FlyByWire A32NX developer complaining about the sad state of the developer / third-party experience

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128

It’s really very simple. I know actual, high-end, commercial add-on developers – the ones who are making things which many people will buy in the Marketplace – who are working with Asobo to flesh out the SDK and the capabilities for third-party development of the sort of addons we expect. The needs of the big guys aren’t being met right now, but they are actively being worked on.

The company does not have infinite resources. Who is going to get priority: the big commercial developers who will rake in the bucks for everyone, or people – even popular and talented teams – who are, effectively, just enhancing the functionality of things that are already in the sim? If your answer is not “big commercial developers”, I seriously wonder about you.

Look, I get it. I’ve been working with a number of other folks to enhance the stuff in the stock game, too. And yes, the public SDK is a mess, the documentation is terrible, what bit of the code we can see and work with is a bit of a nightmare, and you spend half your development time feeling like you’re trying to build a table with no hammer and a dull saw. And it’s frustrating.

But, honestly, as a consumer? With what we have now, I’d rather Asobo spend time working with the big names to produce the kind of things that I am going to buy because they do things I can’t or won’t have time to; not dedicating themselves to answering the queries of people like me who are hacking on things that weren’t really meant to be open to being hacked on in the first place.

You’re implementing free enhancements on a local scale to a sim that is still in active development and for which the current focus is on large-scale bug fixes and providing a stable platform for commercial development. It was never going to be an easy ride, but this is where a person puts on their big-boy pants, realizes where they are in the scheme of things, and works with what they have until there is time for their own personal interests to get more attention.

It’s fine to ask for help. And I really respect what the FBW team are trying to do and the effort they’re putting into it. But honestly, this kind of public demonstration of pique feels out of scale, out of place, and really isn’t a great look.

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130

According to the Steam Hardware Survey of Aug 2020, 65% of Steam users still use four or less physical CPU cores. It’s perfectly reasonable from Asobo’s perspective to not ignore pretty much two thirds of their potential customers. This was not to be a niche product, so they obviously had to take into account a certain interoperability with lower-end machines.

Does it suck? Sure. Is it Asobo’s fault for people still running their old-timey CPU’s, or Intel not bothering with putting more than four cores on their mainstream CPU’s for a decade? Hell, no.
Still, I’m sure it’s going to be rectified at some point.

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For the record: I have posted like three - three! - entries with own photos in the „photo community“. One of them was showing a marshaller standing on some rooftop of a terminal in San Francisco or so… so nothing breathtaking, for that matter (more on the hilarious side)…

And like a gazillion posts here in the „community“ forum. So not sure what statistic was consulted by my stalker, Mr. „I am so hardcore simmer“-Aracines.

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What isn’t a great look is releasing half baked software with a ton of broken and missing features and no plan on what to do after that. As far as I can tell in order to make a quick buck during a pandemic when people are cooped up and might enjoy the feeling of flying.

The entire point of this “simulator” based on what was communicated before release was that it would roll in a lot of features that had traditionally been in third party packages, reducing the barrier to entry for new people and providing a more coherent and useable experience.

It’s astounding the me the amount of abuse in the form of ■■■■ software the flight sim community is willing to accept and that so many people are basically telling everyone to shut up and wait to shell out hundreds of $$$ more to have an up to date experience and have things that were even promised before release.

One thing that is really telling to me - I was listening to recent podcasts and they were gushing over all the feedback they were getting and saying “there is no one person who has flown all these aircraft, we could never have all this data without the free input from the community.”. That’s a load of ■■■■■■■■ - test pilots are a thing, and if Microsoft wanted to improve the quality of the aircraft models they could have gone and hired a person (or multiple persons) with the needed experience to review and comment on the product in a professional for-pay setting instead of depending on free feedback from “the community”. But they clearly didn’t do that based on the numerous aircraft performance and operational issues.

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Yes. That‘s why they have started developing in 2016 already, and announced the game last year at E3 (June/July 2019? Before the pandemic in any case…), including a release date this year 2020.

Oh, now I know: Bill Gates was behind all this! He planned the outbreak all the way! Doh! :roll_eyes:

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135

Your very far off in your assumption.
Forget the “youtubers”. They did get in for the ride and put out garbage.
This game has more problems with basic functionality at present anyway that so called experts would add very little to where we are at today.
We basically have a poor test team and a rush to put something out.

I was in the Beta for a long time and due to the NDA won’t go into details. BUT if you only knew.

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The question is whether “this situation” will still be a thing by the time PMDG is prepared to release their first aircraft. Their first release likely won’t happen for another 8 months or so. If “this situation” still exists in 8 months, there’ll be a lot worse problems.

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138

Excuse me ?

I literally specified we do not require clearance, I said we are asking for an ANSWER. A “no” will do very well. We’ll make our own model if it’s the case.

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Ask FBW if they would allow you to take their work for free and create a third version of the A320, plus:
document all their changes (haha)

Have you never heard of how open-source software works ? That is literally how most of it works. We are here to create a great airplane, not to pet our ego about having created that very plane. Take all of my code and modify it all you want. I don’t care. I can tell you most developers I know in the project feel the exact same way.

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Expensive the first time around but not nearly expensive when reselling it for the fifth time lol

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Maybe it’s better they not answer?..

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Dude, I was using Linux in the 90s. Started with kernel version 1.2 or 1.3, it’s been so long I can’t remember. I introduced LInux servers into the company I was working at at the time.

I have no idea what the rise of an open source OS has to do with people modifying someone else’s commercial software and demanding free support for it.

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Sure, but then we live in the fear of having our project shut down in minutes.

I’d prefer a “no” that allows us to start modeling our own entire plane.

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The question is still there and unanswered: What do you think the dev costs are for a PMDG plane and what do you think their margins are?

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Yup, flew 6hrs today UK - UAE no issues at all…

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That’s entirely possible. Perhaps if the original reddit post had spent less time ranting about one person’s opinion of what is “utterly unacceptable” and more on an explanation of what the team is trying to do, what they’re having trouble with, and how they’ve asked for help it could have gotten a more useful response.

Heck, maybe even other freeware developers could have chimed in to help. Who knows?

I do not know what the original reddit poster’s role on your team is, nor yours. Neither do I know if that was meant to be an “official” statement or just one person blowing off steam. But I would suggest that if you’re big enough and important enough to feel like you warrant particular attention from Asobo you should probably pick a PR person who can express themselves a bit more constructively.

People who demand respect should take pains to ensure that they appear deserving of respect. Just a thought.

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Heyyyy GUYSSS NEW VERSION ON GITUB

LEFT ENGINE ON WITH APU TURNED OFF IN FLIGHT

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If you’re looking for the specific answer you might want to ask Cpt. Randazzo then. My opinion is that they are more profitable than most aircraft developers but may come shy in profitability percentages to 3rd party scenery…but their revenue’s are most likely MUCH higher.

That’s all I can really offer.

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Well, I am not suprised at all :slight_smile: They focus on one particular part of the sim. Fixes and improvements will come much faster than Asobo, as they are not trying to juggle every broken aspect of the sim. This is why we need to fully support such freeware development groups.

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Here, I’ll even do it for you:

An open letter to the Microsoft Flight Simulator Community:

I, Joe Random, represent the FlyByWire team. We’re a group of XXX developers from YY states and countries who are working together to fix and enhance the default A320 in MSFS. To date, we have already implemented these, amongst many other enhancements:

  • Super thing 1
  • Super thing 2
  • Super thing 3

All of our development is done in the open, and you can track the status of our project and learn more about us here at github.

We have become frustrated recently over a lack of response to an inquiry of ours from Asobo/Microsoft. We are eager to make some great changes to the 3d model of the A320, but are uncertain of the licensing status of the model and our ability to legally change it. To date, we have attempted to contact Asobo/Microsoft by doing Thing A, Thing B, and Thing C, however, we have as of yet received no response.

We fully realize that the development team have a lot to do right now, but we fell that we bring a lot of value to the sim and that with a little help we could be poised to make a lot more great enhancements to its default aircraft. We would very much appreciate the assistance of anyone who can help raise the profile of our request with Asobo/Microsoft.

If you know someone who can help us, we would love it if you could pass our request along. Even if not, it would be great if the MSFS community cooperated to help raise the profile of this request and get some attention by doing Thing A, Thing B, or Thing C.

Thank you.

XXX

Do you think that would do?

1 Like