POSCON online flying

[Victoroos 205]

hm, wait, those guys in the video aren't from poscon right? from the donation?

Odd.. odd odd.

No, fragmentation would be bad.

 

[Victoroos 205]

4 hours ago, ckyliu said:

centralised network viewer (VATTASTIC probably the best one but still doesn't display UK ATC sectors properly) and very poor official stats

Agree with everything.
Just maybe.. accumap is in beta.. and I believeit does the UK sectors correct..right?

http://accumap-project.com/

Edited August 6, 2018 by Victoroos

[ckyliu 1,749]

Ooh yes I completely forgot about accumap, shame on me! Indeed it is reported to do UK sectors properly. Just annoying you can't click on the ATC symbols for pop info info at the moment (strangely you can click the airport if there's no ATC, perhaps it's just my browser?)

Edited August 6, 2018 by ckyliu

[skelsey 765]

4 hours ago, ckyliu said:

VATSIMs redeeming feature is the professionalism of its controllers. But there's a long queue for training, much on a "who you know" basis.

Unfortunately, it is the training process which produces those professional controllers - other networks may wave people through quickly but the result is that the quality suffers.

In fairness to VATSIM UK, the training process is anything but "who you know" -- it is quite scrupulously not that. The issue is that there are literally hundreds of people signing up to be controllers in the UK every single month and there simply isn't the capacity to train them all at once.

What I would say is that whilst your criticisms are valid - the problem is that "VATSIM" isn't really in a position to "do" any of this. VATSIM is a community driven by volunteers - it's not like Gunnar can just snap his fingers and instruct someone to develop a new voice codec, or code a new client etc. With 80,000 active members one would think that there would be an abundance of people with the technical know-how to do this stuff, but in practice hardly anyone ever comes forward to actually do it. As with pretty much all such organisations, the vast majority are happy to take out the enjoyment but quite reluctant to step forward and contribute.

As someone might have once said, "ask not what your network can do for you, but what you can do for your network".

Edited August 6, 2018 by skelsey

[skelsey 765]

27 minutes ago, Victoroos said:

wait, those guys in the video aren't from poscon right?

Haha - absolutely not!

[ErichB 3,638]

44 minutes ago, skelsey said:

What I would say is that whilst your criticisms are valid - the problem is that "VATSIM" isn't really in a position to "do" any of this. VATSIM is a community driven by volunteers - it's not like Gunnar can just snap his fingers and instruct someone to develop a new voice codec, or code a new client etc. With 80,000 active members one would think that there would be an abundance of people with the technical know-how to do this stuff, but in practice hardly anyone ever comes forward to actually do it. As with pretty much all such organisations, the vast majority are happy to take out the enjoyment but quite reluctant to step forward and contribute.

I have not once seen a public announcement from VATSIM on social media or the popular websites asking for expertise from community members/VATSIM users to do any of that.  Instead, all they have done, at their own conference (Connexxion) is promise that it would be done - which was framed in such a way that it was understood that they had they capability lined up to do it.

Although I understand the limitations of a voluntary organisation, why have they just not been transparent  about the very obvious limitations to achieve their promises?   Perhaps then, help would have been forthcoming.

 

[fluffyflops 1,848]

8 hours ago, ErichB said:

We won't know the details until both parties have been transparent about what's going on.  If £50K is paid, then I agree it will have to be recouped somehow and a sub service for a minimum monthly fee does seem logical.    I still doubt that will be the case as the POSCON website specifically says:

iAnd best of all, it's completely FREE.

(I wasn't shouting - that was a copy paste)

I've telling you man. There ain't nothing in this world for free nothing. 

50k is alot of money and that's even if Davies spends 400 a week on morrisons shop (like he showed on his stream) 

I'll wager in 5 years we will all be on vatsim with the crappy codecs and mumbling pre pubescent  high pitched 11year  tower controllers saying trrreee instead of three 

[skelsey 765]

1 hour ago, ErichB said:

I have not once seen a public announcement from VATSIM on social media or the popular websites asking for expertise from community members/VATSIM users to do any of that.  Instead, all they have done, at their own conference (Connexxion) is promise that it would be done - which was framed in such a way that it was understood that they had they capability lined up to do it.

Although I understand the limitations of a voluntary organisation, why have they just not been transparent  about the very obvious limitations to achieve their promises?   Perhaps then, help would have been forthcoming.

 

In fairness - as I recall (and correct me if I have got the timeline wrong) that announcement was made very soon after Gunnar took over. Between then and now, there has been a concerted drive to recruit to the tech positions, open up the infrastructure and encourage more development, get rid of the NDA etc and a number of appointments have been made to fill the technical VP positions that were vacant for a very long time.

As such my understanding is that the project is very much under way - I don't think Gunnar ever promised anything instantly but I think it's clear that the wheels are in motion and one would hope that will soon start to bear fruit.

Having said that - I don't think it's ever been a secret that nothing gets done in VATSIM unless someone sticks their hand up to do it -- it's never been a greatly centralised organisation, but anyone taking a look at the staff pages over the last eight or nine years would have been able to see that the technical VP positions were vacant. I'm certainly not saying that the prior leadership did everything right -- far from it and the fact that Gunnar has come in and grabbed things by the scruff of its neck is long overdue -- but equally as members of the community we can't just place all the blame on the leadership. It's all of our network and it's up to all of us to contribute and make it better, whether by helping out on a local level with training/documentation/admin/helping new members etc right on up to coding and development for those with the skill base and it shouldn't just be a case of waiting to be asked (although for sure it's not a bad thing for that prompt to be put out there).

[Petraeus 147]

16 minutes ago, tooting said:

 

I'll wager in 5 years we will all be on vatsim with the crappy codecs and mumbling pre pubescent  high pitched 11year  tower controllers saying trrreee instead of three 

A bit OT,  but when I learnt radio in the UK I was taught to say 'tree', 'fower', 'niner' etc for the sake of clarity.

[fluffyflops 1,848]

Probably what it is then. 

[ckyliu 1,749]

@skelseyBeing a voluntary community organisation is no excuse; VATSIM leadership chose to be in a postion to not develop anything, they never publicly reached out for technical or financial support. VATSIM effectively coasted for the best part of a decade, their offering has not evolved and now they are in danger of being overtaken. User contributions aren't easy either without a framework. Almost all advances have been external with little official support. I'm sure just asking for donations would've raised money to fund significant developments.

Other voluntary organisations manage.

I like VATSIM and it is my preferred network but one cannot be blind to the issues plaguing it.

Edited August 6, 2018 by ckyliu

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

46 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

@skelseyBeing a voluntary work community organisation is no excuse; VATSIM leadership chose to be in a postion to not develop anything, they never publicly reached out for technical or financial support. VATSIM effectively coasted for the best part of a decade, their offering has not evolved and now they are in danger of being overtaken. User contributions aren't easy either without a framework. I'm sure just asking for donations would've raised money to fund significant developments.

Other voluntary organisations manage.

Yeah, that is the cold hard true right there.

You know, it's the Founders who make the decisions about development.  Lefteris Kalamaras is one of the VATSIM founders. Since he's a VATSIM owner and a professional programmer, I wonder what he has to say about all this.

 

 

 

[skelsey 765]

52 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

I'm sure just asking for donations would've raised money to fund significant developments.

How? What would X thousand pounds do? It's not like they could go out and buy a pilot client/network system off the shelf.

Money, I would imagine, is not really an issue here. VATSIM owns very little - the servers and bandwidth are donated as far as I know, so there's no great infrastructure cost to meet. The issue is expertise and willing volunteers. I suppose with a significant amount of cash they could hire some professional developers, but I can't imagine $50k, or even $100k, stretching terribly far in that regard. It's also simply not how VATSIM, or IVAO for that matter, have ever worked -- they have always been community-led organisations with freeware developers donating their time for the benefit of all. Some of us remember why VATSIM came about in the first place, and why the BoG and the Founders have little appetite for soliciting financial donations.

As I say, the prior BoG certainly didn't display a lot of gumption -- something which has changed with a change of leadership. Would it have been better if the previous Board had been more pro-active? Definitely, but unfortunately one can't change the past. I still maintain that there's never been anything to stop any of the 80,000+ members from putting their hand up over the last decade and saying "I think the voice codec could do with updating -- can I help with that?", but very few did and the BoG didn't push them to so, again, there's nothing that can be done to change the past but things are changing going forward and that was a process that started well before people were talking about POSCON.

[ckyliu 1,749]

VATSIM have officially declined the offer from POSCON and given the alleged terms I don't blame them. I wonder if all this was a PR stunt? 

https://www.vatsim.net/news/joint-statement-vatsim-founders-board-governors

Edited August 7, 2018 by ckyliu

[Victoroos 205]

14 hours ago, ckyliu said:

Ooh yes I completely forgot about accumap, shame on me! Indeed it is reported to do UK sectors properly. Just annoying you can't click on the ATC symbols for pop info info at the moment (strangely you can click the airport if there's no ATC, perhaps it's just my browser?)

If you zoom in a bit, you can actually click on it.. But for very spiffy to say the least.