StuartC wrote in Sat Feb 20, 2016 10:48 pm:Well I got so fed up with it, I binned it. Just reinstalling 3.4 now.
Guess I wont be using the new one as its not going to be fixed until the next new one arrives.
I must say im not impressed by the initial bugs even with the installer. A novice would have no chance with it. IMHO this will only hurt FG. Remove it until atleast the installer works properly.
point well taken - however, the real issue a chicken and egg problem, i.e. the number of Windows users involved in regular testing is extremely low, and the number of Windows-based core developers is much lower - I am not even sure if there are any FlightGear core developers remaining who are primarily developing on Windows - most of the remaining folks are Linux/Mac OSX folks. Previously, F-JJTH and FredB would handle quite a bit of testing, and maintain/develop the underlying infrastructure code - but these days, even most power users don't have access to Windows (except for dual-booting or VMs).
All of that is to say that, unfortunately, you should not expect the quality of future Windows releases to improve significantly, unless you are willing to get involved, if not in core development - then, at least in regular testing, and in providing regular feedback to the people developing the code, and that would normally take place using the devel list or the issue tracker - or preferably, using merge requests to provide patches/improvements.
There were a few Windows-based contributors involved at some point, but their patches also had a hard time getting reviewed. Fundamentally, the project does not just need more active core developers, but also people on Windows to help with testing.
Otherwise, the situation really isn't much different from having some kind of exotic graphics card, where most shaders/effects won't work properly - so that too little testing by those who do have access to the corresponding hardware, turns the whole issue into a chicken & egg problem. Just look at Thorsten's comments on fixing Intel and AMD/ATI related shader issues - he really cannot be expected to have 10 different graphics cards from 5 different vendors ... thus, FlightGear as a community, depends on this kind of feedback - or it is simply to be expected that FlightGear development will increasingly shift to *nix based OS - the only thing Jenkins (the build server) helps with is ensure that things to build/run properly - but there isn't any regression/usability testing done for things like the installer.
So things aren't going to magically improve - if you care about improving things, consider to get involved in testing and try to provide feedback.