MSFS2024 Gripes

jimjones

SOH-CM-2023
I use MS2024 with a reasonably fast PC with a 1GB internet connection. Most flights are short at many places in the world viewing POI's, photogrammetry cities and scenic areas. I enjoy high frame rates up to 80 fps and have yet to lose any settings. I'm reasonably happy with the sim so why gripe?

Often when changing to a new plane or location the sim ignores the new choice and selects the previous plane or location used or a location to a distant continent half way around the world. It might take two or three attempts for the sim to use my selections amounting to a loss of 15 minutes. Asobo should be able to fix this eventually.

When changing to a new detailed location the stutters are significant. For the first half minute 2 second stutters follow one after another while the sim populates my PC with scenery. Very unrealistic take offs and frustrating. Since streaming is used to populate new scenery there seems to be little hope this problem can be remedied.

I dislike the complexity of the Controller interface and fear having to reconstruct my settings. Not so easy for a 90 year old with declining memory.
 
Anyone remember when sims and everything else came with an instruction book? Now we are faced with a complex sim without instructions as to how anything works? A lot of unexplained features, the descriptions of which sometimes use made up words. My greatest frustration has been the new user trophy which I have been awarded five times now, requiring complete reconstruction of all of the control bindings.
 
Anyone remember when sims and everything else came with an instruction book? Now we are faced with a complex sim without instructions as to how anything works? A lot of unexplained features, the descriptions of which sometimes use made up words. My greatest frustration has been the new user trophy which I have been awarded five times now, requiring complete reconstruction of all of the control bindings.
Not only that, we are effectively being used as beta testers. The difference is that we have to pay for the bloody thing.

Priller
 
Not only that, we are effectively being used as beta testers. The difference is that we have to pay for the bloody thing.

Priller
....and to put insult to injury this thing is more like a moving target: The things you figured out yesterday don't work like that after the next update / hotfix. Now what you gonna do with your (RT)FM ?
 
So far, I have gotten rid of the MS control settings and use Axis & Ohs to set the controls for each airplane. I have been flying only VFR and relative simple GA airplanes. I have had good experiences flying this way.
 
What bugs me the most, is actually that seemingly simple things that have been reported from the Alpha testers and after the release by a multitude of users don’t even get a reply from the officials much less a fix.
For example registration numbers. You can edit them in different places….. the sim just doesn’t give a FF. It sticks with the regional format.
Sure this doesn’t affect the way an airplane flies, but it shows utter disrespect for the customer.
And this was just one quick to describe example of that attitude shown by ASOBO.

For most of the other shortcomings I have found external programs or apps….
ATC, Weather and most importantly controls. I am fortunate enough that I have enough discretionary funds to buy all that stuff to make a game work, that I have already paid a good sum of money for.

But maybe with everything that is going on in the world, that just is how it is these days.
 
So far, I have gotten rid of the MS control settings and use Axis & Ohs to set the controls for each airplane. I have been flying only VFR and relative simple GA airplanes. I have had good experiences flying this way.
Can you move settings between FS20 and FS24 using A&O?
 
What bugs me the most, is actually that seemingly simple things that have been reported from the Alpha testers and after the release by a multitude of users don’t even get a reply from the officials much less a fix.
For example registration numbers. You can edit them in different places….. the sim just doesn’t give a FF. It sticks with the regional format.
Sure this doesn’t affect the way an airplane flies, but it shows utter disrespect for the customer.
And this was just one quick to describe example of that attitude shown by ASOBO.

For most of the other shortcomings I have found external programs or apps….
ATC, Weather and most importantly controls. I am fortunate enough that I have enough discretionary funds to buy all that stuff to make a game work, that I have already paid a good sum of money for.

But maybe with everything that is going on in the world, that just is how it is these days.
Hearing reports of bugs and issues reported by alpha and beta testers that are never addressed or fixed is way too common in MSFS testing over the years.

I have a theory on why I think the alpha/beta test method they use has a fundamental flaw. They are allowing too many people to participate in the testing. As a result, the bugs and things this enormous amount of testers send back to anyone on the MSFS team has to start sounding like nothing more than lunch time in a school cafeteria. Even over on the MSFS forum, which I don't find much use for, is a cacophony of everything from too many first-time users to too many folks that seem like they might actually know what they are talking about. It's almost as bad as trying to make sense out of or get intelligent info about flightsim issues and products off of Discord channel's incessant babbling.

My take is the testing group shouldn't be that big and should be made up of sections of hand-picked testers. How about 10 first time MSFS buyers, 10 experience flyers in the non-freeflight options, 10 experienced flyers that fly only freeflight, all of the developers that have MSMP products, 1 moderator from each of the 10 most used fligthsim forum sites. There might be 2 or 3 more sections I might add. Each of these sections would be focus groups that would identify and report the issues they find only within their dedicated subject areas. Those section groups would fine tune and verify their findings within that group and make their reports as a single enitity. The idea in having forum moderators included is that they probably have excellent insight into what the general problems are as reported by the larger group on their sites. Their "one voice" would in essence represent a large and varied group.

Then I would have dedicated teams at MSFS for each of those sections.

One of the things I wouldn't worry about during the testing with this smaller team is crashes. Those are going to happen even after any level of alpha and beta testing you'll ever put into a product like this. Not a lot of sense worry about whether the product works on thousands of different system configurations, until RTM time.

The testing at alpha and beta should only be focused on whether the basic designed functions make sense and do they work. Which with the current state of MSFS2024, they never even got to that level.

The current testing system seems to work like a committee. An old saying "A camel is a horse designed by a committee." I think what we have in MSFS2024 is a flying camel that was way over thought. :)


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