At my job, we regularly discuss managing customer’s expectations, to ensure what you deliver is what they want or expect. We constantly provide definition and clarify of what we’re going to do.
I think Microsoft/Asobo didn’t do a very good job of this. Some examples:
Weather. There’s no way to reduce visibility as far as I can tell. That’s not unreasonable to expect that we would be able to reduce visib to 1/4 mile like we could in FSX.
Seasons. It’s summer. All the time. We should have probably been told about this limitation of the photogrammetry scenery.
ATC. It was reasonable to assume we would get FSX ATC at a minimum. We didn’t. ATC sucks. It really sucks.
I mention these ones, as I don’t think they’re bugs. I think they are implemented as designed due to limitations from wherever, and I’m not holding my breath for any improvement.
My point is simply that I think more disclosure would have been nice. I think the green grass 365 days a year is the best example of where MS/Asobo could have said that it’s a limitation that we’re going to need to accept; instead, they said nothing (AFAIK…). Not a good way to manage your customer’s expectations.
I agree completely. I think about 99% of the frustration, disappointment, and vitriol in these forums could have been prevented by MS/Asobo just being upfront and honest about the product they had to sell. The truth is it’s not finished. It’s a work in progress, it’s rough around the edges, needs some time and love from the community to finish growing up etc.
Launching it as a proper release, and not addressing the shortcomings and limitations made them a lot of money, but I don’t think it earned them much good will.
tbh it was pretty common knowledge there were no seasons if you were following the development roadmaps etc.
but i am still half convinced it’s a reason they decided to push to release in summer… casual users wouldnt notice its perpetual spring/summer for several months.
Not everyone has time to wade through hours and hours of Q&A videos to see what is going on. Especially when the Feature Discovery videos from pre-release and the Around the World videos show a much different product than what we actually received. Adding to that, we get gaslighted with things like the weather and the stock aircraft where no one is willing to clearly state what the development team considers “done”, all we get is platitudes about how “we are all on a journey together”. They should tell us clearly and succinctly what the destination of the “journey” is.
What precisely would you like them to do, baring in mind that summer trees are shown on the actual orthos that are draped over the mesh?
Sorry but a load of bare twiggy trees sitting over the lush green foliage on flat orthos trees just isnt going to look good in my opinion. Until we have seasonal ground orthos I just dont see seasons working well. The eye is very good at spotting glaring inconsistencies, at least mine is.
I have nothing to compare ATC to since I never really played civilian flight sims in the past, but this is a major bone I have to pick with the game. ATC seems like it got dropped on its head as a child. Repeatedly. It gives the most “r-word” instructions ever at times. Or forgets about you leaving you at FL300 over your destination airport. Or they order you down to altitudes that will crash you into mountains if followed. And you have no way to inform them that you can’t comply, so basically ATC is useless from that point onwards.
Oddly, it seemed better at launch. Then with the patch when they added the extra voices, ATC suddenly suffered major brain damage.
This. I had the thought yesterday that if there isn’t a feature request for an option to tell ATC to “■■■■ off,” there really should be. All you can do is cancel your IFR and refile the same one, so you get…the same broken instructions.
Excuse me if I don’t think approaching my destination at FL375 till I’m 3 miles out, then descending to 2k ft in the span of 1.5nm to make a visual approach into the wrong runway for the instrument plan I filed and the arrival I flew in on, with a 25kt crosswind and low visibility is a great idea.
