Just back from FlightSim Con and.....

[Karl]

Hi all,

Just want to say that I made a ton of observations and had a great time at FSC. I planned on taking the time on the flight to group my thoughts and observations but who can use a laptop from those skinny little seats. XP11 was the talk of the town but the FSX based products are very much alive as well. I will be putting something together in the next day or two as family time allows. Nova is doing so as well.

What questions do you guys have that myself or Nova might be able to shed some light on... or throw BS at :P. Oh wait, that Travis' job and he wasn't there so....

[Bushman]

Did you see the presentation on Mobiflight? What were your impressions?

https://www.mobiflight.com/en/index.html

[Wingman]

I watched Nova's comparison video, and have to agree that an untouched/base copy of Xplane11 looks very nice in contrast to P3dv4 (and FSX)... at least, in the area where he was flying.

[Karl]

Did you see the presentation on Mobiflight? What were your impressions?

https://www.mobiflight.com/en/index.html

I did. He was not an official presenter/exhibitor. He sat himself down at one of the community tables and set a small display up and had a line of people looking and asking questions for about 6 hours. He was probably in the top 5-7 of the exhibits when it came to interest shown. I really liked him and his product. I'll talk more about it when I type everything up. So far I've just done an outline.

[Pops0]

Opps wrong button meant to LIKE #3 :witless:

[Travis]

I watched Nova's comparison video, and have to agree that an untouched/base copy of Xplane11 looks very nice in contrast to P3dv4 (and FSX)... at least, in the area where he was flying.

I completely agree. Xplane11 is the best choice for the newcomer simmer right now in my opinion. Especially if they are on a budget.

I would also like to thank Novawing for his videos and extensive reviews on many things on his channel. I would also like to submit some friendly feedback that is my own opinion, and you may do as you wish with the information. Keep in mind, I am only one person, and if your target audience is against what I am saying, please ignore what I have to say. Disclaimer: This is going to seem negative, but it is not intended to be.

I don't see why Microsoft Flight is even relevant anymore, other than that it was a 64 bit sim. Maybe you should ask your Dovetail friends why they didn't buy the MS Flight rights and build from there(I am genuinely curious). It is also difficult to find the download, and from my understanding, next to/impossible to get any add on scenery. I am happy for the decision to not include any sims that are in development and clearly not finished such as Aerofly's and FSW.

From a viewers perspective, I think your videos generally can be cut in half in time. They are a bit over the average length for the subjects given. This video is 43 min long, which is half of a movie(for perspective). I think these things would attract more viewers and more regulars to your channel. It could potentially earn you revenue, or more revenue if you so choose. I think you deserve this because creating videos takes valuable time, work, and effort to make.

What I suggest to consider:
Intro-this is not a high concern for me, but may be a good idea. Your intro is a little long, but it is good. You could get right to the action by starting the audio talking right when your text has stopped moving(about 12.5-13sec). I believe froogle does the same(and yes I know you are not froogle, but it seems to get things started quickly and nicely.

Talking/Chit chat-Public speaking is not easy at all. You generally do a good job, but I find that in your videos that you tend to ramble or get off topic more than necessary. A possibility is to create a script. This would keep things on track and concise. You could practice in front of someone that is honest and get their opinion as well(if they are truly honest), or just read it to yourself should work too. Please try to get rid of the "Umm's", "Uhh","So's", etc. Script should help or fix this.

Dead time-(at least for this specific video), The time that the Microsoft Flight splash screen was on screen(10 seconds) is a lot of wasted time. It could be enough time to read, plus a second, 3-5 sec max.

Editing-I think this may be the most important. Much of your videos could have more editing. I will only use this one as an example, the purpose seems to compare the 3 simulators. You did set them up very well(similar aircraft and same location). One thing that could have greatly reduced the time was putting all 3 side by side this would have kept all of the content in the video as well. If that doesn't suit, another possible edit could be to only get the important or interesting parts(this goes for anything). In this video, the takeoff, landing, and interesting scenery(same sections for each sim) was all that was needed. I also don't think the shutdown was needed.

Show me the action!-It took 7minutes for the action to start. Jumping right in at the first minute may not be required, but I think after the 2 or 3 minute mark it was time in this video. you got most of your point across and could have stream lined it up a little bit. Also, you could have added some narration to each related part when they were playing. I would suggest to voice over with a script as well.

Your conclusion was pretty accurate except MS Flight Alaska scenery is not "out of the box." That is not a huge deal since it is dead and you cant really get it, but accuracy shows quality and credibility.
The conclusion was shorter and more to the point than the intro, however, I think some of it could have been narrated over some of the flying. I did enjoy that the flying did not include voice, but it was too long. It could have included voice, but again, just the relevant information when necessary.

Novawing, I hope you take this in good spirits and as a friendly and honest criticism. I put a lot of thought and effort into what I wrote above, and would like to see your channel grow and become more successful. If you want to talk about things further please let me know, and I would be happy to chat with you when we can meet up. Also, don't let this put you down in any way. You are doing many things right that I did not talk about. I would like to see you doing more professional like videos. In return, I can guarantee you I will watch all of your upcoming videos to their entirety.

Best Regards,

Travis

[Karl]

Okay so here is the quasi-journal of the event:

FlightSim Con was, in many respects, like a lot of conventions that I’ve been around. It was held at a hotel with areas for exhibits and rooms for meetings and such.

The exhibits were on the main floor and on a second floor area that was pretty divided up. The first things to jump out were the exhibits using VR glasses. They were sponsored by the folks that make AeroFly2 and X-Plane. Next one noticed the physical cockpit setup. One gentleman had his personal one there. He started with the cockpit of an old Cessna 172 and built his home cockpit from there. I think if one searches “MyCessnaProject” you should be able to find it. The other two items were from “Jetline Systems” and “VolairSim”. The former is basically the dash panel of a Cessna and is designed to be used by flight schools. I think a small number of hours can be flown on these in instrument training. The hardware was very solid. I believe it carries a price tag of about $15,000USD. The VolairSim is a mounting system for home cockpits and is about $600 USD. In the display he was using Saitek equipment.

I tested both of these out. The quality of the construction of the yoke in the Jetline system was really smooth and accurate. It felt much more like the real thing. I was surprised how well the VolairSim setup handled. Using it did feel more natural than sitting at a desktop with a stick/throttle/rudder pedal setup. There was a similar setup to the Jetline system upstairs that used Redbird hardware. That company also targets the flight school market. I liked it the best. What impressed me the least was the hardware from GoFlight. I know about them because they make the extremely expensive components for folks that want to build home cockpits around airliners. A throttle quadrant for example is $600. The construction felt even less solid than Saitek equipment. I was surprised by that.

Bushman had asked about Mobiflight. We have had numerous conversations about the component of simming that revolves around making our own USB switch boxes. The base platform is called Arduino. There is some programming involved to get the system working. MobiFlight makes software that is an interface with the Arduino stuff and takes the programming out of it. The developer is a guy from Germany who is in his 20’s. He sat down at one of the tables and set his stuff up.

He basically had a Surface type PC, a small PC board connected to the Surface via USB. It has a few switches and knobs for input examples and a small spinning dial and a numeric display panel to demonstrate output. He was quite popular. He was 3-4 people around him the entire time and most spent more than just a passing minute. If you want tactile switches and dials for your sim I would say that this is definitely something to look in to.

My focus was specifically on the rudder pedals and yokes. I did note that all of the displays were using 4K monitors. The added detail, clarity and crispness was impressive.

In the realm of software there were numerous vendors there. Lots of stuff aimed at the airliner market so I didn’t pay a lot of attention. JustFlight had a display but that was about it for non-airliner things.

Then we come to the people. The average age there was ~40-50 I’d guess. The only women I saw were what I called drag-alongs and there were only about a dozen of them. I was told that about 750 people attended, up from 550 last year and 350 the previous year.

I met Pizza from EasternHops. He’s a big, outgoing grab your hand give you a hug kind of guy. I like him. EH had a room where Pizza and a few other were showing off their PC’s. I think there were about a dozen guys there from EH.

Another group, flyVirtual.net was there in force as well. I think they do mostly airliner/Vatsim stuff. Nova and I were the only ones there representing msFlights.net. We might want to fix that in the future. {EDIT} I looked at their site. I appears they connect via FSHost and Teamhost. They are doing an airmail tour that I found interesting ( http://flyvirtual.net/tour_pics/Airm...ur%20Flyer.pdf )

Talking with others that are so into flight sims that they came to a conference I found it surprising how many did not fly online. One guy there reminded me of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. He was all about DCS stuff. I found it amusing how he turned every conversation into a DCS conversation. Everyone was pretty accommodating to him as it was obvious he had Asperger’s and that was just who he was. I really didn’t have any negative interactions with anyone at the conference. A lot of personalities and everyone was cool.

I did sit down with a couple guys at the bar and it turned into a YouTube video about what we thought of the conference. That was funny.

At one point towards the end of the social hour someone pointed out the guys that publish Active Sky. I introduced myself, said hi and expected the pleasant 2 minute conversation. Publishers like this get approached all the time so I’m sure it gets old for them. I actually spent about 15-20 minutes talking with them. The CEO/owner (I can’t remember his name) was incredibly straight forward and pleasant. We talked about the business of the product. What I got out of that was that the primary mission of this group was to make the product. Positive revenue was a requirement for the project to continue but was secondary to the development. I also learned that pricing is done exactly how I was afraid it was done. By best guess. There is no marketing research done. Most of these companies and the market itself is simply too small I guess. They seemed very energized to bring their product line to X-Plane though getting it done sounds like it will take some time.

On the subject of X-Plane I asked numerous vendors if the increase in interest in X-Plane was actually equating to money in their pockets. Most said yes. A couple said it was too soon to tell. Not a single one said no.

So after talking with all of these vendors, which platform we will be using in 2 years or 5 years. I don’t know. Lockheed Martin has the development team and the base FSX product. Dovetail has certainly dug themselves a PR hole to dig out of but they do have the legitimate license to continue the FSX line. X-Plane has the buzz and momentum now that vendors are jumping on board. Clearly X-Plane is in the lead but I think that it is still anyone’s race to win over the long run.

I tried to keep this organized and concise. I hope I touched all of the bases. I’m simply not going to have time to edit this out any more today so I am just going to post it. If I missed anything or you want clarification don’t hesitate to ask.

[Waterman981]

I don't see why Microsoft Flight is even relevant anymore, other than that it was a 64 bit sim.

Just as a quick note, Microsoft Flight was 32-bit, not 64-bit. I think that is the big thing that when you look at it, and compare that 32-bit simulator to the 64-bit ones, you wonder why the others haven't caught up. Every single tree moves with the wind. I think of some of the tree densities over Hawaii and I don't think P3Dv4 will show that many Speed Trees (which are their trees that would move with the wind), and definitely not with the same performance.

I think of Nova as showing here's what we had YEARS ago with a 32-bit platform, and here's what we have today with 64-bit platforms. In my opinion both P3D and X-Plane have not progressed enough... by comparison to what there was.

(And I absolutely agree with a lot of people that Flight was not perfect and missing lots of things. I'm thinking engine only.)

And there are ways now to import the entire world into Flight from your FSX. Search for FlightToolkit on AVSIM.

Edit: I thought I had read that Flight uses Speed Trees, but looking they are the same X format trees as FSX/P3D... but as I said all of them do move with the weather like Speed Trees do.