As the poll for FG Festival Spring Festival 2016 comes close

[IAHM-COL]

I of course suggest Carribean!

Something that has disuade us to jump to the Caribbean is the fact that so many nice places there are terrasync-flooded.

Ideally the place of the event, while we can feature scenery packs, should be able to be played with no further customization.
Caribbean definitely is not playable with terrasync, by default, so new comers may run in big trouble

[elgaton]

(@elgaton: I hope you would'nt mind mirroring this post on Curtis' Flightgear Forum)

Crossposted - I have refactored it a bit to keep the format in line with the threads for the previous editions (and to keep only general information in the first post, since it will be updated to provide links to useful resources when the locations are decided).

My preference for the Spring festival, for now, goes to Japan/South Korea (maybe even China?) - it would be great to hold an edition in Asia.

As for the Fall festival, I second the proposal by you and MIG29pilot (whole UK) - we could even partner with FGUK for the ATC service, they seem to have some great controllers there.

I've also dug up an old post of yours on the main forum - I'm quoting it here since it has some interesting proposals (my comments are in italic):

If distance to Europe is a bigdeal, I suggest a few European locations for also consideration below:

• U.K 2015 (London particularly has beautiful scenery in several of its 7-in-the-city airports), besides multiple develop accross the county. In 2014 JAFVA flew in from Edingburgh area, that actually looks neat.
• Italy 2015: Airport of the North Italy are very very cute. Gotta Love Linato LIML, besides the NIATCA guys had done some progress over Verona (Aww, thanks )
• Switzerland-Austria 2015: Who doesn't want to have Basel and Innsbruck as an event hub, for real? (Already done)
• France 2015: Give me some supercomputers and Paris is the place to go

If distance to Europe just causes our shoulder to rise, then I will say

• Texas 2015: DFW (all ZFW area) and lets get dirty developing. Besides all Texas have fantastic places. Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston (2 airports). Once again, flat Mexican Tortilla (more locally appropriate than pancake )
• Caribbean 2015: Will the flooded airspace improve in 1 year? (I think World Scenery 3.0 is in preparation now, but generation takes a long time - building the 1x1 tile that includes LIPX with a few osm2city models/streets, for example, takes a whole day on my computer. I don't know if we'll have the updated scenery by March.)
• Hawaii 2015: Many cool developed scenery in the middle of nowhere. For real. Great for GA islandhopping
• West-Coast. KSFO is close but not within radarspace. Including example KLAX KLAS KPHX.

There's one issue nobody has mentioned yet - AIP availability. Besides looking at the state of scenery development in the regions we're going to choose, keep in mind that I'll need charts to prepare the OpenRadar/Route Manager files (and participants will need them as well to fly the published procedures - from an ATC perspective, being able to rely on pilots who can follow an SID or a STAR without much intervention reduces the workload; so far, I haven't had to deal with an overwhelming amount of traffic, but that may change in the future should the Festival prove even more popular). The Japanese/UK AIP require registration but is otherwise available, the South Korean/Italian (*)/French one can be accessed freely; I haven't checked the other ones.

(*) Registration is now required to access it, but I can provide direct links.

[KIWI34]

New Zealand? It's quite long , many airports make it interesting. Only a few are Rnav equipped so you could make
Some challenges with the various visual approaches into
While the two narrow islands make it easy to navigate ( fly west to the west coast , east to the east. The country can be flown from the tip of the north to the bottom of the south in under 2 hours ( jet aircraft ) and their is bound to be an airport every 30nm , great for you little GA pilots with some cessnas. For the IFR heavy jets , Auckland -Wellington- Christchurch are the main airports for your "bigger" birds, but feel free to soar in to land on a 3500ft runway on the coast.

Just a proposal, it's my country , nice scenery ( except airports , we have 6 months ) and I'm sure if an auckland -Wellington 45 min jet flight is short for you, Sydney is only a 2.5 hour flight from Auckland

Take care
KIWI

[MIG29pilot]

I suppose it wouldn't be polite to do it at EGOD anyway--the FGUKer's mightn't appreciate have umpteen-thousand aircraft in their airport all of a sudden.

What about New Guinea/Indonesia?

[IAHM-COL]

@ elgaton

thanks for crossfeeding the Curtis' Forum.

1) I agree with you, I think several options of the Runners up can/should be reincluded in the ballot. For Europe, it means reinclude Italy and France in the run. For the rest of the world it suggest adding Texas, Hawaii, and US West Coast.
2) Based on feedback I retract S. Korea, and leave my proposal as Japan, alone
3) I still think Caribbean is too early for 2016, and I would prefer to hold for it to be a viable option. OTOH, Lego strongly proposes it/defends it, and I see no reason to not include it as a ballot in the Polls.
4) AIP availability. Not a deep worry. We will unearth charts one way or another.

@ALL

Keep the ideas coming. I remember hearing on the mumble channels over the Festival Weekend that America NorthWest (Seattle, Vancouver, Portland and surrounding areas) would be a great contender. Also SouthAfrica was mentioned as a potential candidate for the Spring poll.

IH-COL

[IAHM-COL]

I suppose it wouldn't be polite to do it at EGOD anyway--the FGUKer's mightn't appreciate have umpteen-thousand aircraft in their airport all of a sudden.

I see no political concern here. No one owns anything in FG. If they want to participate they'll get us flooding their usual game-place. If they don't they'll know with plenty of time to plan their own party elsewhere.
It's just 1 weekend, anyways.

[IAHM-COL]

Why would this be done on Jabberwocky's forum? I don't even know where that is.... Why not here? And who decided this? This is a FG event after all.

@Lydiot

elgaton and I briefly discussed the pros and cons of this. Ultimately holding the poll in thejabberwocky.net forum allows everyone to cast a single vote.
Hosting it only in Curtis' Forum excludes the people unable to access that limited forum to cast a vote. IAHM-COL is still the main co-organizer of the event and he, and others deserve a right to the opinion. --Regardless of what King Curt thinks--

Hosting a simultaneous poll in both forums enables people with double accounts to vote double -- which is unfair.

Hosting it in thejabberwocky.net allows anyone willing to cast a vote and participate to do so in equality of conditions, making it a real fair voting poll. Which is the objective, and thus the reason why the poll to decide the festival locations will be held in thejabberwocky.net forum. People interested to cast a vote only need to register.

[legoboyvdlp]

The only reason I suggested Carribean is because I live there
I must say, UK sound nice.
So does Japan and NZ.

[IAHM-COL]

I think Caribbean will come strong candidate once the new scenery is fetched by default.
My objection is that we can't expect everyone in the festival to "come prepared". Many people join last minute, or is informed at the last hour, or does not have time to make lots of extra preparations.

A festival should not rely on additional installations. It can have them optional (which is great). But it can not be that a pilot is disabled if failed to install some sort of REQUIRED fix.

[IAHM-COL]

Can we guarantee that more will be modeled in time for a festival?

AFAIK, the guarantee of new scenery for any festival is Zero.
No one is commited to make new scenery or new development.

People that volunteer hours to do new scenery development surrounding the festival do so willingly and voluntarily, and thus, no-one has "administrative" control upon what is done or left undone. In that sense, I only find big thanks to those that give hours of their time to create something new for FG, and that allow for the festival to leave gifts for the future of the simulator.

so, again, whether there is available scenery or not, could/could not play a role in the decision of where will host by a particular person voting, and it may have no effect on the community's decision. The real deciding factor of the future locations is the poll to be held. Whatever leads the poll will be the next hosting place.