Adopt a more agile development strategy

Exactly my point. It’s about the scale and its relevance in the statistics. They could have 20 machines with different configurations and different settings, but they can never mirror what the actual real-world setup is like. You have many people with different software loaded into PC, different antivirus/no antivirus. Then you have people having pirated software installed. You have people with missing drivers/too many drivers. It’s nearly impossible to replicate the exact same conditions of what everyone has in their PCs. What I have in my computer is not the same as what you have in your computer. So if it works on my end but it doesn’t work in yours. Then there’s something in your computer that’s causing it, not the software itself.

They could design their software and tested it against these 20 machines or different iterations and they could have a standard that the software has to pass all these 20 machines. But even if that’s the case, the moment it hits the public with all the different iterations and different setup, there’s bound to be something that fails.

Even if we look at the statistics: Assuming we have 1,000,000 MSFS users. If let’s say 1% of that fails with frequent CTDs, bugs, reboots, etc making it literally unplayable and these people reported the issues. There are literally 10,000 cases logged against it. Then that number can easily be a headline news in itself. “10,000 MSFS users have logged in severe errors and game-breaking bugs and experience extreme performance degradation.” And only people with issues would log a case against it. Making it too easy to judge that the game is broken simply by looking at the number of issues log. Nobody would log a case saying “The game is great” they would be too busy flying themselves and not pay attention to the forums.

I’ve been working in the IT industry for long enough to know that perfection doesn’t exist, and what people expect is a perfect software that doesn’t exist. If we spent too much time trying to perfect a piece of software where a perfection is unachievable, then it will never get released at all. So there’s always a line that we have to draw whether this is “good enough” or not. And when you tested across your own different combinations of machine configuration, sometimes the outcome is “good enough”. Yet it will never be perfect once it hits the public.

It’s all about whether working on bug fixes in a controlled environment, versus allowing the great unwashed masses to conflate the process, is the best methodology. Beta testing is the process by which bugs are sorted out, and seems to have been a hit-or-miss proposition with Asobo. Thousands of users with different systems test software changes and report bugs. It’s up to the devs to determine which are truly bugs, and which are the result of individual user configs. Tough job. But yeah, when something is determined to be a systemic bug (like the ‘white dot’ issue so many, including myself, are reporting) the question shifts to: “Are they going to fix it in a timely manner?”

Aside from easily solved freezes and crashes caused by software (nVidia driver and a Reshade filter being the two that come to mind) my sim has been working really, really well. Do I consider myself fortunate to be an exception to the rule? Judging by the overwhelming sense of defeatism and outright scorn that seems to be infesting this forum lately, I think it’s more a case of my experience with PC’s, and a strong troubleshooting mindset. I do feel for the Xbox users who are having issues that seem persistent and unfixed. That’s a case where the devs have total control over the platform, and fixes for those users should be far easier to diagnose and implement.

I believe bugs like these are also triaged in a way to determine the severity on the issue. I would think they could go with fixing it in a timely manner when a systemic bug literally made the game unplayable or constant CTDs that affect everyone at the same time.

But bugs like the white dot issue that is systemic and yes I do have it as well, is simply considered the severity to be nothing more than a “mild inconvenience” so it doesn’t really carry as much weight on the priority to get it fixed on top of any other issues that are more serious.

Even I learned to peripherally “ignore” the white dot on my screen over time. But I do understand that it might be a more serious issue for VR users. Which again, due to the proportion of VR users compared to flat screen users they’re even more in the minority which pushes this mild inconvenience bug further down in the priority to be worked on.

That’s just how it is, I suppose.

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Agile approach is 50% bs in software development. The other 50% is what a good dev team has always did. It’s may be a part of why Asobo introduce old bugs when uploading a new update because I guess they try to be “Agile” indeed.

After 35 years off business soft dev, I found that Agile Approach is more stupid than smart and gives too much freedom to a programmer who is good at coding but incompetent at wide architecture and software tests. Also giving to much power to a PO who has no clue on how a solution can be disastrous on a wide architecture. That said, closing the distance between POs and programmers without a near architect and functional analyst in the process result in weak softwares.

I really don’t know how Asobo organized their multiple teams but I’m pretty sure an Agile Approach is NOT what it can helps.

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Reading some of their posts, and words used in their Q&A, it would seem, that at least, they have some awareness of the Scrum-Agile terms.

For anyone interested, the 2 links below may be enlightening.

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What is a PO in agile?

Product Owner - Scaled Agile Framework

The Product Owner (PO) is the Agile team member primarily responsible for maximizing the value delivered by the team by ensuring that the team backlog is aligned with customer and stakeholder needs.

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Yeah I know and his center role tends to be less aware of the software architect first, but worst is that the magical assumption with that strategy is to cut in the reflexional process to produce more rapidly at a lower cost even if it produces unfunctional component (meant incomplete).

There’s 3 main realities in any project; Delay, Cost and Quality. Life shows that you can’t be perfect at those 3. So Agility Strategy is based on improving Costs and Delays. So they do…

It will never happen, but how about :

Scrub the infrequent Q&A streams, and instead, just Live stream the “Daily Stand Up Meetings”. :scream:

I’d watch those, with great interest … :wink:

What will happen when I vote for
“It’s unreasonable to expect users to wait several months between sim updates”
and also
“Stop the Monthly Update Madness”?

Hahaha will the forum explode because I gave the computer a paradox as input to calculate until it explodes, similar to a division by zero? :smiley:

Just because you VOTE on something, does not mean it will happen.

I think of the Votes on the “Wishlist” system as a way for Users to express their “Wishes” to Asobo, and maybe bring attention to subject that interest the User,

Whether the are of interest to Asobo, or fall in with their future plans, is up to Asobo to decide.

One Dictionary definition of a “wish” is

wish sometimes implies a general or transient longing especially for the unattainable.