I know that a lot of connected services (Xbox Services e.g.) are causing problems during integration.
But the last couple of patches managed to raise more bugs than those that have been fixed. Especially the new one now - with no response from Asobo - makes me feel that we need a beta lane that has to be exposed to the community for testing.
It´s more than frustrating for homecockpit builders and also for 3rd party devs to react to nearly untested mandatory patches.
So the 300 users that signed up last week to test patches… does anyone know if they tested this upcoming World Update 4? Seems a little late in the process to be testing WU4.
no patch will be perfect for all users on all systems.
until the game is fully complete with all planned updated/additions, expect issues.
it’s a pain but not unusual for a project in this part of its life cycle.
even if tested to pieces internally, once the update hits the real world unexpected issues can and do arise.
I’ve currently shelved the game as performance is so variable in VR. Rather than get frustrated ill wait for a patch that is lauded by the community then I’ll jump back in.
You must be one of the guys who work in large companies and design ‘processes’ haha
Newsflash: welcome to real world were things get done! There is no such thing as ‘Quality Management’ or ‘Quality Assurance’.
lol
Your one-off view on the topic is far from the real world though.
There are several industries and sectors where quality work from the developers is of paramount importance. Even the smallest mistakes can be fatal. Did you know that NASA’s Ariane 5 crashed because the developer did not implement the averaging function of a variable? I’m pretty sure NASA developers are good developers though.
But let’s stick to flight sims for now, in which case, we could absolutely benefit from at least a basic degree of quality management.
Stuff as basic as, you know, not releasing a buggy update where every aircraft has double the amount of flap generated lift.
I think what he is trying to say is yes, ASOBO has little to no quality control or sense when it comes to updates. But to say there is non in real life is just ridiculous.
Many reputable companies have quality control. Just because one software developer decides not to use any quality control doesn’t mean the rest of the world is the same. Yes things slip through the cracks sometimes but testing and CC is crucial in delivering a quality product. If a certain software company had done some testing and had a real beta program, I bet we wouldn’t have seen the flaps issues or many other bugs over the last few updates.
The flaps issue was really disappointing to see, and really shouldn’t have been allowed to make it in to production. A few minutes in any plane would have told you something was wrong. And if that plane just happened to be the Piaggio, you would have been somersaulting. It is a little difficult to comprehend how a change in flight dynamics could have been implemented in a manner where this effect was not immediately detected.
I think Asobo should better manage the tester pool they have. They should keep track of real world pilots, of real world developers, of people that have worked in the flight sim industry, and all of those should be present during a beta test. Then add in random people from the population to get a representative slice. This needs to be done because the average flight sim user will simply not catch most issues. If one has never flown an aircraft in real life, how is one to know that the flaps provide too much lift? That the engine is not tuned right? That some aircraft system isn’t working correctly? With the current system the best you’re likely to get is: “the thing didn’t crash my game and it’s useable”. But that’s about it.
There are a lot of very knowleadgeable people on this forum with a lot of real world experience, very eager to help. Asobo should take advantage of that.
In fact, @moderators can something like this be implemented for real world pilots? I know third party devs have labels next to their names, but it would be great if real world pilots had something similar. Thanks.
My understanding is that the flaps issue arose during the compilation of the build itself and unfortunately nobody tested the flaps since nobody touched anything to do with the flaps and nobody thought to actually test anything other than the fact the scenery didn’t cause the sim to crash.
All I’ll say is coding is frustrating, especially when the machine code decides to take a holiday on you and go all derpy whenever you try to run a script.
I based the Quality program I managed for many years on these two treatises. Demming’s work is the “How to” but Pirsig’s work breathes soul into the process.
The combined philosophies can be applied to any situation, whether you’re trying to manage a 24 top breakfast-only diner, or an Amazon fulfillment warehouse: it all springs from the same well…
And that in and of itself is an indication that that the proper processes to ensure quality are not in place. The mentality of “we don’t have to test this because we didn’t touch it” is “cowboy” stuff and no reputable software company would ever behave that way. At top companies, it takes a surprising amount of time between dropping the first release candidate build and actually releasing the final bits. There are a great many details that have to be attended to, but one of the most basic is ensuring that the product is working as designed. This will involve running a comprehensive set of tests. For large projects, the testing process can even span multiple days. There is simply no excuse for shipping a bug of the magnitude of the flaps issue (or some of the other whoppers that arrived with previous updates). It was highly unprofessional.
