If you can imagine it, it has likely been discussed here.
This forum has a search function, a magnifying glass icon, right at the top. Click that and you can have access to thousands of MSFS experts. Months of troubleshooting and solutions to most of the issues that users have encountered are at your fingertips.
If you try searching for your issue and donât find a result that matches, it is likely you just need to try changing the search a bit. Keep the keywords simple, donât try to be too specific. How else could you describe the problem? How might someone else describe it?
Once you see a list of topics, take a little time to look through them. Not all issues look the same to every one. The solutions or troubleshooting tips might even point you in the right direction to solve the problem yourself. If nothing else you may learn something you didnât know.
Take note of the information the experts are asking for in the posts you read. They will likely need a lot of detail to help you solve your problem. If nothing else, they will want to know your computer specs and any mods or add-ons you have installed. Be specific when describing your problem. We are all aware that the simulator has some problems, but complaining about the developer or your level of dissatisfaction is of no value to solving the problems you have encountered.
Be respectful and be specific and the forum members will do what they can to help you find an answer.
Edit:
This is not meant to be a discussion on the availability or viability of an âOfficial Manualâ. Rather, this is meant to be a discussion on the use of the search function and the understanding of following or continuing an existing thread.
Is this forum a helpful resource? Yes
Is it a replacement to a manual? No
While there are many items here, the sim still need an official âsourceâ of info that is documented. A lot of it here are guesses or recommendations, with different opinion.
Example: I was asking for 11 months the details of how rolling cache works and 100âs of people had their own opinion - no one knew for sure. Only in the last Dev Q & A they provided some info on that (which I still think is incomplete based on what I am seeing in actual performance).
A manual is still needed - and required IMO - if they want to grow a successful user base for the sim / game.
Although it may be more expensive to develop and maintain than a user based forum, the software, and its paid users, deserve access to a manufacturer provided written reference manual.
This is one thing that this forum canât do. It cannot grant wishes.
So if a someone new to the forum was to do a search for âRolling Cacheâ they would find all that information? They would have the ability to learn something new and maybe even resurrect that discussion with other users that are interested in the topic, and may still be watching it for new posts, and offer some new insight possibly.
The alternative would be to start a new topic about the rolling cache and create another diluted discussion that would quickly get lost under hundreds of other diluted discussions about things that have been hashed in numerous similar posts.
I prefer option one.
Obviously the forum doesnât have all the answers. It would be nice if we had a 3 volume hard bound manual with every aspect documented, but we donât. We have this forum and a couple others like it. I think if we all put some effort into expanding on existing âhelpful postsâ instead of everyone just shouting their own questions and complaints into the void, it is possible that in the future this may be even more useful than that elusive manual.
No sir, they will see posts of 100s of people posting what they THINK it is and argue among themselves with no one knowing for sure, as there is no manual.
Is is this forum better than nothing? Yes.
Do we still need an official manual that tells us what / how a feature is designed to work? Yes
Can Microsoft afford to pay a summer intern to go document the core features and how they are intended to work? Yes
LMAO no. A few MSFS experts, thousands of other clueless users giving each other bad information. 5% good solutions hidden among 95% bad solutions or no solutions. And in many cases âthat is a known problem that will be fixed sometime in 2021 - 2022â or âyeah there are three threads on that with five votes each over the last three months so itâll never happenâ.
It takes a lot of effort getting meaningful information out of this forum. Hang around for a long time, figure out who know what they are talking about and who donât. Try various fixes, mods and suggestions to find out what fails (most) or helps (a rare few).
However, if we all searched first, then replied in the appropriate thread, at the very least, all that discussion, conjecture and arguing would be in one thread that could be used to reopen the discussion if new information came to light.
Thatâs all I am asking for in this thread. I just want to be able to follow a piece of information from start to finish, without having to read 40-50 individual threads, most ending withâŠ
âwe are closing this thread because it has already been discussed in numerous other threadsâ
What is the purpose of this thread? To highlight the already blindingly obvious? You must be very bored.
Edit: I see that you just posted the following:
Thatâs all I am asking for in this thread. I just want to be able to follow a piece of information from start to finish, without having to read 40-50 individual threads, most ending withâŠ
This does make sense to me and I agree. You should add this sentence to your original post.
Ideally Zen Desk would maintain an end-user Knowledgebase of authoritative and accurate items of interest - anything from âWhat isâ to âHow toâ - in lieu of a manual.
I agree that a fixed manual cannot be reasonably provided given this is an Agile development outcome - the sim at release was a Minimum Viable Product. In many ways, it still is. As such, a living document online, rather than a manual, makes more sense as there are many more changes to come.
Weâre too early in the product lifecycle to set things in stone. Even an FAQ would be challenging, as literally things could be shifted overnight. Dev Team moving to a 30 day update cycle reduces that âchurnâ but if youâre issuing say 8 major Sim Updates and two World Updates (which could also include Sim Updates bundled) annually, thatâs a LOT of documentation change.
I donât recall saying anything similar to, âI wish we hadâŠâ instead I inferred that we âdeserveâ better.
Iâve invested lesser money in other programs and received much better documentation.
Donât get me wrong⊠Iâm all for saving trees and not providing unnecessary hard-copy documentation, but in todayâs day and age, online access to information costs very little to provide.
Like @AceForce11998 mentioned, user forums are a great place for information exchange, and opinionated discussion. I am all for them. But officially sanctioned documentation and reference materials are preferred (at least by me) when things get complicated.
Iâm not trying to subvert your efforts to make the forum a first place to look⊠I agree. But implying in your thread title that it is a replacement for an actual product manual is a bit of a stretch.
And feel you were duped into reading the post as a result of a misleading tag line?
That has never happened before, right?
The implication IS misleading but in the absence of an actual manual, hopefully when a new user searches the forum for âmanualâ this discussion will come up and he will realize that although, sadly, no written documentation will be forthcoming until we start getting the third parties charging ridiculous money for more incomplete information, that luckless new user will then have a guide on how to find the information they seek.
Sorry Jim, didnât mean to put words in your mouth. Just wanted to illustrate the futility.
A wise man once said,
âIf you wish in one hand and cr4p in the other, which one do you think will fill up first?â
Given that any .pdf would have to incorporate all the hundreds of cr4ppy work arounds to get the sim to work and which are growing in number weekly, you make a fair pointâŠ
This is what we want to discuss here. If more users made proper use of the search function and re-opened existing threads to ask questions of offer new information, it would take a lot less effort.
If you read through most of the âsolutionâ threads, you can determine, very quickly, who knows what they are talking about and be able to filter out the noise. In many cases, just put them on ignore.
