What an interesting thread. Hi Goran - the 3 devs I contacted I suspect missed the emails because I sent from frooglesim, instead of from my normal email address. Goran you were one of them - you'll recall that the PC Pilot award badge you proudly display on your DC3 in the store was awarded by me (Peter Wright) in my review of your product some time ago. I've been trying to get updated download links for the 64 bit version as well as your new aircraft. No biggie, part of the idea of the video was to get you guys (the collective "you guys" in the X-Plane dev world to sit up) and I am resending emails and broadening their reach. Ben can sit there saying "Froogle who" all day long, but here we are in a two page thread carrying my name, so I guess it worked. Now to address the bulk of the issues in this thread, and the inference from Ben that my ethics are questionable and reviews are for sale. Almost every single review on the frooglesim channel, and many I write for PC Pilot are made with software I buy. I do that to support the community, and to give me the freedom to say what I want about a product without feeling an obligation or tie. Most of the reviews in the magazine are made with software explicitly provided by the developer for the purposes of review, a practice not uncommon in any industry you care to name. From the developer standpoint it's called marketing - sending new products to influential voices in the hope they will review the product. From the journalism standpoint it's just business as usual, writing about the products we see and reviewing them where appropriate as long as the free product does not interfere with the opinion stated in the piece and the relationship between reviewer and producer is clear and disclosed. In my case, products i receive for review do absolutely not bias my opinion - look at some of my recent reviews in the magazine, some of which got me in very hot water for expressing a highly negative opinion. With regard to my involvement with X-Plane, I have been writing about it for years in the magazine. Many years ago for example I helped kicked off X-Planes exposure with an in-depth look at the product itself, plus a multi-page interview with Austin. Since then I've reviewed a few products of interest in X-Plane but the simple fact of the matter, the unfortunate fact, is that the vast majority of the audience are X-Plane shy and want FSX . That's also where the bulk of new products launch, so naturally it's where the bulk of content in a magazine or indeed on my YouTube channel is focussed. From the comments I see on the channel, many are interested in X-Plane but trot out the same old excuses as to why they are not using it (and why they are not your potential customers). The UI is poor. The colors seem off. Their add-ons don't work. FSX looks better. FSX has more choice etc etc. That's what I want to address. Today if I throw up a video on a product it's actually rarely just that one product. A2A's Cessna for example was covered in video with sky textures from REX, weather from Active Sky, scenery from Orbx, control input filtering from FSUIPC, post effects from Shade. It makes the videos visually appealling and it shows FSX as a platform in the best light, enabling the rest of the video to then focus on the content at hand. In contrast I did a number of videos of the Worldliner 77 and the comments quickly turned to focus in on what X-Plane stock looks and feels like since behind the aircraft that's all your seeing. I want to start a series looking at X-Plane itself but in the best possible light and that's what the VLOG was calling for. I want to show people that X-Plane can look better than FSX, that there is a thriving marketplace out there that people can tap into to extend and enhance it, and that switching to a better flight model does not mean sacrificing the aesthetics people have grown to love in FSX. However, I don't have all that stuff and so reached out to ask you, developers and publishers, what would I need to make X-Plane awesome? What are your best of breed add-ons and enhancements that you believe I really should include in the videos to really shine a light on X-Plane in the best possible way. This isn't biasing a review, in the same way that A2A's Cessna didn't get a great review because the clouds looked nice, or there were animated people on the ground at the airport. Yes, Ben, the vast majority of the audience on Frooglesim are currently invested in FSX. Asking you guys to undertake what is effectively a marketing exercise to sway them did not, and does not, to me seem unrealistic. I'm giving you a platform to market your products to a captive audience in one of the fastest growing simulation YouTube channels in the world (almost 15,000 subs and growing at 12% per month) and in a channel that is almost viral in nature (again, here we are in a separate place on the Internet discussing my videos - see how that worked out?). Given that I also want to focus in on X-Plane and get a fairly steady stream of content up I also went the magazine route and reached out asking you to supply content to review under typical review terms (that being that the review is not in any way biased just because you provided the product for free). Please also bear in mind that 'reviews' probably represent less than 50% of the channel. The bulk of content on the channel is demonstration/tutorial in nature. I released a series of videos on the NGX some 12 to 18 months after the NGX released showing how to fly with it and those videos collectively went on to gain 1/4 of a million views and become one of the most popular NGX series on YouTube - they almost certainly drove traffic to PMDG as well. If some of you wish to sit back indignant and do nothing then so be it - ultimately increased exposure for X-Plane benefits you anyway - but it does sadden me to see Ben's attitude towards any form of journalism. *Edited to clarify the channel's growth*
