I don’t blame Jorg or Asobo. I think your summary is almost certainly right.
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You certainly haven’t been programming video games or flight simulators. Otherwise you’d have at least a vague idea of how development teams work instead of suggesting that working on visuals and bugs are mutually exclusive and somehow in conflict.
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While I fully agree to this, this could haven been outsourced, as I feel a piece of software as complicated as this one would have deserved proper documentation from the very beginning. I was always expecting this during the alpha implicitly, and was shocked upon release when there was plainly nothing.
Even if MSFS has a rather intuitive UI, this doesn’t make documentation superfluous. This starts with the basics of flying, something like the former Rod Machado school comes to my mind, and goes on with installation issues, controls settings, graphics settings (and their relation to performance), and more. At least, something like the SoFly guide should have been included.
Anyway, thanks a lot for the excellent interview!
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Better documentation would certainly be welcome. I’m very thankful for people like 320SimPilot that take the time of posting advanced tutorials from a professional point of view.
The lacking tutorials were one of my major points of criticism when I reviewed the sim, but that’s an entirely different discipline that requires entirely different kinds of professionals. Jorg did pretty much mention that they have realized that they need to do better with the Xbox release, so I guess now they have that handled, or they’re handling it.
I do hope that whatever they do for Xbox on the tutorials’ side will also be backported on PC, where applicable.
You’re very welcome. Thanks for the kind words 
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Unless there have been some demographic shifts in the console market over the past 20 years, I honestly think Jorg, and whomever else at Microsoft, have overestimated who the Xbox audience actually is. These are the GTA, fly under a bridge, how come we can’t drive cars crowd who aren’t going to sit in front of a TV for 3hrs on a transatlantic flight, let alone learn the ins and outs of VFR or IFR.
Yes Jorg mentioned that’s why there’s a co-pilot and all kinds of flight assistance. But to commit the resources and money to a platform where this is going to be a flash in the pan, in my opinion, is a mistake.
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It’s well-known that the cost of porting games to modern consoles isn’t all that large because they share the architecture with PC anyway, not to mention that all the effort done to optimize the simulator for Xbox will benefit the PC version as well.
So no. IMHO, it definitely isn’t a mistake. I don’t expect the xbox audience to somehow outnumber that on PC, but it’ll certainly be sizable, and this hobby does need new blood, badly. The downright reactionary attitude we see often in this community is certainly evidence of that.
Even 100,000 new people (and that’s a very, very conservative estimate) will be a very welcome boon for this hobby.
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I think this brings up a good topic… Women!! In aviation in general there are no women and its because most of the dudes in the industry are chauvinistic and the industry as a hole isn’t very women friendly. This game is the same, it doesn’t even have a female theme/livery; the women characters in the game are Barbie Dolls. I hope MSFS team figures this out. Aviation is apart of this even though its a game. I have never worked with a female A&P in 30 yrs of aviation jobs. As an FME I have only flown or knew one four stripe female pilot and the company I worked for she was it out of hundreds of pilots on staff. WHERE is the WOMEN at??
Dudes you need to encourage more women in to Aviation. I think its why Aviation can’t move on/grow up in to the SST Age and why this Sim has so many bugs. Its all in perspective. Ying and Yang. No balance in the sky.
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As a reminder, please stay on-topic of this interview.
I didn’t think much of this interview as it glossed over much of the angst and criticism from so many of the game, not only in it’s current state, but the terrible problems we had during the Alpha and Beta.
And no mention of the massive installation problems that are still ongoing.
And as for not dumbing it down, all I can say is “Huh”?
This is no “sim for simmers” as he stated. The thing is, they’ve been found out and wanting, in many key areas such as the Garmins, aeroplanes that fly like wounded bricks, autopilots that don’t work and then blaming users for not using them properly.
I could go on and on but I won’t for now. Suffice to say it’s stating the obvious they were in way over their heads. Flying blind and struggling to stay aloft. They’ve put a lot of faith in the fantastic FBW crowd who have come to the rescue, and many others too.
Their commitment, such as it is, is now a desperate desire to mitigate the damage done to their reputations before people see through the charade and give up with no hope.
Can’t wait to see how XBOX works out!
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I agree, in particular for the first two points. As I wrote before in the forum, the lack of FSX style missions is still one of the missing pieces of the new sim.
Also, I would add to your list a fifth point, better documentation.
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You also don’t speak for me either, a simmer of 20+ years…
I love this sim, and it can only get better. The commitment is outstanding. How did Vanilla FSX compare when first released? How was the default F-22 in P3D?
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That’s crazy. This sim has deeper default systems than P3D ever had. This sim is definitely going in a great direction.
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It’s impossible to tell if you are using them properly or they just don’t work properly. There’s no documentation. FSX was pretty limited, but what was supposed to work worked (and always did) and you knew what didn’t. The actual documentation is far too complex for your average gamer, if not everyone else, and it’s an inaccurate simulation anyway.
I don’t see what the XBox crowd get out of it. The simmers will mostly already have bought it - those of use who have some idea how the G1000 works or the A320 and can figure it out. They can do the training, do the landing challenges and bush flights - really just VFR. There’s no progression in the game at all really. Even trying to figure it out from the excellent youtube videos isn’t easy.
I think they probably want to shoot things anyway. Yes, it’s nice to fly round your home town which is done pretty well … but there has to be a bit more than that.
Even for simmers its pretty limited. VFR, yes, great. IFR … erratic, even if you can figure it out. Just saying “oh, that’s how game development is” or whatever is not an excuse.
This isn’t a game and it’s certainly not a modern game where there’s a vast amount of work in 3D models and sound and so on. Maybe that’s why we get offered liveries rather than working autopilots.
But there’s more to it than that. Microsoft could, for example, simply buy Sofly, or their product, which is actually a proper manual. There are some VFR and IFR tutorials which are quasi missions which look pretty good. But these shouldn’t be extras after paying £100+ for something that doesn’t actually work properly. Everyone knows it ; that’s why all the “new aircraft” are props. That bit mostly works.
I don’t think it’s Asobo’s fault. I think they were stuck with it. And it begs the six million dollar question, once the XBox sales have gone, what funds further development ?
Despite the fantasies of some, FSX, FS2004, XPlane and co basically worked on release. Not perfect, but there weren’t huge holes missing to the extent that you were impressed when something worked like it was supposed to.
So where does the money to pay Asobo come from once the sales are gone. Anyone with actual experience of Microsoft knows they have absolutely no qualms about dumping people/developers/users if it suits them. (Read “Showstoppers” for examples, including the total dump on IBM) If it’s half finished and bug littered then the development that was done by others to push FSX on isn’t going to be feasible, and there’s running the servers as well. Charging for servers ? New “versions” with slightly fewer bugs ?
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No it doesn’t. It’s built on the FSX code base. (Which itself was built on the FS2004 code base). I would agree that things like the Garmin’s theoretically are “deeper” than the implementations in FSX, which could be limited. The only problem is they don’t work reliably. Even now after months of bug fixing they’re still not reliable.
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I am sorry, but as a P3D user, I struggle to understand how other sims provide a deeper IFR experience than MSFS. I have no trouble flying IFR in MSFS. At least, not to any lesser extent than I do in P3D… P3D has the same fd-up ATC system that MSFS has… X-Plane is even worse. Which part of MSFS doesn’t allow you to fly IFR? I really don’t understand. For instance, if I enter a hold on P3D, I basically have to ignore ATC, cause you can’t request a hold from them. In addition, P3D’s ATC constantly bugs you about changing headings to those COMPLETELY different from the IFR plan you filed in the beginning of flight. At least MSFS doesn’t bug you every 5 seconds to expedite your heading change. On P3D, if I am doing a long-distance flight on an airliner, I basically prefer to just fly it without ATC because it will bug the hell out of me and not want me to follow any restrictions that are easily seen in the flight plan on the MCDU.
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Aside for the completely incorrect analysis of the situation of the sim that has already been discussed ad nauseam…
Let’s not even go into the misconceptions about the console audience, which is much more diverse than some (who obviously don’t know it) give it credit for, and has much more diverse interests, which can certainly accommodate a flight simulator, especially one with many “leisure” features like this one.
Your memories of FSX, FS2004, and Xplane at launch are exactly what I would define “Fantasies.”
I’m sure some would have a vested interested in that happening considering the unwarranted hostility they express, but may want to give up on that.
Microsoft has already announced that they consider this simulator a success and pledged a 10 year support plan for it. They have every interest to support it as a wider corporation, as it’s a showpiece of their main technologies that has received extremely positive press basically everywhere. May want to come out of that echo chamber.
You may want to talk for yourself. I and many others can use it perfectly wall, so if you find it “unusable” the issue isn’t with the sim.
The use of the code base of FSX is very limited. Most of it is new code, and it shows. This sim isn’t nearly as limited by obsolete implementations like past sims.
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Some users tend to mistakenly confuse capabilities of 3rd party add-ons with the capability of the simulator.
Past sims don’t have any specific advantages with IFR. What they have is mature third-party add-on aircraft that are better equipped for IFR and started to come years after the launch of the main simulator.
There’s zero doubt that MSFS will get third-party add-ons with the same or better capabilities faster, but some tend to forget that P3D isn’t PMDG and X-Plane isn’t Toliss. 
This whole IFR mantra is simply a petty excuse people use to try (and fail) to counter the absolute superiority MSFS has with VFR (without even count the fact that visual flying is still an important part of airliner experience, especially for certain approaches), which other simulators can’t even get close to, no matter how many hundreds of dollars of add-ons you pile on top of them.
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I think some of these cats ought to go and install P3D and X-Plane to refresh their memory… I am the guy here with all 3 on my system RIGHT NOW… and I am telling you, it’s no walk in the park!
Hell, for things working properly/improperly… I bought MilViz’ KingAir 350i… That’s a study-level aircraft with DEEP systems. Every time I do an ILS approach, unless I activate APPR on a STRAIGHT line to the runway, the autopilot will struggle to follow localizer and will zig-zag. I mentioned this to MilViz on their forums, and they fully acknowledge that it’s an issue and to just approach it in a stable config… THAT’S a $90 AIRCRAFT!
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I have been simming for more than 30 years now (since FS4), but I am not into 3hrs transatlantric flights. I like VFR trips, say an hour or a little more, including visiting countries and airports I never had a chance to see in my life. This is where MSFS excels and this might be appealing even to console folks.
And some of them will stick. And a portion of them will clearly surpass me and become airline captains. Great, isn’t it?
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It basically worked. You could have updates and they did, including an add on package not dissimilar to the extra on MSFS, but these things were mostly mastered on DVDs. This was more normal, as the further back you go the harder distribution was, especially with copy protected media and ROMs and the like.
Audiovisually it doesn’t compare and still doesn’t, in the way FSX was a step up from MSFS. Most of the things were complete, in the sense that there was a decent selection of planes that worked. There were the documentation, missions and Machado tutorials, and they were quite deep, compared to MSFS equivalent.
It’s a complete untruth to say that the bug level in FSX/FS2004 was anything like MSFS. The modern thing of launching something half working (like that Cyber game whose name escapes me) in the vain hope you could debug it later didn’t happen much. Software as released basically worked, even complex systems like FSX, which is way more difficult than wrapping some game script and graphics round a 3D engine.
As for those who claim to be simmers, one thing which is obvious about simmers is there are far more IFR/Jets than VFR/Cessnas. And I speak as someone who is primarily the latter. Look at the number of VFR groups compared to IFR groups, Virtual Airlines compared to VFR flying clubs. Spend an hour at Heathrow on VATSIM and you’ll maybe see 1 Cessna in 10 or 20 (unless there’s a very specific VFR event which happens occasionally) and shedloads of people flying big iron.
The instability is less important in VFR. You don’t have flight plans as such, it takes the fun out of it. So if MSFS/XPlane or whatever crashes, you can just start up and slew or take off from a nearby airport and carry on. This is much harder with flight plans - the save on XPlane is erratic and the one on MSFS is barely worth the effort of pushing the buttons.
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