Hi, I would like to ask if Jorg and the Asobo team would consider doing a semi-regular Q&A session dedicated to our questions, meaning customer questions - just like they do the “Developer Q&A” sessions on Twitch, but for more of our questions gathered here on the forum?
I get that they have an established format - usually presenting a World Update, Sim Update, and/or new developer products. But too often long-standing questions we try to ask in this forum don’t “fit” the narrow criterea for inclusion in the Dev Q&A and get rejected and thus never answered.
Having made great improvements in stability and memory optimization for smoother flight and less crashing (SU10 and SU11), and the amazing functionality of AAU1, I would love the opportunity to ask and hear discussion in some detail about the following:
ATC?
Ground Services personnel and vehicles?
Bing maps (out of date, raised rivers, sunken island airports and shorelines, etc) Can you describe the plans for this as the World is not static…?
Better error reporting - and messaging - for server-related errors.
Can world improvements be open-sourced, so improvements are crowd-sourced and continuous?
Clarifying support and refund policies for 3rd party content in the marketplace.
Can we vote on whether Zendesk continues to be the provider for official support, because frankly, it’s not a good experience (in my opinion).
I think it’s fairly clear that none of those topics are top priority for the developers given their planning for this year anyway. That’s not necessarily a criticism, just a fact of where things stand given their capacity.
The devs mentioned specifically that ATC was unlikely to see an overhaul over the next year or so in the last Q&A. They seemed open to a long term improvement, though.
We will be getting a scenery gateway this year, though it’ll be limited to “airport logic” and not scenery, and the SDK folks explicitly shot down any expansion of this tool in the near future at least. The broader strategy for Bing seems to rely on the discrete world updates.
The marketplace design and Zendesk have issues, but there’s no evidence that they’ll change significantly any time in the near to medium term future.
I appreciate that each thing is complex and takes time and resources, and that they can only focus on a few things at a time, and that makes it a challenge to prioritize. But it would be nice to hear the discussion of these topics - because (at least for me) it would help me to understand the thinking, the challenges, and to set expectations. The improved funcationality and stability have made a huge positive difference to my own use of the sim, but I’m hoping to hear something about the other remaining issues - and it would be nice to have a periodic forum for more community questions to get discussed. Thanks.
There’s a hundred topics they could answer every Q&A, what I have noticed is that the questions only get asked if they’ve got enough votes so people want to hear more about Birds coming to the Sim than major/minor regression bugs getting fixed anytime soon(!).
I personally gave up with the Q&As long ago with the respect I was looking forward to the hard questions getting answered, but I soon learnt they tend to swerve around them and never actually answer directly or act confused at the question so never answer them at all.
They’re nice to have and Sebs sections on physics are a delight, chats with Partner Devs are good, but other than that they’re merely ticking a marketing box and shining a light on the features.
I believe that is all because of prioritization - they had to find and fix the underlying stability and performance issues, and they have a development roadmap for products, etc.
All I am asking is to have a semi-regular Q&A session dedicated to these neglected questions, and that provides a format for customer questions going forward - so that customers don’t give up.
That sounds like the much asked for scenery gateway editor which they’ve said is about to enter a beta phase for full release this year at some point. When it does get released it will make a big difference to things.
That sounds like the much asked for scenery gateway editor which they’ve said is about to enter a beta phase for full release this year at some point. When it does get released it will make a big difference to things.
I hope it does live up to its potential, but as of now the gateway editor will be very limited over the next few years. It will help with some airport fixes, though, which is a start.