Dear Jorg, please read this

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We all got your happy announcement that began like this:

“We are pleased to see that so many players enjoyed Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 over the weekend.”

I am 63 years old, former pilot and businessman and a MSFSimmer since version 4.0, I am no troll or some youngster who does not know how to express himself or just want to bully.

The fact so many people where on the servers in the weekend might say something about how many people are trying to get things to work.

I am already retired and spend about 6 full days (that is about 48 hours!) after the realease, not flying but in a try to get things setup and today I (partially) succeed in it (after 48 hours of work i have the throttle and yoke setup and some decent FR (High end system here).

Especially the UI on setting up joysticks and throttles are a nightmare, after the settings are done it is overwritten over and over again by the system and you can startup again and again without succes.

After 6 days i now have the solution, starting to save your settings on a empty profile that you first have to duplicate after getting it empty and than save. Only then you are able to get the settings not overwritten.

CTD’s, freezes, lockups, no rain affects in 2D but they are there in VR, freezing image in VR for a second when something is getting downloaded from the cloud (probably) every minuut.

These are the things I struggle with and i was not able to do one single complete flight a week after lauch, where i spent (again) 48 hours on the basic setup alone. Other people are having same or even more issues.

Do you realize what that happy message from you is doing to us customers? So its us?? We are seeing things that are not there? It is us only?

Ignoring and not mentioning the thousands and thousands of complains or bug reports is a total disrespect to the customer and I hope you can, and will do better in the future and refrain from these messages.

To be heard and recognized helps, ignorence not.

Thank you.

Best Regards
Ben

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Very well put. I hope it gets enough visibility.

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But this is supposed to be the most innovative and updated msfs to date! I play on Xbox and it looks like it took a step back. I’m not enjoying the game and the more I play, the more I understand how little they put into the sim. Where is replay? Where is the “stunning” graphics? Where is the sim rate icon? Where is my passenger? Oh they are on the underside of my bonanza. Dev team it is crunch time.

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I want him to explain to the VR Community why he released a Beta product without informing us first, it has game breaking issues that should never of been allowed to be in the release candidate, they’ve learnt nothing from SU7 debacle.

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The replay is there on Xbox but the sim crashes when I try to use it. Says all about the quality of this release.

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So I am older as well…been involved with sims since the software was a bunch of lines on an apple IIc.

I will say MSFS 2024 is a step backwards for the sim. There is plenty of improvement required to make it on par with 2020. Some of my gripes with what I have already experienced.

Bugs all around both graphics and playability
Weird flight dynamics with Balloons
Annoying dialogue in career mode
Career mode has numerous glitches
Controller mapping issues
Weather issues
Situations where you can get into a never-ending crash loop. Spawn a Balloon on the ground with live weather and watch your balloon get blown away before you can board.

And the list goes on and on,

Glad I’m just playing on game pass and didn’t pay for it. Maybe in a year if they get their act together. Till then I’m going back to 2020.

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I love MSFS2024, its a huge improvement over 2020. However, there are many bugs, especially those affecting your career can be quite annoying. For me the current version is quite an early access version, I would say this is the alpha version. Because they released the Techalpha and afterwards no further testing was done probably because they run out of time. Nevertheless, I am happy to play 2024, even though its an unpolished product. Think about it differently, if they would have relased this version as an alpha test, you would face the loss of your career progress after testing is complete. This way, you will keep the progress. How much does it matters if you pay the money now or in 6 months. This way you will get more of your money. I would say its a classical win-win situation.

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I was also surprised by the happy announcement. But i think the FS department within MS has all eyes on them and this message is pure politics to show MS that Jorg and his team have everything under control (which is not).
I have not bought 20204 as i saw this disaster release coming from miles away. Streaming so much data around the globe…nope. Meanwhile i do my PMDG 737 thing in 2020 and i fly around the globe. Over a year or so i will have a look at 20204 and what it has turned into.

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Hello Ben,

while I’m not Jörg and just a random Forums user I understand your frustration with the controller setup as described.

However I found that the system does not overwrite your controls: whenever you start to alter the default preset MSFS will ask you to create a new profile as long as you do not select the freshly created copy on the left hand side frame (where it says “General Controls” “Aircraft Controls” and so on. If you select the correct preset you initially created you can just alter everything and it will stick. Also be aware that you have to select the correct profile each time you select a new aircraft for the first time - alternatively you can also assign one profile to all aircraft through the gear icon.

There are some YouTube videos around which cover that case. In fact if you get used to it it’s pretty handy as you ca. Create multiple presets for different aircraft groups like one called “General Aviation 1/2 Engines” and another one called “General Aviation 4 Engines” if you want to map 2 throttles onto one axis to control each aircraft side with just two sliders.

This however is a tough topic - Jörg is basically “just” a spokesman and the developers of the simulator are not directly involved in these forums. There are community managers which look up bugs reported and forward these to the internal ticket system if they don’t exist already. These bus will then prioritized, refined with details, reproduced by the developers and getting worked on - this whole process however takes a fair amount of time. If you’d want him to say more than just “Yup, we hear you.” you’ll have to sit tight until the potential cause was analyzed.

We’ll surely see and hear some official information regarding the feedback, maybe a first on on tomorrows developer streams but surely also some written remarks like we had on MSFS 2020 with the top ten topics (which have most votes) being covered in more detailed.

While some of that is surely also political the thing is that it’s especially pure business for now. I think many bugs, especially with aircraft themselves, are known. However business (not specifically Jörg as head of flight simulator but XBGS in general) took the potential risks as Q4 is the most important quarter of the year and so released the sim as is because there is much tied to such an release especially when it comes to cross selling (Xbox Series, Gamepass, new computers with pre installed Windows 11).

So I consider the situation being under control but in a different way :wink: however they certainly already have a roadmap for fixing the pending issues which were known in advance ready as per priority and significance. For formerly unknown, highly significant issues they will create hotfixes for sure before going on holidays.

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People seem to forget the original MSFS2020 wasn’t exactly smooth, plus the issues from various SU along the way.

The “can I speak to your manager” approach won’t change anything. Leaving feedback and bugs reports in the appropriate forum category will do more to improve the experience and address the many shortcomings.

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I literally could not care any less about career progress when trying to open the ATC window makes my airplane hurtle itself to the floor.

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Altough MSFS is a business before everything for MS, if you listened to Jorg all these years, you know there is more than just business there. The direction that MSFS (2020) took from day one until know, could hardly be better for us simmers, if you think about it.
He talked about the major issues, and perhaps in the tomorrow livestream he will speak further about it, but it’s done, the important thing now are the incoming fixes.
If I had to choose the director of MSFS again, I would choose Jorg 10 out of 10.

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It’s a shame that people don’t understand the 2024 control settings - as automatic per plane settings is a huge step forward.

Air Manager, Mobiflight, Popup Panel Manager and other programs have had per plane settings for sometime, because it is essential.

The elephant in the room is the absense of a quick start guide, although this forum community is sharing knowledge quickly.

Initially I have chosen “for all planes” because it’s the simplest control option. I’ll branch out to per plane later, or more likely a single-prop group and then a twin-prop group, followed by an Airbus group.

I suggest we write down what controls and buttons we want for each plane we fly. Airbus/jets needs APU, Ground power buttons, smaller prop planes don’t etc.

I have the Thrustmaster Airbus throttle quadrant with flaps and speedbreak and flight stick.
Control settings to adapt to Cessna will be great like using Airbus flaps 0 to 3 to mimic Cessna flaps.

The flight stick for a military jet will need to be quite different in sensitivity and button assignments compared to Airbus. The Spitfire has up/down flaps, again a different configuration and a quirky “War Power” throttle setting.

All the above was really awkward and a manual step in 2020. But with 2024 we configure each plane or group of planes the way we want. After that the controls are automatically adjusted per flight.

If I need to explain all the above better just ask. We’ll have to think how we share control settings as that would help a lot of simmers.

Personally I like all the changes in 2024 and feel excited about the potential. Already I see better and smoother frame rates, and higher cpu usage…so I’m getting more out of my old hardware.

The streaming is a good concept. It lacks essential controls like being able to uninstall unwanted streamed objects and a simple guage to show how full the cache is. After Asobo get the upgraded scenery and marketplace under control I expect they will add uninstall. At the moment they are trawling through 7900 addons to check compatibility, they have done 4500 or more

So yes it will grow over time, but I think the overall design is what 2020 should have been.

Btw the new free cam (press Esc then Q) is excellent and Seb rightly says its better than 2020. I use it to explore airports and that tall tower in Dubai.
Trying to do the same in 2020 is really frustrating or impossible.

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All this feedback I’m reading here and elsewhere on the web is very discouraging, but rightly so.

I am definitely waiting at least 6 months to get 2024. In the meantime, I am happy with 2020.

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I disagree with this. I think it’s the worst decision ever.

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There’s a couple of improvements in 24 with the controls configuration, but also a bunch of things that are made worse or even are now broken that we’re OK before.

Yes per plane controls are good, but sadly the implementation is bad. Rather than treating all bindings the same and letting us have layered profiles, what they’ve done is classified every control into either general, aircraft type, or plane specific. This means we now have 3 classifications of controls and need to manage them for each plane.

You want to use a different key for a plane but asobo decided it was in the general class? Tough. You want to always use the same key for a bind that Asobo decided was aircraft type specific? You can but now you have to copy the same setting into every aircraft type control profile you have, which isn’t really any better than before.

Fundamentally they’ve got the abstraction wrong for how they layered the control profiles and as a result it’s harder to use and less flexible than it should be. Ironically I suspect they did it this way because someone thought it would be simpler to understand but in reality it’s confused the heck out of the majority of the userbase.

One massive improvement they did make was the in flight popup to edit keybinds, that is such an improvement on exiting to settings every time, speeds tweaking and testing up hugely.

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I kind of agree with @BRANDYDOG01 I was leaving a bit of wiggle room when I said its a good “concept” ha ha

Everyone knows the initial implementation of streaming was poor, slow and embarrassing. I have empathy for everyone who struggled and a few went postal (Airplane movie reference)

But Jorq/MS increased the server bandwidth after a day or two. For me that extra bandwidth has made a significant improvement.

I have 380 Mbps broadband. Major airports download at bursts of up to 320 Mbps when starting a free flight.

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Don’t be so dramatic. I think very few want him to resign. He IS Microsoft Simulator. I just want him to be frank and open with us and to tell us exactly what is happening. Is that really too much to ask?

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In theory the idea of streaming is good with its saving of disk drive space. But in practice it sucks.

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You know that he doesn’t want that drama. He’s a frustrated consumer who was sold a product that he’s not happy with. He has every right to express his concerns. His constructive criticism, if taken by Microsoft/Asobo will help make a better product and keep both companies in business. He’s pointing towards a disconnect of words from Jorg, because many customers are not happy. It’s not personal.

I’m also sure that Jorg and his team have been working very hard and are probably exhausted. I’m sure with time and patience things will greatly improve.

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