count me out, why?
I have been a highly dedicated Supporter since their 1st release in FS9 but sorry this has been bugging the living hell out of me for the past several months as
I've seen forums and my concerns are that some of the beta testers these days are pointless (this is not all I'm talking about, but a large number)
its becoming across the boards these days if you kiss @ss and suck up you can become a developer or a beta tester regardless of your real life or fsx experience
Its sad because there a huge number of experienced real life pilots who would pick up on the problems that beta testers fail to pick up
I feel sorry for the original hard working developer, who at the end of the day receives all the flak because of these beta testers, which is crap, developers have done all the hard work and have been let down by people doing the beta testing.
after the last few bug filled releases i might take my chances with alphasim or abacus
please don't take this as a jealousy post, i struggle to figure out how work cfgs files on the best of days, and there is no way i want any form of expectation placed on me
the past 12mths ND has dramatically gone down hill in my eyes and many of the guys I fly
Rant over, and sorry about the grammar I'm drugged up on pain killers ( football injury)
If this is read by any other developer, please take note and choose your beta teams and texture teams wisely and carefully
Hi everyone,
First of all let me apologize for my tardiness in response to this thread and explain the cluster that prevented me being here sooner. Firstly I am not (but now will be) a frequenter here, but 2 days before the SA2 release my development computer's GPU crashed, rendering the display useless and everything on the computer unreadable (it's a laptop) so hence no update to the website or ability from me until I went out and dumped a great deal of cash on a new rig, added to that, when I came here and saw the post I had to reregister as my login was no good anymore, alas when I logged in I was unable to post and it has taken me a full week to be given posting rights here. That explained, my apologies.
Ok on to Matt's post and a little explanation and qualification. I would not do what I do without the help as a newbie offered to me by him as he was the first person who taught me anything about painting aircraft and a lot of other things related to FS.
But to give everyone a little bit of background so they know where both I and Nemeth as a company stand. I have been employed since after the Skycrane was released, the SA2 is my first release working in my role, the UH1 last update that fixed a plethora of problems it had was my first project.
In response to the last 12 months, yes there was a definite decline in quality and in Matt's correct assumption the beta testing lacked badly and may well have been comprised of the kind of people he referred to - roll forward to my hiring and here is what has been implemented.
I started an entirely new beta testing team staffed with people from many and varied backgrounds (you can see their names in the SA2 manual) comprising of RW helicopter pilots, RW helicopter mechanics, FS software developers and effects coders and indeed a few actual simmers with no experience apart from being customers of FS retail releases to give us a baseline from the buyers perspective different from the hardcore sim enthusiast or RW pilot in their own right.
I myself am a helicopter pilot and base my experience around that and having a passion for the sim side of things led me to my role with Nemeth. The testing process is long and arduous and requires sometimes a dozen beta builds to correct issues picked up by the team, the SA2 from alpha to release had 6 before going to testers and I think 5 after that, so going forward, yes we test and test and test.
To explain about the SA2 specifically, it was priced as a budget release to the community as for one it was a fictional bird and second we did not put as much development time into it as we would say the EC135 model, that said it still took 6 months in development. But it does not have popup windows and a few other bells and whistles you may be used to from us, but also understand that we certainly did not skimp on what we delivered to the customer, by way of new tech in this model such as the icing windows effects and the entirely from scratch created digital displays and systems modeling.
As far as complaints go about how it flies, well folks, it is a fictional bird, so without having anything to go on apart from watching the movie countless times and trying to envisage what the lovechild of an Osprey and blackhawk might fly like, we took our best assumptions matched with some of our previous data along with some guess work and that's what you have in the end model. Will it suit everyone, maybe not, but most found it perfectly flyable and different to the point that they enjoyed flying it, as is echoed in the last 2 pages I read here in this thread by customers.
I go to great lengths to try and be approachable and contactable by our customer base, hence my direct email being prominently displayed to anyone on our website contacts as well as checking our forums several times daily for any issues as well as answering every email I get and working directly with anyone who ha an issue until it is fixed as anyone who has emailed me with a problem or question will find out.
Going forward and improving everything we already have is a constant goal of mine, hence spending 3 months working and testing the UH1 patch before releasing to the public, that's 3 months we spent unpaid, trying to fix issues existing from a previous model, there are plenty of developers who just don't even think to do that and cut their losses. Although we are human and if you do find an error we can fix please let me know, some things we just can't get to work perfectly through one reason or another, be it the FSX SDK being the issue or just plain not being able to find a bug in the coding, but if that is the case, you can expect me to be the one to admit that that is the issue.
While we strive for as much realism in our products as you can get, we also realise that this is a sim product and there are serious limitations that the FSX engine has, which we try to work around as much as we can, but we are not dodosim, who in their own right, create great products, but have the time to dedicate a year or 2 into the development of their products, of which we do not have the luxury of.
I hope that going forward I can be more of a presence here and be accessible to you all and hope that you continue to enjoy our products and we keep improving on the quality that you all know and want from us.
For anyone that wants to visit our forum (which is not just for support, you can find all kinds of info there, such as shockwave configs for our birds) you can find it at
http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?/forum/112-nemeth-designs/http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?/forum/112-nemeth-designs/
or you can email me directly at
ryan@nemethdesigns.com
thanks for reading this long response, but I felt some explanation was necessary, especially for my absence right at a release through circumstances beyond my control.
).
the screen shots look like works of art
Thank you very much