Deploy *all* new updates to Beta channel for public testing before worldwide release

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
1

As we recently saw with a major mod conflict with AAU3, which was released with no public beta testing and no release notes, untested rollouts can be very rocky.

Problems noticed:

  • crashing causing incompatibility (though perhaps not for 100% of users) with a very popular IFR mod (Navigraph data) not detected during internal testing
  • users who opted into the beta channel didn’t even get the update until a couple hours after its wide release on the release channel
  • release notes were not provided until several hours later

Recommended solutions:

  • test all updates publicly through the beta channel before wide release on the release channel. this would’ve shown up the incompatibility almost certainly, while a smaller number of people were using it who had opted in to test bugs
  • always publish release notes before the software, so people know what’s in it. not even knowing what was going on in the patch was very worrying

Thanks for your consideration; all us simmers want is to help keep things going smoothly for everyone!

23 Likes
2

I thought the Beta channel wasn’t even active anymore or even updated at all.

3

They keep it around, and you can stay in it after the beta on the theory that the next time a beta comes out, you’ll get it right away.

But they haven’t actually used it for any beta deployments since the SU15 beta; there was no pre-release for AAU3.

Additionally, the beta channel received the AAU3 update several hours after the release channel, causing confusion on the forum thread about the CTD with Navigraph as people tried to replicate the conditions of the bug and narrow down its cause.

Consistently deploying as pre-releases to the beta channel would be very nice. At least just deploying the same release on the beta channel also, would’ve been better than what we got. :smiley: