• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

MSFS MSFS Developers

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4
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unitedstates
OK it's been well over a year now of trying to develop scenery for this version of Flight Simulator(MSFS2020) and I can say it's the worst of the worst. I'll admit I'm not a programming engineer from the basements of the CIA, but come on! I realize there is great potential in this system, but that's all I can say. From day one it's the 2 day installation even with 5g or the 1 day "mandatory" updates, the countless bugs and errors, literally thousands. The wasted FPS and don't even get me started on the VR, which has been a sad comical series of blunders and mistakes. OMG I am done with this thing. I thought X-Plane was bad, but this system drove me back to it and P3D v4. You know what this feels like? A bad marriage. I really feel like I've wasted a good year and a half hoping that some lightbulb would go on and I'd have my moment to say 'it was worth it,' but it never came. In fact, this system of scenery creating just gets worse and worse, like quicksand.
For a long time I thought it was just me, but as I scroll these forums, day after day, I can rest assured it's not. Microsoft you took ten years off, so I thought this version would be it. This would be the sim that would finally solve the limitations and problems that have always plagued a flight sim. Boy was I wrong. Even the big developers are doing the dance. Face it. It's going to be a long time before this platform get to a place where I can see progress.
For those who are successful in their endeavors with this sim, I tip my hat.
 
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264
Country
unitedstates
I feel your frustration. Still have an airport project that I have not finished yet. Some of its due to not having the time but lately it’s the SDK changes and figuring out what breaks and then waiting for the next one to hopefully fix things to be better/easier. Same tip of the hat to those who have been able to release stuff.

I however am enjoying flying the sim even with the current warts (and I am using VR). Thought I’d have to quit for while with the broken VR toolbar but the workaround is fine with me until they fix it. I try to keep reminding myself that this sim was released in a beta state and it’s gotten better. The SDK I truly believe was an alpha state which is why it’s still never gotten to version 1 yet. Lol. Seriously though I am still hopeful there will be progress soon. Can’t wait to see how the official Blender exporter works out!
 
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23
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unitedkingdom
Ask yourself, what does MSFS have to offer other than fancy graphics? why do you want to play a flight simulator? the answers will not match up, MSFS is anything but a flight simulator and has followed the same bs as FS9 and FSX with releasing a semi-functioning bug riddled SDK - they never did fix the old SDKs so why the hell would they sort this one? over a year since release and still no proper simulation for fast jets or helicopters. In fact, last I heard, the update that was meant to bring in full support for fast jets has been delayed well into the new year in-line with the new Top Gun film....made to wait for features for a movie, that will no doubt be complete horse poop compared to the original one any way.

I don't know if it is, but in my own head, MSFS is dead.
 
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rhumbaflappy

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We do have 2 problems as developers for MSFS:

1) The Asobo team are, for the most part, not content developers. This has always been a problem, with the flight sim creators. FSX was actually better in that the Aces had a closed beta, and they actually listened to the content developers during that time. FSX was more limited in scope than MSFS, as to what changes were allowed to the core of the sim. MSFS is like the wild west. We don't know the scope or limitations of the core, and perhaps Asobo doesn't even know. At any rate, they seem to change the development rules on a whim, without checking if the development process is broken, or if past addons are broken.

2) As content developers, we are actually competitors with Microsoft and Asobo. They are not overly concerned with our problems as long as they can develop their own content.

To the credit of Asobo, they do seem to care about the problems we have, but it does seem like an after-thought. It would be best to not introduce the bugs in the first place, rather than hot-fix things after they get feedback on the broken items. They have the means to do this. There is a developer beta crew that could be given the power to 100% verify each release... and no verification, then no release. But they are probably not enthused about giving up control of the sim to a 3rd party quality control group. Especially if that group are seen as competitors.
 

=rk=

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I have long interpreted the offer to develop content, to be merely another sales incentive. With FSX, the implication could be reasoned that so little of the world had been made, MS had invited independent developers to join in that work. With MSFS, that relationship no longer remotely resembles a partnership, as much as it does a proprietary market.
 
Messages
4
Country
unitedstates
We all remember 5.1, right? Basically, the 3rd party development community took it over. Microsoft and all its power couldn't update the core program 'enough' back in those days unlike Asobo today. I'm not saying Microsoft didn't try, but these mandatory updates at random moments, as Asobo does undermines most attempts by the developer's to gain a foothold in the content world because of the massive changes and bugs. Perhaps not the large firms as much, but definitely the small developer's, who depend on the SDK and Asobo's compiler, processes etc to form a bridge to users and of course a marketable product.
I don't blame them, but why release such a large SDK? Is it for show? Can it be possible for this blunder of errors to be accidental? I think not. I truly believe MSFS 2020 used that understanding that if you get this community interested, string them along with a nibble or two, you'll have them purchasing 'their(Asobo)' content for a long time. And it's working.
By the way I actually adore our flight sim community. They've been around since the very beginning and I've never seen a more dedicated and loyal community. By the way, I don't buy the alpha beta thing. It's just not a viable excuse in today's world. The things I am purchasing to make this flight sim work are with real money, making real profits for real companies. Face it, we're like UFO zealots. We want to believe. We want to believe. And we'll make huge investments to convince ourselves it's real, but guys it's just not. That's my opinion at this moment, sadly...
Joe
 

Lagaffe

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857
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france
Hi, my 2 cents,

Since MSFS was announced last year I signed up for the Beta and unfortunately I saw that from one version to another there were incomprehensible regressions and that the opinion of beta testers did not seem to be taken into account.
Then came the first official version in August 20 (why so soon ? money is money ;-) ) At first I didn't understand why rush this release considering the previous betas which were far from a finished product. Then suspicion set in with the first updates that were erratic, with a non-existent quality department (in the sense of what we call a quality department in IT companies, a department that allows to follow the evolution of a product and to manage regressions and other bugs).
I was deeply disappointed by the SDk: the documentation was very basic, from one version to the other, some functions didn't work anymore or were completely rewritten. In short, it seems that Asobo had to develop for 10 years and that you had to wait.
I invested my time for almost a full year (I am retired from my job) to study this new SDK, the most appropriate development processes, the new languages used, etc. What is the result: mixed! As much as I consider that the graphical rendering engine is a real progress with the incorporation of Azure technologies, I consider that Microsoft does not want to create a replacement for FSX but rather a product like Flight oriented XBox and so much the better if it works on PC but it is not the main target.

So what to do? Continue to perpetuate the investment or put this product on a shelf and return to simulators that honor their functions as Prepar3D.

I have released 2 scenes and a plane. The second and third aircraft are in progress but the work required for that is immeasurable for a free developer. I don't dare to think what it must be like for a company that has to make money while investing.

In short, I agree that the pandemic has played a lot in the last two years: in the early release and in the schedules that had to be heckled, but overall the situation is really not happy and I wonder: MSFS or Prepar3D. Honestly, it would make sense to go back to P3D.
 

rotorhub

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122
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norway
Hi, my 2 cents,

Since MSFS was announced last year I signed up for the Beta and unfortunately I saw that from one version to another there were incomprehensible regressions and that the opinion of beta testers did not seem to be taken into account.
Then came the first official version in August 20 (why so soon ? money is money ;-) ) At first I didn't understand why rush this release considering the previous betas which were far from a finished product. Then suspicion set in with the first updates that were erratic, with a non-existent quality department (in the sense of what we call a quality department in IT companies, a department that allows to follow the evolution of a product and to manage regressions and other bugs).
I was deeply disappointed by the SDk: the documentation was very basic, from one version to the other, some functions didn't work anymore or were completely rewritten. In short, it seems that Asobo had to develop for 10 years and that you had to wait.
I invested my time for almost a full year (I am retired from my job) to study this new SDK, the most appropriate development processes, the new languages used, etc. What is the result: mixed! As much as I consider that the graphical rendering engine is a real progress with the incorporation of Azure technologies, I consider that Microsoft does not want to create a replacement for FSX but rather a product like Flight oriented XBox and so much the better if it works on PC but it is not the main target.

So what to do? Continue to perpetuate the investment or put this product on a shelf and return to simulators that honor their functions as Prepar3D.

I have released 2 scenes and a plane. The second and third aircraft are in progress but the work required for that is immeasurable for a free developer. I don't dare to think what it must be like for a company that has to make money while investing.

In short, I agree that the pandemic has played a lot in the last two years: in the early release and in the schedules that had to be heckled, but overall the situation is really not happy and I wonder: MSFS or Prepar3D. Honestly, it would make sense to go back to P3D.
Very well summarized. At least I have had ample time to rediscover X-Plane, while waiting to see if this platform is maturing in the right direction. P3D V5.3 is very good news!
 

Cédrice

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359
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france
I think that it could have worked if there had not been all these very invasive updates which are too long, take up too much space on the machines
(to believe that it is a strategy to remove the other simulations from your SSDs ). And on top of that they introduce innumerable errors.
I haven't been a user for years and I'm happy to say to myself, but even as a developer, I threw in the towel as well.
Now I would only work on the already existing scenery and make sure they work over time.

My take on it is that they deceived the simulation community ... And yet remember at the beginning of the hype an interview and more precisely a question from a journalist had challenged me was "MSFS2020 will be a game or a simulator?"
the Asobo / Microsoft interlocutor was in an embarrassment, they were really not prepared for this question; they answered "both" several (days or weeks) later they said it was the best pure simulator ever.
Today we all agree that MSFS2020 is a hybrid but with a tendency more towards gaming and I don't think there will be any evolution.

As for third-party development content versus Asobo content for me I don't consider it competitive and on the contrary they need add-ons to survive.
For me a platform without add-ons is doomed to die slowly.
 
Messages
946
Country
panama
I still think that Asobo does not have the knowledge needed for a true Sim. All their previous software has been Games and basically this is what MSFS is. One year plus and still their commercial jets simply are no good, no helis and a constant updates that brake things up in one or more ways. Agree with all that point out that X-plane and P3d are much more realistic. Just fly the X-plane 737 and make an ILS approach and you will see the huge difference with MSFS. I guess we'll have to just "play" flying Vfr with one or two planes since many of them also fly really bad. I am happy that I am making pretty good airfields all over which is what I really enjoy, the SDK does stink too.
 

Cédrice

Resource contributor
Messages
359
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france
The so-called "serious simulators" currently only benefit the users of a few airliners from a few companies, which represents very little user potential.
"Game simulators" are the result of the growing demand from new generation eye candy users.
MSFS2020 should not be interpreted as a continuation of what we know. But as another possibility to simulate as everyone sees fit.
Regarding the development of scenery for MSFS2020 I found it much simpler than for P3D. And this even if the SDK lacks a lot of functionality and has a lot of limitations.
I would say beyond all this the DLC market for MSFS2020 is very bad. This is certainly the cause of the game culture,
that users can take advantage of Asobo content which is free and also huge competition /lots of choice of content whether in payware or freeware.
 

jtanabodee

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3,921
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thailand
Since the first day of MSFS, I haven't done any airports for this platform. The reason behind this, I would like to make sure that it is stable enough, no update required. However that day never comes. It is very painful if you do something and released, then you have to come back every time the update causes problems to your scenery and you don't know how to solve that problem. I can feel you pain Joe. I think I did the right decision not making anything for MSFS yet. I am not that genius to do and I am not a computer guy nor programmer to understand things without proper SDK documentation.
Hope MSFS is mature in the near future. Santa cannot make my wish come true.
 
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Messages
1,095
I must admit that I see MSFS a little differently, it shows a lot of promise, so it's just a matter of getting the hang of it. I can remember almost 20 years ago, MS included the Gmax Gamepack for the first time, and nobody really had a clue how to get a workable model out of it. I has no interest in modelling scenery back then, and I was hoping that development would really take off, giving us a lot of great scenery for my part of the world, but it just didn't happen. So I took a lot of time trying to get it working, and published my progress in online tutorials to get the developers on the right track. Since then, I've been hooked.
MSFS was sold as as ongoing project, and it does have a long way to go, but the result is worth it so far. I work 'by the book', and don't try anything clever, from installing/updating the sim to building scenery, and I've never had a show-stopping issue. Sure, it misbehaves some time, but so do my grandchildren...
I did spend a year getting to know the SDK, but I was lucky enough to be in a position where I didn't need to rush. Even now, aged 65, I'm looking forward five years and imagining what we'll be able to accomplish.
 
Messages
255
Country
germany
Thanks for all your valuable thoughts that I would like to grab and use it for creating a critical path for the future.
1) If MS is not immediately start listening to the impressive community of all the developers of MSFS content, they will loose the base to really make progress in making MSFS2020 a flight simulation application instead of just a game like FSX before.
2) They need to fix 100% of the SDK bugs as soon as possible and keep it stable for at least 3 releases
3) No more content development by MS until 2) and 4)
4) 100% of all MSFS bugs have to be corrected
5) Asobo need to give developers more access to the load and mount functionality of mods. More than 60% of the load time is used by content not needed for dev mode. There is a content.xml that is not used for this but could be used. The more content MSFS is adding to the sim, the more waste of loadtime will slow down the development process.
 

=rk=

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us-washington
MSFS was sold as as ongoing project, and it does have a long way to go, but the result is worth it so far. I work 'by the book', and don't try anything clever, from installing/updating the sim to building scenery, and I've never had a show-stopping issue. Sure, it misbehaves some time, but so do my grandchildren...
I did spend a year getting to know the SDK, but I was lucky enough to be in a position where I didn't need to rush. Even now, aged 65, I'm looking forward five years and imagining what we'll be able to accomplish.
You are optimistic. 16 months have passed, since release. A year in, helicopter support was not implemented, AI was not given full functionality, an entirely new platform, with relevant bugs, support requirements, etc, was added. From my perspective, it is not just a matter of all the ancillary aspects of flight simulation, present in FSX at release, still not being implemented 16 months down the road, it is also a matter of what has been implemented, over that time.

Because it looks like they are selling superlatives. Apparently, the phrase already exists. I thought I'd made it up for this post, but I Googled it and "Superlatives," is a product for auto dealerships with excessive inventory, that makes any mundane automobile, into a unique creation with its own particular history and nuances. In short, something out of nothing, using the power of words.

We get evocative tableaux, that are carefully curated to showcase the best graphics and avoid problem areas. As to the process of making good on the, "ongoing project" status, we witness the introduction of an entirely new interest group, arguably less focused on realism and simulation and more interested in visceral experiences.

The takeaway, to me, is that it is kind of a "hat trick." We are standing here with our jaws slack, eyes glazed over the possibilities and we're making arguments, "yeah, it's great but
1) If MS is not immediately start listening to the impressive community of all the developers of MSFS content, they will loose the base to really make progress in making MSFS2020 a flight simulation application instead of just a game like FSX before.
2) They need to fix 100% of the SDK bugs as soon as possible and keep it stable for at least 3 releases
3) No more content development by MS until 2) and 4)
4) 100% of all MSFS bugs have to be corrected
5) Asobo need to give developers more access to the load and mount functionality of mods. More than 60% of the load time is used by content not needed for dev mode. There is a content.xml that is not used for this but could be used. The more content MSFS is adding to the sim, the more waste of loadtime will slow down the development process.
"

And then we look down at our collective hands, the $125 that I had been on the fence over spending - ya, that is long gone and with it, 99.99% of anything Asobo is ever going to get from me/us. They already got everything they could want and the .01% for endorsement, just got spent here.

These days, my development process is pretty linear. I monitor news of updates, apply them upon release, start the sim and explore the bugs. There is a ground poly/CGI issue that prevents addon photo scenery in locations and there is an altitude bug that manifests at 67K feet, you can test it yourself.

Neither of these were present prior to the XBox integration patch and neither have been addressed. I get that most planes don't fly at 67K and it is just my dumb bad luck that I'd chosen to create a hypersonic glide vehicle - what was I thinking, smh.
It may be a coincidence that my obscurely located scenery and my oddly configured aircraft encounter two distinct and glaring glitches and I can only assume from my limited experience, such anomalies are rife in this simulator in its present state. So I wait and watch.
 

DragonflightDesign

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I've looked, was on the beta program, saw the almost total lack of feedback to problem reports and decided I'd wait for v1.0 of the SDK before comitting to anything.

Two years plus later I'm still waiting. I've turned down one potentially lucrative commercial project because I have absolutely no desire to keep chasing Asobo/Microsoft's poor pre-release testing practices.
 

rhumbaflappy

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SU7 was very annoying, as it changed (broke) the DevMode as well as some core structures. Now they have a beta for it's hotfix.:laughing: Just more delay, as they seem to have no clue what they added or what they should fix. February was indicated as the SU8 release. I agree that they should wait until the bugs are fixed, and the SDK brought up to date, before they release any new core changes.
 
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