A number of years ago we had a lively discussion concerning what many felt would be a major break through in home simulations.That was the ability to "online" place another person in your cockpit who could take control and operate the aircraft you were both flying as well as being able to communicate by voice real time.Such a facility would have endless possibilities on expanding flight simulator. It would make FS a far more enjoyable shared experience as well as allowing the potential for real world online training with an instructor who may live on the other side of the world but who could join you in your aircraft.He would see the same instrument panel, same views and terrain and would be able to take control of your aircraft.The other potential would be having a real co pilot on your jet flights who could run through checks with you, set flaps, nav boxes etc and even have conversations on the boring enroute sectors. Even take control while you go back for a cup of coffee.The possibilities are endless and exciting.This was on the front page at avsim! whether it offers what it appears to do has to be seen ? but if it does then we are onto something really big for expanding the potential of flight sim both as a training tool and its enjoyement factor.CheersPeter Sidoli>The team explains: "A few months ago we were talking about a new concept: What about being able to share your cockpit with another pilot and interact together on it? Imagine what you would be able to do with a program which can synchronize your systems and fly the same aircraft. for example, you lower the gear and the other pilot get the gear lowered on his system as well.""Having such a system allows for realistic pilot/co-pilot flights: doing checklists and taking care of your own duties reproducing in a better way what happen in the real cockpit!"The initial release, intended to enter private beta some time this Summer, will be FS2004 compatible and will function with any default aircraft, or any other aircraft written to the FS2004 SDK specification.For more information, visit gates.to.

Here's hoping that Ugo wouldn't announce it without knowing it would work, Peter! Can't wait for this myself, it'll be the biggest development for some time if it works.Of course, we'll need to develop CVR software to go with it:"Gear down""What? Say please""Shan't. I'm the Captain. Gear down""Nope. It doesn't take much to say please. 500'""Now look here, do as you're told. Gear down""When you ask nicely. 400'""I am the Captain, you are the co-pilot. GEAR DOWN""I'm qualified. I just happen to be flying FO today. 300'""Oh heck, I'll do it myself""You can't. It's on my side and I'll hit your hand if you try. 200' Decision height, sir""Gatwick Approach, we're going around ....."The mind boggles. What fun we're going to have.Mark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP FleetDC-3 Airwayshttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

I am also very excited about this announced package. What a useful tool this sim has become.Now if we could only get more real working real world instrumentation-my personal request!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=13467&page=Kurt M

KurtFor what it is worth, I have already written a private note to the developers offering my own opinion that such an idea as detailed in the link you provide is commercial suicide. Crazy. No one will want that, no one.To pair that with their excellent co-pilot development would be madness. I trust we can have one without the other, but right now that's not clear. If it's loaded as some sort of spyware, forget the lot.We shall see. I hope I'll hear back.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

Hello Peter,Thanks for your interest in our new project!The gates.to/FSNet project is still under development, but we are confident that it can be implemented otherwise, as Dark Moment notes, we would have not announced it!We anticipated that some aspects of our plan would come unexpected to some users and, before going public, we asked many expert FS users gathering many encouraging answers. We also decided to lay down as much of our plans as possible since the beginning to make things clear and avoid surprizes.About the link to the other thread provided by Kurt, that thread contains several imprecisions and pure inventions (not to speak of plain and immotivated insults).We are going to post an official answer; the thread has been locked but we know AVSIM uprightness and we are sure it will be possible to answer this well orchestrated attack to a new name in the FS add-on market, even before any product could be evaluated (and criticized, if necessary).In the meantime, we invite any interested simulation fan to read the pages at our site and to evaluate directly what we are saying. Suggestions and criticisms, even deep but constructive, are welcome and can be posted to the forum on our site, where doubts can be answered promptly and extensively.We respect all opinions; we do not claim to have THE truth in our pockets and we are ready to change our plans following grounded and motivated objections; on the other hand, personal attacks based on (deliberated?) misunderstanding and preconceptions will be of no help.Best regards,Maurizio M. Gavioli

"this well orchestrated attack"I don't believe it was an attack as such, but that people are not keen or fully understanding of what the implications of using your product are.A better detailed & explained initial description could have avoided this, but you're planning an "official answer." Just make sure it is is informative, and not just further mud-slinging.

Why not just answer the question directly? Is your program going to be displaying text ads or not?TonyDigital-Flight

Dear Sirs,After having seen so many misunderstandings in thread #13467 we think it is time to clarify them all and once forever.Adware: paid / unpaid?The concept is that the program is either used for free with ads or paid for without ads.This was said in the gates.to site (and anybody could have read it), but apparently not clearly enough, so the texts are being rephrased in a more explicitly way; our thanks to the critics for highlitghing this communication deficency (if more obscure points remain, please let us know and we will try to further improve the descriptions).This concept seemed to us a decent way to allow everybody to use the program for free, still generating some income to support further development (and ourselves). It is adopted in many widely used programs, like Eudora, Opera and many download managers, apparently without great concerns from the users.The alternative is simple:

Ugo and Maurizio,Thanks for posting the above. You are very clear. My own view after your comments - not having seen the product, but responding only to your request for input - is that people will be more than happy to pay for your co-pilot add-on, it will be so revolutionary. If you were to do a demo of any kind, I would make it time-limited. The concept of advertising being part of unregistered use of the program seems flawed, to me, in that those who use it unregistered for any length of time, thus being exposed to your advertising, are not the ones who are likely to be buying anything! Furthermore, the whole concept of advertising within FS, with possible online updating of the content, is inevitably going to arouse mistrust and worry about the manner in which this is executed. This is no reflection on your own character, it is simply a consequence of the spam-ridden online world we live in.I haven't read the linked thread since I last posted and shan't bother to; here's looking forward to the co-pilot project coming to fruition, whatever you decide to do! Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

Mark,Thanks for your input and your considerations. The point you raise that our "spam-ridden online world" may generate mistrust and worry even against the projects with the best intentions is serious and, probably, something we have under-estimated.We are confident that, once the product will be available, any unbiased user will able to recognize its uprightness and fairness but, of course, the burden of the prove lies on us.Probably, part of the problem is also in the terms used; after all, any multiplayer implementation sends data here and there, collects data and so on without much eyebrow raising.So, if we continue on this way, it will be for sure necessary to be as clear as possible, making plain that no online updating of contents goes on, that no info is sold (or anyway given) to any third party and so on and to choose carefully the terms and the language.Of course, if this will require us to hire some communication and public relation experts, it may prove cheaper to drop the idea entirely ;-) .Thanks again,

Hey, Mark!I believe I'm as anti-adware as anyone, despite the fact that cleaning client's computers of same provides a non-trivial amount of my bread and butter. So perhaps I'm the exception that proves the rule, when I say that adware *can* be done right -- since I bought some!Back in the hectic days of the Fly!II beta, we were given a number of heavy downloads, weekly. I was on dialup then, using a download manager (I forget now, something about a monkey or gorilla), which worked fine until it was unable to correctly get one weekend's record-busting 200 MB d/l. It would retrieve the zipfile (15 hrs overnight), but PKZip would always return a checksum error.After three busted d/ls, I spent three nights trying out replacements for the gorilla. The last one I tried was Headlight Software's GetRight, which was adware. The gorilla had gotten me used to adware, so I tried it. Not only was GetRight a couple of hours faster, it was the only one that retrieved the monster file without error. After enduring the ads for a couple of weeks, I went ahead and bought it. It has always been a superior performer for me and was (until I moved up to DSL in February) used almost every day. When I bought the license, that was the end of the ads. So, done right (and it sounds like gates.to is aiming to do so), adware can be successful and quality work, and I wish them every success in making a go of it, for a successful implementation would allow me to fly in the same airplane with my best friend who is 90 miles away. We could share checklists, he could be my Wizzo in a F-15 while I flew, not to mention flight instruction -- the possibilities are seeming endless and *extremely* attractive!!!It seems that a vast horde of computer users are willing to steal anything they can get online, rather than pay for it (witness the file sharing debacle). I was unable to convince my own sister that she and her kids needed to realize that using Napster to get music, when used as a substitute for buying it, was theft. In the face of this willingness of even the most reasonable people in today's culture to take whatever they can and "devil take the hindmost", I have to concede that some kind of effective protection against software piracy is necessary. I have bought licensed and keyed software, and I'm sure I will again. Adware done right can help authors get *something* for their work, and reactionaries like me who just can't stand the ads, can decide whether the usefulness of the software, combined with the peace of no ads, is worth paying the registration fee. If the fee is reasonable, there really should be no difficulty.My 2

Hello BeachComer,Thank you for your post; not only because you are accepting that we might be potentially not totally wrong (still, it is up to us to prove it, of course).But above all, because your post, together with Mark's one, demonstrates that things can be discussed, pros and cons evaluated and, in case, criticisms advanced, in a reasonable way, without preconceptions, looking at the substance.Thanks again,Maurizio

Hi,There is another group announcing a similar software, apparently for free :http://www.mcdu.comHere is what they say in their forum :http://www.mcdu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=...066585ab7adc41dQu'avons-nous dans un futur proche ? - Un logiciel pilote/copilote vous permettant en r

This is an interesting idea, but as anyone with a multi-PC sim setup should understand, the proof of the pudding is going to be in the tasting here. I have a multi-PC setup running linked sims over a 100 Mbps LAN (faster than a T3 line by a long shot) and issues like network latency and jitter from one side of my desk to the other are problematic when trying to synch up multiple instances of FS. Doing same over even high-quality wideband internet connections is a huge technical challenge. Just for starters, how do you synch the wx picture so that both pilots see same environment...how do you deal with jitter and latency across commercial long-haul data networks that aren't designed for real-time data transfer...and how do you deal with multiple control inputs simultaneously active etc etc? The list of caveats and compromises stands to be huge.In short, I'll believe it when I see it. Pre-announcements don't even faze me any more...it's all as fictional as an episode of Stargate until demonstrated. If it actually works, then we can concern ourselves over the issues of payware/adware etc. Unless of course, the idea is to have a cast of hundreds of pre-alpha testers serving as an adjunct adware audience. But hey, we're simmers, we're used to being abused by our commercial suppliers. We love that stuff!RegardsBob