Why has everyone defected to paid FSes after landing here?

[Lydiot]

I agree, and my criticism is 'mild'. I don't currently contribute to FG and I appreciate people who do for doing it. It's just that from a user perception perspective it's as you say; tons of half-developed aircraft.

I think that more often than not I find an aircraft and go: "wow, looks pretty good, handles pretty well, pretty good systems modeling", and then as time goes by, pretty quickly actually, the undeveloped or underdeveloped parts start showing up. And then one moves on, and it's the same thing again.

Still, absolutely great work by a lot of people.

[Octal450]

+1

[jwocky]

Well, I am just sneaking back into the plane business and terrain development is for me still a book with seven seals. So, my thoughts about all of this are subjective and based obviously on incomplete knowledge in this case. More like I feel the things:

1.) I want to start why I actually like the FG world, even some of the reasons are not entirely specific to FG. The idea to have a system that is open to development of things by users is intriguing to me. Admittedly, even now, with very little time left for any hobbies, I spend more time tinkering than actually flying. I know, it's not every but that is actually the point: The FG world offers different things for different tastes.
The other thing, and now I am probably about to collide with some others, I like to fly pretty uncontrolled, ATCs are for me more someone who helps find an airport or a runway on it. I don't really pretend to be a real pilot, my need for formal authenticity is low. I know, others want to come as near to the real thing as it is possible and other again are interested in other ways of flying like for example fighter jets and dog fights. FG offers some of it and at least in rudimentary forms all of it, but there are three problems for my feeling:
a.) It is all mixed (so you have for example the resident bus driver suddenly flying through an area where some fighter pilots do their thing and an ATC at the same time tries to create order out of the chaos).
b.) We have no way to actually split our MP system. We can't set several !worlds" like games can do, to say, we fly this day on this server "historical planes", we do on another "incident simulation" and do the "general bus driving" on a third while the "combat zone 2000" is on a fourth.
c.) The current MP system is slow, not equipped for a bigger number of pilots at the same time and very limited in its capabilities to transfer data to all clients.

2.) The graphic is not up to par. Simply that. Not out models, not our scenery. Our 3D engine is outdated, at least in the way we use it. I lack there still knowledge and have to look deeper at those things, I am not much of a 3D person and worse, my eyes are not that good, I miss many details and you don't want the blind mole determine what to do with your graphics, but even I can see the differences.

3.) I have no real idea about VATSIM. It is for very authentic commercial flying, so exactly not the place where you would find me. But I understand, others like it. Which means, we need in the future the option to do it smooth.

4.) The plane development is slow. It0uchpods for example programs his rear off, I have some good times, a lot of others do a lot of work. But it is just sooo much work and it is all manual work. One point is, we lack tools, I think.
The other thing is, we still don't make enough use of our abilities to team work. I take planes as example. We have different specialties. Some make models, some make FDMs, some make cockpits. So, in a perfect world, a model-maker would make a model and send it to the FDM guys, who add the FDM and then we send it to the cockpit devs. Like a work flow. But we have all too often to do all the stuff alone. I wait for example a while for some Blender talented person to make the cockpit deck of the Antonov bigger. Israel, my go-to guy, has no time, RL got to him. Gabriel and It0uchpods wait since weeks, that I get around to the 737-800 again (I forgot about it, sorry, too much other stuff). our work flows are somewhat between chaotic and non-existent.

I think, we should, instead of evading into more sophisticated but quite pricier systems, try to organize our work better and figure out, what to do, with which priorities. Always in the limitations of course, what is possible.

Another thought: We talk about core devs, plane devs, terrain devs ... we have still a bigger chunk of people who don't develop. Those people are valuable. They fly, a lot. Which means, we have test pilots and I see this problem again in my Antonov. I am most of the time the only one flying it. In a month or so, when I have finished what I am currently doing to her, it would be very interesting to hear what other pilots think. Not that I promise to implement everything, there will be too many different opinions, but it would give me more hints where to go with it in the following step.
We have also a lot of work to do in organizing ourselves. None of those jobs need actual programming abilities. More the skills to know who can do what and make sure, those guys know what is next on the list.
And last but not least, my favorite subject: Community. I was a while rare due to RL things and I am still struggling with a lot of things, but I am working on it, really hard. Others were here a whole time and again other have other RL things to do and are rarer than they were. So, money is short, time even shorter, we need to find a way to get over this phase. Which means, others have to step up more and in a constructive way.

So, the real question is not whether FG sucks in some technical details. It does! The real question is, are enough people willing to step up and do something about it? And if so, how do we get organized and get the job done?
Those are my two cents. Any thoughts about this?

[Octal450]

+1 @jwocky
Completely agree.

In our FGFS Slack we have a better workflow (hint hint @jwocky come join us)
We have texture artists
We have 3D model people
We have a few Cockpit people
We have a few systems/nasal people
We have a few sounds people

So things work somewhat Okay there.

But I understand what are you saying.

[Lydiot]

Those are my two cents. Any thoughts about this?

I agree.

[jwocky]

Okay, so, after I got me some more free time, I can look into that slack business. But we would also need to expand on this board, put jobs to do in a work queue, get an overview in what kind of state are our planes, figure something for knowledge transfer and open some kind of brainstorming what to do in what order.

[Octal450]

Good idea.

[Falcon]

C-EYTT understand why myself and others have moved?

[Falcon]

Also, how did you get to know about this forum so quickly?

I showed him some articles from the forum before I told him that I fly on XP10 then the words "defection" and "traitor(s)" became common any time I came on to mumble.

[Falcon]

I like to fly pretty uncontrolled

I am the same way. the trick to flying uncontrolled in VATSIM is to know what ATCs and When ATCs will be coming on. I talked to you on April 2nd about how I see the USA tour expanding, but I did not know that it was almost over. IAHM-COL if you are wondering what I am talking about feel free to email me about it, and I will happily tell you what I meant. But if you want to fly uncontrolled Alaska, The Caribbean, Mexico, and South America are all the places where there is rarely ATC on during the times you guys normally have the USA Tours.

The only issue I can see happening is the event planning on the VATSIM network. As far as I am aware, you need someone who is of at least S3 (Student 3 ATC) to create the event. Thankfully ACI dose have such a rating, however he will not be able to provide ATC for the entire time, due to ATC limitations. If he can do it, then y'all are set. And Josh feel free to correct me on this, because I am a pilot, not an ATC.