The next developer stream is happening on 2024-12-04T18:30:00Z. No question form was sent out ahead of time*, so this is a thread to discuss what you would like to have answered.
(* Schedule was changed. Maybe now there will be a form and maybe this thread is moot? I don’t know.)
There is no guarantee that anything you ask here would be asked on the stream (which is also true of the form). But it may be helpful to the powers that be.
I have a few questions, but I invite others to give their own questions. There are lots of questions that could be asked that I haven’t written here.
Server issues
Could we please have some clarity on what system(s) failed?
The current banner in the forums, apparently a direct quote from Jörg Neumann, says, “The capacity issues we encountered at launch were tied to overwhelming interest and access to the online servers – completely separate from the simulator itself.” This seems to contradict to Seb’s earlier message, “We’ve been struggling for a few hours with one of our services. So in Flight Sim 2024, there are a few new systems in the sim. People have maybe noticed there’s career mode, there’s all sorts of missions…” Personally, I was pretty satisfied with Seb’s answer. As a technical person, I could have used even more detail, but I think the point was to say, “We understand the problem and we’re fixing it right now.”
This new statement, “completely separate from the simulator itself,” is confusing. Are we saying that the services were not the problem? Are we splitting hairs and saying that services built on Azure cloud aren’t really part of the simulator? Are we saying that Azure is to blame and not Flight Simulator? I don’t know what to make of this. Every time I read this, my instinct is to believe that the team is trying to escape responsibility for the problem, and I don’t want to think that. But clearly something failed, and the buck has to stop somewhere.
Where did the number of “200,000” test users come from?
Seb said that they did load tests with 200,000 simulated users. I’m curious to know where that number came from. I’m sure that all of these tests were conducted according to a plan. Would you have caught the problems in testing if the actual number of day one users were simulated?
Why does sitting in the queue stress your GPU?
There have been numerous reports in the forums about sitting in the queue causing your GPU to run at a very high percentage:
- Still in the login queue since 6 hours here in Germany and the GPU use 180 Watts till I limited the FPS to 60 with the display driver.
- Yep, 85% utilization of my 4090!
- Enjoy the 700fps loading screen.
- Why are we still using 100% GPU in menus? I haven’t even gotten past the login queue and it’s taking 100%.
etc.
The team is aware that GPU usage in the menus was a big problem in 2020, and in fact, introduced an option to reduce GPU usage in the menus in 2020 because of user feedback. So why was a decision taken to utilize the GPU at such a high rate in 2024? (Note: There is a new MSFS 2024 wish to supplement the MSFS 2020 wish that’s still active.)
Testing
To what extent were real-world pilots involved in testing?
There are many videos about the launch, but here is a video that was extremely telling to me, as the new 737 MAX was supposed to have an unprecedented level of systems depth, and this former 737 pilot encounters numerous issues simply trying to start the aircraft under normal conditions. He’s not even sure if they’ve modeled the correct engines. Ultimately, he crashes his plane at takeoff because the aircraft wouldn’t rotate. (Again, this is a real-world former 737 pilot.)
It goes beyond aircraft, too. Here is a screenshot showing an airport as seen from the sky at night, captured in a bug report:
Did any real-world pilots weigh in on what airports actually look like from the air?
(Edit: I’ll add a bonus. I’m reading various reports that this 410-vote bug report from 2020 wasn’t fixed in 2024, where you can see taxiway lights and runway approach lighting from Mars, but the airport beacon doesn’t show up until 3 nm out. If anything, it looks like this situation has gotten worse. In real life, you usually see the beacon from far away in a sea of blackness, just as the OP of that bug report has depicted.)
Why were the alphas so late, and why was there no beta?
In October, end users were invited to a one-weekend tech alpha for a product going live in November. Afterwards, Marketplace developer partners were then invited to a dev alpha. Why did this happen only weeks before the launch of the product, and why was there not a more extensive beta period, as you had for MSFS [2020]? Did the team feel that the community’s involvement wouldn’t help?
Did you incorporate any tech alpha community feedback before launch?
Although the primary purpose of the tech alpha was to test the new services launching with the sim, users were invited to give feedback in a forum subcategory that is now closed. What ever came of that feedback? Was any of it incorporated into the sim before it launched?
Bugs and fixes
What bugs are prioritized to be fixed in the near future?
I think most of us understand that CTDs [crashes to desktop] are always a top priority for fixing, as is ensuring that server capacity is right-sized, going forward. Beyond that, what immediate bugs are you hoping to squash?
Will anybody be looking at all MSFS 2024 bugs logged in the forums?
Currently, there are over 1262 MSFS 2024 bugs logged in the forums (updated December 3, 2024). Of those bugs, only 50 are marked #feedback-logged and 43 are marked #bug-logged. That means only 7.4% of the bugs reported in the forums have been sent up. Some of those may be duplicates, user error or something else, but leaves potentially a thousand forum bugs that are not in your bug tracker. Will anybody be systematically looking through those bug reports and logging them?
What will your bug fixing cadence look like?
When Microsoft Flight Simulator [2020] launched, bug fixes came every two weeks for several months until the sim stabilized. Will there be a regular cadence, or will we continue to receive fixes every few days, as bug fixes come in?
If this is a “sim for simmers,” why were nearly 100 MSFS bugs closed leading up to the 2024 launch?
There is a thread discussing the closure of bug reports marked as “won’t fix.” I went and found almost 100 such “won’t fix” bugs. There are some “greatest hits” bugs in there like gigantic hangars, the drone camera rolling on its own, contrails not appearing on other aircraft until you’re at altitude, and home cockpit mode not disabling the virtual cockpit. Why did the team decide to close so many of these? In some cases, they were very simple things like, the DA62 used the wrong kind of fuel and therefore its fuel burn was incorrect, or the wrong seats were being illuminated on the DA40, or the landing gear indicator lights being wrong on several Reno aircraft.
If they’re building a sim for simmers, I would think that the developers would take pride in their sim and want to fix bugs such as the inner speedbrakes on the 747 not deploying or the Meigs rotating beacon not working, or a simple typo on the Cessna 208. I’m not looking for the team to give a reason why each one was closed (although it would have been helpful if this information were provided by the developers so the Community Managers could communicate it), but a general overview of why the bulk of these are closed, especially simple ones that probably required a negligible amount of time to fix.
Marketplace
Why aren’t users allowed to disable Marketplace content?
As people’s Marketplace content comes online, it appears that it’s impossible to disable owned Marketplace content, and apparently that’s by design (see the marked solution). Unfortunately, it looks like this is causing a lot of problems for people. What’s going on? Why is this limitation in place, and in what timeframe can we expect to see it lifted (days, weeks, months, years)? (Question removed: The answer is December 9.)
Why was the Marketplace deactivated for launch?
In a recent developer stream, Jörg said, “We can’t affect what you already have… But we’re not going to turn on the Marketplace because we’re trying to avoid that people buy things that are not quite ready.” (Full context here.) Why not just keep the Marketplace open for the handful of developers who do have their products ready? It’s not like products can show up on the Marketplace against people’s will: Developers have to sign off before they get listed. Why is the team waiting on this? I just hope that the real reason isn’t because nothing was signed off by launch time and the team wanted a few items in the Marketplace to make it look good.
Will you be able to gift an item you own to someone else?
I think we know that the new Marketplace will let you buy something as a gift. But what about giving something away that you own? Say, you accidentally bought the same airport from two different developers or you accidently bought something on Simmarket and the Marketplace and you want to give the Marketplace version away. Or maybe you’ve grown tired of an addon but you have a friend who might want it.
Limited Collectors Edition
If the LCE is a “love letter” to flight simulation fans, why did Microsoft never acknowledge or apologize to US users, whose shipments were also delayed?
By this point, I think it is well known that the LCE was delayed for people outside the US. In fact, Microsoft even issued a message to people who ordered the Limited Collector’s Edition outside the US. Users outside the US were given* 1-month Game Pass codes in order to enjoy the sim on day one. However, there was also a shipping problem in the US. In the thread I just linked, you won’t find any official statements acknowledging the problem stateside. You also will not find any statement on flightsimulator.com, and US orders did not receive a complimentary Game Pass subscription. If this is truly a love letter, where is the love? Why did US users get slighted in this deal?
* Note: I have seen reports of users outside the US not even receiving their codes, either.
LCE orders that shipped after launch were shipped by ground, not air. There have been calls for a shipping refund. Will you consider that?
If something is late, you make up for it and you get it there as fast as reasonably possible. That didn’t happen. I’m not going to link to the people talking about a shipping refund because I don’t want to put them on the spot, but there are many who are calling for one, including myself. Would you consider it?
Why did Aerosoft and Microsoft never update their FAQ or issue an apology to US users?
Here is Aerosoft’s FAQ and here is Microsoft’s FAQ. They appear to be identical, but I linked to both just in case. A search of the words “apology,” “apologize,” “apologise,” and “sorry” never appear on the page. Why is that?
This is what the FAQ says for US users:
Why was this not updated to address US users after orders did not ship on the 19th? You cannot say that there was no issue on the US side. This is from an Aerosoft representative about my order: “It was a chain of unfortunate circumstances that caused the product to arrive so late.” Clearly there was a problem.
Why was the plan to ship the Limited Collectors Editions on launch day instead of many days before launch?
If you look at the above FAQs, it says that the “LCE is expected to ship out for US customers as originally planned on November 19th”, i.e., on launch day. So at best, the people who spent the most money on the sim, the people to whom the love letter was addressed, were originally scheduled to be playing the sim a few days after launch. Why?
In Conclusion
Will you make good on anyone requesting a refund?
Many users have been rejected in their requests for a refund. I read one story of a person who waited in a queue for hours and finally quit, and then got their refund rejected by a bot because they “played” the game too long. It seems that some people have had more luck talking to a human, but there seems to be quite a bit of angst and confusion in this. Will you make good on people’s refund requests, and could you please provide some official advice for people who want refunds?
There is an overwhelmingly large Wishlist request to make streaming optional. Is the streaming model a failure, or should users give it a chance?
Here is the wish. It’s not even a week old and it has almost 1000 votes. The OP of that wish talked about 30 minutes to load into the sim. As someone whose MSFS [2020] sim takes the better part of an hour to start up with just a fraction of my addons installed, who wishes it only took 30 minutes to load the sim, I’ve been looking forward to this cloud-based model for a long time. With all of this public backlash, do you still think that streaming is the way to go?
What have you learned from this experience?
MSFS users went through a rough launch of 2020. Sim Update 5 (AKA the Xbox launch) was nearly equally as difficult. And I hope that nobody would call this launch smooth. What lessons have you learned so that something of this scale won’t happen again?
Why should we trust you, going forward?
The team had two limited alphas before launch and no beta. Microsoft and Aerosoft have not owned its problems with the US Limited Collectors Edition. The team has logged a total of 54 bugs out of potentially thousands of MSFS 2024 bugs on the forums. It closed nearly 100 bugs before launch, some of which were probably pretty easy to fix. People took days off work to play this sim on launch week. Others, including myself, have invested thousands into this ecosystem. We now have a gigantic Wishlist request that serves as a strong indictment on this cloud-based streaming model.
Flight Simulator 2024 on the Microsoft Store currently has a rating hovering at 1.7 and 1.8:
I don’t have Steam, but one screenshot I saw had FS2024 with an “overwhelmingly negative” overall review:
Could you please articulate why we should put our trust in this team, going forward?
These are my questions, and I’m sure that there are many more out there. This post may come across as harsh, but it is not my intention to cause trouble. Many of us would just like some answers.
Thank you.
