Developers are being pressed into making Add Ons XBOX Compatible now so should
there not be a method of viewing / testing New Product directly on the XBOX ?
Some thoughts here, from someone that already went to the Dev Mode route, with
little success ( but I’m having some fun playing Retroarch on my Series X ).
First and foremost, in order to upload anything to the XBOX, you must activate
Dev Mode, which require first to have a Developer account. If you are already
a partner in the MS Marketplace, you already have a Developer account, so you
just need to add an Xbox Developer license to it. It’s 19$/year if you are
registered with Microsoft as an individual, or 99$/year if you are registered
as a Company. Once you get this subscription and install the apps, you can
reboot the XBOX in “Dev Mode”, which is a different shell that is able to
connect to a PC using IP ( Ethernet or Wifi ). With this mode, you can send an
application you made to test and launch it from there. It must be a Windows
UWP app. You can start the normal Xbox shell too but, the caveat is: - When
the Xbox is booted in “Dev Mode”, you can only start YOUR OWN apps, the ones
you send through IP, all installed games (like MSFS) are completely invisible
in that mode, because they are normally mounted in their own partition from an
encrypted file and ONLY when the Xbox is in “retail” mode. - Conversely, when
the Xbox is booted in “Retail” mode ( the mode you normally use it ), you can
see ONLY retail games, everything you uploaded when you were in Dev Mode is
not accessible. So, that’s the main issue, which I think it MIGHT be fixed, if
MSFS had a special support to “expose” the Community folder when in Dev Mode,
maybe a Symbolic link to a folder visible in both modes OR, perhaps, behaving
itself like a Photo app, having some option to “import” a package from an USB
drive and copy it in the Community folder on its own, this might not even
require a Dev Mode. I think this should be addressed sooner or later, because
it’s really impossible to expect us to “optimize” for the Xbox, and having to
wait for the Marketplace team feedback. It doesn’t make any sense, and it will
put pressure on the testing team, which is already overwhelmed with normal
releases.
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With no Dev Mode in Retail Xbox MSFS, this is a major issue. How to test
airplanes and scenery (not applications) on Xbox platform before publishing to
a live MSFS Marketplace? Providing a route to side load content into the xbox
version may be one solution… Come on MSFT, lets have a workable response
(please).
Hello, Indeed you can’t sideload content on Xbox, and there’s no plan to allow
that anytime soon. However, to make sure your content will work properly on
Xbox, you can: - Check the Xbox optimizations
documentation
, where we gathered a series of guidelines to optimize the content - Enable
the “Xbox LOD Selection Mode” in the DevMode menu > Options, to enable the
Xbox mode and see how your scenery/airport will actually behave on Xbox. The
main thing that could prevent your content from working on a console is the
performance management. If you properly design LODs, manage the texture sizes,
create optimised cockpits (everything is detailed in the documentation above),
it should run as well on Xbox as it does on PC.
The inability to test locally on Xbox is really required, for many reasons. I
posted in another thread an example of a scenery that works perfectly fine on
PC even with Xbox LOD selection mode enabled , but I had to learn AFTER
SU6 update came out, that jetways don’t show up, on Xbox only and yes, they
have multiple LOD levels ( 3, which according to the latest docs is the
minimum over there shouldn’t be any change in LODs ) so, I’m not even sure
it’s a LOD issues, although another scenery we made, with jetways using 5 LOD
levels is the only one that works on PC and Xbox as well. I wanted to TEST the
theory that 5 LOD levels are the solution but, how I’m supposed to test, other
than resubmitting it to the MS Marketplace ? I tried to tell to our
Marketplace contact “could you just TEST on Xbox and report back if this fix
works ?” I wasn’t asking to speed up the realease of the update, I only
wanted to know if the fix worked on Xbox, because I can’t test it. The reply
was that testing would be done when the update will be processed so, of
course, because of the long queue, it might take weeks just to KNOW if my “fix
in the blind” worked. What if it didn’t ? Should we supposed to wait weeks
just to know if something works, then try another random fix, wait another 2-3
weeks, and so on ? Users are frustrated with us, and we don’t know what to
reply other than the “if it works on PC, it should work on Xbox”, and Xbox
users are way less tolerant to bugs.
Totally agree with Umberto… and I feel your pain… Clearly we have 2 code
bases running in parallel and being unable to test things on XBOX will just
continue to increase this issues further and further. The second problem is,
when Microsoft Market Place resources will be increased? it is crazy having to
wait 2 months for new content to be available after it has been submitted,
much worse having to wait 1 month for a simple update a product to be
distributed to customers, which are mostly corrections to bugs introduced by
platforms updates or due to core changes imposed to the platform. R.
@SonantAlpaca There is some in mind for allow
Tools Developer to access the XBOX platform and Marketplace?
I Am quoting from a post, “I Believe” made my someone associated with India
Fox Tango on MSFS 3rd party developers Forum and wondered if anyone from ASOBO
Could comment? thanks to Microsoft we have been granted access on XBox to
our products prior to the Marketplace release and during their test phase
(prevously we had to rely on their feedback and reports). This will ensure
better communication between us and the Microsoft test team and hopefully a
better support for the XBox in future.
I can confirm as another 3rd party that indeed Microsoft did offer us to test
on Xbox at the end of the ingestion process of our latest product.
Hi @FlyingRaccoon,
Hope you are well.
Is there any plan for this in the future? Is it something that is being discussed internally?
I am sure you agree that for 3rd party devs to properly manage/support Xbox versions of their products a development feedback cycle which runs at the same frequency as a release cycle, is suboptimal.
Kind Regards
rmurdoch
PMDG
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