I’m confident that the testing pool of 300 people is the right decision.
It will give them the opportunity to select people that are known to give them constructive feedback or have a more ‘exotic’ hardware setup that they don’t have in their own testing team.
A relative small group of testers will make it easier to manage and track bug reports if there are any.
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The pre-release Alpha and Beta testers came up with a lot of bugs that were also (still) there in the release version. Some of them still aren’t fixed.
A LOT of bug reports were filed but not solved before release.
So it’s unfair to say that they only let ‘childish’ players test their product.
It was more a matter of (lack of) tracking and fixing bugs that were reported.
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I understand your concerns but I would say in any beta testing is better than none. The two aforementioned major bugs would have been detected in a 2 week test…
The described long-term beta testing is what we are all doing since release 
Might also be limited to only 300 users because they might need to dedicate separate server capacity?
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WTF with Berdok3D and Abu Dhabi airport, that looks like nowhere where the real airport is 
This is a good step, really good news in my books. Looking forward to seeing what the new beta process will bring to the table.
300 well-chosen users will be more than enough to find bugs.
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@Jummivana the Aerolite 103 shown as updated in the marketplace, but the version history for this product is empty; is it possible for products to be updated in the store without the auhor supplying a changelog/version history?
edit: or to clarify, is the product itself not updated but for example, just the store-front description/images/price etc?
I find it strange to limit the testers to a pool of 300, it’s blatantly obvious (to me) that you do like a lot of other games/sims and release a Beta Branch that everyone can get access too and therefore garner much more feedback from a wider variety of PC systems.
Yet again this feels like a plaster to cover the cracks instead of actual progress, how many of those 300 will bother to report anything back or will they just be there to get the content “first”.
Again this should’ve been organised properly prior to release, it smacks of poor management and a naive approach to what needs to be done to store up major bugs before release.
On that topic when are the major bugs from past releases going to get attention? The POI LODs of Devils Tower and The White Cliffs Of Dover (just two examples) have not been dealt with, the Tree LOD dramatically changing for the worse has not been dealt with, Issues like the Horizon Line - which was known about since alpha - still not dealt with.
The only good thing to come from this week’s update is the introduction of the VR Bugs snapshot, finally. But alas the dates of anything getting fixed and features to be added don’t full me with confidence, it seems as though you’ve decided it’s all just fine and anything else can wait.
I live this Sim, i dislike the poor application from Asobo/Microsoft in many areas.
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Has anyone experienced the Zinertek Enhanced Airport Graphics update? Looks neat and am wondering if it’s worth the money. Struggling to find much opinion on it.
How noticeable are the changes?
(Genuine question here, I’m interested, not being sarcastic, I’m just not a gamer so have no knowledge of this)
Which other games that rely on online data streaming provide an open beta for all users to participate in, rather than a closed beta with a dedicated beta server and therefore limited capacity?
Also, whats the issue with the horizon line and POI LOD, I haven’t noticed those? As for trees, haven’t they’ve stated that they will be working on Tree density over the next sim updates 4 + 6? And isn’t that a bit of a marmite issue (some people hate it some people don’t mind it?)
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Any EVE Online player can log onto the test server which is near-always available and used for players to try out and give feedback on new features; and sees developers invite players to stress-test features during events there.
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That’s really interesting! looks like they have very similar number of online users compared to FS2020 too, according to steam stats…
Sounds like a great way to test. I wonder what’s stopping Asobo / MS from operating a beta programme like that…
Edit: oh but after reading, it does look like a much more lightweight game in terms of PC power, though… don’t you download the whole game to your PC and then just stream the multiplayer element? bit like world of tanks? so the FS2020 beta would work in a very different way I assume, as you’re streaming most of the scenery from the FS2020 servers?
So it seems like asobo / microsoft offering a beta version to everyone might not be as easy or obvious as we might suppose, outside looking in as we are…
I hate to be critical and I hope that MS take this as helpful criticism but I don’t find the development roadmap very informative or useful. Now, of course, MS is under no obligation as a “game” publisher to share it’s development plans with it’s customers. Most other game developers do not. However, if you are going to call it a development roadmap it should be more than looking in the rear view mirror. We know what has been done in January, February and March. And the only information shared about April is that World update 4 will be released. Perhaps this is just a “Marketing” Roadmap. Either call it that that or lay out a longer term (i.e. 6-12 month) view of what the devs are focusing on.
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Racing Sims rely on Online Data to a certain extent, although not “streaming” that is neither here nor there when it comes to a basic Beta Testing program, MMORPGS utilise “Live” severs and have had far better Beta Programs in the past (Elite Dangerous for example) so again it’s not like Asobo/Microsoft wouldn’t of known about them, begs the question why leave it so late to start one when it’s so blatantly obvious that a Game/Sim of this magnitude neds one from the very beginning.
As for the Horizon Line bug:
and the POIs LOD issues, which this thread shows Asobo exactly how to fix their problem, simply fly to the White Cliffs of Dover/Devils Tower and you’ll see what the issue is:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/poi-very-late-rendering-draw-pop-in-solution-for-asobo-to-fix-in-this-thread/368281/2
The Tree LOD has been dramatically altered and is an issue, like above perfect examples of things that are broken then left to rot for months until a fix eventually comes along. IMO when a new Bug surfaces via a Patch then that Bug should be prioritised very highly, not left for ages with little to no sign of being fixed - hence my dislike at the Bug management part of the Sim, amongst other areas!
Woo hoo. More arrogance and superiority from the “community”
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I assume the Development Roadmap has become somewhat stagnant lately because they are still restructuring their internal schedules. In the 4 February version, Sim Update 4 and a new Feature Discovery series episode were scheduled for late April.
But now we know that Sim Update 4 has been combined with World Update 5, which means many of their plans have changed. The roadmap should be updated when their new schedules are finalised.
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SU4 has been combined with WU5? Where did they tell us that? I must not be paying attention.
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In the latest Developer Q&A, they said that this is due to their effort to reduce the amount of internal branches (currently they have over 30 internal builds). You can read about that and more information from the last Q&A in the official agenda.
QA on releases:
Jorg > Monthly updates require a lot of work and right now we are also working on Xbox. We made the decision of combining Sim Update 4 and World Update 5 to reduce the number of builds we are doing.
Well that’s good news but it’s not very clear from the roadmap. So people being recruited for the WU5 testing will also be testing SU4?
Right now they are recruiting for World Update 4, we don’t know what their plans for the next beta branch are, but we can presume that this branch will feature both updates. Sim Update 4/World Update 5 could be pushed to June now, and this section of the roadmap will be appended in late April.
What am I missing here - the development roadmap above doesn’t match the blog post - which shows WU4 scheduled for mid April rather than the end of April? Can only assume things are going to get worse as the Xbox release date approaches.
Edit: Another 4 weeks of absolutely miserable performance and bugs, without actually knowing if they’ll actually be fixed in the next release.