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

Hi Dave
I think you misunderstand my position.
No one wants to return to a wooden box.
The MD-11 is an outstanding simulation; but restricting simulations to it
and a few others of equal quality, would seem to me to be counter
productive.
Nevertheless, having broken aircraft that don't get fixed is a real problem.
I still think that  the authors or maintainers should be notified; and if
there's no response, and the planes don't get fixed in reasonable time,
they should be sent somewhere out of the way of a new user. My last
suggestion was to relegate them to the FGAddon basement by stripping them
of their ratings.
{I agree with having the ratings displayed.} An aircraft with 0 ratings
would not be characterized as "bad"; it would just be non-rated.

Kind Regards, Frank

On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 6:47 AM David Hudach <[email protected]> wrote:

> > "the same way Google or Amazon don’t hide low-rated items"
>
> Yes, this is because they don't make the products, their job is to show a
> list of available items based on the search. They don't have a dog in the
> fight, they are neutral (possibly paid to rank some higher). Back to your
> pizza analogy and one that aligns more with the current discussion of FG.
> You own the pizza shop and one of your cooks wants to sell and uncooked
> pizza or one that does not meet the standards of the restaurant. Do you
> offer it on the menu? What is the impact to a new customer? It may be hard
> to predict. But what is the safest "bet" for the restaurant owner who cares
> about future and existing customers and his brand, his product, his pizza
> shop.
>
> I know, it's a bit of a goofy analogy but I think it brings into focus
> what we are really talking about here.
>
> And I will say that much of this discussion relates to an experienced FG
> user. I don't think that is the origin of this post. It has to do with the
> image of FG with a new user and the impact it has on new users when an
> aircraft is broken. As an experienced user it's easy to say, "write the
> author" or refine your search criteria and so forth. But to a new user when
> something is broken, that user will more than likely associate it with the
> app itself. And that's what ends up hurting the name, the brand.
>
> And back to this:
>
> >  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.
>
> I repeat, we are not talking about perfection, we are talking about
> improving realism and not permitting broken aircraft into the app. Lest we
> forget the original subject: The endless influx of low-quality,
> low-realism, quantity-over-quality aircraft into FGAddon
>
> >  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.
>
> And there it is: "who cares"
>
> If there is no concern for loss of revenue then maybe it matters that FG
> takes monetary donations to improve the product. A new user may want to
> contribute with money rather than getting their hands dirty to improve
> things. I suppose the thinking here is that only developers use FG. Oh,
> maybe a new user will want to contribute if things are broken. Maybe. But
> what is the safest "bet" here to increase FG usage and likeability? I say
> it's that FG offer the best to hook the user.
>
> I think the problem here is that many are expressing a view of how THEY
> see and use FG without even imagining (or sometimes caring) how a new user
> sees things.
>
> I'll go back to this: I believe each and everyone contributing to FG is
> striving to improve it. That's painfully obvious to me from following the
> progress in the posts. That's a credit to all and a reflection that the
> goal is to make FG the best. So why does it seem like some just want to
> give up on what is the public facing aspect of FG - the aircrafts
> themselves.
>
> Again, the goal isn't perfection, it's striving to improve everything
> overall. If not, then FG would be content offering gallon's wooden box with
> a few instruments and an old TV from the late 1950's.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 25, 2026 at 5:13 AM James Turner <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > On 23 May 2026, at 00:51, Richard Harrison <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> > The default filtering in the launcher already reduces the list of
>> aircraft from ~750 to 62; and some of those should be variants.
>> >
>> > There are some UI issues with how that filter works:
>> >
>> >   1. The filter controls sit at the top of the aircraft browser and
>> scroll out of view once you are into the list.
>> >   2. Switching from a currently-installed aircraft into the browse view
>> positions the list at that aircraft, which can leave the filter controls a
>> long way off-screen above.
>> >   3. Search ignores the filter entirely. It would help if results
>> indicated something like "not showing N filtered aircraft" so the user
>> knows the filter is still hiding results.
>>
>> Each of these was actually a conscious choice :) The first two are to
>> avoid wasting visual screen space, and the later is you can find aircraft
>> *regardless of their rating*, by design. Otherwise the discoverability of
>> lower-quality aircraft would effectively be zero, and previously we have
>> felt that was a worse problem.
>>
>> > It would also help if the average star rating were shown alongside the
>> favourite-star indicator - probably as "3.4 out of 5" with the stars drawn
>> beside it. Implementation is left as an exercise for the reader.
>>
>> Ahahaha :)
>>
>> >
>> > Point (3) is probably the reason users still encounter low-rated
>> aircraft that the filter would otherwise hide from them.
>>
>> Again, the intention of the UI is to allow the user to choose based on
>> the rating, *not* to hide low-quality aircraft entirely, the same way
>> Google or Amazon don’t hide low-rated items, if they do match your search.
>> It might be bad restaurant, but if you want pizza, and it’s the only pizza
>> place within 10 miles, *you* need to decide. Same logic applies to our A380
>> - it’s buggy and unmaintained, but if the user is determined to fly an
>> A380, are we supposed to prevent them?
>>
>> >
>> > Alan asked whether we have any statistics on aircraft usage.
>>
>> Those numbers also align with the data I get from Sentry.
>>
>> >
>> > Anything we can do to improve the experience will be a good thing,
>> whether this be UI improvements, fixing aircraft or updating ratings.
>> >
>>
>>
>> As Rhys said, MRs that update rating are welcome, we just see almost none
>> being submitted.
>>
>> One more thing about hangars: aside from differently licensed hangars, it
>> would be easy to allow a custom hangar to be defined based on Fgaddon, but
>> which subsets the aircraft (this is already possible) and/or overrides the
>> aircraft ratings. This would then become ‘James’ Top FGAddon picks Hangar’,
>> and maybe contains only the aircraft *I* deem to be suitable.
>>
>> (This works because hangar building is decoupled from where the files
>> live, anyone can make a hangar using the public scripts, based on what’s in
>> FGaddon, and do whatever filtering or overlay they wish)
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> James
>>
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