April 27, 2023 Development Update Blog Discussion

Bug Reporting Hub Resolved
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Was there a thread opened up for us to post questions for the next DEV Q&A?

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We used to get a whole forum section where we could post threads and vote. Apparently they don’t want this any more.

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We used to get a whole forum section where we could post threads and vote. Apparently they don’t want this any more.

The developers have been experimenting with different formats for the Dev Livestreams. It’s possible there’s enough content planned out that they won’t have time to get to submitted questions in this round. But I am definitely hoping they keep Dev Q&A discussions as part of the livestreams moving forward.

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That’s what I’m hoping. Maybe it’s time to reveal one of their big surprises and it had seriously better be at least tangentially related to an improved atmospheric appearance and not “Hey!, we’ve decided to model earthworms!”

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You might be right. This weeks Dev Update said " In upcoming news, on Wednesday, May 3, we will be hosting the next of our regular Developer Livestreams. You can watch the panel of Jorg, Seb, Martial, and special guests discuss the future of Microsoft Flight Simulator and answer questions from the community. " Maybe answer questions from the community means they are only taking questions from chat.

Looking forward to it and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

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27

Unfortunately taking questions only from live chat excludes anybody who is unable to join the session live, due to timezone, work, family, or any other commitments. It also doesn’t allow for a reasonable way to prioritise questions based on popularity, largely favouring those who shout the loudest or get their timing right instead.

As to the format, it’s called a Dev Q&A so let’s hope we get that, and not a marketing sales pitch.

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28

All,

Fantastic to see last night so many quality sceneries making it to the in-sim MP, particularly for Xbox. IniBuilds JFK and Drzewiecki’s Tallinn are the standouts but we also have some decent-looking stuff from Fly2High, along with new releases from Paulo Ricardo (Campinas), Digital Designs (Salzburg), Airworthy Designs (St. Barts) and Impulse (Canberra).

We also got JustSim’s Rhodes v3, which was a no-brainer at only £4.19 (EUR4.80 or US$5.25). I’m actually very impressed, especially given the price. Okay, the building textures aren’t the most intricate and the apron looks somewhat generic, but there is plenty of nice detail that stretches well beyond the perimeter fence. The landside area is impressively modelled. No terminal interior but for an airport like this that’s no issue. There’s also lots of animated custom ground vehicles, although the pax buses are a bit jerky at times.

I wonder if JFK and St. Barts will have issues with the Asobo hand-crafted versions in the Premium Deluxe MSFS?

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I sure hope this was taken into account when these were brought to Xbox.

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Perhaps more to the point
 what will have been removed from JFK and Tallinn to optimise Xbox performance? To be fair, from what I’ve seen so far with other complex sceneries, they just reduce the LOD levels and draw distance, mostly. Most of the good stuff remains. Drzewiecki’s EWR is the exception, but was only handicapped as a pre-emptive measure since it was released before devs could fully test on Xbox.

Pyreegue’s airports have no discernible differences on Xbox, and still run great.

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What’s really funny is there’s a bunch of people complaining that all we got was scenery
 :wink:

I’m just happy we have a Marketplace and they fully support 3rd Party development

And happy they are thinking of ways of supporting freeware for Xbox. Hopefully they finish that soon.

The only thing I wish for is the ability to choose not to see work from developers I don’t wish to know released yet another product.

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32

Although there’s nothing interesting for me in this week’s marketplace update, I’m happy to see 70+ products being released. Please keep this up, this should be the standard every week, or else the backlog will never decrease.

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33

To be honest, I think they need another year (minimum) to bring the backlog down to comfortable numbers. It’s still over 1K.

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True
 imagine releasing 1000 items in one week. That’s not going to work, either, as a lot of stuff people just won’t see.

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Personally i won’t touch Inibuilds JFK for now. Too much CTD issues and conflicting texture issues because of Asobo’s JFK.

I bought EPWA from Fly2High. I managed to take off from it, but you can’t enjoy this scenery before deparure because it causes the infamous black screens meaning you are always on edge for things to happen. This isn’t great.

Same for EDDB which i bought last week. I know these things can happen, but i’m weak and keep buying stuff
But there comes a time that i’m becoming so fed up with things, that it’s time to say goodbye.

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Was this not considered by either Inibuilds or MS before it came to Xbox? Sort of an unbelievable oversight if true.

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I wish i knew. I though that because of the new rules for submitting content to the Marketplace, this was a thing from the past. But i guess i was wrong. That even a “big player” like Inibuilds can’t get this right for Xbox, is concerning.

On Xbox, we are so severly handicapped
We can’t remove stuff that’s part of the Deluxe/Premium package. We can’t toggle graphical sliders etc etc


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I viewed some online video reviews of Fly2High’s stuff and a lot of it seems to be very buggy (EPWA in particular). It’s a shame as some of it looks pretty nice. A beautiful airport that has more than its fair share of annoying bugs is Pilot’s LEAL — however it’s so impressive and runs so well I’m willing to overlook them
 for now. I did contact Pilot’s and they seemed keen to get things sorted.

IniBuilds’ JFK I always suspected was asking for trouble on Xbox, and the reported texture pop-in is enough to put me off for now. Sure, I expect it on console at some of the most complex airports but not to the point that a building can’t be rendered at all unless you’re only metres from it! To be honest, some areas seem to have been scaled back (PC too) to ensure reasonable performance, so you get bits that look stunning and bits that look comparatively poor. I would say this is the norm for huge airports but KLAX and EGLL apparently don’t suffer in the same way.

I’m more confident in Drzewiecki’s Tallinn. Much smaller airport so the area to detail isn’t as great — plus the guy has a proven knack of producing complex scenery that’s pretty well optimised. No indication of what’s been omitted on Xbox but, as I said previously, it tends to be the less important rather than the tasty stuff.

On a somewhat related note, I went for JustSim’s new Rhodes (v3) — which we were only discussing the other day. It’s pretty decent but when you factor in the price, it’s amazing! Not perfect but it’s another for my Greek odyssey!

A shame about Limesim’s EDDB, that’s on my Wishlist. Looks great. Is it triggering constant CTDs or just periodically? I had my first one in ages this morning, while landing at Pilot’s LEAL. Seems to be luck of the draw most of the time, although (touch wood!) I’ve never had one at a Pyreegue airport!

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But you knew that going in day 1
right? Not reigniting the sensitive debate but for someone who has been FSimming since FS2002, I would not ever think to use a gaming console other than a computer desktop/laptop for a game of this magnitude and indepthness.

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No CTD’s yet, but the avionics won’t start or are going black after a while discovering the scenery.

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I’m not even commenting on this because it’s pointless.

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