Dear Asobo, I think it would be a good idea to implement a formal developing
beta testing program. Although you guys are doing an excellent job and are
also putting all your best efforts in order to help us everyday with questions
and issues we find. It is quiet clear your plate is full given the extent and
complexity of MSFS, and unfortunately this is a situation that will remain for
a very, very long time. Given the results of what happened after SU5 and how
this disrupted many parts of the SDK workflow with issues that went under the
radar, I think it is crucial to implement a formal Beta program so 3rd party
developers can actually test changes to the SDK and changes to the development
workflow implemented by your team. We all work in different ways, therefore we
will always be able to find problems you guys are unable to see. If we are
able to catch such issues before they become really BIG PROBLEMS, it would
help your team to identify and take care of big obstacles for any big release,
it will also increase your efficiency and avoid down the line having to fight
for resources to get things fixed vs being able to continue with your current
road map. At the end of the day it is not only 3rd party developers suffering
due to these issues, it is MSFS customers who are now forced to wait for
several fixes in order to allow 3rd party developers to update our products or
release pending products, alongside of course with your own team who simply
put, will be unable to fix everything at the same time after any big update is
available for general public. As a software engineer I totally understand the
pressure you guys are under and all the challenges you are facing, so what I
am proposing is to find ways to help your resources to avoid being overrun
after each mayor update applied to the product. Finally, I would like to take
this opportunity to express my most sincere gratitude to the entire Asobo team
for trying to address all the problems we find and report despite your current
resource limitations and required deadlines due to contractual obligations.
Kind Regards, Simbol
totally agree with this petition.
We would love to see a dev beta channel be put in place. Our experience with
beta channels on other platforms has been great so far and resulted in a
better experience for everyone involved. I hope the people in charge at
Microsoft have a desire for smoother update processes and will bring those
channels to life.
Totally agree as well. Please do this…
Hello Simbol, Thanks a lot for such a kind message. The question of creating a
developer beta program is on Microsoft’s hands and at the moment I won’t be
able to give more details. Maybe you can directly discuss that matter with
them? But indeed, being able to collect your feedbacks and fix any issues
before the release of an update would benefit everyone. 
Have a good day!
Please note, that during SU5 beta testing many reports were sent to a given
email, and only some elements were fixed (LODs, animations, pink textures).
Everything else was left “as is” so the problem is obviously not in the
communication but the workflow priorities. If such a basic topic as Jetways is
left “broken” for weeks, the team is obviously overloaded with time-
constrained tasks. In the case of SU5, it was the Xbox release. I would assume
that the next update might actually be related to fixing things rather than
making the sim compatible with Xbox. Don’t take this as a criticism - this is
probably just how their agreement with MS works. In any case, we are grateful
for their amazing work as well as for the possibility of talking to the actual
Team members and receiving responses (especially when things do not go as
planned).
Hello, I’m closing this one (status “complete”) since it’s a matter that must
be handled publisher-side, outside of this platform. Thanks for your
understanding!
Can we get a link to where we can submit such request?