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Guest drmweaver2

Social-psychology of FS community

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Guest drmweaver2

>>>Things are not so bad here, there is still lots of creative discussions going on. Sometimes, you just have to filter out some "noise". The biggest problem I see is when people confuse opinions with facts, and vice versa. ... we should be exchanging opinions and views, but instead sometimes people feel the need to resolve the issue until there is one "correct" answer.>>> I think this strikes at the crux of the matter for me. I've got as large an ego as most people I think. But I have been around long enough to recognize the difference between being wrong and being insulted directly, between opinion and fact, and between a recomendation to buy/not buy and a customer complaint or statement of dissatisfaction. It's strange, I guess, that I assume others will note these same differences - and yet I feel a certain level of disquietutde when I see the opposite happening (taking opinnion as fact, taking disagreement as personal insult, or responding to a statement of dissappointment or desire as criticism that must be responded to publicly, etc.).I've looked way back in these forums just to verify my gut feeling that things have somewhat "deteriorated" and, unfortunately, it seems that they really have.I'd make the old joke about "can't we all just get along" but it's so overused and seen as so "wimpy" today that I think it would just get lost in the dust. I prowl USENET, some other forums and even talk with real people in the physical world. What I percieve as so different about this community is the speed of change in general attitude - and I think that we might all end up the poorer for it.Well, I have some afcads to go redesign and some ai traffic files to try out.. You guys enjoy the forum discussions if you can. I'm going to try to stay away for a while .... or at least limit the threads I peruse. Maybe that will change my perception.

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Well John; I have read all of the responses to this thread and can honestlysay that to some extent I agree with most of them. I have been disgusted by what I've seen leading up to the realease of FSX. I've lived through all of this before in the process of earning a living. I've been a long haul trucker off and on for a long time, and at onetime the first thing I did, after starting the engine and doing my pre-trip inspection, was to fire up my CB radio. I have owned a CB since there were only 10 channels, then 23, and now40. We "Professional Tourists" used to run channel 10 back in the day. Butwhen CB grew to 23 channels we were requested to find another home aschannel 10 would sometimes bleed over onto 9 which had been set aside asan emergency channel. So we VOLUNTARILY moved our stuff to channel 19. Back in those days I knew guys from coast to coast, but only bythier"Handles". We considered ourselves friends and quite a few of us did infact become that way. You could find an awful lot of intelligence andgood natured humor out there...and yes.. help if you needed it. Thecamraderie and humor sure made a 10 hr shift pass more quickly. About the time "Smoky and the Bandit" came out every Tom Richard andHarry went out and bought a CB. And brother the good old days were gone. If I do fire up my radio now its usually on a discreet channel, anda lot of my friends either use SSB or a cell phone to stay in touch. The anonimity factor loomed large in this as the "Personna" soonreplaced the person. There are people who for some unfathomable reasondelight in stirring the pot...there are actually folks who just like to annoy others so much that they'll put a 1000W base station on theair just brodcasting a recorded obscene or annoying message 24 hrs aday. A friend and co-worker of mine went to jail about a year ago for having a CB in the truck with him that wasn't even hooked up. Seemssomeone had started on one of these nut case rants about kidnapping/bombs and God knows what else and indicated he was driving for thecompany I worked for. My buddy spent 24 hrs in jail and was off workfor 6 weeks until the proscecutor got around to dropping the charges.He was scared to death...was forced out of the truck at the wrong endof a 12 ga shotgun...forced to kneel on concrete wearing a pair ofshorts while the cops patted him down and cuffed him...it was 110F that day and he got pretty bad burns from it. As to using your real name, I don't know if it would help much as your still anonymous and heck most of the admins on the various forumsuse a "handle" themselves. We have a subforum here to list personalinformation about yourself and a number of folks did write a littleBio....heck I wrote my autobiography. Most however did not. Several things come into play on an international forum such as wehave here. Sometimes what is said is misunderstood. Sometimes theposter uses what would be considered humor at his neighborhood drinking establishment...but since we can't see his facial expression,body language, or hear his tone of voice it comes across wrong. Some people simply cannot stand to be contradicted. As you said I'vegot a fair sized ego myself. I drink on occasion, you name the occasion and I'll drink, so I'mnot pointing fingers at anyone else, but I'm sure relaxing with a beverage or two...or some other chemical relaxant..contributes a great deal to the problem. The release of FSX is worse than Fs9...but not by much. I'm seeingthe same things now as when I first became active here. The big difference now is the visibility of the ACES team. A numberof them have been members here for quite a while incognito. Tdraggerin particular would sometimes try to help someone but most of the timewould get blown off by some know it all. I think part of the defensiveness you've seen directly relates tothe fact that after all these years these fellas are making an activeeffort to be part of the comunity to listen and help. And yet I saw apost shortly after the retailers jumped the gun and released early saying that since they hadn't been on the forums "They must be hunkered down in the bunker in Redmond" actually they were all on a one week vacation after the exhausting schedule they had kept for thepreceeding months. Adam Zorfran replied(good naturedly) to a post, just today, about thier seeming light presence here by quipping "It isn't a lot of funjumping into FLAMES" but realise this isn't the only forum they visitand thier job is not product support. Another thing I'd like to bring to your attention is the people thatseem to feel an almost PERSONAL BETRAYAL are the guys with the higherpowered rigs. They seem to feel that if they can't run something, noone else can, or if you tell them you can they get really messed up.Heck John Cilis was running Fs9 on a 800 MHZ P3 and when he told folksthat they would just flat out call him a liar. Another thing I've seen till I'm sick to death of it is the statements regarding the numerous tweaks that have come out. Goes somthing like this...I'm not going to dumb down a program torun it. It was/is MS responsibility to release a program that wouldat the very least, get some kind of respectable preformance on one oneof todays high end computers with all sliders maxed. They should haveconfigured FSX to take advantage of--Dual Core--SLI--Ect. One poster even went so far as to suggest that the program should have been released that way and then updated at intervals to keep pace with advancing hardware capability. Now let me translate what(In my opinion) these folks are actuallysaying. 1. MS should have released a program optimised for todays hardware. Translation; Screw all of you who can't afford the best. So what if it runs like crap on your dog of a computer...upgrade or quit griping. And by the way I can run it maxed out and YOU CAN'T..so there:P 2. Here I have spent $2000.00 and your telling me that you're getting decent performance with your obsolete rig. Translation: You are either lying thru your teeth or: a. You are blind as a bat b. Obviously don't know stutters when you see them. c. Are a complete MS a really excited user. d. Are an imbicile. e. Do not have a clue what a good simulation is like. e. All of the above. 3. Release and update to reflect better hardware. Translation: I don't understand the concept of sliders at all. With my Ubber rig I have a god given right to max every slider out while lesser beings have to settle for less than stellar results. I RESENT THE HECK out of being lumped with UGH.... default FS users. I refuse to fly default crap, and wouldn't land at a PTOOIE! default airport. And furthermore if you hadn't made the default VC's, exteriors, sound files, flight characteristics, scenery, mesh, water, and airports so darn good; I'd have some headroom to import all my payware and wouldn't have to settle for the same thing as the unwashed masses. I dunno John seems that things are deteriorating and will probablycontinue to do so. As to the good old days....when I was still street racing quite abit. I heard a lot of the Ford vs Chevy stuff, even saw some punchesthrown, but ya know what? They were both wrong 'cause anybody withhalf a brain knows MOPARS RULE!:-badteeth

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Hi Denny,All very thoughtful words.But still,....something has to be done in the community inorder to prevent the "climate" to be wors, since it seams that we can not make it on our own. :-)http://www.scandicair.com/images/sa_banner.gifDell Dimension 4600 P4/2.8 at 3.0 Ghz1024 Mb DDR333 Dual channel memory (2x256,1x512)AGP 256 Mb ATI Radeon X850 Pro ViVo, flashed to a X850 XT PE. Omega 2.6.87 (CAT 5.12)DirectX 9.0cW XP Home with SP2E171FPb Flat panel monitor 17"370Gb HD (120 GB Maxtor, 250GB Samsung) 7200rpm ATA Lacie 250Gb Extern HDBlogg: http://blogg.passagen.se/primeaviFiles: http://library.avsim.net/search.php?CatID=...&Go=Change+View


 

Staffan

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Guest PowderBlue

I'll tell ya what, all this talking, all the bashing. The way things have been going I'm ready to just stick with FS9 and hang up anything else. After all I do have almost a grand in addons for FS9 why would I change to anything that is not 100% better.

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Very good post, except one thing...L.Adamson --- Chevy Silverado a really excited user :-hah

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Guest FSJUNKIE

> The big difference now is the visibility of the ACES team. Anumber of them have been members here for quite a while incognito. My thoughts exactly. Legitimate program bugs aside, a lot of the emotional response to FSX not meeting some expectations (or wishes) has a LOT to do with this. These guys have been around long enough to hear first hand, if not indirectly from some of our payware purchasing behaviors, what features people wanted to see in the next MSFS release. So, I think the community got all that it asked for in FSX, but from a hardware requirements perspective, that turned out to not be so good! FSX in the best words that I can think of is "waaay ahead of its time". I don't consider that statement as being from a "a really excited user" either by the way, I'm definitely a "glass half-full person" whenever I can be though. I just spent the last 2 days installing an additional MSFS-dedicated 250 GB hard drive and reinstalling FS9 and hundreds of dollars worth of payware. It's clear that I don't have to "worry" about buying another machine any time soon based on the lack of ROI on anything that I'd be willing to build and pay for, i'm going to get another year or more out of FS9 (which is running unbelievably smooth after I discovered the world of tweaks in the past couple of weeks (I've been missin' out!), AND when all is said and done I will have gotten an unheard of 5 or so years of useful service from my computer (CPU)! I don't see MS releasing another FS in 2 not even 3 years; I think this cycle will be longer, and now I can buy my next system smarter...when I get ready. That actually feels good to say! But, NOW what am I going to spend my income tax return on?! Ironically THIS MSFS-driven computer purchase decision didn't hurt my wallet like the ones in the past!!!> Now let me translate what(In my opinion) these folks are>actually saying. 1. MS should have released a program optimised for todays>hardware. Translation; Screw all of you who can't afford the best.>So what if it runs like crap on your dog of a computer...upgrade or >quit griping. Somewhat agree, would say it differently. I fully expected to have to replace my 3-year old P4 3.0GHZ PC to fully enjoy FSX. If FSX were to be released say in March 07 instead of when it was, I would be in the same boat as far having just bought a new inadequate machine. They have a right to be miffed, but only need to change the target of their rage. Unless you truly have that much disposable income, this practice of ours (letting a 50-70 dollar piece of software drive the need to spend thousands) is absurd to the outsider. This is where the rage that you see here is born; I think it's the low score on the "rational man's test" that really is the source. They just have to realize (or remember) that the hard core flight simmer is chasing something on which you can't put a price tag. For some simmers, that thing that they're chasing DOESN'T cost as much as it does for others..in other words "guessed wrong, get over it, better luck next time". Unless what you are chasing in simming changes, there WILL be a next time. What did you learn? True story: When I bought my current PC off the shelf (Sony Vaio), it was an extremely difficult decision; I had been pretty hyped up for a few days with cash in-hand to buy an Alienware. The specs on the product card for the VAIO looked great, it was very upgradeable (etc.), but buying a computer for such a low price just didn't "feel right". What did I do? I talked to the manager, made a quick trip home, and returned to the store with all 4 FS9 disks and joystick in-hand of course! My lesson on my inevitable FS-driven PC purchases there was to do whatever I needed to to gain assurances before laying out the cash...So, I guess I kinda owe these guys a little...what I was doing this time around was reading the forums to see which systems got the best and worse performances! >They were both wrong 'cause anybody with half a brain knows MOPARS RULE!Agreed!...tried the rest, now I drive the best (Ram tough)! :-kewl >> >>

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