After having loaded down an awfull lot of things and really spending hours to install them, I dare to pronounce a few wishes to those who do the work.
YES, I know, we gready sim adicts who are not willing to spend money should be happy there are people like you at all and should take your work like it is, but perhaps there is somebody outthere who has some understanding and symphathy for us... !?!
Today, I talk about
README files
The first big thing is the readme file. As far as I read your comments you often make in readme files and manuals, you are fed up with people blowin up your e-mail inbox and complaining about things they think to be bugs, because they simply did not read the readme file... Seems like there is hardly one of us users reading it. In other words: I understand your annoyment about this.
But often the question is as simple as: Does it tell me something new?
There's a file called "MUSTREAD.txt", so you think, ah, something very special, and you open it up. But what do you find there?
1. Legal stuff.
Okay, this is a must. It is more or less the song to sing along, entertaining like a commercial break . Therefore , most developers put it at the end of the file.
2. Genesis."Created using GMAX".... This is the part, wich even I skip, because I simply got no clue about modelling. This is possibly a must for copyright reasons, but it should not appear in the first lines...
3. History and technical data This should disappoint developers most:
They move devil and hell to get the facts together about the plane they designed, put it in the readme file, and the readme file ends up in the trash can without even being opened.
I myself don't want to prolong my waiting time till I could fly the plane and have, as most users, not enough patience for that. BUT I am interested in history. So what could you do about it? Quite simple:
Move this information to the kneeboard reference chart. As you can see in my reviews, I often advice people to do so and tell them how. When I fly level and everything is done, I often switch to the reference tab and read about the plane. It is also good to have all the technical data at the kneeboard so you just don't have to print something out or to pause FS for fiddeling out how much the range or the MTOW is and how much fuel you should use. It is incomfortable if you have to pause the simulator and dig for the readme file.
A real pilot knows facts like this by heart (at least in Germany), but he does not fly about 170 single aircraft modells and types, like some of us simmers do.
4. Installation:
"Please read this, extremely important!", it says and a standard installation procedure follows. MUST THAT BE? It should be that way:
"Installation:
If you know how to do it, proceed as usual, there is nothing special. If you do it for the first time, do it like this: Unzip ......bla, bla, bla...."
OR:
"Advanced users: Installation procedure is unusual so please do not skip!"
I very often followed the written instruction litterally, and if I was not experienced, I'd still wonder why some things don't work. Example:
"Unzip gauges.zip to the gauges folder". Loading aircraft, no gauges. Opening gauges folder, find a folder called gauges there. GRRR!
Others even do worse:
"Unzip the whole package to your main FS directory." It was more then once that I had to dig for every single .bgl, .bmb, .r8 and so on mixed with all the other dozends of files wich are placed in my main directory and belong there. If you got no backup and the "artist" did not even make a folder structure, you will not be able to tell wich .bgl belongs to the main folder and wich was placed there accidentaly. Since I got this 3 times, I always zip everything into a temporary folder within the main directory, because I lost trust in you!
Sceneries: "Create a folder called Texture and another one called scenery. Drag and drop all .bmp into texture, and ..." hell, while you write this, you could have made those folders yourself. I think, you test your scenery, so you have to create those folders yourself. Why don't you just zip the whole folder, e.g. "Honolulu2003" after you tested it, so people had nothing to do but unzip it directly into their Sceney or Add on Scenery folder?!?
No, not because we are too lazy: The more people must do the more likely they make mistakes. And then they bother you with complaints. Even worse, some rate your add on bad and comment it " Rated 1. Does not work." (wich is very constructive...) and people reading this stop downloading an excellent pice work that took god knows how much hours to be done!
Some of you even give wrong instructions when offering a self installer like the one by clickteam: "Search for the FS main folder", and then you find your MD11 folder between the gauges and the Modules folder in the main directory, because you did not find your MD11 when running FS (MD11 is just an example taken by random and does not refere to anybody who made a MD11).
5. Gauge manuals, special keycodes and shortcuts:
You need to read this when flying the plane. This also should appear on the kneeboard. If you are as excellent as making a gauge manual with screenshots, please enter a copy of it to the kneeboard as well and refere to the other one made, for example, in .pdf format
If I printed all the gauge and aircraft manuals out that I downloaded with the planes, my paper and printer cache supplier could quit work being a rich man and buying a house at Hollywood or Monaco. And I could fill a complete room with all that paper stuff. Okay, this is exagerated, but it illustrates what I mean.
Location: Virginia Beach, Virgina USA (KNTU, KORF)
Age: 41
Gender: Male
another issue...Tutorials and instructions are for people that DO NOT know what they are doing. Please stop writing the tutorials and instructions like your writing for a room full of developers. Yes, I'm an idiot, there I said it!
Well, it is just like entering the room with the tree at chrismas eve:
You installed the plane, you launch FS wich seems to take ages, you select the new plane that you searched for so dearly on the net, chose a location, hit "Go flying", swet and tremble while FS loads the flight and just like to kick your machine to be a bit faster (try to imagine this how I swing my leg onto the desk to kick my PC )
Wait, writing in progress
Modem crash with a big text written, too tired for today, will carry on tomorrow.
I've got to say that I agree wholeheartedly with Rhythmosaur regarding the "Read Me Files" and putting things on the kneepad. I'm just getting around to figuring out how to put the things on the Kneepad that I find myself needing time and again (not because I'm stupid, I just fly many different types of aircraft and find I get some things confused, usually at exactly the wrong moment). In many cases, a simple copy and paste operation from similar a/c would suffice.
To all you developers out there, please take these comments as constructive criticism, not out and out gripes. I'm pretty sure that is the way Rhythmosaur meant them and we both really appreciate the time you have spent putting the add-ons together.
ditto ditto and ditto! i couldn't have said any of it better myself... as if that were possible to begin with.. i fully appreciate the fact that there are so many countless addons that people spend hours, days, weeks months or even years to develop... you're doing this for the good of the fs community, and because you like to do it, you like to make something for others to enjoy. so why not do that? and yes, it is only constructive criticism, not rants or complaints...
You jump in, you gaze at the panel, you turn your head(-switch), you check the VCock (if any), you check for pop up panels.
Gauges complete?
Something new?
Fuel consumption gauges? UTC-Clock? Engine hours counter? Pushpack panel? Something I don't know yet?
The excietment is only surpassed by the moment when I initiate the start up sequence because sound is a crucial element for me.
But sometimes the excietment is really dumped to the abyss.
(BTW: Nice word for a German airliner registration: D-ABYS. I'd not dare to board on that plane ).
"This panel needs deadlink.zip" Trying to get those files, it turnes out to be a dead link. GRMBLFJX!
"This panel needs FS00 Concorde gauges" People who never purchased FS00 are left in the dark. GRFTJX!
(Load down the exellent "Recopan2.zip" Concorde panel even if you do not intend to use a Concorde. It comes with all the gauges you might need from FS00. Try the panel anyway, it is great!)
"I left out the VCock... the sound... this and that... for keeping the download size down" Feel good lies. If you really want to get an excellent aircraft that does not cost you a single cent, you are ready to wait hours if necessary for downloading the file. I speak by experience!
Custom gauges are something very nice. They are the result of a programmer who was not satisfied to put a default gauge there in order to come "as real as it gets" to the panel design of the real thing. More so, when somebody designs entire custom (pop up) panels. Meanwhile, this often causes trouble:
In "crowded" panels, some gauges are hardly readable and even more hard to tune, even in high resolution. What to do about this? Just add the same gauge/instrument as zoomed pop up like some developers do.
Imagine, you are in the middle of your flight. You just need to tune in another NDB or just want to have a look at your GPS wich you closed for framerate or gauge observation reasons. But where is it?
I understand some designers don't want to have the default click icons to appear on their panels, either because they don't stylistically fit or there's simply no space for them. I got used to use shortcuts for pop up panels anyway, because it is quite often that a pop up panel just hides the icons when opened, and you cannot change this unless you don't mind to hide your primary flight gauges.
One of the wonders of our century is that even MICROSOFT realized it is easier to keep a kind of standard order for pop up panels. In most of their *beep*, the GPS appears with Shift+3, and the radio stack with Shift+2. When a plane has a built in radio stack, e.g. the Bombardier Learjet 45, then they place something different at Shift+02, but the GPS remains at Shift+03. A few add on developers do the same with related custom gauges.
Pretty much simmers fly seriously with several dozends of different aircraft, and it is quite impossible to keep shortcut settings for each in mind.
I hope I kicked nobody with this, it is ment as constructive criticism. Unlike to what my nation is famous for abroad, I did not just "complain", I made suggestions. Hope this will be a help for the dialogue between the "maniacs" who develope and the "parasites" who take the benefit...
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. Therefore , most developers put it 
Hope this will be a help for the dialogue between the "maniacs" who develope and the "parasites" who take the benefit...
