I’ve noticed that a lot of “issues” that the six-figure developers with an R&D budget of hundreds of millions can’t seem to fix, those are fixed single-handedly by modders with no budget in their spare time.
Some examples (feel free to add to the list)…
Giant blue taxi assistance arrows as big as an Icon A5, modded to be subtle assistance arrows (green nontheless to match the green taxi lights).
Mugz’s TBM mod. Basically fixes everything wrong with the physics of the stock TBM in addition to adding the functionality of opening and closing pilot, passenger and cargo doors. A team of highly paid developers can’t do this but one volunteer with no budget can
Replay mods. Just saw a thread talking about no replay because it’s very complicated. Well… not for modders. There’s several replay things out there so if they can…
Bujanstudio 4 season trees mod. Aside from this mod being far superior in the display of said trees, there’s the seasons thing that the developers haven’t figured out how to impliment yet.
Basically, the modders that can, don’t they deserve the six figure development salaries as opposed to the developers that apparently need the modders to complete the work for them?
The list of broken things from highly paid developers that are fixed by volunteer modders has to be embarrassingly long
It’s not that the paid developers are lazy or incompetent. It’s that there is waaaay too much work for them all. They are assigned specific tasks from a giant ongoing list that includes thousands of issues, even if the majority of them are trivial quick fixes. They simply can’t do everything. The unpaid developers are cherry picking a task here or there, not trying to tackle the entire simulator.
It would be great if Asobo could directly incorporate community development into the official build. Maybe not going as far as making the project open source. But giving third party developers access through an API or interface, and even making them paid contributors on a per task basis. Hell, a lot of people would probably work for Asobo for free just because they love Flight Simulator. I’d be one of them.
What’s made Flight Simulator thrive over the years is the vast community support it gets through add-on development. Everything about the new platform should be capitalizing on that.
MS could license the solutions, pay the modders, and incorporate their solution into the official release. I know this won’t happen of course. I also know that devs are almost always hamstrung by management.
My point, assuming I even had one (ha ha), was to elevate the modders to an elevated status of appreciation
The other part your missing is msfa isn’t just about the dev’s supplying a perfect TBM as example. It’s fine as a stock ac for new or average user. A huge part of simming is the mods, the add-ons, payware and freeware. For a very large amount of folks, it’s a hobby .
Let’s not make any sort of excuses, Microsoft is ONE very large corporation with incredible wealth and need to then employ more people. Why when they fix something that is not working then something else gets trashed and on and on it goes. Every time…I have asked on numerous occasions " who is checking these fixes and what else is it that they are now going to wipe out or destroy". Ever heard the saying " to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". This should be thought about. It’s not rocket science.
Agreed. I just like to make sure folks point their ire in the right direction. it’s higher ups at Microsoft that are responsible for rushing this game and releasing it in an incomplete and broken state. It’s not the developers at Asobo who should be blamed.
Most of the mods you listed use janky workarounds anyways (replay mods, 4 seasons mods) and have their own problems. The replay mods have pretty severe limitations (compared to iterations in previous versions of Flight Simulator) and the seasons mod applies a single season to the entire globe and you have to restart the entire game just to swap them. Asobo worked directly with Daher on the TBM, so personally I don’t really see the value of a mod that alters the flight model to simply be more in line with the POH when Asobo got their data directly from the people who manufacturer the aircraft, though opening the doors would be nice I guess?
So it’s less modders “fixing” things and more finding workarounds or tweaking things to be more in line with their preferences.
Also, Microsoft is the publisher of this game, not the developer. I don’t think they can just mandate that Asobo employ a bunch of new people. They already do a ton of outsourcing for things like the World Updates (eg. Gaya Simulations), which is why it never made sense to me that people complain about the World Updates when most of that work is being done by a third party anyways.
I would agree with that 100% for design. But there’s questionable coding practices from Asobo such as…
“Press any key to continue…”. That’s a “What were they thinking?!?” design from MS that Asobo was obligated to include. However to remove it they ADDED code to essentially go around the problem rather than removing the code that does this to start with. We know this because in one of the last updates, their servers were goofed up and many of us were met with “Press any key to continue…” when the startup process didn’t follow the exact path needed to avoid it. And of course CTD right afterward.
Another example is with the airspeed strips on the TBM. There’s two of those. Both were showing overspeed when in fact there was no overspeed. So they “fixed” it. Except that the smaller airspeed strip still shows that overspeed error. So instead of having an object that calculates airspeed and then having the airspeed indicators simply display from the airspeed object, they actually have the same coding logic (calculating airspeed) in each airspeed indicator. So currently, two airspeed indicators display different things for overspeed.
Anyone remember the short lived splash screen upon startup? The MS design called for no visual feedback for at least the first thirty seconds of game startup (still does). So some enterprising Asobo developer added a splash screen immediately on startup to give visual feedback that the game was starting. Well… that lasted about four days before it was coded over and hasn’t been seen since.
I may be wrong, but just with these small items as example, I imagine that the code is pretty bloated and fairly spaghetti-fied.
Agree… it should not be a problem to add some third party addons to the official install. They can e.g. pay these developers, as long as the addon is needed. There are addons for the spinning wheel, for the white menu indicator, for lost mouse… and extras too ! Maybe people would be prepared to pay some more for MSFS if they get Bijanstudio seasons included, or Mugz+G3000 preeinstalled in a Community folder. Nice thing about it: XBox users will be able to access these addons as well, because they come preinstalled.
Unfortunately this theme of the community fixing Asobo/MS introduced bugs and issues is getting tiresome;
Terrain Spikes - Community fix, official fix came weeks (months?) later.
Flaps Issue - Community Fix on day one, official fix 10 days later.
Aircraft Lights - Community Fix, still nothing official since SU5 when it was introduced (!)
There’s probably other examples, the main point is Asobo/MS are very poor at urgently rectifying issues they create in the first place which gives a bad impression on them.
As pointed out above a lot of addons are work arounds, even Asobo themselves fixed things with sloppy and quick workarounds. The playing music for 2 seconds although turned off is just one indication, other things that were claimed to be „fixed“ come back in subsequent updates or hotfixes —> scenery culling, LOD distance… I certainly don‘t need preinstalled fixes or addons that are added, if it comes with the sim it has to be FULLY integrated. A patch on a jeans hides a hole but it doesn‘t repair it. We need these fixes to be part of the sim, a real repair, not them sitting on top and failing again with every second update.
took them over 6 months to correct the fuel qty it can have
Havnt flown the stock Longitude for ages, but for what I read, it’s not really better than at launch
thank god we have Dakfly’s mod because they dont seem in a rush to fix it
Hmm… I don’t see the issue. When it does not work, remove it. On PC, we have control over Community installs, there should be a way to switch them off when they come to XBox. At least, give us a list with downloads ! Thing is… if the options are there and known… why not make use of it ? Developers would profit from their hard work, and issues are solved. Why only include stuff from one vendor… other Microsoft products have plugin options, you get a list of things to download in Office, that is a Microsoft product too. It seems a good idea to me, to include an option like that in MSFS. Nearly all airports in the world are handcrafted… just google for them. Asobo/MS won’t need to do all that work… and a lot of customers don’t want all Thai airports. People from Thailand do. So put a link, I would say. We have been asking for a scenery gateway for a year… Asobo sais it will come in 2021 or 2022… may as well fill it up with options.
mod content is not equal to content by devs 99.99pc of the time.
if the modders (who do great work) were employed by Asobo/MS you’d also see their customer facing production rate be as “slow” or “lazy” as the devs (are accused of)
it can seem that modders are often outpacing the devs in some areas and indeed can dominate in others but they can’t be compared on a 1 to 1 basis.
many reasons are covered above in other replies.
its a common mistake to make though and OP isn’t the first and won’t be the last.
Even if it is…they either need to be hired and part of the team, or MS would have to buy the rights to their code, which wouldn’t be practical.
So they can continue to offer their “fixes” as free community mods that people are free to download and use as they wish.
But even if 99% of the mods work well and don’t cause harm, the 1% that do cause issues won’t be discussed. And crashes that have nothing to do with Asobo will be blamed on them.