3 minutes ago, Chock said:

Probably more than you think if you actually watch my stuff; I might not actually come right out and say it, but I suspect I make it fairly apparent what I think , and where there really is a big issue, I make that fairly plain. For example the Captain Sim Cripple Seven fiasco where they were attempting to 'do a Papa Tango' with liveries; you can still see my pinned comment about that up at the top of my comments on the youtube review even though the situation is now resolved (and I have absolutely no intention of unpinning it either). So whilst I don't actually say 'don't buy' it on that review, I'm pretty sure anyone who has watched the conclusion at the end of it where it is taxying in after landing, can fairly easily determine what I think about it personally, even though I do leave people to draw the conclusion themselves.

I guess it's the 'glass half full, versus glass half empty' position. It's the same thing, but I'm inclined to at least be optimistic until evidence proves otherwise as to the potential for patches and improvements down the line. However, if that does not happen, then it gets stored up as an factor  which then impacts any subsequent product reviews from the same developer as a point to mention in regards to support. Thus these things do have an impact in the longer term on how I approach talking about a particular developer and how likely they are to stand by their product.

A good example of that is the recent Nemeth Yakovlev 18T, which I held off on reviewing for a short while because initially it absolutely sucked in terms of frame rates. However, I suspected this was something Nemeth would address quickly, and they have, so now I have a review of it in progress. It still has some things I'll be critical off in my review, but the FPS will not now be one of them.

I think the key here is... you are actually trying to gather subscribers to your channel... 😉 I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that you are also not against the idea of receiving future releases as free-of-charge review copies, therefore your interests in not making developers mad is built into your business model. I, on the other hand, am not at all interested in any sort of following, nor do I care what some developers might think of me. Therefore, our approach is bound to be different. And yes, I have seen most of your videos. They are filled with a lot of knowledge and background info and I have a lot of respect for you - I simply can't take your recommendations seriously after you said things like "if you are interested in history of military aircraft, this MScenery Skyhawk may be worth buying" - anyone suggesting a purchase of MScenery aircraft simply HAS to be out of his word not allowed mind 😉 ... but there is a lot of other value in your videos. Cheers!

1 hour ago, BostonJeremy77 said:

I think the key here is... you are actually trying to gather subscribers to your channel... 😉 I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that you are also not against the idea of receiving future releases as free-of-charge review copies, therefore your interests in not making developers mad is built into your business model. I, on the other hand, am not at all interested in any sort of following, nor do I care what some developers might think of me. Therefore, our approach is bound to be different. And yes, I have seen most of your videos. They are filled with a lot of knowledge and background info and I have a lot of respect for you - I simply can't take your recommendations seriously after you said things like "if you are interested in history of military aircraft, this MScenery Skyhawk may be worth buying" - anyone suggesting a purchase of MScenery aircraft simply HAS to be out of his word not allowed mind 😉 ... but there is a lot of other value in your videos. Cheers!

Actually, if you watch that Skyhawk review of mine, from timestamp 25:30 onwards, what I actually said was the following: 'it's difficult to recommend it with those visual anomalies'. This comment was followed by me also adding: 'If you are prepared to put up with all the things I mentioned, then go for it, but I've got to be honest and say at the moment 'do I recommend it?' - NO'. You can check if you like, that is what I said, I know, I just watched it again to make sure of this.

So it's not unknown for me to to say 'nope' about stuff if I really do think something is not worth having. Thus the comment with regard to people into history possibly getting it, was with the caveats of me basically saying 'if they sort out the anomalies, or if you are prepared to put up with them and if there is a better repaint or you are prepared to paint it yourself, you might give it a shot.' This is hardly what I would class as a glowing recommendation for anyone other than a die hard person desperate for an A4 in their sim when this is the only choice, and so the inference is pretty clear from that comment that I am actually not really recommending it, especially when as noted, it was one of the rare occasions where I came right out and said so.

With regard to the desire to garner success for my channel, whilst I'm not opposed to the notion, since having people watch stuff you make is after all the point of videos, there are many more things I could do or could have done to cynically gain subscribers simply for the sake of it if that was my sole objective. I am on record as having said when MSFS was still not released, that I refused to do any of those mirroring the MSFS official releases just to garner views and was critical of numerous people doing that for the lazy and cynical reasons people were indulging in doing so. You only have to look at the channels which did do that stuff and the fact that they are now rarely if ever doing flight sim stuff at all, to know it was just a cheap way for them to gain views.

Similarly, it would be easier for me to gain subscribers if I kept content down to below ten minutes - I know this from the channel analytics - but that would compromise the ability to offer a useful video which covered stuff in detail and longer videos can always be fast-forwarded or skipped if people want to watch something specific in the review, thus it is user utility I'm prioritising, not popularity, So whilst I do try and gain subscribers, since obviously I would like the effort I go into making stuff actually end up being seen, I try to gain them on merit, not at the expense of compromising the utility of it.

It's also true that I have had (just two) freebie review flight sim products (whereas there are over 160 videos on my channel though, so freebies are not a big part of the content), but even so, it's worth noting that one of these review copy freebies was the Real Physics Dorand AR1 200 WW1 biplane, and I was not shy about criticising some features of that in spite of getting a freebie, specifically, the missing crew, the texturing perhaps not being to everyone's taste, the lack of a manual, missing forward machine gun, plus a few other bits and bats. The other free one was the Big Radials P40B, which is of course excellent and particularly for a first effort from a new development team, so it's not really true to say that I'm not critical of stuff I get for free, because as noted, I don't tend to get freebies, and of the two I have had, one was great and the other warranted a few minor criticisms but is worth having, and that is how the reviews of them went in terms of content.

It's similarly true that years ago, youtube did contact me and asked me if I wanted to monetise the channel, and I said no at the time (this was when the criteria for such an offer was different; I think t was based on the length of time you had been making stuff). Nowadays the criteria is 4,000 hours of public viewing time and 1,000 subscribers, and I do already tick the view criteria box by a very long way, so it would perhaps only take one or two 'popular' videos to tick the other box if I was in a hurry to do so, since I think I'm only abour 200-odd subscribers off that target, but I'm not in any rush to get to that point, I daresay it'll come, but if and when it does, it will be off merit, because as my dad usefully told me many years ago, the one thing you will never get back, is your reputation if you throw it away.

I should also point out that the truth of the matter is that to make about $500 Dollars off a youtube video, you need approximately 500,000 views of that video; so even if my channel does get to a point where it could pull advertising revenue, I don't think I'm going to be driving a Rolls Royce any time soon unless I started live-streaming Fortnite and  Minecraft videos, and I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for me to do that garbage. Interestingly however, what I do plan on doing in the future, is speaking to MAG (Manchester Airport Group) about making video content related to my aviation job at the airport, and I hope they will be amenable to the idea. I already spoke to my employers (Menzies Aviation) about it a couple of weeks ago, so that might be fun.

Back on the topic at hand of this thread. I absolutely do think some of the tosh that gets banged out for not only MSFS, but other sims too, is worthy of criticism, but I am aware too that some people are happy to drive a 777 with 747 avionics. I'm not one of them, but I wouldn't stand in the way of anyone who did like that kind of thing, although in all honesty, I think anything over a tenner price tag for that kind of stuff is too much, and in some cases, even that is asking too much. But people don't need me to shoot Captain Sim up the @rse on a review, all I need to do is show the product and Captain Sim will already be doing a fine job of that for themselves if their current form is anything to go by. 🤣

Edited July 7, 20214 yr by Chock

Sounds fair. 

There are a bunch of free conversions from FSX to MSFS with mixed cockpits at Flightsim.to. The authors loudly proclaim that they do not have a realistic flight model. I like to try them out and I think they are often fun to fly. They are also easily erased if one doesn't like them.

I do realize this is not the same as someone charging for similar conversions. I guess if they are totally up front about what they are selling, then it's not so terrible. If, however they pretend these planes are something they are not, then that's just wrong.

That Embraer flightdeck does look like its out of FS2004, Its like different panel elements were just pasted on  there using MS Paint. 

However these kinds of addons are not going away and they never will. Many gamers (through not fault of their own as they may be n00bs) dont know the inaccuracies mentioned (such as seeing Airbus references on the Embraer screens or 747 data on the 777 screens). 

They just want to get in and go. For many who utilize the game as a virtual tourist application they just want a nice external model because the jet will mostly be flown from the external cam view. Nothing wrong with any of this, whether the gamer is "study level" wearing full uniform and Captains hat to do 15hr real time flight  in a hyper-real A350 or the casual doing loops in a 747 both are playing with virtual planes in their own way and thats where the fun is 😃

Edited July 7, 20214 yr by ThrottleUp

17 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Not to mention the sweeping brush of calling all developer's "lazy" which I think violates his own terms of conduct at FSElite per policy. 

How much experience does Calum Martin have with the MSFS SDK, specifically with gauge development?

Does he really think PMDG have an aversion to income?

Demanding developers to "stop"?  Yikes!  Maybe Calum can help us all out and show us how to do gauge development with the MSFS SDK (WASM, Coherent, etc.) ... that would be proactive.  Glad it was just an "opinion" piece at FSElite ... shame he thinks we're all lazy.  Hopefully he does some research into exactly what the issues are with the SDK.

Cheers, Rob.

Sorry but that is not an excuse for third party developers to release half baked add-ones. As a developer, it is your responsibility to figure out things to release things at "acceptable" level. Sure you are going to blame the documentation, but there are other channels like forums, discord to ask questions and now you have many open source projects in github where you can see how things are done and you can do try and error. Why I say this? Because of my work as software engineer for the past 12 years, this has been always what I do, half of my time doing research, try and error, look at existing projects, asking questions to the project maintainers in order for my project to reach at least the minimum acceptable level for the consumers. 

 

 

This 'problem' is an inflated bubble that will pop like the stock market crash.  Very casual simmers that dont really care about such inaccuracies are likely to lose interest in short time.   Those that peaks their interest and dive into the hobby further, will want to look into more accurate aircraft.   The driving force of flight simulation is quality addons.   FSX lasted so long for that reason, because the base sim certainly didnt cut it.  Most dedicated to the hobby will understand who put out high quality textures, weather making, high fidelity aircraft, immaculate and detailed sceneries, liveries, and cameras just to mention a few.   

Unfortunately this will carry on with another wave when the xbox version hits the market.   In due time you will then have alot of filtering action of sim and game flyers.   Casual included, but these ones will eventually have an appreciation for the finer points in addons.  These mish mash addons are not going to carry on other than leaving a black mark of reputation for this hobby that portrays MSFS as something that lacks serious flyers.  But the outstanding developers we all know will persist.   In the end what  benefits all is MSFS thriving with hard core serious simmers as well as casual flyers that simply enjoy flying, but recognize it needs to be somewhat accurate and not just a play toy. 

 

9 hours ago, Chock said:

Badly-written opinionated tosh for the most part.

I completely agree. I'll make up my own mind as to how I'll spend my money on flight sim addons, and if I decide to buy 100 Bredok and Virtualcol airplanes and gift them to inmates at Rikers Island, I'll do exactly that!

As for some no-name website, whose main raison d' etre (look, Ma, I threw in some fancy French words😉) is posting wallpapers of product release announcements, with the occasional "review" thrown in for good measure telling me what to buy, well, I'll just hand it over to this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBQvt-t6NcA

It does not bother me that they slap default systems in some of these planes honestly. What does bother me is not being upfront about it. Its ok do what works for them, just tell everyone up front that the product borrows the default assetts.

I don't go any further back than Fs95 but since then, it has been possible and indeed routine to add default instruments to home made panels, freeware and payware aircraft models. I don't recall any loud voices protesting about that and I would expect that in due course, as P3D have done, bespoke gauges will be created. It will take time for developers of all kinds to master the intricacies of this still new simulator and we should allow them that time.

 

14 hours ago, BostonJeremy77 said:

Rob, I completely disagree. Moreover, I blame Bredok for paving the way for the even more inferior products. And by inferior, I don't mean "my version of inferior", I mean FACTUALLY. Like the recently released KingAir based on YOUR work AND incompatible with it at the same time. Nice tip of a hat towards the WT developers, eh? We are gonna make a commercial product incorporating their work AND will make people choose between the original WT CJ4 and my aircraft - they can't have both. 

You're entirely within your rights to disagree. 🙂  However, I personally feel like pinning things like the KA on Bredok is specious. You're basically making a slippery slope argument that anything that is "factually" inferior to anything else is encouraging even further inferior products.  Which... may actually be true to an extent.  But if that's the case, it's not something that can be uniquely applied at the tier of Bredok and not above.   Are, say, MilViz encouraging people like Bredok to do what they're doing, because MilViz themselves produce products that, as great as they are, some would say are "inferior" to those of PMDG?

At what point does creating something other than a Bentley mean you're personally culpable for the Yugo?

(And that's not a slam on MilViz, not at all.   I own a great quantity of their stuff, more than I do PMDG's.   I was just looking for two respected names which some might argue are in different tiers of quality.)

42 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Agree, I've been doing that since age 16, professionally since age 24 (I'm 57 now).  A typical working day is 8am to 3am including weekends (all nighters if a big client is involved).

I post on MS dev forum, it "should" be the place post for my projects ... anyone wants to help feel free to chime in on one of my threads there.  If I got any answers or support (which I haven't), I would love to bring a "minimum acceptable level to my customers" ... happy customers = better sales = more development.

The sweeping statements we're "lazy" is puerile at best and certainly isn't going to accomplish anything the community wants.  

I know what users want and I agree with their feedback but there are real roadblocks with the SDK and sadly information is scarce as is the documentation ... rarely any public developer support from Asobo most seems to be done behind doors and yet there is a public developer forum??

Cheers, Rob.

Rob, 

 

I will preface it with saying I have very little to do with software development - my career is in medicine, but I HAVE worked as a Network Engineer building servers and LAN networks in the ancient days before medical school. 

Without knowing anything technical in regards to your post in the Dev Forum, I have some questions that are real and not meant to poke fun or accuse anyone. Considering your product deals with seasons, are you aware of Bijan's Seasons product? Is there no such thing as developer networking in flight simulations? Are you not able to say... reach out to Bijan Habashi and ask for his assistance? In medicine, it's a fairly common practice - as an oncologist, if I have a hole in understanding something, I am able to reach out to colleagues (even though they may run competing practices) and seek advice or insight. Networking is a huge part of the profession and it's done for the sake of furthering our knowledge and scientific progress. Does the same not apply for software development? ESPECIALLY because you are all in this together on a completely new platform? The other thought is... I am not sure how much Asobo can help you with your questions because I have a feeling that they have no idea at this point - the seasons feature will come out next year and WHO KNOWS what's gonna change? I feel that the sim is very much a moving target for developers right now. You can come out with something that MAY get completely broken by the sim update. Every time there is a major update, things change - sometimes things change for reasons only understood by Asobo. So I don't know how much help Asobo is able to provide to you on the Seasons product. 

That's my two cents. 

3 hours ago, CaptainNick said:

It does not bother me that they slap default systems in some of these planes honestly. What does bother me is not being upfront about it. Its ok do what works for them, just tell everyone up front that the product borrows the default assetts.

I agree with this. I dont think it will affect their sales negatively either and will in fact make people respect them more for being upfront. 

So the dev could put in their description something along the lines of:

• Not a a complex "study level" plane
• Uses resources from the default 747 (FMC & panel displays)
• Uses resources from the the default A320 (display on panel)
• Uses resources from the default Citation Longitude (panel display)

Edited July 7, 20214 yr by ThrottleUp

2 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I don't have problem with bad reviews, fair enough, but the article referenced in this thread was not productive or helpful in anyway, shape, or form.  I'd suggest FSElite get some developer context and bring it to Asobo and find out the issues rather than a game of "bash developers" as lazy.  If Calum wants to come over and spend a week sitting with me watching what I do, he's welcome but he'll need to sign an NDA.  The rhetoric is getting tedious but he's more than entitled to his opinion just as I am to a rebuttal.

Rob, in your case, that is absolutely legit and obviously you are hitting a limitations, you have done your homework and you are reaching a blocker. This is something out of your hand and I absolutely agree with you, Asobo should address this although my gut feeling is, they haven't reached that point yet to look at the seasons lol.

Back to that article, this is obviously directly into the likes of CaptainSim who didn't do the basic thing, like literally, changing the 747 to 777 label in the FMC which is extremely easy if a small research has been done and instead, release a complete junk. Literally for these likes, I would call them lazy developers as well and in fact, it is even a disgrace to call them software developers if you know what I mean since you and I share the same software development background as we both agree, big chunk of our job require us to research things to satisfy our clients.