Info about Beta testing

[Sami]

Some information about the beta testing process and about sending applications to the beta. As already posted before in the newsletters the beta application process is following:

# First the invitations will be sent to people who have submitted data to us. (time to apply - one week)

# Then people who have subscibed to the AWS newsletter (as of 15th June 08) are invited. (time to apply - one week)

# After the invitations are sent (two weeks total) the applications are screened. Selected number of people are invited to join the beta.

# Time when actual beta testing starts and testers can access the games is not decided yet. In plain English - we will select the beta testers now in good time before we start beta process and the actual testing will start later. Do not ask when this is - the selected beta testers will be informed personally about this.

# When the software is fully ready for beta testing, we will e-mail all those who have been selected as beta testers and ask them to join the games and start testing.

# Actual beta testing will consist of playing 1-3 full games to test the load created to servers and to scout for any additional bugs not found in pre-beta.


In conclusion, please do not post to forums or email us if you can be a beta testers (in such case you can't)... I am getting numerous PM's and emails about this and responding to them takes quite much of my time. The invitations will be sent as described above, and once invitations are sent it takes some time to process the applications. All who have been invited and sent the application will receive an email back from us with more information about the beta, once all the applications have been processed.

If you have any further questions then feel free to ask in this thread (as long as the question isn't anything what has just been said above...  ).

[Sami]

The first batch of beta test invitations have been sent to those who have submitted some data to the AWS project. This includes roughly 50 persons. If you have submitted some data to us within the last two weeks then that has not been added yet and you have not received the invitation - in such case please drop a PM to me via this forum so that I don't forget you

The existing pre-beta team (30+ members) do not have to take any action in regards of the beta as they are already accepted for it automatically.

The invitations to the newsletter's subscribers will be sent within next 10 days or so.

[EduardoMorteo]

I sent a message to you about the invitation.

Abraço!

Eduardo Morteo Bastos
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

[Sami]

And I replied too already

[EduardoMorteo]

And I replied too already

And I sent you other message about new airports in South America.

[Unbornio]

Wow... 50 people. They must be very lucky. 

[xolon]

Hey Sami,

When do you expect the invitated people will get a reply on their filled in 'join-the-beta-form'?

[Sami]

Today I think, but the beta games start when the whole beta lot is full. Meaning that I'll send the rest of the invitations in the next few days and beta's start perhaps in two weeks or so.

[Sami]

Second batch of beta test invitations have been sent today to those who were subscribed to our newsletter.

Again there is one week time to reply to the invitation, and then the applications are processed and each who has sent the application will get an email back from us. The time when beta testing starts will be announced later.

The invitations have been sent to some 670 people (+ some 30 already testing the game), while 500 players is the designed maximum for the beta. If we get more than 450-470 beta applications, the people are selected by random from those who fullfill the beta test criteria.

[Sami]

By the way - noticed a small error in the latest beta invitations..

It said in the "intro" as follows: This email is sent to you as you have submitted some data to the AirwaySim project. ... but naturally this was not the fact but the invitation was sent because you were subscribed to the newsletter of the project. But doesn't matter - just in case someone is really reading that email and wondering about what the heck I have written again ... 

[waerth]

Hello Sami,

Hereby a hint for the beta testing. Once people start to report bugs yo want to know what sytem they use. So it might be a good thing to have people fill out a form before the testing starts in which they should give the following details:

Browser(s) used (would be interesting to have testers with browsers like Opera, Safari and Conqueror apart from Firefox and IE)
Screen display
OS
System

and any other things worth knowing.


Also I have a question about the involvement in other airline games question. I am not involved in manegement or development of any. I did present a lot of airport data to 2 other games though. This shouldn't be a problem should it?

Waerth

[Sami]

Yeah, good point. Though the browser issues should be really nonexistent as the code should adhere web standards and does not contain any IE-only-stupid-coding or something like that.

And beta is non-available to those who are considered as staff members or developers (etc) of other products of similar nature, and simple data collection isn't that in my mind.

[waerth]

I know unfortunately not all browser developers adhere to the web standards set. Especially IE is notorious for not complying to them. I am developing my own site about food. And am helped by a developer for that and learning PHP and MySQL in the progress but sometimes things that are standard do not work in IE 

Anyway thanks for the answer. Hope to see the game be a winner ..... I actually hope every game will be a winner  !

Waerth

[Sami]

Just a small friendly reminder generally:

As the beta is getting closer I am getting an increased number of different queries to my email / forum PM inbox. There's a lot of people invited and naturally some things that are not clear so that is understandable. However as there is still a lot of work to do, please try to keep the communications to minimum ... So check & search the forum first if the topic has been discussed.

And also - as mentioned already, all who have sent the beta application will get a reply to their email once it's been reviewed. This may take a week or two from the date you sent it, as there are a lot of applications.

And yet repeating myself a bit - the beta itself will start when the software is ready for that. And those who've been accepted for the beta will then (again) get another email about more details of it, a few days before the game starts or so. So for now you do not need to visit the site every day or keep an eye if some magic button appears somewhere that takes you to the games ... you will get the email and notice it then, trust me. 

[Payden]

Ive been waiting and on newletter list have a hotmail email but didnt get invite to beta ;(  can you look into it please


AirwaySim Newsletter‏
From: AirwaySim (xxxx)
Sent: Wed 6/04/08 12:52 AM
To:  xxxx

AirwaySim Newsletter -

Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. We will send you occasional e-mails to inform about our site's latest developments.

https://www.airwaysim.com



---

please don't write emails to public messages / Sam

[Sami]

According to the list the invitation has been sent in the second batch. Check the spam? (though I see a lot of hotmail users already having sent the application) or then it has been lost somewhere in between, in which case I'll resend.. (PM me for that)

[EduardoMorteo]

A note:

I received an invitation E-mail on july,29.

Now I´m waiting the activation.

Thanks to invite me!

[Sami]

Yes - it said there that you should expect a reply within max 1-2 weeks from sending the appl. Even said it in this thread in the message I posted yesteday.

[EduardoMorteo]

Yes - it said there that you should expect a reply within max 1-2 weeks from sending the appl. Even said it in this thread in the message I posted yesteday.

I know, that´s ok.
I´m still looking for airports.
You wrote to me in a message that some IATA codes were missing when I sent you the airports information. I entered in a website with a list of almost all IATA codes of Brazilian airports, but didn´t find those codes. So I tried to appeal to wikipedia, but I don´t know if wikipedia is a good source in this case.

[jacol]

Can I still join beta? :/