Re: The endless influx of low-quality, low-realism, quantity-over-quality aircraft into FGAddon

The other day I flew the MD-11.
After selection of Aircraft Configuration Center/Ready for Takeoff, It flew
well.
Navigation and the Route Manager worked and the radios tuned.
However, Autopilot was disabled in the f10 menu.
In some planes, clicking on autopilot redirects you to a custom autopilot
menu; but not in the MD-11.
When I clicked on Documentation/Auto Flight and FCC, I was directed to
Octal/Flightgear-Aircraft-Documentation,
where Auto_Flight-and_FCC.pdf displayed GITHUB notes on autopilot
development progress.
So I was puzzled as to how to engage and test the autopilot.

I admire MD-11 development; but I also agree with Wayne, although there may
still be a question of broken aircraft, where such a condition is not
reflected in their ratings.

Regards, Frank



On Sun, May 24, 2026 at 6:26 PM Josh Davidson <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hi Wayne,
> > I'll say something else directly related to the title of this thread. So
> the argument is we will loose users because they try an aircraft and
> what, it flies nothing like a real aircraft?
>
> Yes, I was one of them nearly.
>
> In fact, the sentiment that FGFS is "cool" but doesn't have very realistic
> planes is *VERY* common on the internet and flightsim communities.
>
> When I tried FG, I knew very little. Then I started learning and very
> quickly discovered that I could not apply what I learned to many planes I
> wanted to fly in FG...
>
> I subsequently bought a copy of Prepar3D.
>
> However... and likely because I'm autistic, I decided I wanted people to
> have freeware detailed simulations, and thus I started learning to develop
> for FlightGear... most people would not be like that. It's now been 10
> years and I'm *STILL* not there yet, yes, I can finally fullfill my
> airliner simming with my creations, because they're at a high enough level,
> there is still MUCH to do and I am not close to done yet.
>
> Most users will simply save up, and buy a commercial simulator and a
> commercial aircraft addon and finish their learning there.
>
> Reminder that the attitude of FOSS-die-hards is a bubble, they refuse to
> purchase commercial software like MSFS, and thus, they just "deal" with FG
> and either choose to wait for improvements or start improving it themselves.
>
> This is "ABSOLUTELY NOT" representative of most users...
>
> --
> Josh Davidson
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Wayne Bragg <[email protected]>
> *Sent:* Sunday, May 24, 2026 18:18
> *To:* [email protected] <
> [email protected]>
> *Subject:* Re: [Flightgear-devel] The endless influx of low-quality,
> low-realism, quantity-over-quality aircraft into FGAddon
>
> >The endless influx of low-quality, low-realism, quantity-over-quality
> aircraft into FGAddon
>
> I'll say something else directly related to the title of this thread. So
> the argument is we will loose users because they try an aircraft and
> what, it flies nothing like a real aircraft? What new casual user knows
> what a real airplane flies like? In fact we are more likely to retain
> that user because there are 400 out of the 600 that work and and work
> well. You hit start and they go and they fly. They may or may not be
> perfectly realistic, but they are easy to fly and they are visually a
> decent representation of that make and model aircraft. I think that is
> exactly what is likely to keep a new or casual user around. Way more
> likely than 10 perfect, very complex and difficult to fly aircraft. So
> for that type user I say the 400+ Helija aircraft are very beneficial.
> So what, it is the experienced simmer that we will loose because they
> fly an aircraft and it doesn't perform as they expect, or it is missing
> lots of the panel gauges or switches and knobs. Well if the only way
> they will stick around is if all aircraft offered in addons is perfect
> because they are not interested in getting their hands dirty to improve
> a less than perfect aircraft, who cares, I want to the attract the
> simmer that wants to improve stuff, not the ones that demand perfection
> or they are out of here. The entire argument doesn't make sense to me
> and I don't believe it is even a thing.
>
> Why were there were no responses to the results of the filter results I
> posted. That if you want to see only the best (10 aircraft), you slide
> the sliders all the way up. If that is so hard or complicated that it
> alone will cause a new user to bail, I submit, who cares! Where is the
> loss? Again, we are not selling something. We are not loosing revenue.
> Apparently we are not even loosing someone that is willing to get hands
> on and make something better. We are not loosing anything of value to
> the project.
>
>
>
>
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