19 hours ago, bgpearce01 said:

, the $50,000 they are offering vatsim is for the stats of the current users on Vatsim. 

Huh? Just for the stats, nothing else?
Then they must have some earning model in mind for the future. 
There is no way that POSON (or any such company) just burns $50.000 on a few stats, without having a plan to get those 50.000 back. 

My guess that is either through advertisements or subscriptions.

 

Luckily I live in Europe and those stats are bound to me personally. The new European GDPR dictates that I need to give consent that information is sold/shared/handed over to 3rd parties

Edited August 4, 20187 yr by Egbert Drenth
Additional info

My guess:

• Buy VATSIM
• Shutdown VATSIM
• Online flying will now be on POSCON
• You need to pay to use POSCON

Under GDPR rules Vatsim cannot sell any data for any European user without explicit consent.

S.

15 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

My guess:

• Buy VATSIM
• Shutdown VATSIM
• Online flying will now be on POSCON
• You need to pay to use POSCON

If they do that, Vatsim will go the way of the 8 track tape player. 

If I offer Paris Hilton $50 to spend the night with me, it doesn't make her a hooker...well, not unless she accepts the offer. 

But a bunch of people, ignoring the obvious difference between a ridiculous and obscene offer and actual bargaining for an act of ill repute, will still talk about it...so the guy making the offer gets some cheap publicity. 

Just sayin'

 

3 hours ago, Greggy_D said:

My guess:

• Buy VATSIM
• Shutdown VATSIM
• Online flying will now be on POSCON
• You need to pay to use POSCON

My first day at virgin many moons ago, branson came to our wings at the end of the course.  I had a chat with him and he told me his 2 favourite sayings. 

1. If it doesn't make money in a year try something else

2.theres no such thing as a free lunch. 

That was in 2000.

Davies is upto some tricks here. He's trying to make some money. Good luck to him. I'd happily pay a tenner a month to use an updated  network that had cpdlc, and good controllers. 

As much as he's not my cup of tea, I think he's quite a shwed business man

https://www.facebook.com/groups/vatsim/permalink/10160779431215602/

Quote

I'm aware many are waiting for a statement from VATSIM - we are aware of that pressure but you'll have to wait just a little longer I'm afraid: VATSIM is not owned or run by one person in one timezone and everyone involved has family and work commitments too. There will be a statement as soon as we are ready.

That said, I was wondering why I was receiving so many messages last night while I was out at dinner, with questions about something I had allegedly said yesterday, so I wanted to provide some clarity on that.

It seems FSElite have used a comment I made no less than 6 days ago, in response to Matt Davies on his Facebook page, to suggest that we had not heard anything from POSCON, and that this comment contradicted something Matt Davies had said.

First of all, to our knowledge, Matt Davies does not own POSCON. As far as we are aware he is a paid developer for them. So any communication from POSCON on something like an offer for a network would be unlikely to come from him.

Secondly, this comment was made 6 days ago in direct response to something Matt had said, totally unrelated to the widely reported offer from POSCON to a flight simulation network. As we all know, POSCON publically stated their intentions much more recently than this - less than 48 hours ago, in fact. 6 days ago there was no 'offer' on the table to any network that I'm aware of.

I have contacted FSElite and asked them to write a correction to reflect this. Lots of drama being made about something which has been reported incorrectly.

Thanks for reading.
Gunnar Lindahl

 

Yikes quite the debate going with Vatsim users for and against. POSCON sounds good with its features and modernization but if a merge or buyout doesnt happen, we are looking at very thinned out networks as some from Vatsim, and IVAO will move over. Others will stay because they dont like change or the idea.  Something doesnt seem right.   An alleged offer of 50k, be it to buyout outright or just the data? How the heck is that money going to be repaid back? You dont invest 50k and not expect it back somehow. It says it will be free, but theres something else at play here. 

lol, 

skip to 2 min into the interview 

 

VATSIM is only promising things without doing something... This is a logical development of things. POSCON seems to be in early stages, if THEY do what they promise many people will change the platform. But the (hopefully near) future will tell. 

Edited August 6, 20187 yr by Rhinozherous

On 8/4/2018 at 8:25 PM, tooting said:

Davies is upto some tricks here. He's trying to make some money.

To be clear, Matt is only the Technical Lead Manager on this project. He doesn't own it.   I don't think the 'business model' is part of his remit but I could be wrong.   

I doubt that charging to use the service would happen though as the point of POSCON is to get as many people flying on one network as possible -that is the key to a successful ATC network.  Although I would be prepared to pay for a top tier global ATC network myself.   .  I am much more interested in how they are going to support POSCON with more comprehensive controller coverage though, which at the moment does prevent many from using VATSIM.

Matt isn't everyone's cup of tea, but as a passionate flightsimmer first  - he knows what the community needs to make the experience much more amazing than it already is -  and I am confident that he will deliver.

14 hours ago, A340-4 said:

lol, 

skip to 2 min into the interview 

 

I do find it hilarious,  after POSCON's affirmation that they are building new tech to support the network,  that VATSIM have only just 'got a team together' to work on new voice CODECS having promised it to the commuinity two years ago already at their own conference.

 

2 hours ago, ErichB said:

To be clear, Matt is only the Technical Lead Manager on this project. He doesn't own it.   I don't think the 'business model' is part of his remit but I could be wrong.   

I doubt that charging to use the service would happen though as the point of POSCON is to get as many people flying on one network as possible -that is the key to a successful ATC network.  Although I would be prepared to pay for a top tier global ATC network myself.   .  I am much more interested in how they are going to support POSCON with more comprehensive controller coverage though, which at the moment does prevent many from using VATSIM.

Matt isn't everyone's cup of tea, but as a passionate flightsimmer first  - he knows what the community needs to make the experience much more amazing than it already is -  and I am confident that he will deliver.

Where's that 50k coming from? 

There's no such thing as a free lunch. 

Someone is going to want to see a return on that 

Edited August 6, 20187 yr by tooting

28 minutes ago, tooting said:

Where's that 50k coming from? 

There's no such thing as a free lunch. 

Someone is going to want to see a return on that 

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)

As a hardened cynic I sit and watch with somewhat sceptical interest. I can't see them chucking that amount of money around without having a plan for a return which I suspect involves charging users. Plus, I don't trust anything that Matt Davies is involved in, he's got his fingers in a lot of pies and has previously monetised free products (not that I'm against people earning their dues), and I loathe how some hold him to be a kind of infallible and flight sim omnipotent demigod. Hopefully Andrew Heath can be trusted but this offer to buy VATSIM data has a whiff of PR stunt about it.

VATSIM has a lot of longstanding shortcomings: outdated audio codec (who remembers Roger Wilco?), a myriad of clients (Vpilot probably the best but doesn't work well on single monitor), no model matching set (FLAI has sort of filled that void at long last), disparate ATC booking, no centralised network viewer (VATTASTIC probably the best one but still doesn't display UK ATC sectors properly) and very poor official stats presentation. ATC clients I'm no longer au fait with but it was mainly Euroscope when I last controlled.

I'd prefer not to see more fragmentation in online ATC, I already switch between IVAO and VATSIM mid-flight to maximise controller coverage. However, if POSCON ends up supplanting VATSIM it will be VATSIM's fault for sitting on their hands for years and stagnating technologically.

VATSIMs redeeming feature is the professionalism of its controllers. But there's a long queue for training, much on a "who you know" basis. The progression in VATUK is agonisingly slow, able and willing controllers should be up to S3 Approach level fairly quickly but they're left to languish as S1 Tower for hundreds of hours.

If POSCON (or IVAO for that matter) start to poach VATSIM controllers in significant numbers, it's done for.

I too would be interested to hear feedback from people who've used POSCON.

Edited August 6, 20187 yr by ckyliu