The FS24 Launch - What should they have done?

Discussion Hub General Discussion
1

So what should MSobo have done for a smoother release of FS24? My recipe for a good launch would be:

  • Launched as beta. Thus telegraphing to the community that the product still needs some development. Complex software like this can only be tested with a large number of users using the system. Not only does this test the robustness of the servers but more people testing the system will find the bugs faster. Also it would allows the community to express its views about the direction the game should go in.
  • Give something back to those people prepared to try this ā€˜betaā€™ system by giving them a discount on pre-orders, if not the whole beta test.
  • Allow the new sim to be pre-downloaded. I guess the reason they did not do this was they wanted to put out a late patch. If that was the case that does not suggest the had a well functioning system.

sPK :thinking:

2 Likes
2

I agree. The lack of a long Beta period was the biggest mistake they made.
Considering the state of the Nov. 19th release, the Beta should have run from Nov. 19th through at least April 1st.

2 Likes
3

Hi BegottenPoet,

How are you getting on with the new version? I have been struggling to keep track of the enormous number of recent posts from new and unfamiliar users, so itā€™s nice to see you, TenPatrol and many other familiar names commenting.

I have not been overly impressed so far - I had a lot of difficulty working out the control bindings, and after spending hours configuring and mapping every control I had used in native 2020 plus mobiflight, I find a lot of confusion still in the profiles in 2024 and how they are applied to the aircraft.

Even once I think I have everything set up, I have been finding certain controls or buttons unresponsive, but I canā€™t seem to reliably update existing profiles with new button pushes - for some reason it tries to create a new profile each time, where instead I just want to add a new binding to an existing profile. Whether these subsequently save and can be seen as applying to all aircraft is also hit and miss - Very frustrating!

The lack of native control of the tobii 5 head tracker is ridiculously irritating - could they not just have carried across exactly the same way it worked as in 2020? Seemingly not.

I love flying bush trips, either self made or imported from flightsim.to, where I can just pootle around and see some interesting sights. I have been enjoying the huge multi-leg ā€˜World Sightseeing Tourā€™ in 2020 which uses the rather wonderful DA62, but so far I have not been able to successfully carry that across into 2024 and get it working.

I am not interested in the career mode really, or the photographic tasks, so I havenā€™t tried either of those yet, but I was very disappointed to see no Bush Trips included in the new version. How difficult can that really have been? Even just carrying over some or all of the official ones from 2020 would have been nice, and could have been used to showcase the difference between the two.

Finally, even just trying a basic free flight is fraught with complications and issues - short of unplugging it each time, there is no way to turn off my tobii 5 and I am saddled with a halfway house version of eye tracking rather than the head tracking I would prefer.

My pc has excellent specs and I have a 1000MB hard wired fibre broadband connection. The first time I tried a free flight it was a complete stutter fest, and unflyable with the settings the sim had automatically applied.

Unplugging the tobii and reverting to ā€˜highā€™ global settings made no difference, so for the moment I assume the poor performance is down to the service that UK users are getting from the servers.

I loved 2020 and have got enormous pleasure from it considering the outlay. I wanted to support the sim and the developers as much as I can so I got one of the expensive versions this time around. I am very hopeful that they will get it sorted out, but the experience so far has been very poor in every way.

I glad I didnā€™t delete 2020, and that I still have around 50 legs of the World Sightseeing Tour to complete, as I donā€™t think I shall bother even trying with 2024 for a few weeks.

I know that a flight sim is incredibly complex, as evidenced by how long it has taken 2020 to reach itā€™s current state, but for 2024 to have been released with so many problems, so much seeming un-tested and so much functionality completely missing does leave a pretty sour taste.

1 Like
4

My experience so far:

  • Go through graphics setup.

  • Try to understand the Controls UI.

  • Hopped in the new DA40 NG @ 5,000 ft. Couldnā€™t get the thing to stay in the air. I suspect a control conflict with my SPAD profile. I quit after two minutes.

  • Hopped in the new Optica C&D and had my first experience with the required walkaround. I couldnā€™t figure out how to remove the wheel chocks. Folks here have offered help and workarounds (for which Iā€™m grateful) but I havenā€™t been able to run the sim since Thursday, as Iā€™ve run into two hardware issues (water pump dying, and one of my DIMMS failing.)

I wonā€™t run the sim with a failing pump. Overheating my liquid-cooled GPU would ground me for a while. I have a new pump ordered that should arrive soon. And Iā€™m going to troubleshoot the RAM today. The computer runs fine on a single DIMM, but itā€™s sloooow. :laughing:

To sum upā€¦Not much!

ETA: I will say there are a couple of things Iā€™m encouraged by. I havenā€™t been able to truly test, but @ 4K mostly Ultra settings Iā€™m seeing pretty good performance numbers. Nothing revolutionary, but encouraging at least. All the Vcores are being utilized, and FPS looks good. Again, not a true test, which will come once I can get in the air over NYC.

And at first glance, thereā€™s no comparison between the new simā€™s graphics and FS2020. I started at KSEZ (Sedona) and the scenery was breathtaking.

2024 Optica Ramp
2024 Optica Ramp1920Ɨ1350 189 KB

1 Like
5

This wouldnā€™t have made any difference. As far as Iā€™m aware everyone downloaded the initial 12-ish GB with no problems, whether MS Store (PC and Xbox) or Steam.

The issues started when users launched the application and it had to deal with the cloud stuff, which would still have been the case with a pre-load.

1 Like
6

I can almost forgive the launch fiasco. However, they should have years of data regarding server load each any every time they released sim and world updates.
On top of that they must also have had a very good idea of just how many people who pre-purchased to have anticipated logically that a high percentage of those people would be eager to get the sim ASAP when available.

What I am really struggling with now is with the glaring level of issues a seemingly high percentage of people are experiencing after getting the sim installed and running. Those range from bugs/glitches, features that seem to have been implemented poorly (controller assignment UI anyone?) and CTDā€™s aplenty. I have now uninstalled 2024 because it is so terrible and simply CTDā€™s on me regardless of what I disable/try. It gradually got worse if anything.
Even really glaringly stupid oversights like the helicopter throttle axis assignment actually controlling the collective and not the heli throttle. It is simply sloppy and sinks of a rushed product with insufficient testing.

It is hard not to view the release of 2024 as little more than being focused on a release deadline to appease bean-counters. Unfortunately, this is an underlying repetition of the 2020 release. Pretty sloppy and insulting to the enthusiastic user base. MS may never learn from this and do better in the future, but they will continue to alienate their users who will not be so quick to (pre-)purchase and forgive in the future. I will not pre-purchase from them again. Next time they will wait until I am convinced their product is actually ready for purchase. They bit me with 2020, theyā€™ve now done it again with 2024.

7

Honestly, I think Game Pass users were an unanticipated load on the servers that caught everyone by surprise.

8

Maybeā€¦ but they also know how many gamepass users they had/have and how many of those before tried 2020. So again, not unreasonable for them for formulate a reasonable expectation of demand come launch time.

As I said thoughā€¦ I can kind get passed that, that issue has largely subsided. I really need to see some clear and official acknowledgement/plan of what other issues they are tackling. None of us would expect all bugs to be resolved in days or a weekā€¦ but to they can at least do a better job of managing expectations.

It is no fun for those who are spending hours trouble shooting to determine if the problems they are experiencing are a system issue.

e.g. ā€œwe are aware users are experiencing an abnormally high rate of CTDā€™s that appear to be happening during the below activities or circumstancesā€¦ blah blahā€¦ we are aware and are looking to release patch to address as many of these as possible in the nextā€¦ā€

It only takes a few minutes to create a banner like that. :wink:

1 Like
9

Agreed. They definitely messed up their estimation of simultaneous users on launch day. Sure, they knew how many Game Pass users existed, but how many new users got caught up in the hype, and thought, ā€œLet me just check it out on Game Pass.ā€

As for the bugs, itā€™s hard to pick one that I think needs immediate priority attention. CTDā€™s are the most obvious, but thatā€™s always been a tough road because of the near-infinite variety of PC configurations out there. And as Iā€™ve said before, Xboxā€™ers should expect near-perfection. After all, theyā€™ve written the code to work on that closed platform.

To me, the #1 issue requiring attention is the problem many users with 8GB VRAM (which meets the ā€˜Recommendedā€™ spec, BTW) are having - namely, DX12 coding issues causing shared memory usage that leads to horrific performance drops. Iā€™m fortunate in that I have a 24GB GPU. But plenty of folks are trying to fly with 8GB cards, and having a terrible time of it.

10

You just need to play around with the settings to discover how many pixels you can realistically push with your hardware and settings.

I have a GSync 2K 144hz monitor but I run it at 60hz for MSFS, EA WRC, Starfield, AMS2.
Iā€™m running on a 6GB RTX 2060 just fine, with the right settings.

I can run it multiple ways to get great performance and visuals even on my 6GB RTX 2060 workhorse.

I usually run MSFS 2024 at 2K rez w/ Medium preset + TLOD 100 + Clouds Ultra, 50% Monitor refresh rate to lock it easily at 30fps which is fine for most of MSFS.
Great performance at DLSS Quality, but generally use Balanced or performance depending on the rendering load (city vs STOL).

Thatā€™s still not hitting 100% of my GPU.

I can run it at high as well, or medium Gsync (with VSync unlocked) at ~50fps and 100% and still get great performance tweaking a few of the settings.
I could run the monitor at native 144hz but Iā€™ve discovered the NVidia drivers over the last year are especially twitchy and I get better system stability all round dropping it back to 60. Windowed/borderless is especially twitchy with NVidia still, it seems.

Ultra will freeze my machine if I accidentally hit it though, which wouldnā€™t happen in 2020.

Doing development (new version of location manager/skills trainer almost ready), I drop it to low-end preset, 33% refresh, and DLSS ultra performance which works great when you need to run a lot of stuff in parallel (VSCode, debugger, browser, explorer++).

re: Launch

Shoulda coulda run a proper beta but [management/schedule/technology reasons no doubt]. Too late nowšŸ¤· The last few months pretty much gave a few clues the wheels might drop off on takeoff, now itā€™s

2 Likes
11

What resolution is your sim running?

I think the big problem is that those with limited VRAM were used to having higher resolutions and graphics fidelity in FS20. Being forced to limit their visual experience in FS24 (especially with the promise of new and improved graphics) is very frustrating, especially since (from what Iā€™ve read - thanks to member nhc150 for this link) - being forced to use DX12 and experiencing memory issues due to poor coding by the software developer.

12

I run the sim at 2k resolution on a 2K monitor, and control performance by refresh rates and in game settings to get a minimum 30fps. There are multiple ways you can do this to get great performance, even on a 6GB card. I can run 2020 at high/ultra settings at solid 30+ fps, and 2024 at medium/high settings at solid 30fps+.

This is pretty much the formula that works well for me on all current games, and I can easily hit 60+ with Gsync native unlocked.

You canā€™t just whack everything on ultra and stick the sliders to the far right though, that doesnā€™t work for any game. Well, you can, but itā€™s not going to work. You need to be practical about the resolutions youā€™re trying to run at and the amount of pixels youā€™re trying to process to get acceptable frame rates.
FPS is also not just related to visual processing, the GPU/CPU performance is split among multiple budgets (AI, Rendering, etc) and the game/sim is not MSFS 2020 so itā€™s going to be different.

NVidia drivers/dllā€™s are part of this formula dance too.

24 at medium/high looks better than 20 at high/ultra to me @ 2k, so Iā€™m ok with it visually. The rest will no doubt come together over the next 6+ months.

13

They should have been honest and announced it was early access beta.

2 Likes
14

Iā€™m sure thereā€™s a few people at Microsobo doing ā€œI told you soā€™sā€ as well, but it is what it is now.

15

When I started working with computers, the compnay I was with had a ā€˜Mainframeā€™ and ā€˜Dumb terminalsā€™.
Programmes were written on the terminals and sent to the mainframe.
All the data for the calculations was entered at the terminals and then processed on the Mainframe. Good God, it was slow.

Then when IBM 286 PCs came, 5 1/4" floppys. The managers got one and Lotus 123.
The work could be done in a few minutes instead of overnight.

Video games came along and they were fully local operating, i.e. you bought the whole game to play.

MSFS2020 is semi-cloud based, which means some of the base game is on your dumb terminal and the neccessary software for scenery is on the Mainframe.

MSFS2024. A small version of the base game is on your dumb terminal and most of the game is on the mainframe.

In the 1970s the mainframe would stack the jobs, so mine might wait 6 hours before being processed.
In 2024, the mainframe is trying to accomodate every request a small portion at a time. Internet speed should be such that the gaps arenā€™t noticed, BUT THEY ARE.

Can MS offer us a 1Tb USB Whole game, for $150 and inform us of Scenery Updates for our location?
Then everything is local.
There will be way of acheiving MultiPlayer.

1 Like
16

My question is, ā€œWho decided it was time to release it?ā€

I donā€™t want to compare this to the Challenger disaster and the terrible loss of life and impact it had on the US space program, but there are parallels.

There were Rocketdyne engineers practically begging NASA not to launch on that cold morning. They knew there was a greatly increased risk of failure. But NASA just had to get that first teacher into space.

17

If they had gone to beta it would rapidly have had to become FS2025. I think release schedules and management revenue plans dictated the release times, not when it is free of bugs, and that is why we had no beta & so many bugs instead.

The server issue should have been forecasted better based on sales, games pass subs and either planned for or staged by timezone.

Streaming everything was a bold move, but ultimately a flawed bold move as we donā€™t all have super fast broadband, so itā€™s really a sim for an exclusive club for those of you that do. I have no path to upgrade my broadband yet as the infrastructure is not there locally, so Iā€™ll probably never have that great an experience unless I can download more content and especially aircraft locally.

1 Like
18

nothing new

  • pre alpha
  • closed alpha
  • open beta
  • a finished sdk available to developers 6 months before launch
  • make an actual feet-on-the-ground assesment of expected day 1 server demand (as opposed to ā€œmehā€¦ itā€™ll be aā€™ightā€)

why try to reinvent the wheel?

19

This game is a tiny, tiny bit of Microsoft Corp.

All of their products needed patches. This is no different.
Their Flight Simmulator Game has a few customers compared with Office 360 etc, so they donā€™t care about those few customers.

20

A little off topic but interesting.

I accept you can use the modern PC as a dumb terminal but in FS20 and FS24 a PC is not acting as a Dumb terminal. They process the flight model and do the graphics among other things, both quite intensive tasks and not some thing a dumb terminal could not do.

Perhaps we can call the FS20 and FS24 Dumb servers as their main task is providing data :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

2 Likes