I was a bit dissapointed regarding the lower priority assigned to multimonitor setup, which renders the sim unusable for the cockpit builders (3rd most wished feature, 900+ votes). Martial seemed surprised with the question regarding this feature. But at least the message was consistent with the feedback snapshot - adding such support expected in ca. 2 years (2021-2022).
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Yeah, Iām also wondering what they prioritized over it? They said the team was busy doing something else. 
Hereās my personal thoughts about todayās Q&A.
Pros: Devs gave us lots of good news; recent terrain spikes glitch, rounded mountains, water masks missing and overall visuals will be cured; all the rest will be improved as the sim will keep evolving.
Iām also happy to know that Asobo is very interested about Fly By Wire Team projects, they actually deserve this.
Cons: Replay is still in an unknowed state despite the famous āprototypeā status and the developers explanations; Airline liveries keeps being delayed again and again, but this is not the real problem: the problem is they told us many times completely different things. They should have told us right from the start they were having trouble getting airlines licenses; What is wrong with the AI traffic situation? I will be sincere, i can totally ignore the liveries and the replay tool missings, but 100 % unrealistic plane traffic is emberassing. Always in my opinion, this is one of the worst points till today. They even stated they didnāt noticed AI planes weird movements, such as landings and taxi various mechanisms? Oh, and letās not forget about brutal 360ā° circles after taking off at 1000 ftā¦
How much time the AI traffic will need to suffer this way until a fix will eventually come in place?
Last but non least, iām scared about the possibility of new critical bugs showing in the future, just like the terrain spikes glitch. This issue required 1 month to be solved.
My actual fear is not to experiment problems, but to wait in eternity for a fix. And since i love this product, i just want to enjoy it at anytime, without waiting months for a fix.
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I was pretty vocal when this came up. Asobo said they have been unable to replicate it and therefor cannot consider it an official bug and/or fix it. Jorg replied to my comment directly with the offer of putting a video up to show it and said please do, so Iāve made one which will be up tomorrow.
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Itās one thing to show them what it is and how to use the workaround for it. The real issue is demonstrating what causes it to happen in the first place that leaves the afflicted users with the issue permanently from that point forward. Thatās the part they canāt reproduce nor any of us can, because we canāt go back to having the weather working properly once itās broken.
My video really just proves that it exists. I show the weather working 100% fine, i do my 1.5 - 2 hour flight and then prove that the weather is broken everywhere, i then show the exact same location after a reboot (which i speed up, rather than cut) to show the weather being correct again. Right now iād settle for belief, THEN a solution but right now i think the general consensus is that it does not exist officially and that its user error, my aim with the video is to make it pretty conclusive that it does.
Disappointing, no follow up on last Q&A, or raising of.
- LDA & ILS false alignment to runways.
- Lack of SDK ability to program Holds or Missed approaches in GPS
- MSDFS Nav-Data still years out of date to current RW conditions & Jeppensen Charts.
(ie Frequenceis and Airport Navaids) - GPS Frequency for given airport not specifying what service (ie TWR, APP, GND etc)
- Adding and deleting WPs in GPS still broken. (was working on Initial release ? )
Talk about adding customization to aircraft, but still Hiding Deluxe & Premium .cfg files.
(yes, Hide models etcā¦ that the IP stuff, but allow basic customization, so users can correct whats wrong with basic .cfg parameters)
FRUSTRATING ā¦ 75% waffle and wasted air time, that could have been spent providing more useful feedback.
But, having said that, appreciate what feedback was given ā¦
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They do seem to believe it exists, but are unable to make it happen.
In any case, thanks for doing that. Hopefully it helps shed some light on the situation.
I donāt think they think the issue doesnāt exist. It can be very very hard to recreate a bug. Give them time, information and videos. Eventually they will find it.
Sure they said maybe youāre doing something wrong with live time instead of weather. 1) They saw it happen and 2) it would be a nice and easy āahaā moment. 
But that doesnāt mean they donāt believe you. Hey Seb tried to recreate it for 5 hours straight.
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Im not saying they are calling us liars i mean officially, because none of them can re-create it i think it has to go down as that until proven otherwise
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I once spent 4 months trying to fix a bug that I couldnāt recreate because the user was approaching the software differently. I know their feeling. 
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So have I. I could almost feel Sebās pain when he talked about his efforts to repo the error.
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Well. Gateway on their works, hopefully no more dark airports once itās working.
But no one word or question about the Live/MP traffic CTDāsā¦ hope itās solved for next update.
LOD & Trees
Being one among others documenting the exact problems with LOD and Trees for months, I was indeed quite puzzled they were answering as if they were just discovering there could be an issue with LOD and Trees. It is especially even more troubling to me that IIRC, in a previous Q&A the same topic was brought to their attention with the same reaction.
For those wondering, here are a few of the LOD and Trees reports Iām talking about:
TL;DR:
In the Forums:
- LOD problems - Trees Fix Revisited (265 votes since October 2020)
- LOD Problems - Distances revisited (133 votes since October 2020)
In Zendek:
- 61475 Photogrammetry, Ground Textures and LOD ring distances
- 66041 Vegetation impostors/objects ring distance algorithm failing in HIGH or ULTRA depending on the species.
- 70848 Terrain LOD distance is using the square root of its value.
VR
First Iām glad theyāre making it a 1st class citizen because I didnāt think the mere 44 votes would do ( [VR] Dev Q&A and Feedback Snapshot: please make a VR only category ) given the 265 votes for Trees are not even sufficient to make in the radar in 4 months. But on the other hand I canāt help thinking there is something wrong with it, like the LOD and Trees topics.
Where do these āwishesā come from?
Screenshot of the VR bugs and issue taken today vs feedback snapshot VR
For example I can see this one in the list and Iām glad because it is paramount:
[BUG/FEATURE] Cockpit Size and World Scale in VR (161 votes)
TL;DR: The entire chain of IPD/ICD projection matrices must be cross checked with at least WMR OpenXR and SteamVR OpenXR drivers (the 2 most used) in addition to offering a user adjustable override (scale + bias factors).
But I donāt understand Martialās answer about the āBrightness Sliderā. Iām not certain he was joking or seriously not considering this an āimportantā feature. In my opinion (biased opinion being a developer too), what we really need in VR is not a ābrightnessā slider but something different:
[BUG/FEATURE] Implement a metering system better suited for VR (44 votes)
TL;DR: The Shader code behind the EyeAdaptation setting is fine in 2D but wrong in VR because of the difference between moving the head and moving the eyes.
[BUG/FEATURE] Provide a Sharpen strength setting, and more post-processing effect controls in VR (73 votes)
TL;DR: Not all headsets gamut is the same and we need Tone Mapping Gama Slider + Tone Mapping Brightness Slider at a minimum (and more details in the topic)
And what about this one:
[BUG/FEATURE] FS2020 is breaking the VR golden rule: donāt move the camera, the user is (75 votes)
TL;DR: Nausea inducing and actually preventing a lot of customers flying in FS2020 in VR
And this one which is important for flying airliners or the future G3000/1000 improvements in VR:
[BUG/FEATURE] EFIS Screens Problems and Solutions for higher legibility (43 votes)
TL;DR: solutions for rendering EFIS screens with high resolution even if you donāt have a G2 and a 3090.
PS: These VR topics Iāve listed above are prefixed with [BUG/FEATURE] because they are not only reporting a problem but they are also offering solutions which are readily implementable with minimal effort and time (all things considered of course).
AI Traffic and Liveries
I believe there is a disconnection again between language and facts. Jorg is telling us it is a simulator for simmers, yet, Microsoft is trying to control and shape everything for us, like the AI traffic liveries. Of course it will be hard for Microsoft getting all airline companies licensing, because it has always been. Long time developers like me having worked with ACE studio back in the day do know airlines are reluctant, do remember the American Airlines threats, do know the PT fiasco in trying to impose the community paying royalties for a famous airline liveryā¦
This is not new, and this is why there is no commercial offering for this but a great choice of freeware libs of liveries and models for all other simulator but FS2020. Why wanting to control this (in addition to sandboxing 3rd party devs) instead of just creating what is necessary in the SDK for just helping these freeware authors doing the same libraries for FS2020?
I have no doubt there is some value in the actual FS2020 SDK approach for the XBox version, and this might suits well the need for some airliner developers on the PC version as well, but to me, and Iāve been working nearly 20 years in this industry, I believe what makes a simulator for simmers is 3rd party developer add-ons, not just the simulator itself.
Bugs and Repro
Iām glad to hear they are trying to repro some of the reported bugs, but wouldnāt it be just easier to get started with a proper logging system?
Debuging log - Self-Service / Wishlist - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums
Other questions
I might have wrongly understood but didnāt Sebastian told in the Q&A they do have a replay system already but it is only used for their Video capture needs where it can help them producing videos without any stutter?
This begs a question: we were told in previous Q&A the screenshots and videos they are presenting are always from the simulator version we also have, not a future version. However it has been brought a few times: some were wondering how do the official videos are showing stuff we canāt repro with our versions, such as building/terrain draw distance in ULTRA without stutters. The answer has been so far theyāre running it on high end machines, but isnāt it just because the videos are recorded from a replay system designed to eliminating stutters instead? Iām puzzled with this one?!
@Jorg
Iām glad youāre mentioning the dedication of the simmers and our involvement with FS2020 and the forums. You seemed genuinely surprised by this and this is not the first time. This is why it is important to also see all Iāve written above not as a rant at all either.
With your strong commitment to a āsimulator for simmersā it is also expected you get feedback and demands with a high degree of quality and detail. This is a driver and what also defines to me what is the simmers community and why Iām glad working in this industry for the last 20 years!
I believe youāre doing a great job in trying to not only assemble the most prevalent questions, but also with your ability to pick some niche questions sometimes buried in the chat or in these forums.
However it seems to me, in every single Dev Q&A, theyāre spending maybe 1/3 of the time talking about the same things theyāve already said before, 1/3 telling us how great it is working with 3rd party devs, and 1/3 telling us about new things (actually I enjoy a lot Sebastianās talks, please donāt stop doing!!). This is most likely what the Q&A is all about, maybe, but I canāt help on the other hand also having the feeling there is a complete disconnection between the decisions making process about resolving the issues, and the daily work youāre doing here with the community with the addition of the thousand of hours spent by the community reporting the problems and making suggestions.
All this (and more) makes me feel like the Zendesk reports and the topics we are creating for reporting and documenting bugs are not worth a dime at all and weāre just loosing our time, and Iād like some reassurance about this.
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Not sure that they talked about it or if it was in on a list they put up, but one thing many users have been asking for is some sort Sim Rate indicator. You know when on a long flight over water and we use CTRL+R++ to increase the rate to get to land faster.
In Flight Sim Features | Asobo Studio in one or two of those video, they accelerate the sim rate and on the top right of the screen it shows something big >>5 indicating that they are at five time normal rate.
Was that superimpose with video editing, or will that be added soon? Hopefully added soon.
I know that many people say to press CTRL+RĀ± many times and then CTRL+R++ twice and that will put you back to normal rate, but thatās a pain and it would be nice to know how much you have accelerated the Sim Rate.
So to clarify, does that mean that I can disable the logbook popping up at all, regardless if it logs the flight or not? This is a huge immersion breaker for me.
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Sometimes, thatās what it is. Itās harder when youāre on the dev team. You know EXACTLY what to do. You know the beaten path through an application and you follow it. Users, on the other hand, will do all kinds of messed up things that you would never even think of doing and trigger a bug that only occurs in that very set of circumstances that you could never have planned for.
I donāt really think this is necessarily the case here though. Itās happened at various times for various reasons for different folks. My live weather was working fine. I restarted the sim after a flight to get the new update (the last update in November). The live weather bug started at that moment for me. It never worked again after that update, aside from using the workaround.
I feel his pain, because Iāve been in that situation a few times over the last 27 years as a dev trying my hardest to reproduce a bug some user was seeing but not being able to reproduce it myself. Every time, it ended up being some obscure bug buried in the code that caused an error under a very specific set of circumstances that couldnāt have been forseen. Sometimes itās user error / input that triggers it, sometimes it was an external event. But in all cases, it was ultimately due to a bug in the code.
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That seems to be par for the course - they always act like theyāve never seen the bugs yet there are thousands of forum posts.
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I actually think the devs are in fact watching the forums. (perhaps with an intermediate person to list new things)
But to assume Jorg, Sebastian and Martial to watch everything may be a bit crazy. Thatās a near fulltime job? They probably watch the threads they are working on.
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I said it before and Iāll say it again; what I love most about this sim is the devsā willingness to co-operate with the community, interact with them, and continuously make improvements in this sim.
Itās such a breath of fresh air compared to previous ātake it or leave itā types of software development projects. The fact that we can call out an issue instead of having to live with it or work around it is such a relief.
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