Virtual Flight School

[Eight Ball]

Hi guys,

 

I don't know if this idea already came across your mind but don't you think it might be a good idea to create a virtual flight school ?

Completely independant of any squadrons/teams, open to everyone from the total noob wanting to know how to properly start up the plane to the advanced users wanting to learn more on some specific systems or flight techniques.

 

I had this idea after reading

"Wot I Think" by Tim Stone, specially after this part

Serious flight sim fabricators, there are thousands of curious Silent Hunters, ARMAphiles and Wings of Prey-ers, out there ripe for assimilation. One of the things you need to do to turn a neck-craning tourist into a dedicated fan is make training fun, comprehensive and fully integrated

As stated in the dedicated thread, having a completely dynamic flight instructor is almost impossible in single player. But not in MP :)

 

So my thought would be something like this :

 

- A list of instructors ready to share their knowledge (they don't have to be absolute master in this sim, most of us can already teach how to properly start the plane). Maybe selected after some sort of exams allowing to know if they have enough skill and which part of the sim they could teach.

- Each instructor would say how much time he's ready to spend and when (it has to remain absolutely voluntary)

- Student would ask for what they what to learn

- Some sort of planning would be done as quick as possible, showing who is going with who.

 

Mr Pink - Instructor :

Category : Start Up - Navigation - Weapon

Availability : Monday 21, from 7PM to 10PM (GMT)

Hosting capabilites : 4 players

In order to work properly every usefull information should be on the first post of the thread, no discussion would be allowed, only students requests and instructors answers.

 

The first post could look like this :

 

• Beginners :
  

Start up

 

Mr Pink - Instructor

Monday from 7pm to 10pm

Student : Jim, John, Paul

 

Weapon

 

Mr Brown - Instructor

Wednesday from 1pm to 2pm

Student : Jack

 

 

• Advanced
  

CDU

 

Mr Yellow - Instructor

Friday from 3pm to 6pm

Student : Ringo, George

 

And so on

We could imagine a generic nickname the different instructors could access and thus each of them would be able to edit the first post.

 

What are your thoughts guys ?

 

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2011 by Eight Ball

[pitbldr]

I like it! I could see myself using this "service" once I am able to start flying on a regular basis.

[GGTharos]

My thoughts are that you're not really creating a flight school; it's just an operator's course, which is fine, but understand what it is you want to teach and why.

 

Ignoring ground operations and radio operations, FLIGHT school starts with learning basic aerodynamics, weather, and for the flight part, it starts with straight and level flight and trimming ... takeoffs and touch downs come somewhere after learning how to turn the aircraft while maintaining speed and +/- 50' altitude all at the same time, and rolling out no more than 5 deg off your desired heading ;)

[Avilator]

I like the idea, but I kinda have to agree with GG in terms of what it's called.

[Eight Ball]

Oh it's just an idea an it's open to any suggestion. The categories in the first post were just there as an example, it could (and should) be extended to anything someone would like to learn or to teach.

 

Just to be clear, I don't want it to be my flight school, I wouldn't even apply for an instructor "job".

It should be a community thing. By and for the community.

 

Also in my opinion one of the most important thing is it has to remain fun and on an absolute volunteer basis, for both the student and the instructor

If someone has some free time during a few weeks then don't show up for several month it shouldn't be a problem.

 

In my idea it would be a tool for everyone and it could be extended to every DCS modules.

 

But all I wanted was to throw the idea here and see what you guys would think of it. So far it's not even a project it's just an idea

Edited April 14, 2011 by Eight Ball

[GGTharos]

Just to be clear, I don't want it to be my flight school, I wouldn't even apply for an instructor "job".

 

Me either. It takes about 9 months for someone to properly qualify in my squad already, and I need to reserve all my patience for the few great people we have :D

 

It should be a community thing. By and for the community.

 

Also in my opinion one of the most important thing is it has to remain fun, for both the student and the instructor and on a absolute volunteer basis.

 

Good luck with the fun part. It isn't - and probably rarely will be - fun for the instructor.

 

If someone has some free time during a few weeks then don't show up for several month it shouldn't be a problem.

 

It will be.

 

In my idea it would be a tool for everyone and it could be extended to every DCS modules.

 

Yep, except it isn't practical. It isn't a bad idea, it has been thought about before, and if you look - you'll see that such training is typical contained within squadrons. And they require - usually - that you AT LEAST demonstrate the ability to put in the effort to start the thing up on your own.

[Bushmanni]

Having people who have just recently learned their thing as instructors is a good thing as they have more enthusiasm for the n00b stuff and they can better emphasize with and understand his/her problems. Hard core pros are better only at recognizing mistakes.

[bogusheadbox]

I think a school is a great idea.

 

However i have a few suggestions.

 

Instead of training on own server, conduct the training on a popular server (therefore server maps will have to have training slots for planes)

 

The benefits of this are

1. Increased traffic at air bases making them feel alive (brinigng the community together)

2. When they learn to fly and taxi it will teach new players the respect for propper taxi technique (not taking off on taxi ways) and teach them to respect traffic flow and slot in to what can be a busy base.

3. A training flight can then follow an active flight and bug out early to taste a little of nav and radar awareness ( i beleive you have to have a level of threat here to make sure they respect the danger areas).

4. It will encourage team play and squad flight.

 

I personally would love to fly back to a base and see co-ordinated flight between 2 ship and greater. Especially when black shark is merged, then that would be even better as the airport could also host training to helos, where those that are ready to mix it up could transfer to a helo at a farp.

 

Just my idea

[Creelers]

I love the Reservoir Dogs references.

[Eight Ball]

you'll see that such training is typical contained within squadrons.

 

Exactly, and that was the whole point of my idea. There's quite a lot of people outhere who don't want, or just like me, who can't join a serious squadron because of x reasons.

 

Why couldn't we imagine some sort of inter-squadron flight school (or course if you prefer). Everyone would benefit from this. Instructor would somehow advertise their squadron through their teaching. Of course I'm not saying each of their sentences should end by "join the 88th Virtual Fighter Squadron".

 

And they require - usually - that you AT LEAST demonstrate the ability to put in the effort to start the thing up on your own

 

Why would it be different with a flight school ? Having an instructor doesn't mean he's going to take you by the hand like a baby.If everything is planned from this forum it will be quite easy to monitor who's serious and who's not.

 

Instead of training on own server, conduct the training on a popular server (therefore server maps will have to have training slots for planes)

(...)

 

Indeed it would be awesome but I'm not sure a lot of squadrons would agree to see their server filled with non members on a regular basis. It would also mean we'd have to contact them before any course.

 

The advantage of own server is flexibility. The instructor is giving his schedule and the number of slots available and that's about it, no need of any "administrative" work.

I think the majority of players here can host a small session without any serious hit on the performances. The only major downside is no TS and no VoIP

Edited April 15, 2011 by Eight Ball

[ErichVon]

They used to do this exact same thing in "Aces High" to their independent training server. But real life gets in the way unless the instructor is retired with lots of time on his hands.

 

Now introduce payment as to a guy's time worth and using maybe PayPal and this may be an opportunity for making a little cash on the side. LOL You may very well find some takers.

 

I like the idea of how the military trains. And you complete phase 1 adequately before advancing to phase 2, etc. There was a game, similar to Top Gun, where I thought I would never complete the training levels before ever being allowed out to the game's fleet ops. And like the Navy does and some sim squads, you are ALWAYS being critiqued and scored. Some sim squads give you a 2 week trial period. You fail what they are looking for, you are not accepted in their squad.

 

I know of two guys in here that do quite a lot to help the newbies.

 

Erich

 

Hi guys,

 

I don't know if this idea already came across your mind but don't you think it might be a good idea to create a virtual flight school ?

Completely independant of any squadrons/teams, open to everyone from the total noob wanting to know how to properly start up the plane to the advanced users wanting to learn more on some specific systems or flight techniques.

 

I had this idea after reading

"Wot I Think" by Tim Stone, specially after this part

As stated in the dedicated thread, having a completely dynamic flight instructor is almost impossible in single player. But not in MP :)

 

So my thought would be something like this :

 

- A list of instructors ready to share their knowledge (they don't have to be absolute master in this sim, most of us can already teach how to properly start the plane). Maybe selected after some sort of exams allowing to know if they have enough skill and which part of the sim they could teach.

- Each instructor would say how much time he's ready to spend and when (it has to remain absolutely voluntary)

- Student would ask for what they what to learn

- Some sort of planning would be done as quick as possible, showing who is going with who.

 

In order to work properly every usefull information should be on the first post of the thread, no discussion would be allowed, only students requests and instructors answers.

 

The first post could look like this :

We could imagine a generic nickname the different instructors could access and thus each of them would be able to edit the first post.

 

What are your thoughts guys ?

 

 

 

 

[Malefic Rage]

Some sim squads give you a 2 week trial period. You fail what they are looking for, you are not accepted in their squad.

Erich

 

A query with respect to online squadrons: Do you get more happy-go-lucky sorts that accept and train casual players or do they tend to be more interested in the serious simmers and selective about their membership and time investments?

Edited April 15, 2011 by Malefic Rage

[Tekken]

An online flight school was established some years ago for the sim IL-2. Starting with flight basics, acm, bombing procedures to land and start aircrafts from carriers you can learn almost everything needed to survive a battle or to handle emergency situations for various types of planes. It started with 2 or three instructors I think, but some more joined in later on and it is open to everyone, who's seriously interested in learning "the art of flying in WW2".

 

If you wanna take a look at it (german!):

 

http://jfs.sturmovik.de/

 

 

Tekken

[ErichVon]

My only other MMORGP (I think that is the correct acronym...maybe...) online, lots of guys in a server is:

 

http://www.hitechcreations.com/help.html

 

Why I quit that flight sim game I have done since 2007, on 4 independent, company owned servers, is what I perceived as cheating. And I said so on the forum and separately to the owners. That "cheating" may very well be the inadequacy of my Frontiernet.net lousy DSL connection running only at less than 5 mega bytes per second download speed and frame rates. My PC is more than adequate, but something just does not gel there.

 

You guys do the server thing here differently; maybe that is more common in the real world than being spoiled to Aces High. I quit that game paying $15 monthly for something new and more challenging because there is just too many moves that have to be memorized between the 2 sims. The older I get, I am almost age 60, the harder it gets. But I DO MISS Aces High, sometimes.

 

Realize too, I did cerebral hemorrhage at age 50 and survived it---no small feat. I type mostly with one finger. Delphi and Yahoo Groups forums forced me to type, therefore forcing me to use the hand/eye/brain/muscle relearning process and saved my life. Some guys think I am a bit slow learning---yes I am. But at least I have use of both hands. Aftermath of brain hemorrhage is not fun and retraining the brain to create new pathways is the goal. I walk a lot, BUT not enough. I love the Internet, but not Facebook or Twitter. I love flight sims.

 

Now to answering your question:

======================

Both!

 

And then some.

 

Depends on the squad. Aces High has over 500 guys, probably over 1000 guys in it worldwide. And they have many, many squads in it. See their COMMUNITY drop down. Each squad is different. Some squads operate very casually and some squads act just like a full military flight unit should function in real life. Some squads are very demanding, very aggressive, very similar to the way the Marines train killers or the SEALS operate after BUDS.

 

I got LockOn Platinum in January 2011 is how I found DCS through KonKuSSion, I call him Kon. Once I ever get up to where I need to be as a useful squad member I will request a squad membership. I know where I will need to be before being useful. And from what I have seen so far the 77th Savage group may fill YOUR need and MY need.

 

Ask him.

 

http://www.s77th.com/forums/login.php?redirect=cal_lite.php&sid=55c1459e84c45d7771f5680459dabd71

 

Just jump in and try a squad and feel it out.

 

I did that doing the USA Navy in 1974 at age 22, but I was committed, no way out for 6 years. LOL!

 

As to lots of guys on one server? Aces High has approximately quarterly, 500 guys, in squads, at one time recreating a WWII battle that can last 3 hours, but the limiting factor is, WWII era planes, via machine guns, mostly toss bombs except for the precision bombers. And too many guys ramming and head-ons like an arcade game mentality, which I hate. The owners will not enforce not allowing it, so I left.

 

Maybe LockOn is similar. I played LockOn FC about a week.

 

I would love to see a Korean war sim: F-86 vs. Migs of that era as realistic as DCS is.

 

I am a bit wordy.... yeah, right... and veer off topic too much... And might get scolded for it.

 

Erich

 

A query with respect to online squadrons: Do you get more happy-go-lucky sorts that accept and train casual players or do they tend to be more interested in the serious simmers and selective about their membership and time investments?

Edited April 15, 2011 by ErichVon

[mckee14]

just an idea - instead of developing a separate flightschool with all the hassle (and maybe only half the benefit of what one estimates), why not just open a new sub-forum ONLINE TRAINING / FLIGHT SCHOOL?

 

every memeber can request some lesson(s), no hassle about sqadrons and stuff. i know, it sounds very unorganized, but it works :)

 

we just did the same on buddyspike, a general information and meeting website for falcon 4, years ago. as long as there are interested ppl, and an active community, it works perfect.