Morning!
As Jorg repeatedly states that all the posts are read I thought I’d drop this here and say a few things on various topics. This is a mix of general feedback on the sim, feedback on SU4 and a few specific issues I feel matter and also some that I don’t…
The sim itself is awesome, nothing less even with all it’s deficiencies (and there are many)… The thing is that even with the issues I’ve “invested” approaching 400 hrs of my time in it so far and this will continue. Did a group flight last night with 30+ players in the French Alps and I lost track of the number of times someone said “oh man, look at the light coming over the mountains” or similar. For me sims are all about immersion - visuals, physics fidelity and audio. Jorg described it well when he talked about the sim in the very first Dev Q&A - he said “we are building a platform” and this is exactly how I see it. It’s a framework with modules which can be added and improved ad-infinitum. In a strange way, the planes (bundled) are almost a distraction. I bought the Deluxe Premium and tbh felt very disappointed as the only things I really had wanted from it was the 787 and EGLL. I very quickly realised the two planes I thought worth flying (based on fidelity) were the 172 and TBM. Then we started getting the community add-ins - CJ4 and 320nx, now the H135. I pretty much live in these now and am just waiting for the imminent CRJ update at which point I’ll gladly pay for that.
What’s my point? 1. It feels like t the number of bundled planes soaks up dev effort which could possibly be spent elsewhere 2. I really appreciated Jorg’s statement on the latest stream that they aren’t going to abandon the Deluxe and Premium content. I know these statements conflict but the point is - for a dev to acknowledge unambiguously that what shipped was sub-optimal and will be fixed is very different and welcome.
Quick note on SU4 - I did not have high hopes for it based on the changelog aside from the wx radar update because performance was not mentioned at all. But as soon as I loaded in I was seeing an additional 10fps which for me equated to 30% improvement. So - either the performance fairy waved her wand or you did something - either way, more fps and accurate precipitation mapping made me very happy. I saw no new bugs either so massive shout-out to devs, QA and the community testers. Real transformation.
I had 1 CTD in the group flight but I’m pretty certain that was down to some really heavy custom scenery - everyone in the flight started stuttering in the same location and a couple other guys crashed too so I ignore this.
The Dev Q&A sessions send a fantastic message to us and I really appreciate the transparency and effort you all put into them. I sometimes get frustrated because the answers occasionally don’t match the actual question but even so it’s a massive differentiator over any other product I’ve ever used.
Note for you to consider when working with devs on add-ons: I have been suffering for months with frame-rate dropoff. I would start a flight and after around an hour (not always, but more and more often) it would step down to as low as 5 and stay there at which point the sim was basically unusable and I’d have to exit and restart. I looked for common elements which I thought would be in play across all the planes and areas I flew and settled on the Logitech multipanel driver. I love that box but it had become less and less useful because the 2 main planes I use (CJ4 and 320nx) had both implemented custom APs which made use of different vars and (I assume) deviated from the API Logitech used for their driver. It still worked fine with stock planes. I theorised the driver was maybe hammering for constant updates and maybe eventually overloading the glass cockpit or causing a memory issue. Either way - since I hard uninstalled the driver I have not had the issue. IF it is root cause then it’s something to consider - is it down to the sim or 3rd party or Logitech - don’t know. I’m happy to have a stable platform but not happy to have an £80 paperweight 
Random list of stuff I’d like to see and not see:
- water effects - the Icon with no wake or spray on the screen totally breaks immersion for me
- multi-player traffic in TCAS - really confused why this can’t be done - numbers are limited visually so why not fed in like it is apparently with AI
- model matching - do not understand why even a simplified model of a plane in the store cannot be used in place of Bonanza. It doesn’t have to do any system management or flight modelling - it’s just visually close and follows the movements that the Bonanza does.
- Contrails from MP traffic - big breaker when that isn’t there
- Airfield vehicles driving on taxiways and runways - total immersion breaker
- Historical weather - why? Keep up the excellent work developing real-time weather. It’s not perfect but ■■■■ it’s beautiful. I love cloud surfing and seeing clearly rain cells dropping water with a transition to clearer air around it. Immersion
- AI trains and boats - I used to fly a fair amount commercially and was always amazed how easy it was to see boats/ships (with wakes) and trains from 10k or higher. Also emergency vehicles. #1 priority? Nope but real immersion enhancer (for me)
- Sound really matters - the audio in the A320nx shows how it should be done - the “clunk” as relays bring external power and the avionics cooling starts up is amazing.
- Plane switching - what I’d like to do is be able to switch planes on the ground after landing. Yes I know I can use dev mode but then my flight isn’t logged so would be good to just get that plane selector.
- Future solution - let me walk to amother plane om the ground - I see this platform as having potential to be so much more than a flight simulator. Give us cars, trains, boats and legs
- Load times - painful. Both initial startup and loading a flight. I watch perfmon and see next to no CPU, GPU, NW or disk acivity. I’m sure stuff is happening but would be great if it could be parallelised or even load me into the cockpit and do some basics while it finishes loading in the background.
- I bought the product via Steam Store - when xbox is released, will that license let me run it on my xbox1S as well as my PC? Obviously I only mean via my xbox a/c on one at a time… It’d be great to just fire it up in the living room and cloud surf from the sofa without having to think too much…
Realised I’m rambling and could go on adding points for ever so I’ll stop now.
Bottom line? This is a great piece of software and I honestly can’t wait to see how it develops even further over time - thank you to all the devs and enablers!
I felt like I was using a beta copy of the simulator that wasn’t thoroughly tested, but it was not a big deal because I used the sim for an entire month and uninstalled it, I wanted to get the the Premium Deluxe edition after the bugs have been fixed, I didn’t feel like spending $120 on a flight simulator and spend time using it as a beta tester. Well, on Friday of last week I finally decided to purchase the Premium Deluxe edition (version 1.17.3.0) of the simulator and I noticed that a lot of the bugs I experienced before were in fact fixed, it still has minor bugs that can be worked around in most cases and I’m still able to fly most of the aircraft, including the Boeing 787, I’m also confident Asobo and Microsoft will fix those bugs in future releases.