On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Tim Moore <timoor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I for one really enjoyed the list and plan to check out some of the more
> highly rated ones with which I'm not familiar. I can't believe that the
> ratings will come as a surprise to any aircraft developer, and I hope that
> their egos aren't so fragile as to be discouraged by a low rating!
>
Right, I also have a couple "new" aircraft I'm going to go check out in a
few minutes. I think ratings can be good if put in the proper context ...
and in this case it's one person's opinion. Thorsten has been clear about
how his rating system works, and as a result, I think it's reasonably fair.
In order to maintain such a ratings system over time, it must be kept fairly
simple.
However, I could come up with many ideas to extend the system ...
1. It would be interesting if there was a system where everyone could vote
on the rating for a particular aircraft ... kind of like rating a youtube
video.
2. The rating could be broken down into 3 (or more) subsections and the
overall rating could be a combination of the parts. 3 broad categories I
see are: (a) cockpit/interior, (b) exterior model, and (c) flight model (how
well does the thing fly, not to be confused with how hard the thing is to
fly.) We could also talk about sound effects, systems modeling (electrical
system, hydraulic system), fault modeling, night lighting ... and on and on.
3. Ratings are imperfect, especially end user ratings. If I can't figure
out how to start some airplane or I crash on take off because of some
operator error, I might give it a really low rating out of frustration. On
the other hand we all intuitively "get" eye candy and model details so some
aircraft might get really high ratings even though they don't fly right or
they have severe systems modeling problems.
At the end of the day, each of our aircraft has strengths and weaknesses,
and even some "low" rated aircraft (rated low because of less detailed
cockpits) might have other really cool features to offer. I've always liked
the YF-23 because it handles so well across a wide speed range ... it's a
blast to fly even though it doesn't have any 3d cockpit.
Regards,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org -
http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/<http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/>
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