X-Plane pilots wanted to start a VA with

[Johan Wijnands 1269199]

I am building a new virtual airline: X-Liner Virtual Aviation.

This will be a X-plane only VA.

 

Short explanation:

- Logging via XAcars;

- Offline and online (VATSIM, IVAO, PilotEdge, etc.) flying;

- Own liveries;

- Forum for discussion;

- Own TS3 server;

- Shared cockpit flying (smartcopilot);

- at least 5 HUB's (1 on each continent);

- routeplanning via Simbrief;

- no financials;

 

At the moment I am looking for people who want to [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ist me to get this VA up and running.

- designer: create liveries and logo;

- webmaster: help me developping the website;

- Flight Ops Manager: Create the routes, tours, etc;

 

 

Do you have a nice idea for a livery, but don't want to join the staff? Post your idea and maybe we will use it.

 

All ideas can be posted below, or send via email to: [email protected]

 

Kind regards,

 

Johan Wijnands

X-Liner VA

[Ryan Austin]

I am an X-Plane pilot and might be able to join and maybe even help out with a few things.

I am interested in possibly applying for the Flight-Ops manager position. Could you send me a bit more info at [email protected]?

 

Thanks

___________________________

Ryan Austin

S1 @ vZMA

Joinava.org CATIV

"Got Jet Fuel?"

[Greg Miller 1166272]

Best of luck Ryan!

 

So many VA's say they are XP friendly/compatible but of course they are not. For example, DVA won't accept an XP application because their software can't validate non-MFS for their qualification procedures.

 

BTW, Laminar Research just automatically updated my XP to 10.41 last night. MSFS isn't around anymore, so folks are not getting any software updates. When are VA pilots going to wake up.

 

The excuse (and it is valid) is that to much time and money is invested in FSN/FSX.

[Luke Kolin]

So many VA's say they are XP friendly/compatible but of course they are not. For example, DVA won't accept an XP application because their software can't validate non-MFS for their qualification procedures.

 

If it's the Delta Virtual I'm thinking of, that absolutely needs work. I spent a fair bit of time writing the XACARS integration for them, and after being used to the features of their flight data recording software, it was pretty eye-opening (and not in a good way) to have to work with XACARS. I think the staff there got spoiled too.

 

BTW, Laminar Research just automatically updated my XP to 10.41 last night. MSFS isn't around anymore, so folks are not getting any software updates.

 

I believe FSX - Steam Edition and Prepar3D users are still getting updates.

 

When are VA pilots going to wake up. The excuse (and it is valid) is that to much time and money is invested in FSN/FSX.

 

This is what I want to address - and let me throw out the question: When is Laminar going to wake up?

 

It's a little bit tongue in cheek. But only a little bit. It's not just that a lot of time and money has been invested in the FSX platform. Go read about the sunk cost fallacy - and while a lot of people in the world believe in it, plenty more don't. I'm sure there are and will be lots of smart simmers who will decide that X-Plane is a better sim platform and decide to switch. At that point, they start looking through the inventory of X-Plane add-ons and scenery and realize how much they're going to have to give up to switch platforms. I suspect they'd do it if there was a similar add-on set and default scenery quality.

 

An aside that came to me midway through - what would a home cockpit builder do?

 

As an add-on developer, I'd love to add X-Plane support to my software, both the free stuff and the commercial things I've started working on again. I looked at X-Plane a few years back, and even just getting basic C# integration with the sim is poorly docomeented. The X-Plane C# SDK wiki is a dead link. The X-Plane SDK site isn't even hosted by Laminar, and appears run by someone (Sandy Barbour) who's dropped out of the X-Plane scene. XPUIPC hasn't been updated in over two years. I'm not re-learning the abomination that is C and C++ (partly the language, mostly the build environment) for a niche simulator. I can write code against MSFS in about eight different languages, maybe more. I should expect to be able to do so again X-Plane in at least three (C++, C# and Lua).

 

If Laminar wants to seriously grow the X-Plane community, there's three steps that need to happen. The first is getting enough of a user base to convince third parties that it's a viable product base. I think they've done that.

 

Second, they need to make it easy for the third parties and dedicated sim builders to interface with the sim. (Imagine Steve Ballmer jumping up and down shrieking "Developers, Developers, Developers!") They need to host the SDK site themselves and ensure the docomeentation is up to date. They need to provide libraries to make it easy to interface with the sim even if you're not writing in C or Python. And if Austin wants to continue with supporting three completely different platforms he needs to make it trivial for a third-party add-on written only with Windows to interface with the sim on different machine with no code changes required. Add-on developers aren't going to immediately triple their coding and testing costs by supporting OSX and Linux.

 

SimConnect was an interesting development on Microsoft's part - but they missed in certain areas most notably cross-language support. What they should have done was hire Pete Dowson on retainer and told him to design their external interface. Laminar should try the same thing - throw enough money at him to pay for steam railroad trips around the world and build a proper SDK. It'd pay for itself within two years, because of:

 

The third step - which is more people using X-Plane because they ecosystem is there.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke