Shared Cockpit / Connected Flight Deck

[DaveCT2003 2553]

Friends,

 

As you know, Connected Flight Deck will not be included in the initial release of our Airbus because Mathijs made the decision to get the Airbus out to the community as quickly as possible.  You may not know this, but he's been driving the release for a very long time and many of the delays we've experienced really couldn't have been seen ahead of time.

 

Shared Cockpit/Connected Flight Deck is going to explode in our community once the A318/A319/A320/A321 and A330 have been released and updated for Connected Flight Deck, and as Mathijs has said there are several developers (even one or two he doesn't know about yet) interested in using Connected Flight Deck.  On top of this, there is a new online network brewing with a lot more customized coding than VATSIM/IVAO allows for, including a few special things for Shared Cockpit pilots.

 

Shared Cockpit is also moving to other venues such as DCS.  In fact, it's already in DCS, just not how we like it at present - but that's going to change.

 

For the longest time it's really been younger/newer members of the flight sim community who were most interested in Shared Cockpit, but thankfully I've been seeing a major change and a lot more people 40 to 60 years of age have increasingly been showing great interest!  In fact, the private group/Beta Team I manage only has one person younger than 40 years of age, and even though he's in his late 20's he's shown a tremendous level of maturity and commitment. I met him 12 or so years ago (so he was VERY young then) and despite our age difference (I'm in my mid-50's) he's one of my best friends.  What is remarkable about this is that we met via Shared Cockpit in the previous version of the Leonardo Maddog, and today we have a group of guys massively excited and devoted to flying shared cockpit. If you'll forgive me... that's what flight sim and our community should be, people meeting up, establishing friendships, and flying together.  Try as you might, you simply don't have that with any VA (and say that with confidence as I'm extremely familiar with most every VA and/or flight sim group today and in the past).

 

I believe we are quickly approaching a time where Shared Cockpit (Connected Flight Deck in Aerosoft speak, and it's a far better and less confusing name than "shared cockpit) is going to become the third major genre of flight simulation (offline flight sim, online flight sim, and shared cockpit).  We have Leonardo, Majestic, and now Aerosoft (in a big way!) to thank for helping to move our flight simulation into the future! 

 

So, you may not be a fan of Shared Cockpit/Connected Flight Deck now, but if you ever experience it, I think you'll be hooked!  What I suggest is started a small, intimate group with the idea of flying single and shared cockpit flights together.  It's truly amazing!

 

Best wishes.