To all you whiners out there. Get a grip.
Several things…
Products NEVER get released as solid as they did back in the 80’s and 90’s. That just won’t happen. Too many factors in today’s world.
This flight sim cost $59 dollars. Look at what you are getting for $59. Even if it’s not perfect as you would like. It is an absolute gem of a start considering what it does (for your little 59 dollars).
They will update it LIKE EVERY OTHER PRODUCT YOU BUY THESE DAYS and it will get better and bugs worked out, etc.
Face it. Today’s world makes the consumer be the QA Testers. Not to the fault of developers. But to the fault that there are so many variations of things. Back in 90’s you had 386 or 486 to develop on and all had same memory, etc. Now there are a ton of variations.
VFR Flying. Enough said.
So instead of whining, go and enjoy what it has to offer today with anticipation that it will be even better tomorrow. If you can’t see that for your measily 59 dollars, then go play an xbox game in your basement.
Put things in perspective people. This is a great start for a new generation of flight simmers. Trust me. I started on the first versions of flight sim from sublogic. All you could do was mail runs.
Addendum: costs 1$ if you get the XBOX Game Pass trial, +5$ for each month afterwards. Meaning you can try the thing for 3 months for 11$, think how much value you can get for that, more than enough time to try it out and make a very informed purchase decision.
I wouldn’t say “little 59 dollars,” but I agree. I’d rather have people submit proper feedback and suggestions if something doesn’t work for them than them attempting to “scare” people away. We all know devs these days listen to user feedback, especially when it comes to simulators. The people who just complain and their tactic of being toxic is a lose-lose one.
I have friends like this and I tend to avoid them. Just not enough maturity in this world (not saying I’m perfect, just that it would be nice if people were more decent about things - esp for just a video game).
agreed on maturity level today.
And 59 is a decent amount, but, considering what your getting, you are paying what you would for a dinner out with the wife or half the price of a nice trackball, etc. Didn’t mean it isn’t alot to some, but if that is the case, they shouldn’t be spending it if you are that tight.
agreed on maturity level today.
And 59 is a decent amount, but, considering what your getting, you are paying what you would for a dinner out with the wife or half the price of a nice trackball, etc. Didn’t mean it isn’t alot to some, but if that is the case, they shouldn’t be spending it if you are that tight.
Even if they didn’t do their own research prior to purchasing, they’ll come back at you saying they were “promised this and that feature”, how it was advertised as the ultimate simulator, and that’s why they spent the money. Ugh, there’s just no winning with them sometimes - and that’s why I avoid them.
I feel like a road map of features in the pipeline addresses this though.
This is simply not true. I use all sorts of software products personally and professionally that work smoothly out-of-the box.
Speaking as an senior engineer and software developer, this isn’t true either.
In a way it was a bit more of the wild west back then. DOS, Windows, OS/2, all sorts of different compatability issues from varying x86 and compiler conventions. Sure wouldn’t want to get a cdecl mixed up with a stdcall now would we? Or headaches trying to compile some of the same code between Bordland or Turbo C or Visual C. That and everything still being fairly new - figuring out best practice as you go.
Things have become a lot more standardized and cross-platform these days. IDE’s have gotten better and better. Unit testing and automated code coverage utilities have become increasingly prevalent. You’ve got QA teams and development cycles set up to address issues in a timely manner.
Basically, there’s more in place now to ensure compatibility and safeguard against bugs and breaking changes - if they’re used properly.
The reasons a software product goes out these days and is fraught with issues basically boils down to at least one of two things:
Poor software development practice
Premature release; usually from some disconnect between The Business and The Developers
I’m not going to speculate on the how or why MSFS went out the door with glaring issues as it serves no purpose. But there is no doubt in my mind that a lot of these things could have been avoided.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still enjoy the product and its current highlights - particularly GA / VFR flying. I’m looking forward to what should hopefully be a brisk cadence of updates and software fixes, and I’m happy to submit detailed and reproducible bug tickets to that end.
But the notion that we should accept or normalize a release in a rough state - I don’t agree with that at all, neither as a consumer nor as a professional developer.
If we’re being honest, I have no idea how they’re making a profit. Given the amount of R&D that went into making this simulator, even with bugs, we should be paying like $500. And knowing that development will just continue on and on and on? Where else do you pay $60 and get that kind of promise from a product? How much R&D goes into designing a new kitchen sink? And those things get close to $500.
Nothing is more unhelpful than someone complaining about other people whining. Sure some of the criticisms may be unfounded but my opinion is that in a new iteration of a product like FS 2020, you keep in mind the feature set that was in previous versions. You then keep all these good things that worked and nobody had anything bad to say about and add any new features.
Most of my issues are with things that were implemented well in FS 2004 and FSX and have been made worse or are missing. Flight planning and editing, World Map and IFR-related procedures. As I’ve said elsewhere in these forums, if you have past design work you can draw on from previous products, don’t reinvent the wheel and risk ending up with something customers view as a crappier triangular wheel this time around.
Also a software engineer here and I’m totally with you. All this talk about all games being broken upon release nowadays being fine is utterly ridiculous because 1) not all games get released in a broken state and 2) it’s kind of sad that people are advocating for everyone else to just accept it as the new defacto standard.
Not talking about MSFS specifically, but if I wrote my software the way some of the games are released nowadays my contract would get terminated. The problem is that in the modern world it’s all about ROI and MSFS to me smells like an unfinished product that they decided to release to cash in on the massive hype that got created around it over the last few months. All this talk about alphas and betas got people so hyped up that MS decided that this is the best time to release it. Waiting a few months more would’ve meant that the casual crowd would simply move to something else.
Seeing how many people with bad and/or crazy good rigs are complaining about performance issues just goes to show that the game is not ready for prime time, yet here we are with people shouting from the top of their lungs that it’s fine and that this is the way it is nowadays. Sad times we live in.
Games software development does seem to be less rigorous than general or web-development software engineering. I often wonder if game programming practice even includes best-practice processes like test-driven development, unit tests, continuous integration, continuous deployment etc.
I’m surprised at the incomplete state of the SDK documentation too. I would have thought a dev team would include internal tools programmers who also ensure tools docs are maintained. Maintaining documentation speeds things up if you have either new hires joining the team or short-term contract hires. Good docs maintenance means faster onboarding.
Game programming still seems so ‘wild-westy’ to me and is possibly the reason for much of the bugs in games. I think game programming shouldn’t just have alpha and beta stages but also gamma, maybe even delta and then RTM
If that is the case is it a bad thing? Assuming they aren’t just going to leave it in this state (and there is no reason to think that) why shouldn’t they maximise their income? If anything that helps secure a better quality product for the future. No one forces users to buy the game (for $1) on launch. Everyone is free to wait 1 day and look at reviews before doing that.
I’m pretty Microsoft are not short of money so cashing in at the expense of the product quality seems like a false economy to me. But hey, people are happy to just get their hands on the game no matter how well it runs so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The point is it’s not at the expense of product quality. It’s at the gain of letting people get their hands on it sooner, raise more money for development and hence improve product quality quicker.
The entire “Microsoft are not short of money” is irrelevant, a project has to sustain itself, Microsoft business or cloud division is not going to charitable subsidise game development.
that’s what they all say 