why would I spend the time doing this, I reported a few bugs more than a year ago, one has bug logged, none has been fixed, and they have not been closed only because I remembered to comment on them.
Most terrifyingly though, I see activity in the areas I’m interested in (like helicopter agricultural missions), but instead of fixing bugs, they spend time on adding new conditions to fail missions or adding new, even more annoying remarks the “operation manager” can make about my flying.
It’s like they do have resources, but either get the priorities wrong, or, even worse, they think everything is fine and all they need is tweak the texts here and there.
I think they have other priorities. I can’t believe someone like Jorg or Seb are not frustrated with all these bugs. I hope they’re done with bringing FS to other platforms and start focusing on making the sim better. I see all their partners who can produce planes and airports and what not in record speeds. I don’t know what contracts they have but it sure doesn’t contain what they’re capable of doing.
