2 hours ago, duckbilled said:

Unlike Reddit, there really are people from all age groups at AVSIM

That itself is rather pejorative, friend.  Reddit's userbase has a distinct tilt, just as Avsim does, but it is a vastly diverse platform.  I would wager much more so than here.   There are old people who visit there, too.   But that's the kind of sneering that gives this place a bad name there.

As a 40-something I feel neither young nor old (or perhaps i feel both but it varies by the hour).   I visit and participate in both communities and recognize the positives and negatives of each.  Yes, reddit does have some rather childish individuals.   But it's also the hub of a *thriving* mod scene, probably the biggest in the community.  And yes, Avsim does tend towards a more mature discussion amongst folks who've been in the hobby for a long time.  But it also undeniably contains a lot of closeted, elitist thinking and arrogance that other groups find very off-putting.  Swings and roundabouts.

2 hours ago, Chock said:

I've got literally hundreds of computer games on Steam and elsewhere, and I play them frequently. In addition to this, I have loads of fancy payware aeroplanes for FSX, P3D, XPlane and DCS, plus other less popular sims including Condor etc.

This as well.  I've soloed the FSLabs Concorde across the Atlantic in full manual mode using only the CIVA INS simulator for navigation.  I've also torn things up in GTA V's absurd attack helicopter and laughed my butt off doing it.  I've spent hundreds of hours of my life playing Football Manager, and scores playing first person shooters.  I've recently sunk a huge amount of time into development for Working Title and other sim projects that many people are enjoying.  I've also recently gotten high on a Friday night (legal where I am, thankyouverymuch) and done absurd things in Totally Accurate Battle Simulator.  It's all fun and having a pointlessly scornful attitude about any of it only makes your life poorer

Edited October 21, 20205 yr by kaosfere

2 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

How much have bought from the MS Store? I've bought zero other than the sim itself. But I've bought high quality add-on airports for MSFS directly from developers such as FSDT, Flightbeam and LVFR. Why pay MS for someone else's hard work? Having a "store" is no big advantage. Besides didn't at least a few people buy the Steam version of MSFS? Is that not equivalent? Isn't XP on Steam? 

You're entire post so so soaked in love for MSFS that it's not even worth a response. 

And when MSFS hits Xbox, how many Xbox users do you think will buy from the developer instead of MSFS in game store???

On PC, I'd imagine over time the divide between those that buy on the store and on the Developers site will favor the store very much. Heck, some developers are only selling though the store (think Carenado with the Mooney and C182). MSFS doesn't expect to make all their money off of the sim, they expect to make a good portion off the marketplace store.

1 hour ago, duckbilled said:

When people get snippy on either side, they should think about it as if they are talking to their grandparent or grandchild.In reality, there isn't any one side. We all have something in common and that is what we need to remember.

A fine sentiment. Once upon a time I would have cheered, but experience has taught that those sentiments...

Go nowhere. Its too ingrained at this point into the various communities.

The only solution I've ever seen that I hoped had a good chance of working was an event like MSFS that so broadened and expanded the community demographically and otherwise that ageism/elitism would simply no longer be viable, since broad swaths would no longer tolerate it.

What's actually happening is that those new people being drawn recently into the hobby are (not that surprisingly) finding other places to congregate, and likely never the twain shall meet.

Edited October 21, 20205 yr by HiFlyer

On 8/20/2020 at 3:42 AM, rtodepart said:

Man listen if you get any golf related products in the sim you better be prepared to see a 2 mile long post about how tiger woods was on YouTube  trying to golf on MSFS2020 and he said that the ball simulated in FS2020 is not really as rounded out as the real golf ball is .... and the funny thing is that there’s going to be a few IKEA pilots and golf players that will agree with it just to stear things up .

Actually a truly round golf ball would be a flaw, everyone knows the dimples make the ball fly better.

15 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

What's actually happening is that those new people being drawn recently into the hobby are (not that surprisingly) finding other places to congregate, and likely never the twain shall meet.

I'd have to scroll back through the topic list, but I'm pretty sure I've seen some "never simmed before" newbies posting here already.

 

22 minutes ago, eslader said:

I'd have to scroll back through the topic list, but I'm pretty sure I've seen some "never simmed before" newbies posting here already.

There will always be new people. what I was talking about was the expected "flood" brought on by MSFS, and even the "flood" of mods that would normally find a home in this community, but are instead going anyplace but.

Instead, there is a uptick of new venues with rapidly growing populations.

Just two months ago, Asobo/Microsoft congratulated Reddit-Flightsim for jumping to 100,000 members. Two moths later, they are closing in on 123,000, and other sites are exploding as well...

Edited October 21, 20205 yr by HiFlyer

36 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

There will always be new people. what I was talking about was the expected "flood" brought on by MSFS, and even the "flood" of mods that would normally find a home in this community, but are instead going anyplace but.

Instead, there is a uptick of new venues with rapidly growing populations.

Just two months ago, Asobo/Microsoft congratulated Reddit-Flightsim for jumping to 100,000 members. Two moths later, they are closing in on 123,000, and other sites are exploding as well...

Agreed. Aside from this site slipping into obsolescence, what is the solution? Is there a solution? Is anyone thinking about trying to come up with one? Happy to join a blue ribbon panel to come up with one.

I was concerned about this a few months ago - not about new sites or new people. I was concerned that this site would become irrelevant. The lack of files in the library is what brought this issue to my attention.

 

42 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Just two months ago, Asobo/Microsoft congratulated Reddit-Flightsim for jumping to 100,000 members. Two moths later, they are closing in on 123,000, and other sites are exploding as well...

But how often do you read anything of note about MSFS on r/flightsim? There's a ton of screenshots of sunsets, cities and stunts, but the helpful stuff is buried. This is not a knock on reddit as there are other subs that cover MSFS. 

That's why AVSim seems to have so many "new" members. Some aren't newcomers to flightsims but they just had no reason to post until MSFS came along. 

Just now, jabloomf1230 said:

But how often do you read anything of note about MSFS on r/flightsim? There's a ton of screenshots of sunsets, cities and stunts, but the helpful stuff is buried. This is not a knock on reddit as there are other subs that cover MSFS. 

And that's why (I suspect) many people are still here. The population of Reddit seems (to me) to be more diverse and cosmopolitan, yet the site structure was never intended for long term organization and retrieval of subjects.

This affects somebody like me, quite a bit more than younger folks raised in such venues.

This is an issue (for me) on other social sites such as Facebook, Discord and etc, even as I'm simultaneously drawn to those places by a relative lack of conformity and orthodoxy as to what constitutes "real" simming.

There is a recent incident here that while some may find it annoying to rehash it, is a bit illustrative, and that was the recent schism regarding VR.

The forum (Including the mods) due to its demographics I believe, was much more oriented towards what many outsiders would consider to be antiquated technology, IE TrackIR rather than this newfangled VR stuff which I also believe no mods here partake of.

This ended up with a notable antipathy to the newer technology, to the point were it felt that discussion was being actively suppressed, and there are many examples.

This was observed and commented on in other venues, and... Not surprisingly the vr sub forums here are pretty much dead. I myself now avoid them for other places that were and are more accepting, including reddit and other new and upcoming sites.

To the outside view, this only cemented Avsims reputation as a forum of the past, and not a place for young simmers looking for fun.

I considered it then (and now) as a huge miss on a golden opportunity to create mindshare for this site as the new place to be for aviation vr, and it was thrown away, in my view with extreme prejudice.

Thus, when MSFS vr arrives, and a flood of newcomers jump in, drawn by the ability to partake in that exciting new experience..... (not to mention the new Nvidia cards making that experience more enjoyable than ever) I believe (lets find out) that they won't be coming here, by and large. That opportunity was thrown away, and it will once again be other venues that reap the benefit.

And I suspect Avsim won't care one bit.

30 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

 

Thus, when MSFS vr arrives, and a flood of newcomers jump in, drawn by the ability to partake in that exciting new experience..... (not to mention the new Nvidia cards making that experience more enjoyable than ever) I believe (lets find out) that they won't be coming here, by and large. That opportunity was thrown away, and it will once again be other venues that reap the benefit.

And I suspect Avsim won't care one bit.

To be brutally honest much of the population of this forum is study level airline focussed and a newcomer could easily get the impression that is seen here as the only "proper" way to fly a sim.  VR is not going to bring  a lot to the table for people flying long haul routes in an A380 to make money for their virtual airline,

So yes a good part of the Avsim community is not going to see any point in VR (the same way they see no point in FFB) and not only will not care but would PREFER the VR people go elsewhere and stop muddying up their little nest with all this new fangled hipster techo stuff.

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

...normally find a home in this community, but are instead going anyplace but.

Shame, right? This place can sometimes be a lot like another “legacy” aviation forum I visit every once in a while....only to remember 5 minutes later why I stopped frequenting that particular forum.

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

And I suspect Avsim won't care one bit.

You are preaching hot fire in this thread and I'm 100% behind you... except for this comment.   "Avsim", as much as a site can be an entity, does care -- see the various threads that have popped up recently with folks complaining about the number of different places they need to go to keep up with mods, and asking why the Avsim MSFS library is such a ghost town.  Or, even better... passive-aggressively suggesting that people should be posting their mods here, not elsewhere, because everything should be in "one" place -- and, of course, that place should be Avsim.   (This last one was one particular individual, but it's simply a more extreme form of the same lines of thought.)

They notice, and they care.  It's just that there's -- outside of folks like us who harp on it when it's appropriate -- either a lack of recognition of the causes or a willingness to change.

Take, for example, the recurring discussion about the rules for linking external sites here.  It's an area of constant confusion for newcomers (and even some not-so-newcomers) and presents one of the barriers that keeps new people from participating here.  I've had actual discussions elsewhere with folks who have wanted to share things here but who knew there were rules for what you could link to -- yet did not know what the rules were, couldn't find them on the site anywhere, and didn't want to have the Avsim Cops berating them for not following a rule that's not codified or presented in a manner that's readily accessible.  If I hadn't set them straight and encouraged them to post, we would have lost their contributions to the community.  And I know I've seen moderators having to explain it here, repeatedly, and seeming frustrated at having to do it.

Since I always want to try to be part of the solution, after one recent incidence of this I wrote up my concerns and posted them in Hangar Chat along with a proposed solution.  If you check that thread out... it got three likes and all of zero responses.  No one cared.  So the problem continues, a barrier to participation still exists, and we discourage new blood from contributing.

Or, similarly, this comment in the "MSFS File Library is up!" thread from an author who wanted to share a popular Toronto scenery package that currently has a five-star rating and almost 3000 downloads on flightsim.to.  They went out of their way to try to do exactly what people here claim to want: share stuff with in the Avsim library.   They even detailed all the obstacles they ran up against, a number of which I had highlighted in a previous discussion on the topic, and took the effort to actually post about them -- albeit with an understandable tone of frustration.   I chose not to respond because I'd have nothing to add other than "yeah, I know" and I don't like to always be That Guy.   But I was hoping else someone would acknowledge the problem, or make some suggestions, or even offer the author encouragement and thanks for trying.  But nope, no one said anything in response to that.  It was like...  ok, thanks for coming, and by they way why is nothing in our library?

Not to be grim, but I suspect that the average age of the user of this site is steadily creeping upwards.  At some point, if the culture and the format don't change, the whole thing will no longer be sustainable and no amount of past glory will keep the doors open.

I care enough to keep trying. So I grind that axe now and then, hoping maybe a few more people way pay attention this time.

 

Edited October 21, 20205 yr by kaosfere

Some of it isn't necessarily Avsim's fault. The Reddit guys are by and large never going to come here. Both because Reddit people tend to go to Reddit for nearly everything, and because there's a lot of chaff flying around on Reddit about how Avsim is a bunch of jackbooted (disallowed word describing mid-century German fascism) mods stifling free speech, etc.

As for caring... I really don't want to read a bunch of threads telling the mods that they're (disallowed word describing mid-century German fascism), so yeah... I guess I don't care that those guys aren't coming here. 😉

 

 

Edited October 21, 20205 yr by eslader

44 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

Not to be grim, but I suspect that the average age of the user of this site is steadily creeping upwards

I agree that over the past decade that might have been true, but there a lot of new faces here and they don't seem to be dottering crazy uncles.  It's a small percentage of the MSFS user base that care about the details. But it's a small percentage of a huge user pool.  Even on r/MicrosoftFlightSim there are growing numbers of users complaining about bugs in the sim. And what's wrong with that? If Tesla owners didn't complain about issues, Elon Musk might never fix problems. Being a fan of something doesn't mean saying your team either doesn't have flaws or cant improve. Just check out any sports team's subreddit. Criticism isn't considered trolling.

53 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

Take, for example, the recurring discussion about the rules for linking external sites here.  It's an area of constant confusion for newcomers (and even some not-so-newcomers) and presents one of the barriers that keeps new people from participating here.  I've had actual discussions elsewhere with folks who have wanted to share things here but who knew there were rules for what you could link to -- yet did not know what the rules were, couldn't find them on the site anywhere, and didn't want to have the Avsim Cops berating them for not following a rule that's not codified or presented in a manner that's readily accessible.

My heart kind of sunk when I read that a while ago. I knew it was going to end badly, and probably totally discourage others from trying in the future. Why run in circles here when you can take a minute or two to post your stuff elsewhere?

56 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

I wrote up my concerns and posted them in Hangar Chat along with a proposed solution.  If you check that thread out... it got three likes and all of zero responses.  No one cared.

Not sure that nobody cared. Its just that rocking the boat seems futile. Even the post of mine that you are replying to was written with a sense of futility, and honestly I was pretty much expecting to be hammered.

58 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

Or, similarly, this comment in the "MSFS File Library is up!" thread from an author who wanted to share a popular Toronto scenery package that currently has a five-star rating and almost 3000 downloads on flightsim.to.  They went out of their way to try to do exactly what people here claim to want: share stuff with in the Avsim library.   They even detailed all the obstacles they ran up against, a number of which I had highlighted in a previous discussion on the topic, and took the effort to actually post about them -- albeit with an understandable tone of frustration. 

Saw that one too. I thought the whole situation was sad, and was pretty sure we would never see that individual again.

1 hour ago, kaosfere said:

Not to be grim, but I suspect that the average age of the user of this site is steadily creeping upwards.  At some point, if the culture and the format don't change, the whole thing will no longer be sustainable and no amount of past glory will keep the doors open.

I've suspected the same, for quite some time. There are Avsim expatriates on other venues that ask me repeatedly why I am still here. The only answer that smacks of truth is that I do still find value, plus its familiar place that has been my flight simulation home for so long that its hard to even think of leaving, and finally because after all this time, it seems I am dusty little creature of habit.