Official Discussion: September 2nd, 2021 Development Update

Maybe you are not the only one communicating ? :yum:

This was a forum moderator message directed not only at you, it was directed at members submitting here and to the forum in general.

@SeedyL3205 welcome… looking forward to your promise of having more detailed announcements about from the team about changes. Maybe that will make it easier for some critics to focus their comments. It would also be nice toward the community, if unannounced changes are also part of the list.

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Not sure why you think it’s toxic. Quite often it’s necessary to point out shortcomings or areas that need to be addressed.

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You don‘t have to anymore. This question has already been answered elsewhere („News“) with „yes“.

It’s become the Microsoft Screenshot Simulator. All the graphics in the world mean nothing if I can’t fly my… “flight simulator”.
I’ve moved on, i’ve got real world approaches to shoot for keeping current and a sim is a great way to hone in your Nav skills without the cost or time limitations associated. Gamers will only last so long with a buggy product and hardcore simmers are not going to put up with an unstable platform/ Unfortunately for this particular sim they would rather market an arcade game than make it one of the premier sims on the market. The MS/Asobo team may have time for a ten year roadmap but i’m not willing to put up with 10 years of pain for stable working product, i’m not even willing to put up with 2-3 years because that’s not what I paid for.

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Ah, let me get my pitchfork and join you guys, we are ANGRY! We want o see the manager!

Indeed, those improvements in the communication are the right direction. But definitely more is need.

  • As @aracines said - real aviation and flight realism related updates
  • A single “stop-shop” place to get the official update regarding burning issues and hot discussions topics. Surely, some will have just a status of “team are aware and investigating” , but at the minimum an acknowledgment is needed.
  • Official technical updates and details such as the great post (Slider to adjust/disable the scenery culling (reduce panning pop-in and stutters) - #118) by @Jummivana ideally can be posted in an official forum channel known to all. As seen here, many of us didn’t know about it. Would greatly improve communication if we have a “billboard” to look at.
  • A way to follow-up on open issues and bugs, not just those “votes” tables that became very stagnate. We need some follow-up also to the lesser voted topics, zendesk tickets or issues that are not part of those tables.
  • A way to understand the up-coming updates goals - not just timeline milestones, but a real roadmap…

Just to demonstrate the situation today with a very realism related aviation topic - the missing wind gusts bug (No wind gusts regardless of how gust sliders are set. No data displayed in the "Wind Graph". Broken for PC and Xbox!) is there since SU4, however we got no official update it ( other than moderators forwarding this to Asobo ) .
Each sim update is a guessing “roulette” of whether this bug will finally get fixed at all. To have such a fundamental bug lingering for so long and zero feedback leads to the outcome of feeling that the sim has no interest in realism and real flying simulation.

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Not sure if your intention is sarcastic, but I see my post as a very civil and pragmatic post as I could. If you are enjoying sarcasm, trolling here is definitely not a way to improve anything. Many people in the community here definitely take this sim seriously hence the need for constructive feedback.

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This forum has mostly less constructive criticism and more just toxic whining. Including this thread.

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How does this dev update comms differ from any of the previous dev update comms? They very clearly have a template for these weekly communnications. Now to jump on them and blame them again for not telling what you wanted hear is a bit strange.

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I appreciate the kind response, and continued conversation.

Ok so you are still missing the point, let me try another avenue, much more direct.

What you are suggesting to Seedy does nothing for the improvement of the MSFS product. Communications have not improved the product. In other words, empty talk, roadmaps, bug lists, wish lists, feature presentations, news about partners, community news, etc. is all cheap. There are plain basic (even over a year old) bugs, there are newly introduced bugs, there are plain basic omissions, there is a cry out the the developers to DO something about this and not talk about anything else.

It is plain to see that the MSFS team cannot “walk and chew gum” at the same time. So there is a need to focus.

I make distinctions between my interests; don’t we all when the situation calls for it?

I can be interested in a real life aircraft round the world trip, but that has NOTHING to do with the realism that the MSFS development team accomplishes in MSFS. Aviation in MSFS is the focus, real world things are separate, and do nothing for us here, since we cannot reasonably do close to the same as the real world. So UNTIL MSFS becomes a fully featured (according to the feature presentations) flight sim, anything real life aviation will/can NOT apply. In the mean time, effort is being totally wasted, with a delusion that MSFS is already fully featured, and that is completely false.

Were you there when Phil Taylor came on the scene? No you weren’t, because you could not make a “way better” statement like this if you were. Its very important to know the history if you are going to claim it. Perhaps you forgot, and that is ok, we all forget things time to time.

Either way, the previous sims were not released in an alpha state with a 10 year journey attached. The new format can be welcomed, but for it to be a painful journey is not welcome. Communication (delays) will not hide the plainly obvious. This fact is not exclusive to MSFS; this has been true all along for all flight sims.

Of course the MSFS team can hire who they wish, but I would say that the need for community managers is a direct sign for needed delay tactics. All-The-While the development team has no announcements of new hire’s.

Perhaps there is an issue hiring new developers (lots of openings!), because any potential developers see the name of the product (flight sim) and see that it has way too long to go, with too many delay strategies in place - a recipe for disaster in the flight sim realm, and why join something that does not know what it is.

I wonder if the developer position void could also be a result of closing (some cases slamming) the door on several 3rd parties. I mean, how many “flight sim” developers are there? Or how many new developers have a goal/desire of having a “flight sim” development career? The flight sim community has some extremely clever and intelligent 3rd party developers that have worked around all kinds of things to bring realism to flight sims. If nothing else, they know what flight simmers want…results!

The MSFS team has said it plainly, they need OUR help. They have gotten our help. In light of this, its pretty obvious that either zendesk does not suffice, or the development team is unable to cope. Never-the-less a feature presentation filled flight sim is required, not delay tactics. Our help does not involve/include endless patients, while things non-related to MSFS aviation realism continue. If the MSFS team stays focused on aviation realism in MSFS exclusively, then patients will abound.

The MSFS team needs to spit the “gum” out and just walk. The screenshot obsession, that this community and the MSFS team has, prevents this…it is the “tasty gum” that is keeping this project from “walking”. So much more would have been, and can be accomplished.

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Stuck with decompressing phase after update. I gave after several tries and I wait for new update but it is NOT acceptable to have this kind of problems PC W10
Similar issues reported here on several website…One file is probably too big and take ages to decompress and less modern PC are stuck…

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I gave up finally with the update after loosing more than 7 hours in total…Unacceptable

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The “dev update comms” have contained less and less actual development information over the last several months. Since Sim Update 4. On May 25th, a full 3 months ago.

And clearly, that’s 100% on the Devs, NOT the Community Managers.

It’s obvious from reading through this thread that there has been confusion over the focus/intent/purpose of the Development Updates. Here’s a partial list of what I consider to be the highest priority Development activity:

  • the work being done on the core Sim and default aircraft.
  • eliminating CTDs (which I do not have a problem with currently).
  • fixing regression bugs (SU4 broke some very important things, and same with SU5).
  • progress towards the next Sim Update (setting expectations).
  • Improvements to: flight model, physics, weather, optimization, ATC (which I don’t even
    use), better Installation Manager/update process, etc, etc. I know I’m missing some…

In this “Flight Sim For Simmers”, these are critical areas that need attention. Please note the focus on functions/features/areas that bring more realism to our Flight Simulator, or repairing things that worked fine and are now broken. Shouldn’t the Devs be focusing on those?

So in this thread, there has been acknowledgement from the CMs that there needs to be clarification/changes made to the Development Update as we know it. Excellent.

I’m hoping they will breakout the real Development activity from the Marketplace and Community activities. All the important technical Development stuff in one place and the 3rd party/DLC/Marketplace news and Community Activity in another separate place, perhaps as a Newsletter format.

To close, I actually care a great deal about the Sim. If I’m not working, I spend all my time flying it or reading up on flying in MSFS, DCS and X-plane. I think it is an incredible value for what we pay for it and I really want MSFS to fulfill its HUGE potential.

And, I truly appreciate the time and effort that our Community Managers put in for us. I think Microsoft has put them in a tough position… they have to try to explain why progress isn’t being made on high priorities items and deal with a huge amount of problems that they have no control over. The frustration and disappointment we see here so often is not their fault at all.

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Thank you. I can get behind this. This is contructive critisism.

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Sure, bugs are annoying. But many here sound as if the Sim was completely not usable and that’s simply not true. With working around known bugs it can still be a lot of fun. And as bugs get solved over time it will be even more fun.

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Indeed, I tend to say I would have no idea how broken the sim I play daily is, unless I read the forums.

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I think the issue is when they committed to weekly updates, these were stated to be dev updates where they would give an insider look into what bugs the team was working on.

When they post community screen shots and a list of 3rd party ware, it looks as if they aren’t working on anything and counting money when I’m sure this isn’t the case.

Hey guys,

Im at FL320, and it keeps telling me to expedite my climb to FL320… why?
And when I want to increase the cruising altitude for example at FL320 by 4.000ft, it tells the ATC “require FL500” why? So annyoing!!

Xbox Series X

guys, the servers are slow for you also or it’s just me ?