Give small but useful requests a higher prioritization (eg taxi ribbon toggle, logbook pop up, full pause)

Archives Live Dev Answers
#1

[Before people start accusing me of trying to push my own wishes higher up the list and circumventing the ‘democratic’ voting system: no, not all of these wishes are my wishes. But I see the general benefit in them for other players. On the other hand, I also have a bunch of bigger wishes that didn’t make this list. If you think there is one in the list that doesn’t belong, let me know and I’ll delete it if justified. Or I’ll add missing topics if you have any.]

The voting system is great. It allows us to show what we want most. But it has the side-effect that it will mostly cater to big massive requests like helicopters, VR, DX12, Scenery gateway, trains, … These requests are great, but they take a long time to implement.

At the same time small but general improvements are ignored. Features that take 1 - 2 devs, 1 - 3 days to implement. Sometimes it may even be achievable in one hour (rare cases, I agree). Can you please take a look at these requests and give them a slightly higher priority?
Now I’m not asking for you to fix the entire list below by Sim Update 3 or even 4. But it would be good if you just completed a couple every month. The majority of the team would still be working on the SDK, bugfixes and other top voted feature requests, but at least some general improvement should be made on the UX too.

The following is a list of topics (ordered by votes, high to low) I gathered by scrolling through the wishlist. Please, take a closer look at them after the Q&A. (or whenever you have the time)

Highly popular: (50 - 338 votes)

Medium popularity, but still easy to imlement and a benefit for us all: (15 - 50 votes):

Less popular, but good small requests. I wonder why general improvements don’t get more votes, which proves voting doesn’t always work: (< 15 votes)

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/enable-dev-mode-with-key-bind/335242
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/data-limit-only-limit-scenery-download/337231
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/we-need-a-medium-spawn-of-the-planes-just-be-airliner/343399
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/atc-filter-near-airports/328428

Thise are some of the threads suggested by other members, but I’m not sure if it’s actually small? Wanted to add them though. :slight_smile:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/bug-feature-cockpit-size-and-world-scale-in-vr/338584
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/multiplayer-display-other-players-actual-aircraft-3d-models-and-liveries-around-you/242898

So could you please take a look at these and make the sim shine in its UX?

1 Like
Why is there no simple simrate display
Discussion: Live dev Q&A January
Activities / Landing Challenges / Tutorials completion markers
Logbook should not pop up in the middle of the shutdown procedure
Please turn OFF Runway lights during day-time
#2

A compilation of all the niggly [and not so niggly] cries for fixes that seem never to get answered and consequently just rumble on!

Good work. Asobo should give you the job of ‘Finesser in Charge’ to get this sorted.
Many thanks.

1 Like
#3

I’m a freelance dev, they are free to contact me if they want me to work for them a couple of days in the week. :smiley: For cheap even, as I love MSFS more than money. :stuck_out_tongue:

4 Likes
#4

Totally agree that many of the smaller requests and ‘low hanging fruit’ could be (should be) getting addressed sooner - maybe some of it is in progress and we just don’t know yet.

Many of these small requests can have a big impact on the sim’s usability and offer good quality-of-life improvements for relatively little effort and low risk, but indeed they seem to get lost behind the ‘big demands’ of the community - many of which are major projects in themselves and will no doubt stay in the Top 20 of the wishlist for months & years to come…

Maybe one way to handle it is to categorise the wishlist based on project size & estimated workload, such as:

  • High complexity projects (e.g. helicopters)
  • Medium complexity projects (e.g. ATC improvements)
  • Low complexity projects (e.g. key bindings, UI elements)

Then we could perhaps have a Top 10 of each category. Would give more visibility and better balance the demand for different types of requests, for better representation.

The community might start to disagree with which category a wishlist item goes in, but that’s another matter. :wink:

5 Likes
#5

I don’t think many of these are currently in development honestly. The taxiribbon toggle for example has been in there since week 1 and relatively high. It’s easy to implement, the code already exists, they just need to add an option in the ATC. There is no reason it’s still not implemented 5 months after release or 5 months after the request is made. :slight_smile:

I also proposed to split up the wishlist some time ago. Though I would have split it up by category like we currently have the bugs section.
I don’t think letting people decide on their own what a small or large request is. It’s even hard for someone with programming experience to say how long it will take to implement something if you don’t have sight on the current code. How awful are the guesses going to be by non programmers? :wink:
Simutrans (open source alternative to Transport Tycoon Deluxe) does categorize requests by size ([small/medium] vs large). But the categorization is made by the devs. I think that may be too much work for the team. :slight_smile:

I think the design team of MSFS just has to keep an eye on the wishlist and sometimes say ‘hey this doesn’t have that many votes, but it’s actually a good quality improvement and requires little effort’.

1 Like
#6

I completely appreciate that knowing in advance how difficult something is to implement is hard for anybody to know, no matter if it’s the product leadership team or the individual programmers. Sometimes the simplest things take much longer than expected, no doubt.

It would perhaps be better for Asobo (rather than the community) to split the wishlist into two or three sections but I agree it’s a lot of work.

Not all ‘small’ topics are ignored. Remember that we did get the metric units added which was one UI-related update (though it doesn’t offer the right combination for me - I’d like all imperial except for the altimeter), and the Content Manager was improved in the last update, so some UI/UX topics are getting attention. Some things are still very broken, like the pilot statistics which often reset (though some now appear to work reliably) and even the simple count of how many Bush Trips you’ve flown. Embarrassing little things that shouldn’t be overlooked for so long; they take some of the professional shine off the product. And that’s before getting into any complex, technical areas like flight models and avionics.

Anyway, just posting to help the topic stay afloat :smile:

#7

I indeed remember 4 small features they implemented since release (5 months):
the press to start screen, metric/hybrid system, remember tailnumber between flights and the seatbelt ding.

The first three made it to the top list, the last one barely missed it. (to be honest, I had the seatbelt ding for the list in OP too, but they implemented it in the last sim update)

I was able to track back the ones that made it to the top 25:
wishlist
(all of these were in the first 2 months when you didn’t require as many votes to be listed)

Note that the start screen was literally everywhere you could look: wishlist, bug report, general discussion, official reddit, official twitter, official discord, Q&A. They couldn’t miss that. :slight_smile:

The other two prove that they indeed do take note of wishes that stay afloat at the top.

The seatbelt was already on their list of things they wanted to add to the airliners, was brought up in a Q&A, … So sure that came to their attention.

Note, since November not a single small request made it to the top 25 of the wishlist. They need to change their mindset in relation to small, useful requests. Otherwise we will no longer see small requests being fulfilled in the next 9.5 years they are here with us.

I keep on coming back to this one, the taxi ribbon toggle. It has been posted on August 20th it currently even has 200 votes. It is such a small change in the code. This certainly could have been done in the first month without delaying other features. If even that wish doesn’t make the cut, all hope is lost for the smaller ones. :confused:

(thanks for keeping the topic alive :wink: )

1 Like
#8

Voted, and also I hate the fact that we have to wait 2 month between each update.

Why not keep major change for sim update and give us the fix for smaller things on a more regular basis, like every week or two.

2 Likes
#9

May I interest you with some career listings at Asobo Studios.

https://www.asobostudio.com/careers

#10

Yeah, but that tail number carries between aircraft, which is equally frustrating as it not being remembered at all. My C172 shouldn’t have the same registration as my King Air and as my 747… but it’s OK if I fly the same aircraft a while.

I never liked that FSX tied the livery selections, registrations and airport parking codes to the aircraft.cfg file. I hope in future Asobo can find a better way to handle it. I haven’t put any custom liveries into MSFS yet as I expect relatively frequent updates on the aircraft files for the near future.

Interesting analysis on the wishlist meanwhile!

There may be small reasons that make the the taxi ribbon toggle or label toggles not so simple to code, because of how the menu options trigger the ‘save’ feature (spinning circle in lower right corner, console-style). Occasionally that spinning circle appears in flight - I presume it’s when you log a step towards an achievement (for example, it always triggers when viewing a POI or wildlife with the Smart Cam within 0.3nm or so, and there are achievements for that). In other words, maybe the options are designed to be changed and ‘applied’ within the menus only, and re-coding so they can be toggled and those changes ‘applied’ from a key press might be more difficult than it first seems to us.

I doubt it, but just playing devil’s advocate for a moment. And keeping the topic alive :upside_down_face:

1 Like
#11

Probably because more updates = more branches in the programming = more testing required + more chance of bugs?

I’d rather wait a bit longer for a more solid update, but everyone is different :slight_smile:

#12

I disagree, right now there is a ton of small bugs and Asobo seems to fix things based on what get the most vote and ignore the rest, like what will actually get answered on this Q&A.

Just as an exemple, the UI for Metric/Hybrid is buggy, was reported couple of month ago, it’s still not fixed. It’s unacceptable to have to wait 5 month and more, for something this simple.

The same goes with stretch UI for wide screen, we had to wait 1 month and it was a simple fix.

#13

I agree. I’d like to see smaller, more frequent, updates for these kind of issues. Seeing this kind of continuous progress can be good to increase the confidence in the software.

It would be crucial that they do not introduce regression issues or download issues. And if they do, that these are address swiftly.

It can also help to iron out the update process more quickly.

#14

Auto Transponder, AI and user aircraft Drive-Through Parking, ATC Updates/Realism, Airport Lights off during the day/VFR…amen! Made a huge post about this at the beginning…hope it gets fixed at some point!

#15

Some critical thinking, good. :smiley:

I don’t buy it though. I think the ‘save’ feature is to write your settings to the disk, which needs loading as it can take various amounts of time.

See, the ribbon toggle itself is instant:

#16

Fair point, well made. I didn’t honestly expect it to be a hurdle, but all I’m saying is that we don’t know everything so there can be reasons that delay what look like tiny fixes. We also don’t know how much of the original dev team was re-assigned to new projects post launch, for example.

I’d like all the minor updates & fixes ASAP like everyone else, but with a huge legacy codebase under all the shiny newness, I imagine it’s very easy to break lots of things by changing something simple.

Compared to FSX I am very grateful for the controller profiles so I can swap easily between hardware configs (joystick/yoke and throttle combos, single & multi-engine), and the separate graphics options for VR and non-VR are wonderful, making switching on the fly effortless (not that VR runs well for me yet, but nice to dabble with).

Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see what the next update brings. I fear some may never be addressed, but that’s what the wishlist is for. Democracy wins! Mostly… :laughing:

1 Like
#17

I feel like the voting system (democracy) is good for the wishlists, but not for bugs.

The way the dev updates work, it gives me a feeling development is more reactive than pro-active. It’s cool to listen to the people on this forum, but they end up taking up only things that generate a lot of noise. When the users are surprising you with bugs, analysing and reproducing those bugs, coming up with fixes and work-arounds etc … I think that’s not the best place to be (not the worst place, but also not the best).

2 Likes
#18

Yeah, it’d be best if they keep on using the voting system for major features. But not for quality of life improvements, bugs and small requests.

I reported a floating building in the premium Frankfurt airport. 1.5 months later it is still there. Sounds like an easy fix right? :roll_eyes:

#19

Sure does. I’ve reported airfields which exist in-sim (on the map) but are not there in the scenery. They have been built over years ago. 5 months later, and still there in-game on the map. You’d think they’d be easy fixes too… little grass strips, no related navaids or other complexities to consider…

That said, I’ve seen huge lists of such airports on this forum though, so there are hundreds if not thousands to fix. Even AirHauler2 can scan for co-located airports and report likely duplicates with similar names and within 0.1nm of each other. Most are clearly duplicates where the ICAO code has changed. Not a difficult exercise in terms of a database cleanse, but so far it seems nobody has time for such work…

It’s the kind of data clean-up I’d almost gladly do voluntarily. Roll on the potential scenery gateway. I’m glad that’s high up the wishlist at least!

1 Like
#20

Sorry for posting so often here. :wink:

I think the logbook pop up topic is a perfect example of what I’m advocating for here.
The topic existed since the first week of the release (5 months ago). Yet in the past week (= 4.5% of it’s lifetime) it gained 32% of its votes (170 → 250). The only reason it did so is because it is recently being advertised so much in the Q&A. (second voted topic for the Q&A)

What I’m trying to say is that this shouldn’t be. It could have been on their radar right from the start. We shouldn’t be creating wishlist items in the Q&A section to draw their attention. Useful requests should be on their radar regardless of whether it makes it to the top 25 in the feedback.

We could be using the time for questions in the Q&A for useful questions instead of pure wishlist items. Things like how did you do X, why did you do Y such and so, how is development going Z, what is planned for feature W? I’m not saying the logbook pop up question is useless. In the current situation it is not useless. It’s seemingly the way to draw their attention to general improvements. But it shouldn’t be.

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