Open Beta/Stable,why have both?

[Sir Gus]

Hello,

 

As the title says,why we have 2 versions?The game is in beta anyway because of early access modules and updates to client in general.

ED should have only Open Beta client since all the online servers are running Open Beta and that will also help them release more updates per week.

Now we get updates 1 time per 2 weeks because of the stable release which is

 

buggy anyway.

What do you think guys?

Thank you for reading.

[BlueAngel]

The model is sound in most cases. Most industry players do this: one stable version and one "public test environment" (PTE, PTS, etc) where you test innovations with the help of dedicated Beta testers.

 

However, this isn't what ED does. Not only is the Beta an open environment with no dedicated team guided by objectives and driven to improve and resolve, the process of transitioning to Stable DOES NOT solve the bugs found on Open Beta. Which doesn't make sense.

 

You basically now have a Open Beta and a Delayed Open Beta, merging every two weeks.

 

The way this should work was, yes, have two versions, but Open Beta or PTE or whatever you called it be based on specific goals and objectives, with a PROPER community guidance and dedicated forums with DEVELOPER feedback and much more regular fixes and hotfixes TESTED TO EXHAUSTION prior to public release on the Stable version.

 

But we don't have this. So my suggestion is, just go Open Beta because the other takes two weeks to get new stuff... (and new bugs)...

[Mech]

Was about to type the same as BlueAngel, but he saved me from. I have only the Open Beta and i have no intention to install/copy anything else. If its working, fine. If its not, to hell with it.

[NineLine]

Hello,

 

As the title says,why we have 2 versions?The game is in beta anyway because of early access modules and updates to client in general.

ED should have only Open Beta client since all the online servers are running Open Beta and that will also help them release more updates per week.

Now we get updates 1 time per 2 weeks because of the stable release which is

 

buggy anyway.

What do you think guys?

Thank you for reading.

 

Open Beta is meant to test new fixes, and make sure the game launches and is playable with those new fixes. If that is the case, then its moved to release. It doesnt mean the game is 100% perfect for stable/release, especially when you consider, even within stable, there are early access modules that can have their own issues.

 

As an example, the Harrier is an Early Access module, its getting new feature, the laser-guided mavs had a pretty big issue, but that issue was avoidable, and didnt affect anything else in the game. In that sense, its a standard Early Access issue, and the rest of the fixes and content from the most recent Open Beta was moved to stable.

[SonofEil]

The model is sound in most cases. Most industry players do this: one stable version and one "public test environment" (PTE, PTS, etc) where you test innovations with the help of dedicated Beta testers.

 

However, this isn't what ED does. Not only is the Beta an open environment with no dedicated team guided by objectives and driven to improve and resolve, the process of transitioning to Stable DOES NOT solve the bugs found on Open Beta. Which doesn't make sense.

 

You basically now have a Open Beta and a Delayed Open Beta, merging every two weeks.

 

The way this should work was, yes, have two versions, but Open Beta or PTE or whatever you called it be based on specific goals and objectives, with a PROPER community guidance and dedicated forums with DEVELOPER feedback and much more regular fixes and hotfixes TESTED TO EXHAUSTION prior to public release on the Stable version.

 

But we don't have this. So my suggestion is, just go Open Beta because the other takes two weeks to get new stuff... (and new bugs)...

 

It felt like ED intended to do it right but just kind of gave up on the idea. After stable was released the OB was getting regular hotfixes and updates for awhile. Stable was getting much less frequent but more, well, 'stable' updates. It was kind of working, in a disorganized way. But since we're all basically on the same forum, and the whole process has been extremely poorly communicated and segregated, there was a huge amount of confusion about who's getting what and when. Still is, honestly.

Now we've switched to the weekly alternating updates and the whole Open Beta/Stable thing is super redundant. As far as I can tell OB is here just to catch any CTD's that might have slipped through the actual beta testers. It's a whole lot of confusion for very little benefit imo.

Edited August 28, 2018 by SonofEil

[Mars Exulte]

While I agree the testing methodology is less than ideal, what's confusing? You download the game you're presented with stable, unless you specifically download the other. I agree there's not really much difference between the two, but if servers are choosing to run one over the other that's their choice.

 

As a player it is really only an issue if the specific server you want to play on is running the opposite build from you, in which case you adjust to the one required to do what you're wanting to do and move on. Imo, people ''struggling'' are just being unnecessarily obtuse. It's no more complicated than downloading a required mod, do it or don't then move on.

[SonofEil]

Im not confused by it, but one need only look in these forums to see that a lot of people are.

[QuiGon]

While I agree the testing methodology is less than ideal, what's confusing? You download the game you're presented with stable, unless you specifically download the other. I agree there's not really much difference between the two, but if servers are choosing to run one over the other that's their choice.

 

As a player it is really only an issue if the specific server you want to play on is running the opposite build from you, in which case you adjust to the one required to do what you're wanting to do and move on. Imo, people ''struggling'' are just being unnecessarily obtuse. It's no more complicated than downloading a required mod, do it or don't then move on.

In addition to that OB and Stable are usally exactly the same every other week, which makes this even less of a problem as you can play on servers running on the opposite branch during that week.

[BlueAngel]

Open Beta is meant to test new fixes, and make sure the game launches and is playable with those new fixes. If that is the case, then its moved to release. It doesnt mean the game is 100% perfect for stable/release, especially when you consider, even within stable, there are early access modules that can have their own issues.

 

I'm not really against your model. Again, it's very sound in this industry and it works flawlessly with other software projects.

 

Anyone would have to agree, however, that, as it is, it's somewhat a waste of resourses to have two facsimile versions with a two week delay. If Open Beta was to be a test platform as stated, how come multiplayer bugs and other issues still get into Stable? Worse, was it really a good idea to introduce these MP bugs from recent updates coming from OB, when stable was, well, stable? People were complaining for a long time prior to merging. They still passed.

 

In my case I have severe rubberband lag and crashes to menu from incomprehensible disconnections no one can figure out, even after several support tickets (still open) and forum posts. At first, the "solution" was to revert to stable. Now, there's no immediate solution, since the build is pretty much the same. So, in my case, this method sends me in a loop. Even if I revert to Stable, my problem persist because, inadvertently, a bug was introduced in Stable, prior to being handled in OB.

[BlacleyCole]

In my opinion it would make. More sense to update the stable version once a month giving more time to evaluate upgrades and the beta weekly if on the. Week. You update the stable with doing each every other week the stable servers just get it implemented and setup before having to start all over. Imo also stable or release version isn’t accurate as the mods still in development are available which can create bugs

[Mars Exulte]

Even if I revert to Stable, my problem persist because, inadvertently, a bug was introduced in Stable, prior to being handled in OB.

 

Yep, that's kind of an excellent summary of the flaw of the current system. If the beta doesn't actually serve as a catch for bugs that are found, preventing their dissemination to Stable, then Stable isn't stable and the 'beta' has no purpose lol

 

If you push the patch forward before fixing the bugs that turned up, it just screws it up and leaves people without a fallback. I run stable only, specifically to avoid that. Except it's not working =)

[David OC]

Yep, that's kind of an excellent summary of the flaw of the current system. If the beta doesn't actually serve as a catch for bugs that are found, preventing their dissemination to Stable, then Stable isn't stable and the 'beta' has no purpose lol

 

If you push the patch forward before fixing the bugs that turned up, it just screws it up and leaves people without a fallback. I run stable only, specifically to avoid that. Except it's not working =)

 

I think that comes under the "level of bug"...:D Some are keen to have say, have the F/A-18's new "System" even tho ED knows in this build the "Blah Blah and Blah" is not right but none are game stoppers so update stable and try and keep some people happy, fix "them" hopefully before the next beta to stable etc.

[Черный Дракул]

It doesnt mean the game is 100% perfect for stable/release

I think OP meant that "stable" should be as stable as possible, being updated only when (at least new) critical bugs are fixed.

[Pikey]

The way BlueAngel explains it is exactly how I see it. It's flawed unless the issues from OB are fixed before it goes into Live/stable whatever you want to call that version.

 

 

Take the radar issues brought into OB that "some people" saw. Absolutely destroyed playing AI for myself and our group, we added to the thread reporting it, it wasn't acknowledged, it went into live/stable next week, we endured it for two weeks then it just disappeared without a change log in the next OB release.

 

 

I've seen very very few hotfixes in the OB week. If the Beta > live progression is to be worthwhile, then you would think that any hotfixes should also be tested in Beta, in order to minimise risk and maximise testing time in the community. However, what we see is, OB comes out, exists for a week, then live/stable goes live and comes up to exactly the same version as OB was. Which makes me wonder why we have an OB at all if it's just live a week behind.

 

 

What we are actually seeing is a bimonthly change with two releases. And ED could save time on a Wednesday by not bothering with one of them if the end result is exactly the same.

 

 

This is what the OP is implying in his accurate comments.

 

 

Of course, let's wait through this week, watch the next Wednesday's update and see if it follows this pattern again, but I can say as I check every over week on Live release that the last 8 weeks have been following this pattern and it's "spinning wheels in the sand".

[Eldur]

What we are actually seeing is a bimonthly change with two releases. And ED could save time on a Wednesday by not bothering with one of them if the end result is exactly the same.

 

This. I'd rather expect to see a stable verison of 2.5.2, then 2.5.3, then 2.5.4 and so on (and maybe a little progression there more often instead of having "update 9" on a single minor version - but well, after all that's just numbers) plus when a new module is being introduced. I always recommend users to switch to OB branch anyway to be more up-to-date. And if there's something that produces crashes it's been fixed within two days anyway. In that case you still can revert to the last OB version to avoid having issues.

[Biga42]

How do I know if I have an OB or a stable version installed?

[Frederf]

That can be a tough question since you can convert-branch one into each other but apart from that the stable branch is in the DCS World folder of Program Files and uses the DCS folder of Saved Games while the OB branch is in the DCS World OpenBeta and DCS.openbeta folders respectively.

 

 

Really as far as the software is concerned you have registry entries HKCU\Software\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World and \DCS World OpenBeta and whatever path those point to are the paths to each version.

 

 

But most practically if your version as read in the lower right corner of the main menu is equal to the version number of each branch will tell you which branch you have, provided the branches are different versions and yours is up to date.

 

 

The two branches are interoperable when they have the same version number. I can join a Release branch server with OB client or vice versa in that situation.

 

 

I agree that the OB branch is a good idea just that it would be more meaningful to the original intention if the developers were more discipline and rigorous about removing bugs in the testing version before that build is allowed to be adopted by the Release branch. Right now half or more of people are using the testing OB branch as the main product.

[bolek]

How do I know if I have an OB or a stable version installed?

 

Generally you should be able to look inside the dcs_variant.txt file in your installation directory. If you don't have this file or if the contents is "release" then you are on the release version. If the contents is "openbeta" then you are on the Open Beta branch.

[BlueAngel]

This next we will see how the Eagle Dynamics Stable/Open Beta logic will FAIL.

 

This week's two updates introduced severe issues:

 

Mission Editor crashes to desktop.

Nevada/Normandy crashes to desktop.

Persian Gulf may also CTD.

 

If you are adamant to keep your two week model, not updating DCS outside your planned windows, you'll transfer these severe errors to Stable.

 

And there's no reason why you should do this, whatsoever. Stable is WORKING right now. Don't ruin it, just update Open Beta this week again and THEN transfer the version to stable. It's the reasonable thing to do!

[robgraham]

This next we will see how the Eagle Dynamics Stable/Open Beta logic will FAIL.

 

This week's two updates introduced severe issues:

 

Mission Editor crashes to desktop.

Nevada/Normandy crashes to desktop.

Persian Gulf may also CTD.

 

If you are adamant to keep your two week model, not updating DCS outside your planned windows, you'll transfer these severe errors to Stable.

 

And there's no reason why you should do this, whatsoever. Stable is WORKING right now. Don't ruin it, just update Open Beta this week again and THEN transfer the version to stable. It's the reasonable thing to do!

 

While I agree and I also agree that the current open beta shouldn't be moved to stable at all until at least the map crash is fixed btw the ME crash and add on map crashes are related, the only other ME crash they've reported of late is the one if you leave the Loadout panel open for too long with out do anything. though i did just have the other one happen (yay but at least it's producing the error logs etc).

 

but and i'll say but, at the moment they have the issue that some of us can use the current open beta fine and others can not now I'm not going to defend the 2 week cycle, to be honest to me the old one made more sense, do a bunch of open beta builds then get them sorted and push to live at the end of the month or the like. But as a programmer myself I also get that some times you don't always run into an issue before releasing it to the wild.

 

A lot of people for example are like 'OMG you broke it' on

A. an open beta line.

B. why wasn't it caught etc.

 

Forgetting at the moment stable is fine and that some times you can test something on every system you have ship it to 'live' ie the public and bang you'll have nothing but issues because every machine is different in some shape or form and that's basically what happened this week.

 

I'd be very surprised (shocked actually) if the current Open Beta build gets pushed on Wednesday to 'live' if the map ctd hasn't been sorted but that's just me.

 

 

And also the whole reason they moved to the 2 week cycle in part is because people were complaining that Open Beta was getting all the updates and 'Live' was taking forever making it pointless and that every one was on Open Beta yada yada .. so by the looks of it they made the choice to speed up the cycle, only this is 2018 on the 'internet' and nothing any one does is ever enough.

Edited September 1, 2018 by robgraham

[E-Rock]

I thought that was the premise of the OB and stable. If the OB is causing CTD for a large number of users it will not go to stable until it is sorted in OB. I also thought the stable build implied just that, and not necessarily bug free.

[NineLine]

This next we will see how the Eagle Dynamics Stable/Open Beta logic will FAIL.

 

This week's two updates introduced severe issues:

 

Mission Editor crashes to desktop.

Nevada/Normandy crashes to desktop.

Persian Gulf may also CTD.

 

If you are adamant to keep your two week model, not updating DCS outside your planned windows, you'll transfer these severe errors to Stable.

 

And there's no reason why you should do this, whatsoever. Stable is WORKING right now. Don't ruin it, just update Open Beta this week again and THEN transfer the version to stable. It's the reasonable thing to do!

 

Nobody said this update will be forced to stable, in fact, this is a perfect example of why we have an Open Beta because there can be issues that sneak through and cause the sim to become unstable. I don't know where people got the idea that ED would send a version this rough to release?

 

I thought that was the premise of the OB and stable. If the OB is causing CTD for a large number of users it will not go to stable until it is sorted in OB. I also thought the stable build implied just that, and not necessarily bug free.

 

Exactly right. There are bugs that make it to stable, but game blocking issues like we see in this round of Open Beta patches would not be transferred to Stable.

[BlueAngel]

Nineline, the multiplayer issues I mention a few replies above began with Update 4 and arrived in Stable without correction. That's where we got that idea.

 

But, good thing you released the hotfix 2 for the ME, on a sunday no less. But the Nevada and Normandy crashes are still a thing. If there's no fix until wednesday, won't you still release this version to Stable? If you do not, I stand corrected.

[imacken]

Why have both? For times like now, when the beta is jacked up for certain users like us VR people. Can't fly multiplayer in VR on the beta right now.

 

Can’t fly VR at all in these updates. Can’t select menu items - like ‘Fly’! - and so much blurriness of movement as ASW isn’t working.

I went back to 2.5.2 till this is fixed. First time I’ve ever had to revert an OB build.

[eaglecash867]

Why have both? For times like now, when the beta is jacked up for certain users like us VR people. Can't fly multiplayer in VR on the beta right now.

 

I'm a VR Oculus Rift user and the beta is completely hosed for me as well. I was running the stable exclusively when it was released, but then I decided to install the beta as well. Definitely wanted to keep the stable, since we had the Great Building Vanishing of 2017 happen once. I guess us VR guys with the Rift can call this one the Drunk Pilot Simulator of 2018. Good thing I have the stable to fall back on. :D