Trust and the issues of online dependant simulators.

dleblanc

kuid:95125
I use two simulators more than any other games or computer tools. Trainz and MSFS.

I am a content creator in both realms, likewise a retired railroader and pilot who uses these platforms to recreate true to life settings of times gone by. Assets, videos, imagery and stories.

Attention to detail is important to me and I've chosen these platforms because they interface the tools needed to accomplish this.

As of this moment, BOTH are unusable because of buggy patches. All that money, no products.

To Tony Hillman's credit, he's been engaging the community. I appreciate his presence and thank him for his candour. Very often, issues are a result of something in the client's equipment, but many times these are genuine bugs needing fixes at the compiler itself. Clearly, there are several issues in this patch that cannot be fixed by the customer by reinstalling or rebooting.

One thing I take exception to are the condescending fanbois in this forum who live to wag their fingers at those who are experiencing difficulties by talking down to them about things they already know or have already done. What's worse are their psycho-analytical superpowers they seem to diagnose out of thin air insults about the state of mind of those affected by broken software the most. It's demeaning and only frustrates the issue. It fixes nothing. It's TOTALLY out of line.

I have been a member of this community for a very long time, but under 100 posts. I have created and uploaded hundreds of assets. I've helped dozens of others at no charge to create assets for their sim experiences. Many are obsolete now and I'm okay with that. It meant better meshes and issues fixed. Yesterday, another long standing, highly respected content creator started a thread stating why he was "upset" with the last patch. I get that. I don't blame him one bit. I made a comment about the expectation of a statement from Tony. Yet was met with by one of these online trolls and their insulting comments. The thread was titled with an honest opinion about the OP's emotions, yet mine were attacked for no good reason. I was singled out for this abuse as a complainer and emotionally disturbed. I take exception to that. It was a deliberate personal attack, yet it was allowed to stand. That same person is back today, talking down to everyone in the community that it's just a game and they have no complaint for a 49 dollar product that's broken. It's none of their business what I or others choose to do with this product, no less using it the manner they expect.

I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not flush. I am a coder. A lead coder in one group. Never in 35 versions since 2018 have I signed off on a mess like this. I never had to consider a rollback, ever. The expectation we must follow a protocol for debugging is nothing new. It's understood. However, there is NO burden to do so and it's very frustrating when it's insisted upon, lest we get nothing done. I get paid poorly to do this at work. I am in no mood to do it for nothing when I get home. It abuses volunteers and customers. It looks bad on the dev team, no less the managers that order these released without adequate testing across various systems.

Spending money on a product comes with the expectation it's operable.... irrespective of the cost. Trainz has been good to me over the years. It does not have a reputation of buggy failures in my experience. It deserves the benefit of the doubt from me. I will make this post, comment if need be, then lurk as before.

Again, I thank Mr. Hillman for acknowledging the issue affecting many of us and moreover, for allowing an offline installed rollback. It's becoming obvious, the Kickstarter route is problematic. Kickstarter. The place where crowd funding is canvassed. Will it be fixed or deprecated I don't know? However, the optics of this isn't good. Asking for public money to provide a product, then taking it away does not bode well with building trust. It's the only route I've been using since TANE. Almost everything I've created either depends or suits this route.

Even though stuff is broken in Trainz, it pales in comparison to the clusterf@@k at Asobo with MSFS 2020 going on right now. It blue screened me on the updates and I have not been able to get updates since.

I have lost trust in online dependant servers, especially ones with mandatory patches. I'll favor standalone products only and look upon online dependant ones (or Kickstarted for that matter) with a jaundiced eye from now on. I'm sure I'm not alone in that view.
 
I still use my copy of TANE and still using FSX despite both simulator games are online dependant. I'm just staying away MSFS (too high def for me) and TRS19 which gets buggy updates.
 
I still use my copy of TANE and still using FSX despite both simulator games are online dependant. I'm just staying away MSFS (too high def for me) and TRS19 which gets buggy updates.


I'm rolling back to an earlier version of 2019 or I'd never get the Christmas Train project done in time. I'll be wary of trying anything new. Most tools I use or need are old or third party, so update patches are usually just bloated or broken to me.

I actually prefer FS9, because stuff plugs into it nicely, but the .dds graphics are better in FSX. My version of FSX doesn't depend on an online login, but uses it for multiplayer and weather of course. MSFS is like night and day by comparison... when it runs. Despite long loading times (5 mins or more) It really is spectacular, even at low settings on my minimum spec machine. But wow, the updates are rife with nasty bugs. As fantastic as the sim looks, the actual flight realism characteristics of MSFS are nowhere near as good as FSX or FS9. All the 2D stuff... namely panels are not available in MSFS. It's virtual cockpits only. A lot of 3rd party content are merely FSX ports, but otherwise fail if they don't have properly coded VCs. It does come with all the developer tools though, so a lot of things can be tweaked within the sim.
 
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I've got TRS19 and from my experience I have never received a majorly buggy patch. From my experience of playing Minecraft though, I can safely say some of Mojang's updates have broken several worlds, leading to a lot of swearing :hehe:
The best thing to do is just roll back or wait for the next patch, usually they'll fix it.

Good luck!
 
I prefer the Lockheed Martin flight sim. I prefer Trainz for a train sim. The updates to the Lockheed flight sim, for me, have not caused issues. Trains, on the other-hand, makes backups and separate loads a must. Maybe if N3V had the Government Funding of Lockheed we would see better updates. Maybe Tony can get a piece of the nuke-sub contract with the USA.

The funding is the Achilles-heal of N3V. This breeds the need to rely on customers for cash and software products. A management nightmare. But, Tony makes it work, takes the heat, and keeps on ticken.
 
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I guess I'm a troll if I point out that unless you are using the Steam version of TRS19, you had the option not to update. You also have the option to have more than one version installed in different directories. And BTW it is Tony Hilliam not Hillman.

William
 
I guess I'm a troll if I point out that unless you are using the Steam version of TRS19, you had the option not to update. You also have the option to have more than one version installed in different directories. And BTW it is Tony Hilliam not Hillman.

William


Not a Steam version and thank you for the correction.
 
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