February 9th, 2023 Development Update Discussion

Does this help address that question?

It refers to the Xbox One, but the process for the Xbox Series would be the same.

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I own an Xbox Series X and use it for MSFS (among other games). I choose to host the Friday Fly-In events from my PC because that’s where my home studio is setup (lights, camera, studio-quality mic, second monitor for reading chat, audio mixer, etc.), and I’d rather not livestream from my living room couch.

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It was always my assumption one or more CMs have an Xbox.

I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about an Xbox representative who comes in and corrects the myriad of misconceptions and misinformation about the platform that, I feel, I end up doing 90% of the time.

I don’t feel like the CMs represent us, because it comes across as you folks are mainly PC users regardless if you own an Xbox. I have both platforms, but I am 95% an Xbox pilot.

I’d like to feel someone on the moderator team and or CM team had our backs and was here to correct all the erroneous claims about our platform of choice.

I do not, to date, feel that here on the forum, at all, and I’d know — I spend a significant amount of my time here reading nearly everything I can.

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I’m just some guy in CA who seems the Xbox as a total boon for anyone wanting to get into this hobby. I don’t get paid.

I was on the development team for several flight simulators when I was younger. My life moved me in the direction of the Macintosh, which really killed any pursuit of flight simming for most of my early adult life.

Now, I’m back in it and it’s all thanks to the Xbox. It isn’t the red-headed stepchild that folks around here seem to think it is. It’s an incredible piece of hardware and an incredible price and it’s the gateway to being back into simming.

I just wish I felt like Microsoft saw it that way enough to be here evangelizing for it as much as I have.

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This would be a fine approach if the refund policy wasn’t an inconsistent and confusing morass for Marketplace consumers, where officially anyway, a refund isn’t permitted unless the product has been pulled from the marketplace by the developer: https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015885580-How-to-request-a-refund-

Combine that with the fact that we can’t track marketplace purchases due to the “sim credit” system and there are no written reviews allowed, it becomes clear why some folks are fed up with marketplace quality and would like more oversight from those running it.

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Both the CMs and the volunteer moderators are already doing that literally every day.
The reason you’re not seeing this is because almost all moderator actions occur privately. The CMs and mods very regularly send private reminders to forum users to be respectful towards everyone regardless if they choose to play on PC or Xbox and not to post inflammatory comments that insinuate one platform is inferior. The is written into our Forum Code of Conduct, and we treat it very seriously.

  • One World, One Community - No matter how you play – regardless of console, experience level, or reason – we are one community of aviation lovers.

While most of our moderation occurs in private, for a recent public example, see this post where I corrected a PC player who was falsely claiming that “the average Xbox gamer” prefers dumbed-down planes with arcade-y controls and was blaming the Xbox platform for PC players not receiving sophisticated addon planes with detailed systems and a realistic flight model.

Thanks,
MSFS Team

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As little as you know me, you know that I, very much, appreciate you, personally. Knowing that, you know my sincerity when I say I really appreciate hearing this.

However, in doing this privately, it leaves much of these types of comments left out in the open for all forum readers to see and continue the dissemination of the misinformation and false claims.

For instance, when the Twin Otter came out, Aerosoft blamed the Xbox for some aspects of their plane’s feature set that didn’t work (even though similar features worked on all other aircraft) that set off a wildfire of Xbox “hate” that was all based on falsehoods. It took finding a post on another forum where a 3rd party developer stated that add-ons can be developed and submitted with separate PC and Xbox coded versions, which debunked Aerosoft’s claim (not to mention, to date, none of their aircraft have ever been available on Xbox…). I had to go into that thread several times to reiterate this fact in order to de-escalate the falsehoods. I even came away earning the respect of a few PC users who couldn’t conceive of an Xbox pilot being a legit simmer.

All of that exchange is still on that thread, but I don’t recall anyone from MS stepping in and explaining this to the angry mob.

That’s just one example and there are many others. It pained me this morning to see one of the members of the Community Fly-in team claiming the Xbox can’t stream. That should not be.

Again, I totally appreciate your efforts here — you know this — but I still feel I’d like to be able to see/read a voice here that represents us.

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Pieter is not a Microsoft employee, and his comments should not be treated as official statements from the team. As far as I know, he personally does not own an Xbox himself. Of course I know that an Xbox is perfectly capable of streaming MSFS and other games (the HDMI video capture card I use on my PC also works with consoles). As I posted above, the reason I choose to host the weekly Friday livestreams from my PC and not my Xbox is because my streaming studio (which includes several thousand dollars worth of lighting, cameras, and audio recording/mixing hardware), is setup in my home office and not my living room where my Xbox Series X is located. If not for that limitation, I absolutely would host some streams on my Xbox to showcase the capabilities of the platform.

Thanks,
MSFS Team

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I understand this and know he isn’t a part of the paid staff and I hold no ill-feelings towards him.

It’s just that, once again, I’m in here correcting the mistake.

Food for thought.

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I might lack some insight into what exact moment this was talked about, but what I can tell you from having joined the streams as a guest (and community member) in the past, the streaming setup they use today to host the Community Fly-ins requires that the stream is sent to an ingestion server.

You could totally stream from an Xbox to a service like Twitch for example, but to do it for a Community Fly-in you’d have to use a capture card. Maybe I should attempt to get my hands on one of them, and show off my Xbox Series S :smile:

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It at least shows it’s not trivial :slightly_smiling_face: but it wasn’t a rethorical question. I genuinely don’t know (as was already demonstrated from my first answer. Last Xbox I owned was a 360)

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I recently got an Xbox Series X too and I’m very tempted now to use it during one of our Community Fly-ins. The Xbox is perfectly capable of streaming, it’s just not as straightforward to use in the setup we use for the streams.

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Personal Statement
I’m giving my two cents here.

Written reviews may not be allowed for some time. And I can see why.

Imagine this: you are reading the reviews for a product. What if this review contained NSFW stuff? Like profanity? That could break the PEGI 3 rating for language.

People could go review a Bredok product and say “This ***** product is so bad!! Nothing works!!!” Imagine a young kid read that review and saw the profanity. See what I mean?

There are the forums. Now not everyone knows the forums, but a person could come on and say “Hey, is product xyz any good?” And some forum members who own that product could reply with their opinions.

My two cents on the written reviews.

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In the interest of promoting the Xbox platform and, as a gesture of good will amongst the tribes, it would be oh-so-wise for someone on the Community Fly-in team to set this up and demonstrate it in action.

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I mean, that’s fine if written reviews didn’t happen. But taken together, the lack of review information combined with the extant refund policy makes it hard to justify a broad “buyer beware” attitude for the marketplace.

Personally, I find forum and YouTube reviews helpful, but that does not cover every marketplace product and shouldn’t really be needed for all users.

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Really looking forward to the an-225! Looks brilliantly modelled! Must of took a long time theres so many systems on it!

It definitely deserves to be well done though to pay proper tribute to an amazing aircraft!

Will there be any further fixes for AI in SU12?

Hello @MuTe0794,

We will post the preliminary release notes for SU12 when the beta begins.

Thanks,
MSFS Team

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I’m currently updating it. Very curious to read what that 9 GB is about. :wink:

What exactly are you updating😏