Yeah, SF isn't a good counter example. Sometimes there's a year without a patch...and then it comes and BREAKS perfectly working stuff before without adding anything significant...and it doesn't even have MP. However, there's usually a "patch for the patch" soon after.

Even ROF, which probably has the best record of patching of any still current sim, has had to release a "b" hotfix patch every 2nd or 3rd patch because something slipped through. However, ROF has a newer code base. ED is still culling legacy LOMAC code from DCS World, and there's a chance that one of those bits has ramifications elsewhere they didn't count on or notice and when "new module" replaced "old" something seemingly unrelated broke because "old" was involved and "new" is not.

In an ideal world, DCS would've started off with a brand new code base with little to no LOMAC code reused. But this isn't an ideal world for ED. It is what it is. You either accept that this is what DCS World will be for the near future, or you give up and go elsewhere.

I seriously doubt posts of "this should not have happened!" are any news to ED. That's like saying "that plane shouldn't have crashed!" It's not constructive, it's just criticism.

Talking about what modules or features ED should focus on making is at least constructive, even if it's done in a non-helpful way. Whining about the poor state of a patch is just crowning yourself Capt Obvious. To presume that without your complaints the company would think bad patches an acceptable practice is pretty naive.





The Jedi Master

It is obvious to me that ED does indeed think that bad patches are acceptable or they wouldn’t keep doing it. IMO the reason they are so careless is that they know they have no viable competition that offers a comparable product and in essence they are saying “take it or leave it” and it’s that kind of arrogance that makes my blood boil.

Will your blood boil more if I told you that you're wrong?

Since it's far from a first I'd say Blooze is closer to the truth.
In my universe only of course.
But feel free to boil at me.

Nope, he's rather far from it.

Bad releases are not just bad PR, they're bad for efficiency. Efficiency is money gained/money spent, and time equals money, at least if you want to believe that ED does things the way it does because there's no competition and they don't care about PR.

Any way you slice it, you make more money by being more efficient.

Unless you want to claim that they also don't care about money, that is.

Not at all. I am not one of those that claims to be the keeper of universal truth. I have only expressed my opinion and you are certainly entitled to do the same.

To compare to Arma, DCS is a aircraft combat sim and is very complex. Also it is in the process of going to a new graphics engine. The demands on a PC by something like DCS is a lot more than any FPS because of the weapons being modelled and systems/AI etc. The ME has had a lot of improvements recently and these are IMO heading towards a DC in the future. Of course when the ME gets new features it effects missions and so those missions have to be fixed to be compatible with the latest patch. Remember as well as patches to fix stuff we also are lucky to get new content in these patches like newer better 3d models etc. With the Autoupdater it makes patches very easy compared to most other sims/games and it is very good that ED has already released an update to the latest patch rather than having to reinstall the whole sim and roll back to a previous patch.

I've modded ARMA from top to bottom almost, and the engine is quite capable, I assure you. Complexity is no excuse for bad testing, but that's not what I want to address just yet. I'm willing to speculate the majority of the "complexity" comes from relying on a legacy code base that is nearly 10 years old. We all know the lesson of building a house on the sand.

Regardless, this is all bread and circuses. You can skirt around the issue as much as you like, but poor testing is a clear problem. I'm not the first to raise this issue and I wont be the last; why wont people acknowledge it?

Because testing is one of the first things cut when a deadline approaches.

This isn't a new problem in software development and release.



Or might I point to this link.

It is getting patched and fixed. Can we move on?

anyone else getting weird white little sparkles / circles on the canopy ?
It appears as Iam looking at the sun thru a mountain

http://i.imgur.com/8DyTnnL.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RxbXqNK.jpg

You mean the scratches on the canopy?

Huh looks like they brought that feature back. Not something I remember seeing in the game since LOMAC.

Looks really good actually - BMS did the same with Falcon.


Interesting how it's been misinterpreted

these marks are only visible when looking toward the sun

Even if the sun is behind an object eg a mountain you see these marks , they kinda shimmer
I dont think its cockpit scratches but some sort of graphics bug (but I could be wrong)

You see those marks at night?

I would assume it's right they appear also if the sun is behind an object because as long as light hit's them there's going to be refraction...

[admin edit: no personal attacks]

Who said testing was NOT the problem? That more testing would NOT have found the omissions before the patch was released? Perhaps some people are making excuses for it, perhaps not, but no one said "no, the level of testing is adequate" or "they should test less."

Your highlighting of the obvious does not remedy the problem at all. Pointing it out will offer no changes whatsoever because ED already knows even if they didn't take out a full page ad in the NYT proclaiming "bad patch result of inadequate testing." Especially because as the quick hotfix demonstrated, it wasn't actually missed. They pushed out the wrong patch, which is a pretty simply matter of clicking on the wrong things. This wasn't a patch that they thought worked that actually didn't and needed more coding time to work out. They just needed to make a quick patch to take the one that WAS pushed out to the level it should've been, that's all.

[admin edit: no personal attacks]


The Jedi Master

Another ED blasphemer eh? I say stone him!!!

Yes, because the world is black and white, and if I disagree with any stupid old anti-ED statement made, I MUST therefore be a blind sycophant. Congrats, you get TWO SimHQ Forum Dollars for your ability to see through this cleverly hidden (but not from you!) disguise.

Guess you weren't around when I was arguing with EvilBol and some others about how upset I was over the direction ED was going with its products? Back when it seemed like their path was Black Shark, then 3 yrs later A-10, then 3 yrs later SOMETHING, and they were never going to touch any platform they couldn't get extensive data access to ie old platforms or ones they had military contracts on. I was very tough on them for what I perceived as a narrow perspective on the market and what I felt was a recipe for failure. Just ask them, some of them even claimed I was "bashing" ED because I simply thought their business model was stupid. Not the products, mind you, but their marketing strategy and direction they were taking the series.

Fortunately, ED went with DCS World, 3rd parties, and the Flaming Cliffs-level plane modeling ideas that meant DCS was not going to be limited to one uber-modeled product every 3 years with little to connect them. Now we're going to get a real electronic battlefield simulator that we've been waiting for since 1991. I claim no credit for this perceived change in direction. As we all know, ED makes decisions all the time that they don't make public, so they could've been planning this even while I was ranting they were headed to nowhere. Likewise, I'm sure that even if they weren't it was simple money realities that dictated their change. They can't afford to make just one high-resourced product every 3 years, not unless they sell Call of Duty numbers.

So it wasn't my amazing highlighting of their mistakes that caused them to alter course, it was their own management looking at what needed to be done.





[admin edit: no personal attacks]

Some day I will figure out why people think that if you disagree with them at all, you must be against them.





The Jedi Master

Having a bad day Jedi?

I will have a look later on to see if the appear at night

Refraction ? hmmm light refracting through a solid mountain made of rock ?

To be clearer , there is the sun , then a mountain (made of rock) and then the helicopter window , the mountain is fully blocking the sun out.