Friday, September 28 - Patch...First Impressions

[bw_wolverine]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Snapper

One thing that puzzles me is, do the devs actually FLY their own sim? I'm dead serious on this, and not being facetious whatsoever. My reasoning?

1) First thing I did after installing the new beta patch was to run some quick (VERY quick) tests on the Spitfire 2a and 1a 100 octane. Went into Quick Mission, selected Cross Country Flight.....and took off and climbed. Easy peasy. In this case I noted it took 20% throttle to start both aircraft. Take off roll at 9 lbs/6.25 lbs (full throttle resp), 3000 rpms, 100% rad (full open). On wheels up I held to level flight, coarsening pitch to 2850 rpms and closing rad to 50%. Watching oil & glycol temps, increased climb to maintain 185 mph IAS. All fine temps-wise, maintaining this combat climbout. At 18K feet (2a)/22K feet (1a 100 octane) the engine began sputtering, losing power, with rpms jumping wildly between 2400 and 3000. No damage reported in Damage Window; temps OK (ie oil < 95, glycol < 110 for both aircraft). The only way to smooth the engine vibrations and get partial climbing power back was to go Fine Pitch -- 300O rpms, but temps climbed with rad fully opened. Aborted climb, engine resumed normal operation below 16K feet with no apparent damage.

Each test here took about 10 minutes, but clearly no dev has done this, otherwise why wasn't it fixed OR reported in the readme? Sloppy.

2) I didn't do any tests on the Hurricanes. But how long would it take a dev to jump in the cockpit and discover the wretched thing wouldn't start? (Especially when the same problem had occurred in beta 1.07 and fixed in beta 1.08 ). Again, sloppy.

I'm baffled by the testing protocols, or rather, the lack thereof. If such ridiculously simple performance issues such as these are missed, how on earth are more complex issues dealt with?

+1 from me too, Snap.

The only explanation I can come up with is that they're just not bothering to test because they're so busy with the other stuff for the sequel. They're coding what they think'll fix it and throwing it into the beta patches. Then we get the patches and test them and see what sticks and what breaks.

There's no reason a patch that prevents half of one side's aircraft from starting engines for 9-15 minutes should have ever reached beta status let alone Release Candidate status.

[zapatista]

Originally Posted by bw_wolverine

+1 from me too, Snap.

The only explanation I can come up with is that they're just not bothering to test *everything* because they're so busy with the other stuff for the sequel. They're coding what they think'll fix it and throwing *other partially untested fixes* into the beta patches. Then we get the patches and test them and see what sticks and what breaks.

There's no reason a patch that prevents half of one side's aircraft from starting engines for 9-15 minutes should have ever reached beta status let alone Release Candidate status.

regretfully i think i have to agree with you (subject to my bold edits being added)

letting some of these glaring errors into the patch shows those elements simply have not been tested in-house

the good news however is that there are many important fixes in that latest RC patch as well, which have had extensive work and effort (and testing). for ex, overall improvements in the new gfx engine etc... (see other posts listing them). very frustrating however to have these red side plane startup issues