I’ll start by saying that If you have a recent device (~2 years old or less), it shouldn’t crash in Solo and shouldn’t crash in Live with a reasonable number of visible aircraft (start with Medium and work your way up). If it does, there is a bug we missed and we will do everything we can to fix it in a timely manner.
Why is it crashing?
- The 777 is significantly more detailed than any other aircraft we have done in the past. More details = more RAM usage.
- We added a lot more details to the map which is using significantly more RAM.
- The increased RAM requirement puts IF over the edge of what a device with 1GB of RAM can handle which result in more crashes on older devices (we are talking 5-6yo devices).
- Last week we had our all time highest number of simultaneous users. We did add more servers in anticipation but it ended up making things worse due to caching issues. The issue caused many delays and crashes.
- Many new features means more bugs: we had a long beta period but it is impossible to catch all bugs.
What are we doing about it?
- Most server issues were fixed last week.
- We are looking at every crash report we capture and working on those in the order of # affected users. Some are easy fixes, some are more complex because hard to reproduce.
- I am personally looking at map RAM usage since it seems to be much higher than necessary.
- We are fixing a bunch of small issues that might cause higher battery usage on long flights.
- We might consider having an Open Beta in the future. This is a very strong maybe but something we will be looking into.
What can you do about it?
- Make sure you have the latest update before reporting any bug
- If you encounter a crash try to find a way to reproduce it consistently:
- Try to reproduce in Solo
- Try to reproduce with different graphics settings and/or disable the display of other aircraft in Live
- Confirm with other community members
- Report the issue on the forum with as many details as you can. A detailed report that include a way to reproduce consistently can be fixed very quickly; don’t forget device make model and OS version!
Rest assured that we are working tirelessly to address all issues. It is as frustrating to us than it is to you. We will release another patch release as soon as we can (probably this week or next week at the latest). Also our next minor release (20.2) will be focused on quality and performance improvements.