Robert W

Yes, I have a Senior Staff Reviewer working on it...as soon as it is submitted for editing I will get it published right away as I know there are a lot of anxious simmers waiting for the latest report.

AVSIM is not "mostly" volunteers, we are ALL volunteers. I've been with AVSIM for 12 of those 15 years, and I've seen many a volunteer come and go. The dedicated ones stick around. I've read more than my fair share of those who agree to disagree within the forums. I'd say 95% of the participants have voiced their opinions, retorts, agreements, disagreements and personal views with dignaty and respect. But that small minority can't voice their opinions without slander, disrespect and/or ignorance and have to be deleted and/or banned in order for the rest of the forum users to not be subjected to their banter. I try to stay out of the forum arguments unless their is absolute "wrong" information being generated. Words written here can be taken so far out of context that some put their own spin on it and the thread continues from there. With regards to MS Flight, I was invited by Microsoft to attend their "media day" as AVSIM's Reviews Editor. I listened unbiasly to their "sales pitch" and what this product was and what it had to offer. Also in the room were 3rd party developers from various "brand name" companies we are all familiar with. At the end of the presentation I was free to develop my own opinion of the product based on what I had heard. The consensus around the room appeared to be unanimous, this "game" would not fly with the simming public. Microsoft's concept was that this was not for simmers but for the millions of people who wanted the opportunity to experience flying without having to have any knowledge or skills in the cockpit. Afterall, you play/control the game with a mouse. It's free yet you have to buy Microsoft points to purchase add-ons. By the way these add-ons are Microsoft owned so if you're a 3rd party developer, you have no rights over them once Microsoft gets ahold of them. In my opinion,they dissed these 3rd party developers as there's nothing in "Flight" for them. So Microsoft wants to launch a huge ad campaign with AVSIM. Why, we'll we're the #1 fan based flight sim website so we'll get the word out to our millions of readers. They hired a PR firm to run the campaign. This PR firm wanted signed contracts, a raft of agreements and total control over our webpage and how the ads were going to be run. Sorry, not going to happen boys. That's not the way we do things. We are "equal opportunity" space providers for whoever wants to run an ad campaign. You don't have to supply us with product before we'll let you run an ad like some websites. We're here to help you get the word out about your product. We started their campaign under our rules, but this "professional ad company" didn't like the fact that we were in control and tried to take over the "ad functions" again. Thanks, but no thanks....here's your money back. They got a week of free advertising over this mess, so you can see that we were NOT in Microsoft's pocket. We do just fine without their business dollars. So now Flight has come and gone. Let's get on with supporting our 3rd party developers for FS9, FSX and now X-Plane. Let's experience what Prepar3d offers to FSX. Let's try something new with X-Plane. The hobby isn't dead. That's obvious with all of you still hanging out at AVSIM. I'm still loving my time here and will continue supporting both the AVSIM staff and the AVSIM public. You're still free to express your opinions in our forums. But for that 5%, let's keep it civil and try to stay on topic. Remember, opinions are like belly buttons....we all have one.

I'm loving all the forum comments written about Flight but I have to chip in: 1. Flight is a game, it's not a flight simulator. We shouldn't be comparing apples and oranges. 2. The author volunteered to write about the game for AVSIM. He is not a staff member, he is a fellow simmer like yourselves. He was also part of the voluntary BETA team. 3. The author's opinion is his own, not AVSIM's. He reported on what he experienced with the game. Your results may vary and your opinions are your own. Not everyone agrees with everyone else. That's why they are called opinions. 4. I love the english language. Many say that the author is "biased". The Oxford Dictionary says that a bias is to enspire with prejudice. Everytime you make a decision and stick with it, you are biased towards that decision. Therefore we are all a victim of bias. 5. To make it clear, I'm biased towards FSX and X-plane. I don't like Flight either....there I said it. 6. During our visit to Redmond, the Microsoft team told us straight out that this is not aimed at us hard core Flight Sim enthusiasts, it's for the unwashed (my terminology) who have never experienced flying a plane before.

I hear ya. Remember this is a review from a contributing reviewer who is just "another simmer". There is no "you guys"....he's just an honest reporter getting the word out to the masses as to what to expect.Didn't we all know that MSFS died with Aces Studio shutting down. Weren't we all expecting a game to be released. From my own experience....it's Sunday afternoon brain candy. Fly a mission win some points, whoo hoo :Yawn: .Just my opinion....not the world according to AVSIM.

The review has been published

I have the G940, Thrustmaster Warthog and the CH Rudder, Yoke, Throttle Quadrant (yes it's good to be the editor :yahoo: ). I prefer to use the Warthog set-up for flying Mil Jets and use the CH set-up for yoke based cockpits. I'd like to see how the Thrustmaster T.16000M rates against older Thrustmaster models and how it applies to all aircraft operations.

Point taken on Aaron's use of developers screenshots and not all of his own. This is the first occurance for him.I too have used this product and will echo the comments that it does exactly as advertised and produces great environmental experiences.

Be gentle, and tactful.

If you want to submit a freeware review....Word is the best format with your screenshots embedded in the file so I know where to put them. However, when submitting the review, you have to send the screenshots along as well as they reside on your PC. Zip everything up and submit to me....I'll edit it and gladly publish it. If you don't have Word, then any text editor will do, just indicate in the text where the screenshots go. A caption with the screenshot is nice too.Who knows, you may become our next staff reviewer if you enjoy writing reviews of any kind :-)

For what category we win this award for?That would be in the "Utility" category.

I'm trying to get all the payware items in the hopper reviewed.....I'd love to have the excellent freeware items reviewed too, like we used to have. If I could only find a dedicated freeware reviewer. In the meantime, if anyone wants to write a review about a worthy freeware product, I'd gladly publish it.

You are correct....this should have been a tie between the 2 products.

I have to echo the bosses comment. There are so many titles in the review queue and I have a handful of dedicated reviewers trying to take on the workload. We are all volunteers with real world jobs. Our reviewers spend their "off-time" giving back to their "hobby" by reviewing material for your benefit. No they can't all be 20,000 word, in-depth reviews, but they do the best that they can. Please, if you feel strong enough to make derogatory comments about the reviewss (and the reviewers)....I ask that you take some of your "off-time" and help the community but submitting reviews of your own. I have the material....do you have some time? Contact me.

Re: "The iFly 737 NG IS also a very complex aircraft - actually it doesn´t lag much behind the PMDG. So why has that not got it´s share of interest from Avsim reviewers ?"Finn, these are both brand new releases....so reviews are in the works.

This is a first look at this aircraft, as it IS a very complex aircraft.Many simmers are sitting on the fence trying to decide whether this is or isn't an aircraft to add to their hangar. If there is a budding writer out there who has spent a lot of time with the 737 NGX, that would like to submit a comprehensive review of this aircraft, please let me know. I'm always looking for new reviewers.

This is a first look at the 737NGX, as most of you have mentioned it IS a complex aircraft. There have been many sitting on the fence trying to decide if this is an aircraft for them to add to their hangar.

I agree. Even though we didn't have a FANCON those years due to the economy, I still kept track of the BZ nominees from 2008-2010. I can post a list on the Front Page so the readers can recall who the top developers and their titles were.

2007 Conference :Party: BZ AwardsBest Commercial Aircraft - Level D 767Best GA Aircraft - Real Air Taildragger CollectionBest Scenery - Aerosoft German Airports 2Best Utility - HiFi Sim Active Sky XBest Freeware - SimshedBest Hardware (Tie) - Track IR 4 Pro & Matrox Triple Head 2 GoSpecial Achievement - Peter Dowson FSUIPCPeople's Choice AwardFreeware Aircraft - iFly 747-400Freeware Scenery - Glacier Bay V2Freeware Utility - GDI and Radar GuageFreeware Other - The History of Flight Sim book by Jos GruppingCommercial Aircraft - PMDG 747-400Commercial Utility - Radar Contact V4.3Commercial Scenery - Fly Tampa St Maarten

I'm not sure what you mean by a "hands off" approach, but I'm hoping you're not suggesting that I also fly and evaluate every product that is reviewed. I wish I had the time to do so, but alas we are all volunteers and have to make a living.My biggest quest right now is getting enough dedicated, knowledgable reviewers to cover all the products that are available for review. I'd love to have a stable of reviewers who have nothing but time to dedicate to the flight sim world. I don't think that is going to happen.There are several reviews that have been returned to the reviewer as they don't even come close to a "standard". I've also had to let some reviewers go as they submit one review and I never hear from them again. I'm open to suggestions and always looking for new review staff.....who wants to help?

What program are you using to design the website? I'd like to be able to keep the reviews in the same style. Will I be able to link directly from the Front Page to a new page in the same format, or will my link take me to my own Dreamweaver template as I'm currently doing?

I'm leaning towards going back to the 5 star system, with a Gold Star for the top products. I'd also like to see an actual numeric score from the reviewer, with justification as to why the product scored what it did.I'll review your comments and our system with the executive at our next meeting.

With a lot of discussion within many review comments, there are pros and cons of "rating" a product based on one reviewer's opinion and the subsequent "review" of the report by the editor.When I started with AVSIM in 2000, we had a 1 to 5 star rating system, where 1 denoted a poor product, a 3 denoted a product met theexpectations of the day, and a 5 meant that the product broke new ground and raised the bar for the next developer to meet or exceed.As technology (and MSFS) marched on, 4.5 and 5.0 were becoming the norm as the latest release exceeded the last. So we did away with the 1-5 rating and introduced the "Gold Star Award" reserved for those products that were now "ground breaking" in the eye of the reviewer. I, as the editor, can't fly all of the products that are submitted for review, although I wish I could and still pay the mortgage. But as we are a volunteer staff, we have to rely on you, the readers, to step up and take on a role as a reviewer to give back to your fellow simmers by offering an unbiased, best of our ability review of the product we are assigned to review. We have reviewers male and female, aged 16 to 60+, all with unique writing skills and experiences in the field of aviation, be it real world or simulated.So back to the subject at hand. I'm looking for your input as to what you would like to see in a rating system, if any? In the end, this is a website for you, the flight simmer. Just because I think this is the best product since the Wright Flyer, and it runs like a charm on my water cooled, 6-core i7 with 12MB RAM and multiple solid state HDs (yes I got my PC from Jetline Systems as advertised on our Front Page) doesn't mean you will get the same results on your slightly older PC. So do you want us to rate it with 1-5 stars or 0-100 or stay with the Gold Star or do away with the rating system altogether? It was mentioned in one review that perhaps we could let you, the reader, give your honest opinion of your experiences with the product and suggest a rating to be published shortly after the review has gone live.....but wait...you're already doing that through the forums anyway when you respond to a review you've read. I'm open to suggestions and sometimes change is for the better.

Should read FSX.I'll get that fixed.thanks for the pick up.

Gold Star awards are suggested by the reviewer. If after reading the review and judging the pros and cons of the material mentioned in he review, I either concur or deny the review a Gold Star. Since we have done away with the 1-5 star rating (where all "good" products would theoretically rate 3 stars), we only have the 1 "award". Since there is no such thing as a perfect peice of software (at least not yet), this award is subjective. The award is meant to bring the product to the readers attention, more so than other products. :Thinking: Too bad we can't award a "golden lemon" to some products, as that would just be unfair to the developers, after all they did the best they could. :Whistle:

1. Hangar (and another typo) fixed.2. This was a "contributed" review by a fan. I have lots of material waiting to be reviewed....anyone else want to take on the challenge as staff?