Congrats to October "Best OF" at the org

[tkyler]

So I had my first nomination for a "best of" award at the org last month for my Falco...but alas I didn't win.  So my congratulations goes out to the developer of the Airbus winner! 

I must confess though, that I am a bit embarrassed as to my total misunderstanding of the x-plane.org view of flight sim quality...at least in the dialect of x-plane.org speak, I figured I'd know what a "best of" contender needed to bring to the table.    Considering that I've been a member there for something like 5 years or more, you'd think I'd have it down but nooooo..I had to go charging in thinking I was doing something good only to be made a mockery of by true 3D modeling geniuses.

If only the Microsoft Flight Sim enthusiasts could see the error of their ways...and come over to the org and see the best of what x-plane has to offer, like October's winner....month after month... then truly they'd throw their FS DVDs in the trash and send Austin into the wild blue yonder in his Cirrus jet with their rivers of cash flowing into South Carolina for copies of x-plane.

I just can't understand why the MSFS crowd comes over to the org and looks at the 'best of' offerings and still mocks x-plane...I mean..we're throwing the best of what x-plane.org has at em....the populace of the org even says so...they voted on it!

So then......please tell me what things am I missing?  what things do I need to do?  to get my work as awesome as the best of winners?  I'm just staring at these pics but I guess I just don't have the vision. 

[tkyler]

Ok...I did some soul searching...and I think I'm onto something....I think I'm starting to see where my lack of vision lies....

[Goran_M]

You got too much 3D.

;D

Less 3D and painted on buttons and knobs will get you that Best of... trophy.

[hobofat]

As an MSFS crossover, had I found the org before I discovered x-pilot.com I'd still be using MSFS.  The key to winning the org competition though would be to make your plane less, well, real.  It's like that smart kid in class, nobody likes him!

Keep up the fantastic tkyler, it keeps X-Plane worth flying.

[Nils]

Quite clearly, it's the aircraft type, not the modelling/sim representation that counts in this case.

[Cameron]

Quite clearly, it's the aircraft type, not the modelling/sim representation that counts in this case.

Nils,

Quite true. I think what Tom's really trying to convey here is two things:

1. It shouldn't be called "best of," but "peoples choice" or something similar to that nature.

2. That as a person from MSFS coming to X-Plane for a first glance only to see something like that labeled as "best of" for X-Plane implies that it really IS the best it gets for X-Plane.

The above second point should not be misconstrued to suggest that all of us don't appreciate others hard, free, and hobby-like work, but that the perception the actual vote title gives to the outsider can leave a lot to be desired and ultimately give a bad outlook on X-Plane itself in the sense that the aircraft voted "best" is certainly NOT the best potential that X-Plane has the ability to show or can is achievable. As it is, there are already plenty of MSFS users who have an automatic "ew" factor towards X-Plane for their own reasoning or another.

Though this thread is more of a sarcastic message, it still has a comedic value to it. Worth a laugh and jab at least!

[woweezowee]

Great example of the beauty and the beast that would work in this thread: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=41822&st=0

On the other hand it is also freeware and obviously a huge crowd of xplaners still miss those heavies. Yes, like Nils says, "Quite clearly, it's the aircraft type ...  that counts in this case.".

[OlaHaldor]

When I first bought X-Plane about this time a year ago, I paid the .org a visit. Yup. First thing I saw was a "best of", and frankly, it scared the crap out of me. "Really? Is it THAT bad?"

I started searching all over YouTube to see if I could find videos that would prove that website wrong, not knowing that the .org was THE site for all X-Plane related stuff.

Luckily, I found dozens of videos showing silk smooth landings, and I bought the damn thing faster than I could spell "your credit card just got raped". Shortly after, a friend of me pointed me to your WIP thread for the MU-2, and I felt VERY happy about the whole project, and I bet I could probably paid for a pre-purchase if I had the option.

Frankly, I think the .org is kind of embarrassing. Not only the "best of", but also its looks. But that's another story..

Tom, you're by far one of the best out there. I still enjoy your MU-2, and I'm looking forward to your other projects. If I really cared about .org, I'd vote for you.

"It's not you. It's me"!

[tkyler]

Thanks for the kind words Ola.  The Mu-2 is due for an update pretty soon.  I've been working on some projects for V10 whereby I can use some of these techniques on the MU-2.  I'm confident we'll get the ADF in, more systems simulated  and a complete rebuild of the cockpit with proper lighting effects...it should be much better than it is now.

[MatthewS]

That Airbus is a little pathetic compared to your effort. 

Not sure why you didn't win, maybe the crowd that voted are into the "big iron" and not GA.

[Donald Traill]

Wow, off to grab your Falco!!!

Donald Traill

[Tailfeather]

1. It shouldn't be called "best of," but "peoples choice" or something similar to that nature.

Great point, Cameron.

[Rob B.]

Tom,  let me be straight with you, man to man, look, you have sunk untold sums of money into your education and training and it shines clearly through your works. your a master at modeling. the answer to your question should be fairly obvious.

you wanna win?  if thats what it's about- then build what the kids want to fly. build them an airbus. or a boeing, or a

learjet. it dosent matter. theres alot of kids who want to pretend to be airline captains. and thats all.

do you follow me here?  let's be honest. there are'nt too many people who know what a sequia falco is.

I mean I'm pretty UP on my planes and I never heard of that before you put yours out.

so, build obscure and vintage single prop piston ga's  if thats what makes you happy.

build a jet, or a fast twin prop  ( beech-90, seneca)  if you want to win a contest..... rightly or wrongly you have to admit I have a point here. 

did I mention how much I respect your work?    personally I'd die if you took me to task and produces a fast twin.

all the best- Rob

[tkyler]

Rob...you're right about your point....and you're TOTALLY wrong if you think that I didn't know that already. I'm fully aware people want the airliners..always have.  Of course I don't care about winning..what I care about is them labeling something 'best of' when it's clearly not the best of anything.  Best artwork?  nope...best system simulation?  Not by any definition I'm aware of, best flight model?  I doubt it... I mean..if the org can call that the "best of"....the next thing you know, they'll be saying that a project took a year when it only took seven months....or that something cost 40 bucks..but they're kind enough to lower the price for you...or that there's only one more spot in the HTML newsletter.    What I can't stand are the lies disguised as marketing. ....doesn't that rub anybody besides me the wrong way?  How about i tell you my MU2 has a bunch of features it doesn't have....how about I tell you it was originally 100.00..but for you special people...I'll knock it down to 50.00.  How about I tell you it has ground-breaking features...when the features were broken ground by someone else earlier (like propsman)...all for the sake of making you think I'm more than I am so you'll give me your money? ...eh I'm just rantin'

[LA]

Well................... I do know what a Falco is. I've known for a very long time. I'm not a real fan of airliners and prefer "speedy" single engine prop jobs, and a few twins. I'd have voted for the Falco out of those two pics. I'll even down load it for the times I fire up X-Plane.

But then I'm not sure I could have voted. Every thing I do at the org. has to pass through moderation first. And if the vote is for something that isn't advertised there, then who knows. It might fade into obscurity like the rest of my replies do lately. You see, over at the .org, if I say something that isn't totally pro- X-Plane, then I wasted my time typing it out. For instance, just last week, in the regular MSFS versus X-Plane war, it was suggested that MSFS airplanes were too smooth in the air. The author made mention that some X-Planes may bounce around too much, but that "smooth" was definitely un-realistic.

So based on the wisdom that I do fly a (real life) Falco sized airplane on cross country flights very often......... I knew very well that I can go for hours with nearly a ripple of movement. In other words, very smooth. I pointed out that in summer months, it can be very smooth in the morning, turbulent and bouncy in the afternoon, and may return to smoother conditions in the evening. I also mentioned that winter months can be smoother all day long.

I didn't even mention MSFS in my reply. I only wanted to point out that planes don't jerk around all day long. I also mentioned that I tone my X-Planes down for that reason. I now stay out of X-Plane versus MSFS at the org. because there is no chance that my post/reply will show up on the forums. As I said, I have to pass through moderation first. It's now been close to a week, and my reply hasn't made it. Just checked. I just wanted to pass along some real life information. And BTW, MSFS is just smoother by default. You can up the turbulence settings if desired.

LA

[Jack Skieczius]

tom has a good point tho. if the .org is showing that that is the best of the best then no one is gonna come over to x-plane from FSX or even FS9.

the .org is showing how bad x-plane is and is disgusts me. but on the other hand there are a ton of people who view the forums over there each day and for thati will post my work over there to gain attention.

Advertising is also a nasty thing. many will go the lengths of telling others that their product has something fantastic that is merely not good at all just to get their attention and for them to buy the product. i hope we all dont have to resort to that, but i am sure tom your products speak words for themselves.

Jack.

[Rob B.]

.and you're TOTALLY wrong if you think that I didn't know that already.

no, I knew you knew that already as it is obvious in your first posting, and I apologize for the digression away from your point. It's disappointing, and a friend of mine from London and I were discussing this a few months ago, that a " best of"

contest would not have a panel of qualified members who evaluate product based on quantifiable parameters of design quality, but rather turn it over to the uneducated hordes of children and let them be ultimately the voice of the community when people like you work so hard and professionally...on whole other levels- to basically be marginalized by voices that have no credibility or experience. Oh well, I feel your disappointment. :-\

[Wynthorpe]

Quite clearly, it's the aircraft type, not the modelling/sim representation that counts in this case.

Nils,

Quite true. I think what Tom's really trying to convey here is two things:

1. It shouldn't be called "best of," but "peoples choice" or something similar to that nature.

2. That as a person from MSFS coming to X-Plane for a first glance only to see something like that labeled as "best of" for X-Plane implies that it really IS the best it gets for X-Plane.

The above second point should not be misconstrued to suggest that all of us don't appreciate others hard, free, and hobby-like work, but that the perception the actual vote title gives to the outsider can leave a lot to be desired and ultimately give a bad outlook on X-Plane itself in the sense that the aircraft voted "best" is certainly NOT the best potential that X-Plane has the ability to show or can is achievable. As it is, there are already plenty of MSFS users who have an automatic "ew" factor towards X-Plane for their own reasoning or another.

Though this thread is more of a sarcastic message, it still has a comedic value to it. Worth a laugh and jab at least!

This is exactly what i see happening on many occasion over at Flight Sim World (Prob one of largest MSFS sites around), have a look at these threads -

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=173445&hl=XPlane

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=179016&hl=XPlane

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=177843&hl=XPlane

And none of them seem willing to give it a go after looking at the .org and what they see is to offer for sale there, i of course point them towards the MU-2 at every given opportunity and im promoting Javiers CRJ at every chance i get (aswel as all other Aircraft ive bought like the Tecnam P92).

What i would like to see is some decent ground scenery and proper cities and towns.

[deckard b26]

Well, someone has to say it- the org (or should I say the "borg") is giving X-Plane a bad name. I hope someday another site like this one will replace them as the highest traffic X-Plane site.

But one thing this site does need is a file download section. 

[amerrir]

Tom, after reading your subsequent posts, it's pretty obvious that the 'I am a bit embarrassed', 'I just can't understand' and 'please tell me what things am I missing?' from your initial post are far from genuine. In fact it seems as though your first post is nothing more than a shallow attempt to generate more bad vibes here, aimed at the Org. You talk of 'the x-plane.org view of flight sim quality' as though it's an entity: Clearly it's not, it's a community & as such it cannot have a single 'view', at best it could have a consensus - though I don't think you could describe the results of a vote as such. From the dealings I had with you last year while working on the paints for your Mu-2, all I can say is that kind of thing should be way beneath you...

But what of the points being raised here? To me the raison d'être  for the Org's 'Best of the month' competition has always been to give credit, encouragement & acknowledgement to the FREEWARE developers who, month after month, put the fruits of their labour into the DM, to freely share with the rest of the XP community. For that it should be applauded, not mocked.

The far more significant benefit for the rest of us is in the nominations, which give us, each month, a listing of what other XP enthusiasts have found to be of merit amongst the torrent of free offerings appearing in the DM. To me at least, that is the real benefit of the Org holding the competition - and I genuinely get more out of that than I did out of winning an award for a scenery some time back. Tom, I'm sure there will be people who only looked at the Falco after it's nomination - and who knows, a few of them may have gone on to buy your Mu-2 as a result.

BTW, if you're genuinely upset at having not been in the top three, spare a though for the freeware scenery developers: In months were an 'I don't know' voting option is available, the 'I don't know' usually gets the most votes in the scenery section. Imagine how that feels for someone who has spent months or years on a scenery... Actually, spare a thought for the painters.... there's never been a 'liveries' section    (yeah, I'm joking)

Is there anything wrong with the competition being decided by popular vote? The only alternative would be for nomination/winners to be chosen by a panel of 'experts'. As it's at the Org, they would be Org experts, and what next? The anti-Org element here would have even more opportunity to moan & complain about 'favouritism', 'bias', 'censorship' and the rest. Face it, it's a fairly light-hearted attempt to bring some attention to people who are giving a lot to the community & go largely unacknowledged. It's right that the community itself should make the choices. Only a die-hard Stalinist would seriously suggest that the whole thing should be run behind closed doors, in secrecy, by an un-elected elite, is that what you guys want? Well if the community is made up of 'uneducated hordes of children' then I say let them have their vote, and don't get so precious about the result - it's freeware & it's meant to be fun...

The only downside I see to this competition is that it can bring out the worst in people, turning them into devious cheats. Thankfully, in the history of the competition, I'm only aware of one occasion when anyone has been caught cheating & that was Jrollon/Japo32, whose winning entry ended up disqualified after he was found to have created multiple accounts at the Org so he could vote repeatedly for his plane. I guess most freeware developers are pretty decent people, and don't take the whole thing too seriously, which is what I'd suggest everyone else does.

(And if some MSFS fans don't want to use XP because they're not happy with the quality of the FREE add-ons, well I think the miserable gits are welcome to stick with MSFS...)

[Cameron]

Tom, after reading your subsequent posts, it's pretty obvious that the 'I am a bit embarrassed', 'I just can't understand' and 'please tell me what things am I missing?' from your initial post are far from genuine. In fact it seems as though your first post is nothing more than a shallow attempt to generate more bad vibes here, aimed at the Org.

You appear to be missing the point. Yes, Tom's posts were far from genuine...it doesn't take much thought to figure that out, nor does it take much to figure out why. He's simply stating that "Best Of" should more or less be named "People's Choice" or similar. See it how you want, Will, but aside from being said here, it's been said on other forums as well: The "Best Of" titles are perceived by those who are new to XP really as the BEST that X-Plane sees. We both know this is not the case. There is nicer freeware out there. Craftsmanship doesn't always win in those votes, and as such, "Best Of" is just a bad title for the poll.

But what of the points being raised here? To me the raison d'être  for the Org's 'Best of the month' competition has always been to give credit, encouragement & acknowledgement to the FREEWARE developers who, month after month, put the fruits of their labour into the DM, to freely share with the rest of the XP community. For that it should be applauded, not mocked.

Yet again, it's the name being mocked, not the idea of the poll itself.

Is there anything wrong with the competition being decided by popular vote?

Popular vote...people's choice.

(And if some MSFS fans don't want to use XP because they're not happy with the quality of the FREE add-ons, well I think the miserable gits are welcome to stick with MSFS...)

Yes and no. I, personally, would rather see the expansion of the sim through community sites and more 3rd party developers coming over.

[amerrir]

You appear to be missing the point. Yes, Tom's posts were far from genuine...it doesn't take much thought to figure that out, nor does it take much to figure out why. He's simply stating that "Best Of" should more or less be named "People's Choice" or similar.

Really Cameron? Where, exactly, in Tom's first post, does he say he thinks the title 'Best of' is inappropriate? His sarcasm seems directed more at the choice of winner (by popular vote) than at the title of the contest - though that is something brought up later in the thread. Fact is, all over the world, on TV, in print media & on the internet there are public vote contests to establish a 'Best of' for just about anything. Mostly they're called 'Best of' (I've don't recall ever seeing one called 'People's Choice' but I guess it must've happened somewhere).

It's no big deal if people take "Best of" to mean what they've got the most pleasure from, rather than what has the best 3D modelling, switch animation, or pilot figure... It's just a monthly contest for FREEWARE, giving the guys that do it a boost. Perhaps you're all spoilt by the amazing Payware you sell, and no longer appreciate what others do for fun & freely share.

Oh well, at least it's given you all another chance to moan. Perhaps you should start a 'Best moan about the Org of the month' contest, that would be popular here.  :

[Cameron]

Really Cameron? Where, exactly, in Tom's first post, does he say he thinks the title 'Best of' is inappropriate? His sarcasm seems directed more at the choice of winner (by popular vote)

Do you have a hard time reading sarcasm? It appears so.

...than at the title of the contest - though that is something brought up later in the thread.

So if it was something you saw later in the post, why "moan" about it, Will?

Fact is, all over the world, on TV, in print media & on the internet there are public vote contests to establish a 'Best of' for just about anything. Mostly they're called 'Best of' (I've don't recall ever seeing one called 'People's Choice' but I guess it must've happened somewhere).

No prob, Will! I got ya covered: http://www.peopleschoice.com/pca/

It's no big deal if people take "Best of" to mean what they've got the most pleasure from, rather than what has the best 3D modelling, switch animation, or pilot figure... It's just a monthly contest for FREEWARE, giving the guys that do it a boost.

No, definitely not a big deal...depending who you are, I suppose. For someone like you, me, or others who have been in the community and stuck by X-Plane long enough, we know what the poll really is about. To those just coming in (especially from the MSFS world)?...Not so much. They get the wrong impression. We can argue this all day long. I know better than to know you'll change your mind anyhow. You've demonstrated that portion of your thick thoughts in the rants section all too much.

Perhaps you're all spoilt by the amazing Payware you sell, and no longer appreciate what others do for fun & freely share.

A compliment from Will! I'll take it! Thanks for acknowledging the hard work gone into the payware here. All the same, I love contributions of freeware (as the founder of XPFW, and still as a member there), as well as the fact that it is KEY and CRUCIAL to growth in this type of community. Perhaps you've thought wrong, eh?

Oh well, at least it's given you all another chance to moan. Perhaps you should start a 'Best moan about the Org of the month' contest, that would be popular here.  :

You get my vote.

[LA]

No, definitely not a big deal...depending who you are, I suppose. For someone like you, me, or others who have been in the community and stuck by X-Plane long enough, we know what the poll really is about. To those just coming in (especially from the MSFS world)?...Not so much. They get the wrong impression. We can argue this all day long. I know better than to know you'll change your mind anyhow. You've demonstrated that portion of your thick thoughts in the rants section all too much.

Yes, and the general impression is.................is that X-Plane is still years behind. And this comes at a time in which X-Plane enthusiasts are attempting to convince long time MSFS users to a change, ever since Microsoft pulled the plug on the MSFS series.

LA

[amerrir]

Cameron,

1) no problem reading sarcasm, especially when it is SO obvious... Just you're reply was off, that's all. ('he was stating')

2) I wasn't moaning - it just didn't make sense in the context of your reply (see above)

3) Great, thought there must be one somewhere out there.... didn't think the idea was all yours

4) 'Thick thoughts'? Nice.

5) No problem. So, you 'love contributions of payware (as the founder of XPFW, and still as a member there), yes I'm sure you do, you certainly sell it.... When I was invited to join XPFR recently, I declined in part due to lack of time, and in part due to your involvement (and one other person).

6) So, you'd vote for me in a 'Best moan about the Org contest' - even though I haven't been moaning about the Org? Guess we may have uncovered the reason why you don't seem to 'get' what the Best of the Month competition is all about.....

Edit: yes, XPFW obviously.