Am I banned?

[Claude D]

to Nicolas :

 

http://youtu.be/Y3utCntXrPo

 

I'm in Paris and today, we're building a new one for you :

 

[Peter T.]

X-Plane.org = ideology communism

[Dozer]

I see....well i thought they had no business here at X-Pilot forums.... They should not go and put their noses outside X-Plane.org because its none of their business :/ Moderation of X-Plane.org should be inside the the website not outside as well.... doing that means simply nosiness, we have the right to voice out own opinion. They should not go and put their noses outside X-Plane.org because its none of their business :/ Moderation of X-Plane.org should be inside the the website not outside as well.... doing that means simply nosiness, we have the right to voice out own opinion. So they are looking for a reason to ban people? and if they don't allow it they should move one ignoring it, instead of banning. i have so much more complaining to say now but ill leave it in my stomach as this isn't a rant (hopefully)

so its true, they only resolve problems by simply banning people. Improper moderation...

 

Perhaps it would be sensible to use different usernames on the .org and here. That way a person's .org account won't be blocked on account of what they've said under their X-A alias. That is, unless Nicolas and Cameron are the same person (I've made that mistake before ) and can compare IP addresses.

[Peter T.]

actually, here im Peter T. , over there im still Tramkp888

i am still pretty comfused about their antics. they hate X-Pilot, then why bother go here? Hypocrites

[Dozer]

Then... how did they know Tramkp888 was you? Unless they realised there's probably not more than one Hong Kong-based Aerobridge developer.

 

If they hate people saying bad things about them on the .org, they'll hate people saying bad things about them anywhere. Unfortunate, but not very surprising.

 

Tom, it's interesting to hear the history of the .org/XA split. I'd never known how it came about. Was this just an independent community forum before the MU-2 went on sale?

[Peter T.]

i used to name myself tramkp888 here, and then i changed my name later on, its awhile since i changed my username to my real name.

[tkyler]

I'd never known how it came about. Was this just an independent community forum before the MU-2 went on sale?

Most people don't jack...they just think we're all jerks by nature here   For those curious as to the x-pilot split from the org, read on for my version of the story.  Those not interested probably are the better for it.  This is just written history  so my fingers and mind can stay busy while I break from dev work.

 

I think there are multiple factors that led to the split but I'd say it all started with the MU2 and it's related development of manipulators.  Manipulators were new at the time,  no tools existed for aircraft authors to implement manipulators and they had to be done so by hand, not really practical at all.  The MU2 had about 70+ of them and I could easily spend 2 hours hand editing the exported object...and I was exporting every 10 minutes or so during final tweaking.  It was ridiculous and obscenely annoying.   This meant that x-plane add-on aircraft had no 3D interactivity and limited animations.   So imagine me with this vision of a nice aircraft, interactive in 3D like FSX stuff and no way to realize that vision due to lack of tools.   Marginal, the author of the blender scripts did not support manipulators and had seem to have disappeared from the community so we were all kind of in  limbo.   I forged ahead and begun talks/negotiations with Nicolas about selling on the org while still working out the manipulator delimma with Ben Russell and we eventually came up with a rough manipulator framework in blender.   Now let me tangent for a second...

 

I have always  believed that were all add-ons equal in FSX and X-Plane, that a user would prefer x-plane to its rendering quality and smoothness.  The problem is that things were not equal....FSX has 10x the addons and the market share.  So the only way to get my beloved x-plane to that same level of support was simply to get more people to look at x-plane.  If x-plane had low quality...and no features that FSX had,  why in the world would anybody want x-plane?  This posed a problem.  It was my singular goal with the MU2 to send a message to the FSX community saying, "look what x-plane CAN do" and get more people to look at x-plane.  Recall at this time that FSX had not been cancelled so we were going up against a juggernaut and needed every advantage that we could get.   So I made what I believed to be a nice product, comparable to some decent stuff in FSX,  wrapped it nice, wrote a nice manual.

 

Ok, back from the tangent.  while negotiating with Nicolas, I observed a couple of things and interpreted them thusly.  1.)  He wasn't very professional in his communications.  His replies were untimely, never answered my questions directly and were generally evasive. I took a more direct approach by asking more direct questions like:  "How often do you pay?   What forms of payment do you provide?  Do you provide sales reports?  How do you handle marketing?"   and I would get back responses like, "We pay monthly, a lot of vendors are happy with it".  I viewed this kind of as a "I'm the only game in town, you do things the way I want you to do them"....and well, I didn't like that.   I would be bringing HIM money  and expected a bit of service.  His market share alone wasn't enough, it wasn't all about the immediate quick cash flow to me.  For many developers I know that it is and that is still affecting the situation to this day IMO.  Going with the org means quick up front money, but I still believe it comes at a higher cost in credibility....at least to FSX users and they are still the larger market and I don't think the org is helping the x-plane growth.  Nicolas will say it is, growing quickly under his tenure, but his tenure happens to coincide with XP10 dev and FSX canellation.    He may have had vision to see the potential growth, but he's definitely not responsible for it in any way. 

 

So, I also noticed that Nicolas was marketing stuff with a bit more hype than I found agreeable, almost deceitful IMO, claiming some of his products to be the "best of x-plane" as he still does to some extent, but not as much anymore.  Well I could go on other forums and see folks say things like, ".......that's the best they got?"   or they'd buy one of his products and immediately feel like they'd been duped by marketing.   When they'd voice their displeasure on the org, both the user and their post would "disappear".  All that was left was glowing reports and not "counter point".   I definitely have a problem with that at a community I helped contribute to.  So we began taking screenshots of these posts before they were wiped out and Nicolas has alluded to our "screenshots" as silly and childish....but it was our way to say, "hey man, we're not making this stuff up, Nicolas is burying people for speaking out" and the community is oblivious.   It gave x-plane a bad image IMO.  Sure there are people who feel they get equal value for their money but remember, I'm looking at growing x-plane and the FSX crowd looked at XP as a play toy.  The only people who seem to think these were good values were x-plane fanboys who didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings or get banned.   This wasn't the way to grow x-plane IMO......and is probably the philosophical base for our differences to this day.

 

So here I am working on the MU2, an org member, no x-pilot yet.....I have these scripts with manipulator support thanks to Ben Russell, things are going south with Nicolas and he's started to become more and more gustapo on the org when people bash his stuff.  They just "disappear" and nobody is the wiser.   So I need a place to sell my MU2.  So I call up Cameron who founded x-plane freeware at age 13 and has e-commerce programming experience.  This guy is passionate and talented and good at what he does.  He shared my ideas of promoting x-plane quality in a higher light than we felt the org was doing.  As talented as Cameron is though, the task was ambitious to set up a new web store and Ben Russell completed our technological tri-fecta.  

 

The one thing we decided though was to not share our Blender scripts for a couple of reasons.  1.)  We needed a competitive advantage in these early days of "market positioning" knowing the 1000lb Gorilla, x-plane.org was about to outcast and try and crush us and 2.)  the scripts were (and still are) cryptic to implement manipulators.  If we put them out, we'd have a plethora of users complaining on how to use them and overwhelming us with support, stealing our development time.  The license was open source but only upon distribution.  So by not distributing, we weren't violating anything.   One person that really needed manipulator support though was Dan Klaue.  He was working on his stuff but didn't have manipulator support and it really stalled his work.     I later found out from him directly that he thought our hoarding of our own fork of scripts was way uncool and it .."upset him greatly".  Dan was shaping up to be a staunch supporter of Nicolas and the org and this added to the emotional divide.  

 

Now I'm a good ol Texas boy as we'd say in the US, meaning I'm a simple "straight shooting" (says things very directly) kind of guy..... work hard, enjoy the fruits of my labor and don't ask anything of anybody...and I do love to share, my history on the org shows; however,  I can't share if I'm not stable enough to survive.  I looked at it as I "don't need to share YET, but the time will come that I want to very  much".....and a topic for another day, the community here is about to find out that I have every intention of sharing, scripts and everything I've learned over the years using them......BUT I still have to survive and I do long to help and see a new level of shareware begin to take shape and watch people engaging in the hobby of development.   Dan's attitude to me was one of,  "give me your hard work (Ben Russells actually)".   I might have, but philosophically, he was supporting someone who was engaging in really bad behavior in the banning of it's membership.   Granted it was passively, I don't think he had any discussions with Nicolas about the matter and chose to keep to his blinders, thereby maintaining plausible deniability.   Money was at stake though.....standing against Nicolas means loosing lots of money up front and it's not easy to walk away from without a hit to your pocketbook.  To me, it's a tether around your neck though and you don't break from oppression with that technique though so to me it was just a matter of Dan choosing his side and living with the consequences of his choice, nothing more.  I certainly have taken consequences from mine and that's just the way it is.

 

Ok...so here we are,  you have me with my MU2 and manips, not wanting to sell with Nicolas on one side......and you have Dan, already determined to support Nicolas on the other side.....and there was some animosity here....not by us so much.  I had nothing to be angry about.  I have my MU2, I have my manips, I have a store to sell on, I'm good to go.     The one thing I did do though that really fueled the fire was I implicated Dan's work as inferior....NOT a good way to make friends,  regardless of the truth.  Now I didn't do it directly, never called Dan a bad developer, never explicitly said a piece of his work was bad, BUT I did point out technical areas that were deficient compared to the standard FSX users were used to.   Dan's inevitable response was "why would you do such a thing"....and a very fair question to him.  This was one of those difficult moments for me.  I could 1.)  Play nice and make sure everybody felt good.......while watching x-plane continue to grow slow because Nicolas called works like Dan's, "the very best of x-plane"....or I could stand up and say, "no, this is not the very best of x-plane".    People's feelings hung in the balance and I chose to go my route.  Selfish?  possibly.....do I regret it?  certainly not.  I think there are a great many people out there who fully understand that exposure is paramount in marketing.  It had to be done so I did it, knowing full well a lot of folks probably wouldn't be too comfortable.   As long as I could get this message out, get x-plane add-on quality up a level through good old fashioned free-enterprise competition, then everybody would benefit.  This was my only driving factor.  Dan's work today is fantastic I think.  He would probably agree that his work today is better than it was then and that he's learned more and has better resources.   I am very happy for the work he is putting out.  It does x-plane proud. 

 

so that was the environment right before the MU2 came out.  Tensions were high because of my insinuations of inferior quality and Nicolas banning ways and we knew it was only a matter of time before we were out of there.  So we kept our head low, built x-aviation and then built x-pilot as our inevitable forum outlet.  So sure enough, the MU2 comes out, Nicolas finds out, shortly later, I'm banned, Cameron's banned, the MU2 is the first all 3D plane with manips and it gets some good reviews and lo and behold several people say the Mu2 is the reason they came to x-plane.   I feel justified and vindicated...yet pretty much hated by many org members.

 

Now don't forget that x-plane.org is STILL the 1000lb gorilla in the room and when a 1000lb gorilla gets upset, you go into defense mode real quick.  Every time we got attacked (always passively with deleted posts by members or a banning of a x-aviation supporter), we counter-attacked.  Everything we did on our end we felt was defensive only, BUT we were the more aggressive publicly as that's all we had....if we played on the org playing field, we'd be wiped out.  Product quality and freedom of speech is all we had at the time, one thing Nicolas doesn't quite subscribe to.  Nicolas used guerrilla tactics, we used bombs.  Folks see what we do, they don't see what he does, he operates the org like a mob boss, in the shadows.  Bad stuff gets done, but as long as no-one sees it, nobody knows.  That continues to this day.  For us here at x-pilot and x-aviation,  the mission is the same.  Show the FLIGHT SIM MARKET.....not just the x-plane market what x-plane is capable of and we'll all benefit.

 

So as time passes, you see Dan get Sam256 involved and eventually Dan gets his scripts and manipulator support and things keep on rolling.  By this time, we're going our separate ways back to back but there's still tension to this day, like North Korea and South.  All we ever did was want to elevate x-plane's add-on image and quality outside the x-plane arena as this was the real flight sim market in our opinion and when we left the org, we got attacked and we came back very hard and aggressive verbally.  This is why you see no apologies from us save one, from me to Dan for sweeping him up in our issues with Nicolas.

 

Later on, the announcement of the changes in FSX changed the landscape in x-plane.  I got picked up by Laminar and got caught up in that instead of doing more add-ons.  In the time it took me to do the scenery and four aircraft, I might could have done two other add-ons, BUT I was forefront in XP10 tech and this was a bonus, I was help shaping methods that benefit all developers, for the org developers too.  In the end, my path in all this will have a good community effect that has yet to be implemented.  I plan to take all my knowledge, experience, evolution of the scripts, documentation and do video tutorials and written tutorials and teach folks how to develop high quality stuff in a hobby fashion for the community.  Will this be detrimental to payware developers?   Absolutely not in that payware level has gotten to demand a LOT of detail and time.  What I'm looking to do is get folks making shareware like the King Air or Baron and possibly in an open source capacity where we can increase community involvement in a more "guild" style environment.  Very nice stuff can be done with default tools and I for one think it would be cool to have a big download library of aircraft of the King Air and Baron level.      We might implement this in a low cost subscription based environment  which provides tremendous value for the dollar.  As a parent of 3 kids in college, I have to take care of my family in order to have time to do anything for the community.  In the end, all I want is higher quality in x-plane .  I do not subscribe to the "everything for free" model  though.  I have always provided "some free...some not" to balance it out.  I've taken for free and therefore feel the need to contribute some for free.  At the end of the day,  I am interested in a 1.)  Vibrant community with great social interaction, mentorship, and culture of quality shareware development and 2.)  Providing great value for the money whenever money is exchanged for anything I have a hand in.

 

So that's where x-pilot came from in my version.    It started with the Mu2 and my refusal to sell at the org because of what I perceived to be a strategy detrimental to x-plane growth.  Cameron and Ben felt the same and we all headed out.   In the separation, bad feelings ensued and this little settlement here is the result.  Like the org though,in the end, we will go where the community lets us go.

 

Best,

Tom K

Sorry for the ramble...but it was a good opportunity to spill since you asked Jack 

Edited January 9, 2013 by tkyler

[Hampster]

Thanks Tom, that was very interesting and I am supporting you all the way... Go get 'em!

[tkyler]

Cameron has pointed out to me that the chronology of some of my recollections are a bit off...such is my memory nowadays I guess, but we also both agreed that it was close enough to the story  

Edited January 10, 2013 by tkyler

[Dozer]

Thanks very much Tom, that was a very informative read. I was completely misinformed in many of the previous comments I've made regarding XA/.org relations! This should be required reading for all new X-Pilot members.

[Dozer]

It was my singular goal with the MU2 to send a message to the FSX community saying, "look what x-plane CAN do" and get more people to look at x-plane.

Worked for me!

[Colin S]

I got banned today (from all the forums in that .org place) for posting a question about 'it may be time to reconsider the screenshot size limitations (max of 120kb) in view of the hi-mesh scenery avaliable today, X10.20 capability, monitor resolutions, and inexpensive storage space available. I got blasted be the Administrator who say I should pay him $20,000 per month to do that because it cost him $30,000 per month for his current storage space. He sent that as a private message, so when I posted his response in the forum under open discussion, I got banned.

No problem, I have spent many hundred of dollars their in their store and have a very high rating for my posts (over 350 likes in the past 2 yrs) so I don't mind leaving anyplace that has no concern for maintaining they good customers over something like that and not opening my suggestion for discussion. My post was locked and i was banned without further comment. Sad.. especialy for them considering all Austin's legal problems an need to retain customers.

 

EDIT: To be fair I was off a decimal point. It should read $2,000 and $3,000 not $20,000 and $30,000 my typing mistake. I don't want this issue anymore but don't want to be critical of .org since I have been there so long. Their actual comment I add below for fairness.

 

 

Wow... and you even dealt with him in a very friendly way, unlike me, sending him an essay I spent an hour on after finally getting unbanned JUST so I could get banned again.

[Colin S]

Best,

Tom K

Sorry for the ramble...but it was a good opportunity to spill since you asked Jack 

 

Wow... that was amazing. I can truly say that should become a news article in "FLYING" magazine.

[Colin S]

Sorry for three posts in a row, but how would you guys feel if 42.zip started showing up on the .org in place of some files?

[zymurg]

tkyler: After having read your candid and informative narrative concerning the relationship with .org and the beginnings of  this website, the first thing I did today was go to X-Scenery, establish a membership, and purchase the MU2.  I haven't even unzipped it yet, but will be flying it very soon. I am sure it is an awesome aircraft.

Interesting in that my next aircraft was planned to be an .org aircraft but I do not plan to be buying anything there in the near future.

 

I was not surprised by your comments involving Nickolas. Through my very limited experience with him, it was very clear to me his entrepreneur expertise was extremely limited  by his lack of customer orientation and customer appreciation. It is highly contrary to basic business principles, let alone conducive to business growth, to be so dismissive and arrogant to your customer base. I have spent many hundreds of dollars at .org. He has seen his last purchase from me, attributable to irrational behavior and arrogant handling of a simple reasonable comment. I have post graduate degrees in the field of business and have held a number of senior positions involved directly with customer relations.

 

Thank both you and Cameron, and thanks for  x-Scenery, a beautiful aircraft in the MU2, and a a great website in X-Pilot.

[BimmerCop]

Hello guys, just to drop my 2 cents in the fray, I was given a 7 day ban on my VERY FIRST POST at the .org... Why? Because I asked if anyone knew where I could download G2XPL because there were no links to it in the G2XPL thread. Ain't that some shit?

The .org will never see a penny from me and I will go to any lengths in making sure people I know do the same. I'm surprised that website has lasted this long granted the horrific customer service they provide.

Does anyone know if Laminar Research has even granted them permission to use the "x-plane" domain name? Anyone might think .org is directly affiliated to .com and I wouldn't be surprised if tons of potential XP customers have been steered away due to their shitty attitudes.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Edited January 13, 2013 by BimmerCop

[steven winslow]

BimmerCop,

 

Read this thread.  Might shed some light on why the org mods frowned upon your post.

 

http://forums.x-pilot.com/index.php/topic/616-g2xpl-help/

[steven winslow]

By the way, if you had simply done a search for G2XPL in the forums over there you would have found the link to get it.  

[Andyrooc]

I can understand why they wouldn't want to host a link to it given it's dubious nature. They have no capacity for being sued..they're an org after all. And while they are heavy handed at times, I figure (as with all forums) it's their forum, you abide by their rules...kind of like you're visiting their house, using their bathroom etc. If I found their bathroom smelled, I'd find somewhere else .  I do not find this difficult to deal with, and have had no particular problem.

[BimmerCop]

By the way, if you had simply done a search for G2XPL in the forums over there you would have found the link to get it.

I did search and no link for it showed up. How dificult is it to put a line in the OP saying "Email me and I will send you the installer as an attachment" instead of being so cryptic about it.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Edited January 13, 2013 by BimmerCop

[Goran_M]

I did search and no link for it showed up. How dificult is it to put a line in the OP saying "Email me and I will send you the installer as an attachment" instead of being so cryptic about it. Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Regardless of all that...does what you did really warrant a ban?

No.

[Andyrooc]

...which makes me think there was more to it...

[Cameron]

...which makes me think there was more to it...

It wouldn't surprise me if there's NOT more to it. That's how unbelievable things can be there, Andy. We need not go further here other than to say it happens all the time.

[Andyrooc]

oh, ok

[steven winslow]

I did search and no link for it showed up

 

A simple search in the forums brings up a thread titled "G2XPL."  The second post in that thread has another link, which I've included below, that takes you to another thread that also has G2XPL in the title.  That thread has a link to get the download.  Good luck.

 

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=59170