I find it odd that Beta Testers were not instructed on what to actually ‘Test’ in SU13.
Note that all SU13 Release Notes depict something Added or Fixed. Nothing to test.
Why have Beta Testers at all then?
SU 1.34.10.0 Release Notes
SU 1.34.11.0 Release Notes
SU 1.34.12.0 Release Notes
SU 1.34.13.0 Release Notes
SU 1.34.14.0 Release Notes
Beta testers and their telemetry data helped fix this pretty serious regression. I’m guessing without beta testers, this bug would have been pretty catastrophic if released to the masses.
That bug was there way before SU13. For some reason more people are raising their voices about it.
Here is just a quick example. (from Feb 2022) Very Long Loading Time
Note that the only reply to the OP was that there are over 50 threads related to his issue…
Only Asobo knows if those reports are actually the same bug, but regardless it seems the beta testers got Asobo the data to fix it, no?
Perhaps. For me it was fixed in SU12 and I haven’t had an issue with it since. PC/Steam.
They call it beta, so users are aware that there are still bits missing or possible new bugs that need some more work before final release.
Calling it “early access” would only rise people’s expectatiins even more.
I mean, we already have enough users that complain a lot when running into a bug in Beta. Imagine what will be if they xall it “early access” or simply make it the mainline release…
I believe you’re missing the point of this thread.
I posted this to ask why in this Beta we were not given any instructions on what to test.
Look at prior Betas. We had a list of hundred’s of things to test and give our feedback.
SU13 doesn’t have one item listed for us to test.
Nobody said anything about ‘early access’.
The beta forum is full of surveys where we are asked about our experience in various topics. Most recently the ling loading issue.
But as there are no real updates to the sim itself anymore, there is not much more to test but stability.
You got that right.
I don’t get this post, I mean sure, there aren’t too many new things which are to be tested, may be, but still some very important issues were fixed and even more importantly this time around, and this is against popular belief, some key regression issues were caught and fixed before final release. For example,
For regression,
You might have long loading time before, sure, but there was definitely a new bug introduced and fixed in the latest beta build. If you follow the bug thread, you will see that for some people it went from 5 minutes to more than hours sometimes.
Initially there was another bug which forced you to download all the firstparty planes and airports that you DELETED from content manager. That was a large waste of bandwidth and storage space for many, and with slow download speeds, time too. This issue have happened to me many times before, but the issue was random, but this time it looks like it happened for everyone. Asobo claims that it has been fixed, but if the long term random issues was also fixed or not, that I cannot say.
They changed something that causes ATR’s ACW gen and engine driven hydraulic pumps logic to misbehave. It has been reported, but not sure if it will be fixed before the actual release or if it’s something that the ATR dev has to fix.
So you see, there are atleast a few things which beta testers had to test and those brought some results. Doesn’t matter if there was any instructions given or not. Yes, this SU has been very light on content, but this time around, I feel asobo did better when it comes to taking feedback and fixing things before it gets out to general release. That may be because of the smaller scope of this SU.
Is this just referring to the numbered items next to each changelog entry that were sometimes in the betas? That was just for tracking convenience and doesn’t mean that beta testers shouldn’t be testing anything.
There have been other betas where the changelog wasn’t numbered as well, but I think it should be somewhat self explanatory that because this is a beta, the changes in the software should always be scrutinized by the users in the beta, and that’s why the list of changes is provided.
Last week i was not in beta, my sim refused to start, this was out of the blue, and a weitd experience not sure why this happend and what exactly caused it.but what i suspected is xbox app and verify files integrity,
Also it seemed that world updates where not there although they where there, anyway that made me decide to join beta.
After join in and automatically download beta the sim would not start, than redown loaded again but this time i pointed where to install, it found all my installed sim files and downloaded the files needed for the betatest basefiles and from content manager the adapted poi files
Including the c172 classic which from previous install i deleted.
Now i do not know if this had to be tested, but it saved me from redownload the complete sim.
And for me the beta is running all well experience less till no heavy stutters on take of or landing through inconsitency in loading.
Guys, this subject is about one specific point.
In any professional “beta” test, or any test, the testers are asked to test specific things, typically things that have changed.
Just throwing code to the wind is not an efficient methodology and usually a huge waste of time.
The OP is asking, what important things should we have tested?
Clearly, it was expected the white dot issue was to be tested, and, through all of your testing, a bunch of it got sorted. He’s wondering what else. Things like installation, maybe it would have been good to install various things in various configurations.
Now maybe there’s stuff going on behind the scenes, and Asobo knew what needed to be tested, so you folk just messing around was good enough. I don’t know. But it’s a good question.
I’m glad Asobo was able to figure some things out that you all didn’t know you were testing, but, typically, testers are given a laundry list of things to test.
Thank you for your reply. You expressed the point I was trying to make, much better than I did. 
I think Asobo and Microsoft have their own test teams to test their build. They are (I assume) professional testers that test every change in the software that has been made… after that the build is released to us with the release notes to test
There are many different use cases possible for every change that has been made. Not only for the different kinds of software and hardware configurations but also because some people just use the sim differently and catch potential bugs that way. Besides that they (Asobo) use telemetry data.
I think there are many different types of users in the beta. Ranging from ‘professional’ software tester to the average/casual player.
All contribute to testing in their own way.
I’m sure that they will provide us with a more specific directive when needed.
Everything @Sleevezipper wrote above is correct.
We have internal testers who conduct detailed professional testing on every new build before they are released to public beta participants. Unfortunately, because there are literally thousands of different permutations of hardware, peripherals, and mods/addons, it is impossible for us to test every single use case on our own. This is where the community can be of immense assistance to us. Whether you are very purposely testing individual aspects of the sim in a systematic fashion and logging detailed bug reports here on the beta forums or just flying as you normally would and letting the telemetry system automatically log details from your session, participants who opt-in to receive the pre-release test builds are incredibly valuable to the dev team. We sincerely thank everyone who downloads the pre-release builds.
Thanks,
MSFS Team