Introduction and Observations

[Wiley 0]

Hello, everyone.

This is my first post on the SOAR board and is in the way of an introduction and some observations.

In real life I have had about one hour instruction in a glider (GROB 103). This was about 15 years ago and was accumulated on three 20 minute flights. My last flight was cut short because one of the other pilots flying crashed (he had minor injuries, plane was totaled), followed almost immediately by the club having a series of financial and field problems that within a couple of years caused it to fold. On balance, if the club hadn’t gone away I might still be flying for real.

Please keep in mind I am familiar with computers and flight simming but new to organized virtual soaring. I’m a somewhat knowledgeable outsider looking in.

Which leads to my first observation: Mr. Hamilton, my hat’s off to you. As the person in charge you have a tough job. I hope not to make it harder.

SOAR seems to be looking for a focus, a way to appeal to more people. In reading the posts before I joined it was going to focus on FS. Just after I applied for membership the home page was changed to reflect the decision that it wants to be all things to all people. From the complete flight sim newbie to the experienced virtual soaring competitor, to the RC pilot, to the real life soarer. I suggest that a tighter focus would be more successful. Do one thing and do it well. Focus on the virtual world.

As part of that a reorganization to reflect not the computer program being run but the level and interests of the virtual pilot. Eliminate those areas not directly connected to the virtual world. Look to the national organizations such as the Soaring Society of America (SSA) as a model. They have information and guidance for the person who has never been in a glider to the seasoned international competitor. But don’t ask for information on how to apply to enter the Reno Air Races.

Another good example is the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). They have support and events for the once or twice a year club rallyist to the professional road racer. The ‘vehicle’ is secondary to the ‘task‘.

Second observation.

At this time if one is a competitor, Condor seems to be the program to use. That fact should not dissuade one from SOAR participation. This gets back to the organization of SOAR.

I have never used Condor (in point of fact I didn‘t know it existed until recently). I probably never will. While the finesse of soaring appeals to me, I do like to firewall a hot prop or jet and do a little ‘cranking and banking’. Other than at a ‘club level’ the competition aspect doesn’t appeal to me. I use competition in all aspects of my life as a training and measuring tool. A trophy or ribbon is nice but not at the expense of improvement. I will never be a ‘house hold name’.

Third observation.

I have read posts complaining about FSX that are six months to a year old. Many before the initial release of FSX and virtually all before the release of FSX-SP1. I don’t have a ‘bleeding edge’ PC. It’s about three years old. With the release of SP1 most of the performance complaints posted have been addressed. With a just little tweaking most FSX users are at FPS rates that are better than just useable and in most cases better than before. It just takes a little information and guidance. Which SOAR is in a position to provide to the virtual glider pilot.

The other aspect is that some of the people who have generously provided free software are going on to other pursuits. Mr. Roodvelt is a prime example. Many of his add-ons are difficult to find now or will not be available in the future. Thought needs to be given to how to work around not having those add-ons available. Or with the improvements to FSX will they even be necessary. FS has a rudimentary flight recorder.

If SOAR can transform itself to be the first stop for the new or old virtual glider pilot for information relating to virtual gliding the majority of problems will go away. The problem now is that SOAR does not attract virtual pilots. Unless one stumbles across the site it goes unknown.

Observations on flight files for tasks and competitions.

I have looked at Condor flight files and FSX flight files. At first glance there seems to be no technical reason why a Condor file could not be converted to FSX files. Or vice versa. The key is getting someone who has the knowledge of both and the technical knowledge to write the conversion program. With that in place, the ‘vehicle’ would be immaterial. Pick your task, pick your competition, use whatever program works best for you.

In terms of tasks and competitions, while most people are honest, there are some who will cheat. (Ever played golf?) If a file can be opened it can be changed. If within a conversion/flight generation program some sort of a check digit can be generated that stays with the files and submitted results that would cut the cheating to almost nil. How does Condor handle the problem?

Well I I hope I haven’t made anyone cross-eyed by the length of my first post. It’s good to be here.

Wiley

[Don Hamilton 0]

Hello, everyone.

This is my first post on the SOAR board and is in the way of an introduction and some observations.

Welcome to SOAR Wiley! Good to have you join us!

Please keep in mind I am familiar with computers and flight simming but new to organized virtual soaring. I’m a somewhat knowledgeable outsider looking in.

Which leads to my first observation: Mr. Hamilton, my hat’s off to you. As the person in charge you have a tough job. I hope not to make it harder.

We appreciate your comments and are glad for the input.

SOAR seems to be looking for a focus, a way to appeal to more people. In reading the posts before I joined it was going to focus on FS. Just after I applied for membership the home page was changed to reflect the decision that it wants to be all things to all people. From the complete flight sim newbie to the experienced virtual soaring competitor, to the RC pilot, to the real life soarer. I suggest that a tighter focus would be more successful. Do one thing and do it well. Focus on the virtual world.

SOAR was established in 1999 and it's only focus until about 6 months ago was virtual soaring in MSFS (started with FS98). With each subsequent version of MSFS, it was like re-inventing the wheel as far as being able to soar in it! The soaring community have received no support from Microsoft at all thru the years, but thanks to the several dedicated, talented people that created, planes, scenery, and utilities, we were able to "keep soaring". Thanks to them we had thermals, ridge lift, great sailplanes, and wonderful scenery, but it came with a price to the individual user. Each had to learn to install and use the various add-ons. For many that are not real technical this became a daunting task just to be able to SOAR. Each subsequent version of MSFS came with another set of problems to overcome - it was never just as simple as being able to use the addon's created in the previous version - they had to be re-created and tweaked to be able to work. That gets to be real old and folks lost interest in re-doing everthing for every version!! Besides that, the interest in learning all this just to use MSFS steadily dropped off thru the various version. FSX was kinda the topper, and most just decided at that point, they were not going to do it again. There were great expectations for improved soaring with FSX, and great disappointment when it did not seem to materialize. This was the situation at SOAR about 6 months ago!

We then decided to open SOAR to all the various sims. Condor was really taking off with the multi-flying and many of the MSFS pilots switched over. Unfortunately, this did not work well at SOAR. We have always been a congenial, friendly community, but when we opened the forums to various sims, that seemed to change. There was quite a bit of "bashing" the other guy's favorite sim and this was turning our once very friendly community into something we did not want to be a part of and evidently many of the pilots felt the same way. That is where we find ourselves a few days ago. So, we decided to make one more change in hopes of saving SOAR!

Most of the SOAR members are also real-life pilots and many are also interested in RC soaring. That is why we have decided to go this way - folks can then talk about what their interests are and not be limited to just the virtual soaring. We also realize that there are some really good aspects of FSX, especially now that SP1 has been released so have decided that the main focus at SOAR in the virtual aspect will once again be MSFS and hope to get missions, badges, and certificate activities going again at the main SOAR site in the near future. For now the Condor forum will remain open, but if there is no resumed interest in the next month or so, it will be discontinued.

Second observation.

At this time if one is a competitor, Condor seems to be the program to use. That fact should not dissuade one from SOAR participation. This gets back to the organization of SOAR.

I have never used Condor (in point of fact I didn‘t know it existed until recently). I probably never will. While the finesse of soaring appeals to me, I do like to firewall a hot prop or jet and do a little ‘cranking and banking’. Other than at a ‘club level’ the competition aspect doesn’t appeal to me. I use competition in all aspects of my life as a training and measuring tool. A trophy or ribbon is nice but not at the expense of improvement. I will never be a ‘house hold name’.

While we realize that many only want the competition flying as with Condor, there are also many others like you that enjoy the small competitions like we have offered at SOAR all these years. We hope to be able to offer them again. We certainly to do not want to "compete" with Condor, we only thought the forum would be a good place for our members to share their interests in different sims. Evidently, not all people can enjoy the good aspects of different sims.

Third observation.

I have read posts complaining about FSX that are six months to a year old. Many before the initial release of FSX and virtually all before the release of FSX-SP1. I don’t have a ‘bleeding edge’ PC. It’s about three years old. With the release of SP1 most of the performance complaints posted have been addressed. With a just little tweaking most FSX users are at FPS rates that are better than just useable and in most cases better than before. It just takes a little information and guidance. Which SOAR is in a position to provide to the virtual glider pilot.

You are absolutely right!! Hopefully more and more folks wils realize FSX is not as bad as we once thought it to be, but rather that it actually offers more soaring with less work that any of the previous versions!

If SOAR can transform itself to be the first stop for the new or old virtual glider pilot for information relating to virtual gliding the majority of problems will go away. The problem now is that SOAR does not attract virtual pilots. Unless one stumbles across the site it goes unknown.

It is for this very reason that we have left the core of the SOAR site intact with all the downloads, races, etc. with the exception of the CCS files. We want folks that fly the older versions to still have access to these downloads.

In terms of tasks and competitions, while most people are honest, there are some who will cheat. (Ever played golf?) If a file can be opened it can be changed. If within a conversion/flight generation program some sort of a check digit can be generated that stays with the files and submitted results that would cut the cheating to almost nil. How does Condor handle the problem?

That was the main reason pilots lost interest in the offline races and competitions, and we were working on the problem when FSX came out - hopefully, we will still be able to resolve this and continue on! I am sure we still have talented folks out there that are able to tackle the problem, maybe they will step up once we get some soaring activities going!

Speaking of soaring activities - we need someone to take over that task and be the director. We also need pilots that are willing to set up missions, tours, fly-ins, etc. for others to enjoy. If any are willing to volunteer and join the staff, we will do the pages and SOAR will be off and running again! For SOAR to be successful, we need staff volunteers and participation - we cannot do everything ourselves! Maybe you would consider joining the staff to make SOAR a success?

As to the real life and RC soaring aspects of SOAR, for now they will just remain in the forums, but we are definitely open to suggestions and ideas about incorporating them into the main site also! SOAR has always welcomed it's members ideas and given them the opportunity to take the idea and run with it. We believe in team work and encourage others to take an active part in the activities here!

One last thought, we are also considering discontinuing the actual SOAR membership since folks have to "join" the forum. We are thinking more of just having an informal "Pilot Roster" of all the pilots that want to put a little blurb about themselves for others to read.

Thanks Wiley for your comments, and hope this clears up our decision a little more for you and others!

[sf4JC 1]

As far as competitions go and cheating, I think Microsoft will most likely resolve that issue, in FSX anyway, somewhat in the fall release. I have been a competetor in the NR2003 racing sim for a while and I have yet to come across a thread that would give an edge to a cheater, with acception to a few about Damage being somehow disabled after getting some, and that is a little cloudy in detail, and that sim is about 4 yrs old now. But in those cases the cheater is usually brought to light and made public. I can't see how Microsoft would miss the mark on cheating, but in this day and age and morality, who knows what will happen.

The only problem that I can see with this issue is that, a person is going to have to buy the fall release in order to use it's functionality probably, I'm not sure. I have already made a "budget" for it, so I know I'll be getting it and I won't have to be bothered too terribly much until it's release. But who know's really, only time will tell I guess.

sf4JC