Free QA maybe, but at the cost of reputation.
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I can’t be responsible for how you interpret my statements, but they really didn’t imply much more than their face value.
I expressed surprise that such a small number of bugs that many of us have taken the time to outline and post to Zendesk and here on this forum weren’t addressed. As such, I posed the question I wondered why. Many of them are dated back to the launch of the sim. I will caveat this by saying I’m not even talking about the bugs that are highly subjective ones, such as how the weather or night lighting “ought” to look. I’m talking about repeatable bugs we commonly run into.
That doesn’t imply that I have made any sort of statement about the complexities of fixing them, it’s a simple statement of curiosity.
Do they really look at what we post?
Do they only address what gets voted on?
Do they plan to address them later?
Do they deem them unfit to be addressed?
Do they need more information?
Are they tied to systems so complex that it is neigh impossible to fix them?
Are they short on resources (aka staff) that are qualified to make the fixes?
That is only a smattering of questions that I ponder when I think about what we post here and on Zendesk.
I’ve been making a go of reading every single thread and post on this forum that isn’t locked behind the NDA categories. I can tell you that the issues of not being heard and lack of communication from MS & Asobo are an issue dating back to when the first publicly viewable threads were posted in autumn of 2020.
Because they don’t really tell us much, it doesn’t really leave us much to go on, hence my statements.
These are questions that none of us can answer. Only they can. I’m just wondering aloud what they are thinking.
That’s all I meant by it. I’m not having a go at them, I know they are working hard and I’m also not here trying to disparage their efforts. I’m just someone who worked in this industry and I’m curious about how they go about determining what bugs to address.
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Thank you. That’s all very interesting to see.
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I agree that they don’t share their bug list and triage process - and I’m not sure I’d expect them too, but they do communicate a lot - weekly updates, Q&A streams about once a month, discord, twitter, facebook (yuk) etc. Way more than any other games dev (other than maybe Paradox sometimes) that I’ve encountered.
Yes, they do communicate, but they don’t give us much to go on regarding the status of what we’ve taken the time to post here. The developer updates show screen shots of top voted items, the last few I’ve looked at seem to be nearly the same. The live Q&As are addressing only a few questions of items, generally top voted ones, and often the answers given don’t really address the questions or quickly get sidetracked. I did really appreciate Jörg’s candor regarding the ongoing Xbox issues, that was very much appreciated.
I don’t expect them to let us in on the very details of what goes on, but they have established a bug category forum and they could assign a staff member to be more involved in communicating what goes on within that category alone. Again, it just seems as though only the top voted items get any attention. That leaves a fair number of issues off the table.
When such a small number of user posted issues are addressed, do they not want us to bother to post them? I mean that sincerely. If they aren’t helping them identify issues, as they aren’t being addressed, does our posting them serve any purpose?
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In response to the OP question:
In a word, as a VR user; No.
They’ve still not fully fixed a serious issue with the Mouse/Toolbar/Controller input, they’ve let another serious bug through internal testing (toolbar windows reset when changing cameras) so essentially SU8 Beta is currently a step backwards…just like SU7 was and with no signs of any incoming fixes during the beta period.
There is zero communication from the Devs, just a few Mods trying their best, but it feels like I’m constantly talking to a brick wall. You never know if serious issues will be addressed during this beta (much like the SU7 Patch beta), you don’t know if these issues are to stay until SU9 - in May (6 months after the serious issues started with SU7 - the lack of direct communication from the devs is appalling. Just look at the Weather Section of the SU8 Beta, yet again the same issues spotted in SU7 and yet again zero response from the actual Devs as to guide the Beta Testers in their thought process and what to actually test.
I’ve lost all hope in them getting better at this, it is the worst Beta Process I’ve encountered in decades of gaming and countless other Beta programs through many different genres of games & simulations, I give up.
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Oh come on. MSFS is in it’s infancy, bugfixes use a triage system and right now system stability is the major concern but they still have to make and test adjustments to features which must run on an endless combination of hardware. It’s a massive project and crashcodes and feedback from public betas probably provides more than enough information as to what is urgent.
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Given that Asobo provide a development update every single week specifically focued on the community wishlist and bug fixes it seems reasonable to me to assume that those ares would be prioritised. I don’t really know what the point of them showing the wishlist and bugfix progress is given that most of the community wishes have been labelled ‘not started’ for over a year.
I do get that there is probably a lot of stuff going on in the background that we don’t know about, and just fixing the top community bugs isn’t as easy at it sounds due to how fixes in one area affect the rest of the sim.
My biggest wish is that Asobo would actually communicate with users on the forum. So much of the ill will and frustration they generate is not because bugs are introduced, but rather that bugs are introduced and then follows several weeks of silence on the issue from Asobo.
Surely the whole point of having a forum is to have a medium for engagement with the the community, but I have never seen an Asobo staff member communicate on here ever.
At best we might get a mod comment that ‘Asobo hears us and is working on it’, with no further details given, which is a bit like being told Gold hears our prayers and will answer us in time.
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I’m not sure what the “oh, come on” is aimed at. You sound exasperated with me. I’m not sure over what, specifically.
I’m fully aware that bugs are addressed on a triage system.
The problem here is one of set expectations. When they said that SU8 was going to be about bug fixes, but didn’t outline what that meant, it left us all to interpret it as we all were going to interpret it.
Because none of us know about the internal list of issues they needed to address and the workload that would entail, it isn’t an unreasonable expectation to think they were going to address many of the bugs that all of us are publicly aware of.
There is nothing wrong with expressing disappointment that that didn’t turn out to be as we thought.
Again, some better understanding of what “bug fixes” meant to Asobo, would have helped alleviate what we were hoping to see addressed.
This isn’t unreasonable.
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Anyhow I’m just testing on DX12 and performance is getting closer to DX11. Like before there is little fps drop popping out instruments but unlike before there is no further fps penalty when dragged to a 2nd display, previously 50% on my 1024 x 600 mini screen.
I’d say that unless it’s it’s complete showstopper the answer is no.
I rarely look at their top bug lists as they mosty seem to date waay back and haven’t changed much since July '21 when I first started with the sim on XBox. Any other issues that are acted on quickly are accidental errors like nightlighting was, or things that affect everyone badly.
The rest of user bugs on here seem mostly just left to float.
I’ve long been an advocate of resetting the bug system since there are now way more new people simming and the goalposts for most bugs that affect everyone have likely significantly changed over time. Introduction of a more democratic bug system (if that’s how they want to operate) is now overdue.
IMO they should reset polling on a variety of forum listed bugs and allow new votes to take place say restricted to 3 votes per user.
They could leave out more generic stuff like CTDs and list them as “ongoing”. But at least they’d have new data on a top 10 as opposed to what the top 10 issues were a year ago.
There should also be an official XBox bug list, much like there is one for VR, but maybe marketing is a priority over admitting bugs on your top gaming hardware.
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To be honest bugs and issues should never have been given a voting system, it should be reserved for wishlist only.
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This is kind of the point I’m trying to make.
The “Okay, now what?” for all these bugs that didn’t get addressed.
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Now don’t start that again! 
Yeah bugs via zendesk and votes for wishlist? I don’t know. Do zendesk issues even get worked on? They barely generate a reply/acknowlegement. How to tell? The whole methodology needs a change and move away from the loudest gripes on here being amplified so much.
Some apparently simple bugs taking 7 months to be fixed is unacceptable. Eg Hotas (the only officially supported joystick for Xbox at the time of release) sensitivity saves on XBox being broken. That should have been hotfixed a month after release. It is just one example though.
We don’t know what devs bug priorities are and how they are set. To do lists may be long and resources stretched to the max with all the new content as the sim evolves over time though.
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For sure they do but it’s a slow process and a question of priority. I’m sure it could be much better but at the end of the day the bottleneck is the overworked coders at Asobo and partners.
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Is overcast rendering better now? It supposedly had to bug fix in this release.
Yeah. Overcast looks better.
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What is a bit strange is given SU8 was listed as a bug fix update, it seems a bit odd that new features were implemented — the aerodynamics of propellers and the redesigned store, for instance. While those are totally appreciated and needed, it did take coding and testing resources to implement those, which meant those coding and testing resources weren’t on bug fixes. They also said no new features, but if the aerodynamics changes were necessary to address certain bugs, that could have been explained in the Q&A.
So, yes, priorities and stretched resources.
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