January 16, 2025 Development Update Blog Discussion

[Mustang242Sqn]

I am sure that even if all the ‘simmers’ abandoned 2024, there would be enough regular ‘gamers’ still using it that Microsoft would barely notice. Sure, some of the simmers likely spend a LOT in the store (or would if they could), but I’ll bet quite a few gamers do too.

My point is that the simming community likely sees themselves as the core priority group whose needs are most important, but unfortunately, the playground must be shared equally.

It seems clear that the top priorities are not all set by Jorg, nor Asobo, so they likely can’t focus entirely on making the well-rounded sim they want to make (sad if true). But, without the financial might of MS and Bing etc., we wouldn’t have the current sims we do have. So MS will always set some of the goals.

I once played Train Simulator by Dovetail Games. It was good. Then they re-released it and updated the menus. Added +1 to the year in the title. It got worse with every passing year. The old content didn’t work properly. They never fixed the new bugs. Just more content, more re-releases for each year. I lost all heart in that company and will not buy their products again.

I pray that the same will not happen for MSFS with each iteration. I feel we’re at a crossroads in this “10 year journey” we were told about back in 2019, and it could go either way.

[Mustang242Sqn]

@NixonRedgrave

We did nothing wrong here. We bought the product that was marketed to us in good faith. The least we can ask is for some transparency on some of the glaring issues that need to be acknowledged and addressed.

There is little to no reason to even submit questions for the next dev stream. Why? Because all the questions we want answered have been repeatedly asked here on this forum for two months. They say they read the forum. If they do, then they already know what questions we want answered.

I would love nothing more than for this excellent post by Nixon (and I mean all of it - I only quoted a small part) to be read out to the devs in full at the next Q&A, as it well summarises the biggest source of frustration for many, I feel.

I’m sure their hands are tied to some degree in what can be said at the Q&A and it must hurt to see so much anger from the community, but something has to change.

[CaseBug92496684]

I think the upcoming Sim Update 1 (with community testing) is a direct result of listening to community concerns, and while it won’t address every issue and bug, it should be a huge step forward. Bug reports are submitted by the community, reviewed, and then prioritized on the Feedback Snapshot, which serves as a transparent roadmap of what the team is actively working on. Should be a lot of major improvements on the way…

[Nikita]

@Mustang242Sqn

My point is that the simming community likely sees themselves as the core priority group whose needs are most important, but unfortunately, the playground must be shared equally.

This rings true to me. Similar to an old school sports car community. Enthusiast group(s) champion the marque of their choice with great passion. The feted manufacture gets behind these enthusiast group(s) both as good PR and a little bit of consumer R&D. Of course, much of this centers around auto racing, but most of the enthusiasts only race in their arm chairs while said sports car rests pristinely in the garage. A few hardcore hit the track till the armaco hits them back.

The manufactures can only support auto racing for a period at a time because it is prohibitively expensive to do so indefinitely, even for the largest brands. The fans rant and rave when racing support is pulled and pine for its return someday. Life goes on. The thing about enthusiast groups is that they tend to stick around, no matter what watered down vehicle goes on sale to the masses. And then there are the tuners. Starting to sound a little familiar yet? They are us.

[WaterLattice34]

@CaseBug92496684

I think the upcoming Sim Update 1 (with community testing) is a direct result of listening to community concerns, and while it won’t address every issue and bug, it should be a huge step forward.

I agree and was happy to see there will be community testing. But it’s nothing new…we had that with MSFS.

[LawyerSean]

The bugs are much worse

[Foxhound6050]

nothing about when the beta of SU1 will start ?

[tgbushman]

I don’t think the gamers are all flocking to 2024.

First off, there wasn’t any real marketing for 2024, and still isn’t. There are still to this day trade articles, but they are all of the nature of “is it fixed yet” and they report no. So its not picking up any new users reading the articles. SimMarket, you barely ever saw an XPlane mod. Yet now, Xplane mods are about half the recent intake. That means there has been an uptick in XPlane usage. If you look at the YouTube influencers, most all of them were in 2024 at the start, but some of them, including some of the big ones, have gone back to presenting 2020 material. So that steers those viewers back towards 2020. And with any new gam/sim, you have a variety of new YouTubers who will decide to try to start a channel and present content on that new game/sim, yet you are not seeing that right now with 2024. The only new people were early, and they were posting videos of some of the more ridiculous bugs.

And the original point you posted this about was, some of the truly most positive and almost cheerleading people during a crisis are getting fed up. If you are losing those people, how do you expect a gamer who really isn’t into flying yet encounter several bugs in a row, and have them stay. They aren’t invested in the platform. They aren’t going to keep trying and trying until they can get a flight to complete. They just aren’t. The simming community might, but not the casual gamer.

So the statements I made, I made not just because I am part of the simming community and think I am important. I am taking it from various different signs that just shouldn’t be happening.

[Jacobes16]

Any confirmation if WU and LL/FF are still going to release for 2020?

[Kulch]

I think the best we can hope for in SU1 has the usual
“Various bug fixes”
And hope that it covers most of what has been said, asked etc…
If this doesn’t happen and we get whats in their roadmap it’s going to be a long haul slog of a buggy journey for FS 2025, because frankly that current SU1 list from the roadmap is poor

[BragRaindrop933]

It was definitely not loading the stylesheet yesterday on my desktop browser, but it’s fixed now it would seem.

[BragRaindrop933]

@Agathorn1975

On the bright side, they will need to fix at least some things to get everything properly ported.

I suspect they are finding quite a few things and that is what is ultimately holding things up. What is it 3000 add ons to test with quick updates to fs2024 to make them compatible again. Just think of the workload involved in that. Remember they want to be able to continue to sell FS2020 add ons in FS2024 and they promised they’d all be compatible, so it’s a priority.

[BragRaindrop933]

@tgbushman

The only new people were early, and they were posting videos of some of the more ridiculous bugs.

True, and I also have to wonder how they will ever successfully market even a fixed (after a few SU’s say) FS2024 release to new folk as it’s now 2025 so FS2024 is from a marketing perspective now old/out of date to the masses. I swear whoever made the decision to put a date on it then rush it out in November to meet that date with so many bugs needs to question their decision making. We all saw this well ahead of time. Of course maybe they just rename it back to MSFS to thoroughly confuse everyone. It would have been far better to brand it MSFSv2 and release it in EA or ideally when it was ready.

[SaprPavel6630]

Sorry for off-topic but can you please clarify why these pages just hanging on website for a long time and neither updated nor deleted?

Development Roadmap - Microsoft Flight Simulator

Feedback Snapshot - Microsoft Flight Simulator

[SylvesterRocket]

I guess the issue is there is no roadmap with dates on, only they are working on some stuff that is supposed to show up in 2025

It was shown during the last livestream alongside the snapshot that was also picked up with the blog post.
Maintaining a blogpost seems also more efficient than maintaining a static webside with dynamic content.
But I would agree with you, maybe just delete the outdated roadmap.

[Wined2310]

And honestly, i do not biy the “separate teams” argument now.

There should be no local legends or famous flyers before all the major bugs on existing aircraft are fixed.

There should not be any world updates before all the major scenery bugs are fixed.

And there should not be any new features in Sim Updates before the major bigs on the base sim are fixed.

A sim will never be bug-free. But currently we have major bigs in every field. So all reasources have to be focussing on this instead of new stuff.

I hope that this is why we have no dates. Even though that history tells my something else

[PlaneHolland]

Have you ever seen a development team or multiple? The result of what you’re suggesting is that some people will end up doing nothing because not everyone has the same skills/expertise etc.

My suggestion would be not to stop on this or that but just get the right people together, update their knowledge, to fix the biggest bugs.

I do agree on stopping with half-baked products. I don’t fly the standard MS aircraft because their not finished, we probably don’t need more of that.

[Adriano8851]

No Steam. Microsoft store.

[Maelmoor]

I do get that people are upset if there are issues preventing you from enjoying the sim. Those issues varies from person to person, if you fly in VR, those bugs might be the biggest ones, if you don’t fly in VR you probably don’t care about them. Same goes if your favourite plane is broken or if your favourite plane is working fine, the experience will vary a lot.

I always have an understanding for those experience crashes, sim not even loading or severe performance issues, that’s tough, especially when you are really keen to get going.

Some already pointed out about that some rough estimates would help and I agree, knowing roughly when we could expect SU1, launch if marketplace would be really helpful and something that’s been lacking.

I’ve been able to enjoy MS2024 myself, I’m getting great performance and stability and I really think MS2024 brings a lot of improvements and new features that I really value, but of course there’s a bunch of issues that I would like to see solved in the near future.

Unfortunately there’s still a lack of understanding on development and release procedures, it’s one thing to have an indie game on Steam where you can push out fixes as you prefer and a totally different beast to work on a highly complex project such as MSFS. Just the required certification process adds time and complexity which some may not take into account.

Still also baffles me that people either don’t understand or don’t want to understand the responsibility and separation of dev teams. Pausing working on a famous flyer has no impact on how quickly VR issues or problems with ground blurriness can be solved, like it or not, that’s just how it works.

So to summarize, I do think MSFS has better communication and engagement than any current or previous flight sim, which I really appreciate, I still think the addition some estimates of when we can expect upcoming updates would be really helpful.

If you are so upset with MS2024 that it affects how you feel and behave, best is probably to either take a pause, go back to 2020 or use another sim and check in later.

Whilst we might have a lot of opinions, we shouldn’t forsake common sense.

[Nikita]

@Maelmoor

I’ve been able to enjoy MS2024 myself, I’m getting great performance and stability

Glad to hear. For clarity, what is your set-up for enjoying 24? Thanks.