Yet again Asobo and MSoft confound me with their utterly stupid choices and poor user experience ideas.
Seriously, I can’t fathom sometimes how poor the decision making process is for the people in these companies. Where is the logic in “this will be a streamed sim, meaning we’ll get past those annoying problems of constant updates and you’ll always have an up to date world as it will be streamed directly from Bing, however randomly you’ll need to perform a sort of update to enable us to stream more up to date data to you - we could just recognise from the texture and 3D data that you have that you have old data, and update it to the latest photogrammetry and texture quality, BUT NO, actually, you should go somewhere random and enable that to happen for utterly unknown reasons”.
The promotional video doesn’t even mention the fact that its on the Marketplace. How many people will think after seeing the notification banner in the sim that it will be just streamed to them? How many will NEVER actually enable it and think that it is…
I got the big banner telling me that it was available - and I thought that it was pretty cool (but again NO mention of enabling it in the Marketplace, at least nothing obvious to me).
Upon seeing this forum post I went to search for it, and its not even prominently promoted in the Marketplace. I tapped “United States” and got endless airport addons, I tried “World Update”; all I saw was Brazil World Update… I eventually enabled the filter “Price: Free Only” and saw it. Even finding it in the Marketplace was a nightmare. Does ANYONE in Microsoft / Asobo do any form of usability studies or have ANY idea of how users will mess up trying to find this thing, or think that it’s already installed and then later complain that the quality is poor.
I was expecting at least in FS2024 for this aspect of the sim to be better, that when I fly somewhere, if its streamed to my PC, then it will always be the latest data. And they haven’t even managed to do that.
He’s so close to the airport the PG is probably flattened there. Based on how he looks in Google Earth 3D, you’re not missing much. The payware includes Blucifer.
I don’t think its that in reality. Seems insane to me that a tiny population of simmers who have third party objects in a particular region can dictate the smooth reception of significant updates for a much larger population who would gladly accept improved scenery, thats going to be streamed anyway.
3rd party developers could just blank out certain parts of the 3d mesh for avoiding conflicts with photogrammetry, so you can have both.
And regardless the opt-in process could still be somewhere else much simpler, such as after receiving the promotional banner in the sim. There could just be an “Enable” button at that stage with a warning that mentions potential dissapearing of your 3rd party objects. I think they want us to go to the Marketplace so that we MAY just whip out our wallets for things we see on the way. “Impulsive purchases” are powerful monetary tools for companies. I explained the problem to my girlfriend tonight, that back in 2020 it was a nightmare to install scenery updates, it required multiple updates and a trip to the Marketplace to ultimately download the region and that even thought the sim is now streamed in 2024 that we still have to do the same thing, and she said, “ah, so they make you go through their sales channel to get something for free - you of course know why they do that”.
The’ll never admit this of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if this is a big factor. They did it in 2020 and noticed spikes in purchases during world update downloads as people would see a thing for $5 or $10 that they didn’t really need as they were on their way to find the world update. Why kill that cash cow in 2024 as well… Only problem is it leads to an utterly non-sensical process and poor usability of their flagship product which will ultiumately alienate users and put them off the Sim in the longterm.
I do agree with you on the user experience. It’s like they didn’t have anyone with UX experience designing the workflow.
I think you might be giving them a little too much credit on going through the sales channel before getting something for free. The reason is simple, looking at how horrendous the UX has been for MSFS 2024, I doubt they really think about it clearly.
They managed to change up a lot of the key bindings between MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 without any good rationale. There’s no cohesive ways to interact with different planes. All of a sudden, they introduced a ‘simultaneously right and left click on the mouse’ to trigger certain actions. They removed features and functionalities for bogus philosophical reasons. It’s all hap hazard. It’s like they don’t have anyone who is truly thinking through the user experience.
So no, I don’t they thought through the user experience whatsoever. Feels like each engineer does whatever s/he wants and no one can say otherwise. Which translate into the mess we all are seeing with MSFS 2024.
Well, I was going to complain about how the Dallas “globe tower” doesn’t light up at night, but being as others can’t even get it to run right… me thinks I’ll just keep my mouth shut for now.
Exactly. What they’ve done is the equivalent of supermarkets putting sweets near the tills. You wait in line to get served, and pick something up for the kids. Customer manipulation.
I found the CU with a couple of mouse clicks, as I knew from the section headings where to go, but really new first party content should be right on the first page. Except there’s no room because I always see massive banners for products I already own.
I think you’re overthinking it. The reason why it works exactly like in 2020 is probably just for legacy reasons. Like so many other things in 2024, it’s just unfinished, and probably not a priority because it at least “works” and isn’t broken.
Now, if they really wanted to sell you extra stuff (and why shouldn’t they?), while you’re in the Marketplace, what they should’ve done is not bury the update in the back of the store. They should promote it, front and center, and then “conveniently” display “addons that go well together with the new update”. Maybe a KSFO to go with that update, sir? A PHNL, perhaps? A new helicopter, to really admire the scenery? We got you covered, right here!
There’s none of that. They’re awful at promoting stuff.
During the entire year of 2024, the front page of the marketplace in MSFS2020 displayed the “top sellers in 2023”. At the start of the year, that’s fine. But to have that unchanged throughout the year, just makes it feel deserted and doesn’t exactly inspire you to open your wallet. Now we’re almost into May, and the MSFS2020 store is showing the “top sellers in 2024”. Will we have that for the rest of the year? They’re not exactly sales masterminds.
Wow,
Honolulu in 2020 looks very close to what it does in real life - down to the Dunkin Donuts near the airport. The only scenery that would be helpful now is maybe Flyndrive4D 's Hawaii scenery to add the tunnel entrances and the BYU temple. It really does look fantastic now (as default scenery).
I can understand why Inibuilds hasn’t released their updated “Version 2” for PHNL yet, I surely look forward to it. This is what I’ve wanted the Honolulu area to look like since 1996 - and it looks good without addon scenery. The highly protested Kahuku windmills are missing (at least on my system). However, the landscape does look better for VFR flying without them.
If you ever wanted to know what Honolulu and Oahu looks like - “it’s in the game” now, and it’s free.
I don’t know what it looks like in 2024 yet. My system still CTD’s, and it’s just too frustrating to keep restarting 2020/2024 every 10 minutes or less - not a MSFS issue.
I flew along the west coast of Oahu, from Hanauma bay north, and it looks amazing. These areas are excellent in the update, at least when you fly over. Walking in 3rd person you get a lot of messy photogrammetry artifacts, I can’t image they have the manpower to handcraft all that stuff at ground level.
High all, Anyone else find that all the bridges around New York are solid undernearth and a couple of cars go up the buildings. Other wise scenery is great. cheers Mike.
