EuroHarmony Community Forums
Archive => ProPilot => Old Forum => ProPilot Main Forum => Topic started by: EHM-0948 Bruno on January 10, 2007, 05:06:22 pm
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Dear pilots,
After a long time analysing the flights, the MT noticed that the current FAC algorithm doesn't benefict pilots on a fair way.
For instance, a pilot that does a 50 mins flight is evaluated the same way as a pilot that does a 9h trip ...
So, we came to a new algorithm that will work the opposite way as this one: The bigger the value, the better you are :)
The algorithm will be:
[Total Flights] x 0.5 + [Total Minutes] x 0.3 - [Total Extra Penalties] x 0.7 - [Total Flight Penalties] + [Total online IVAO/VATSIM flights] x 0.9
So, as you see you get beneficts if:
- You do flights on ProPilot.
- You do longer flights.
- You fly online on a flight network.
We hope this new FAC algorithm can be more fair to all of us.
The transfer step will be made on our limited time ...
You'll also receive an automatic email explaining all of your new FAC value when it has been applied.
This topic is opened for discussion or doubts.
Regards,
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Absolutely very fair to all pilots who already fly on ProPilot and the same for all newcomers.
Peter
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Seems more fair yes, but will the FAC for all of us, start from 0?
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Im not sure about the way this will benifit longer flights.
It seems to me that in a lot of cases flights of 4hr + are flown with no one in front of the pc screen (auto-pilot) and sometimes not even in the same room.
I feel it will reduce flying ability and encourage chaseing numbers.
Just my thoughts
Steve
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I like all of it, except the fact that you get extra if it's on a network. I think that is very unfair considering alot of us don't like to fly online, and also the fact that IVAO ATC sometimes forces us to make bad moves.
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Originally posted by EHM-1883 Matt
I like all of it, except the fact that you get extra if it's on a network. I think that is very unfair considering alot of us don't like to fly online.
I think I prefer this, instead of what I have seen other places where online flying where rewarded double flight time
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I think the new algorithm 'll be more fair and if possible it must include another variable, that is the difficulty of the airplane, as we know is different make a ProPilot flight on a Beech or on a 747, or on any payware like LevelD or PMDG.
The aircrafts must have a difficulty rate that must be included in the FAC algorithm.:>:% :]
How much worse, better........ehehehehe....heheheh......
Just a question - 'll be a convertion from the current FAC or everybody starts from the beginning?
This is just my opinion
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Originally posted by EHM-1442 Luis
Ias we know is different make a ProPilot flight on a Beech or on a 747, or on any payware like LevelD or PMDG.
;DSure! Flying a Beech is much harder and a lot more fun!;D
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Why reward long flights ? I think the difficulties and the art of flying is revealed at departure and approach. Why reward the autopilot?
I agree to honour the online pilots because they are not allways responsible for certain things especially descent rate and speed at approach - and last but not least - they have more things to do as only concentrating on fault avoidance.
But it is very difficult and the different oppinions show that. So I think Brunos new formula is quit allright.
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;DSure! Flying a Beech is much harder and a lot more fun!;D
Yes,you are right and that must be the reason why everybody here starts flying 747 and when we are ATP we are allowed to fly a Beech.......:> hmm... very logical:]
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Originally posted by EHM-1651 Christian
Seems more fair yes, but will the FAC for all of us, start from 0?
The score will carry on from what pilots have previously got. So if you have a low score, you should have a high score now.
It's all a little confusing if you ask me!
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Alright, it seems the perfect way for me to improve my FAC, because I do long flights and often online, but I still have a doubt: a crash enters in a "extra penalty" category, right? and all the others penalties in the normal flight penalties category? This means that if you get a "engine started without parking brakes on" penalty,(110 points) it means that you can easily go negative...:>
Is this possible in PP or not? (I am already planning for my negative FAC ;D)
I really like this new way, I think that landing after a 6h flight is much more difficult than flying the same plane for 40mins, and it will be a lot of fun looking our huge FACs
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I think we can see the real point only when the new FAC is calculated, and we can see then our own situation and can compare it with others. Of course it can be a pride to be high on the top list, but folks, it is "just" a game ;)
Anyway, I think that long flights count a little more, because you may leave the cockpit for minutes, hours, even though you spent more time with flying, you dedicate more time and more energy to EuroHarmony. It is not a cheating. Everybody flies as much as he can. Nobody will gain anything from having a bigger FAC number, but the experience and the fun of hours he spent with it.
Next to it, if nobody would fly longhaul flights, the big jets would just laid around the HUBs in dust @ rust cover, so anybody could ask: why do we keep them at all in PP system ? Flying the heavies is a type of flying that requires more time than a short flight.
Online flights count more for the same reason: you need to put more energy, more time into it, and it is more risky that your system or plane will be crashed and you lost all the time you spent on that flight. You can do crappy the job, but I am sure the average onmline fliers are very precise, and probably they are the most skilled pilots, and so they deserve some extra score.
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Well, looks like many questions were posted and answered ;D ... It's what happens when we have the best pilot community in the VA world ;)
Well, Robert said it all too, so I think there weren't any questions left, right ?
The idea is to turn our strategy to pass more time flying for EHM, and to start flying online. That's where we want to go.
Regarding the difficulty value, looks like a good option too, I will think about it.
The FAC will be re-calculated.
Regards,
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First this system dont change anything to the system, many pilots will be end in negative numbers and it will take them years of flying without penalties to become positive.
(put it in a spreadsheet amazing figures).
Also the pilot witch makes long haul flights are in great advance,
Special pilots ho are flying day after day after day flights from 8-12 hours (this is only possible on Euroharmony AND NOBODY BELIEVES THAT PILOTS DO FLIGHTS 8-12 HOURS DAY AFTER DAY.).
EHM-1908 Steve It seems to me that in a lot of cases flights of 4hr + are flown with no one in front of the pc screen (auto-pilot) and sometimes not even in the same room.
To fly big jets you don’t have to fly long flights from 8-12 hours.
One other thing get rid off the ridicules system off suspension, ít’s a hobby, also it takes some work away from the hubmanagers (they don’t react and if they do its to late) .
EHM-1001 Robert but folks, it is "just" a game
yes it’s a game ?
Rgrds Willem, EHM1328
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hhmmm... I don't agree Willem.
Looking deeper on the new algorithm you notice that only 70% of the extra penalty is being considered. Also, 90% of a bonus is given if you fly online and the total penalties mantain as it is.
It's true that some of us will have negative values, but negative doesn't mean we are bad pilots :) ... It's just a value, like others will have positive values, but not too high.
If you put yourself on our side, you'll that it's hard to arrange a formula that will be accepted by everyone, and you don't know how much months were we actually thinking about arranging one that could be more fair to all of us.
So, if you have a better idea, please propose it and we will glady hear it and analyse it. If not, than accept this one because it's the best that we can do :)
Regards,
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OK, at the risk of adding fuel to a fire here is my input.
Firstly, I agree, long haul flyers do have a tendency to overnight and leave the controls, but if you do that on PP you do so at your own risk, too many variables can occur that result in crashes and or penalties. Also you would not leave your cockpit for that long if you were on VATSIM or IVAO would you? Why should it be that someone who spends 7 hours flying across the Atlantic setting up the flight with correct procedures observing NATS and monitoring all situations should get the same score as a Pilot who flies 20 minutes from Zurich to Geneva and doesn't even make it to transition altitude let alone FL180? In my opinion, this is a no brainer, of course, the longer you fly and the more hours you invest, the better your score should be! There are many ways of cheating the system if you so desire but flying only short 20 minute flights on the current system offers too much of a benefit. It's horses for courses guys, at the moment, there is far too much of an advantage to flying Short flights on PP, this has to be addressed for those who prefer medium and long haul this does not make it advantageous to fly long haul, it evens the score up, you spend 7 hours long haul you get a fac that represents 7 hours of work. You fly 7 one hour flights you get the same or even better score as there is a division by total number of flights as well.
Remember we force no one to fly on PP, if you feel the system is unfair or you don't like the suspension then you will not utilise PP. Currently on average, less than 25% of EHM flights are done on PP. This says to me that only 25% of our pilots like the current system, this is not enough for the scope that this system offers. If this figure does not improve after changing the FAC system then we need to look at other areas or go back to the drawing board, if it does then we have achieved our goal. I guess what I am saying here, is vote with your flights, if you like it, then use it! If not we will continue to try to develop a system that you enjoy using! Please don't immediately criticise an idea before seeing it in operation. We are a dynamic airline and we will adapt to what our pilots want and the way I see it, PP is not being fully utilised so we need to adapt and develop it further.
Thanks and good luck!
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I am 100% with Phil and with most of the previous opinions.
I always thought that there was something missing in the way the FAC is calculated.
Please don't get me wrong, but just seeing a guy like Bruce with 1200+hours ranked behind another with much less flying time kept me thinking about it. I am glad the subject is now on the table.
Longhaul fligths I do a lot and NEVER EVER leave the cockpit unattended just because on what Phil pointed out. It is not easy though. Whenever I leave the cockpit (and never longer thant 30'), I post a message to the FIR I am flying at showing the Zulu time out and the Zulu time back.
Also the longer the flight, the more exposed we are to penalties, specially the overspeed one. You never know when the wind is going to shift against you.
Flying larger planes should also be better rewarded for the complexity and attention they demand.
Please don't missunderstand me, but I believe that the penalties in PP should be applied according to the rank of the pilot. In other words, the penalty for forgetting to turn the landing lights on before take off by an ATP pilot should be higher than for an FO pilot and so on.
Although it is not my case, I recognize that for most of us this is perceived like a game but even when playing games we humans strive for continuous improvement and always look for more.
If Microsoft had thought of FS as a simple game, we would still be flying a little Cessna 172 out of Merril Meigs like most of us did back in 1984. From Sub-Logic. Not Microsoft.
I congratulate Management for making this step to improve this important issue.
Regards,
Hector
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I have to agree with everyone, I think it is a great step towards more fairness and equality
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I think there are two questions that are discussed here at the same time:
1. How to improve objectivity the PP average score
2. How to increase the flight hours in general and in special online.
PP is an interesting software good ideas included - in my oppinion at the beginning of developement and in need of improvement in many aspects and not made for people with a sensible feeling of fairness and objectivity - there is a lot of potential in it - but it is not a "medicine against everything".
Of course the typical PP-Pilot wants to be successful and member of the top 10 list. So he will elect his flights under the aspect of easy Propiloting:
- "Online? No thanks" (ATC is more a burden to a PP pilot than a help)
- Easy Approaches (it is interesting that most of the "stars" in the top 10 list are unvisible on a dangerous tour like "Dakar 2007" - here are "front pigs" who you will normally find in the 200-300 score lower middle class - are they worse pilots?)
- Easy Planes (Yes: to land a PMDG 738 with autoland in EGLL is easy and no large risk - wheather after 1 or 8 hours)
What I want to say is that PP does encourage the opposite of what it is supposed to do. It is not realy the means to influence the number of online or long flights.
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I dont get it, can someone explain this clearly and simply to me please?:s Thanks;D
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Originally posted by EHM-0948 Bruno
The idea is to turn our strategy to pass more time flying for EHM, and to start flying online. That's where we want to go.
PP is meant for improving our skills, and it is really doing a good job on everyone, but it has the tendency to advantage offline flyers and short-haul flights. The managment is trying to make ehm pilots fly more and online. I think that it makes a huge difference flying a short haul flight and a long haul one, if you leave your cockpit for 50% of the flying time too (I have to admit that I leave the cockpit for something like 4hours or more when I flight from sydney to athens, but I simply love long flights). The idea of the difficulty is a good one, and I am sure the managment is considering it.
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Like many things in life, many of us have strong opinions on this issue :P
For my part, I'd certainly agree that we ought not judge the new system until we see how it actually operates...
We also need to remember that one of EHM's major strengths is that we value all our pilots and welcome those who can fly for hours every day AND those who have heavy work/family commitments who can only fly once a week or month - each of us makes this airline special and those who fly less hours may also be contributing hours of work behind the scenes...
I think a little healthy competition can be a good thing BUT I would say that the only meaningful competition that the FAC should encourage is with yourself! To improve your skills with every flight and correct mistakes is the sign of a true professional in my view and is independent of anybody else's 'score'...
Let's celebrate the fact that we all enjoy our hobby in different ways rather than trying to elevate certain styles of flying above others. EuroHarmony really isn't a competition ;D
After all, in the real world, for years now, pilot training has concentrated on team effort and co-operation rather than individual ability as this ensures greater safety and efficiency... ;)
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I hope this new system works out for the VA and i for one am more than happy to try it out.
But, it yet again seems as though the management are rewarding those who have 8 hrs to sit infront of their pc and penalising those of us who only have time to do a short haul flight for say 1 - 2 hrs - is my flight any less valuable to the VA? Would you tell a short haul 737 pilot that his job is a "no brainer"? I think not, flying any commercial plane in busy airspace with passengers is a challenge regardless of how long you fly.
There seem to have been a number of management decisions in recent months that have punished those of us who dont have a huge amount of time.....if this is going to turn into a regular occurence then the VA will have gone down in my asteem. When i first joined this VA over 2 years ago it was very much open to all with no judgement of how much flying you did or how good you were - beginners to experts, short haul to long haul, all were encouraged. Now it seems i have to fly every day, for many hours in order to be considered a good EHM pilot - well rubbish to that i say and i hope that is not what management are wanting to achieve.
I dont use pro-pilot much these days so i guess it wont affect me much. Why not? Well, i base my flights around on-line ATC on IVAO and 9 times out of 10 there isnt a plane at the airport i want. I was also sick of getting penalties for excessive rate of climb and descent with the pmdg 737 whilst it is flying in VNAV mode.
I will however give the new one a go with an open mind.
Jim
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I can agree with Dom about not to judge the new system until we see how it actually operates...
I don't know if the New FAC algorithm creates a more fair system. And isn't the question, what is a fair system and in what way. I think to many people put to much focus on that number. I mean you can't compare two pilots fact and from that say his a good pilot and his not. Which leads me to something else that Dom said, it not a competition. Somehow it seem like we haven't learned anything from our mistakes. We my not have a pilot of the month. But instead we now have a ProPilot top 10. That smells of competition to me.
I agree with Phil nobody is forcing us to fly ProPilot. But it's clear that MT is trying to get more to fly PP. I guess only time will show if it's going to happen. However MT please remember how the PP was introduced as a division for those that wanted to fly a little more like the real deal. Perhaps those 75% that don't fly PP don't want to fly a little bit more like the real deal. And perhaps it the same thing with online flying. I mean, I for one don't want some Controller to tell me what to do. If I wanted someone to order me around, I would get a wife.
Last thing and this really saddens me to hear.
Originally posted by EHM-1703 Philip
Firstly, I agree, long haul flyers do have a tendency to overnight and leave the controls, but if you do that on PP you do so at your own risk, too many variables can occur that result in crashes and or penalties.
If what our CEO here is saying is the company policy. Then perhaps it time for me to pack it in. And I mean especially when we are talking PP I'm asking myself isn't PP suppose to simulate the real thing. I really hope this wasn't meant the way it came out. I would really like to believe that when someone fly for 8 - 10 hours, that they do it and are not sleeping, in school/at work or something like that.
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@ Jim - please do not take my comment out of context...... Yes flying a plane full of pax in busy airspace for 1 or 2 hours is not a "no brainer" and I agree it is challenging. Flying a 747 full of pax on a busy NAT for 7 hours constantly monitoring fuel use EGT, VIB and the likes is just as challenging only 3 to 6 times longer! (Most RW airlines renumerate long haul captains better than short haul captains, there is a reason for this IMHO) We are not merely penalising somebody for flying 1 or 2 hours a week........ Please do not only see the negative side of this, we are rewarding the Pilot who flies for 10 or 12 hours a week........ There are two sides to this coin and the balance has been tipped in favour of one side for a long time, we are merely trying to even it up.
Originally posted by EHM-1500 Jim There seem to have been a number of management decisions in recent months that have punished those of us who dont have a huge amount of time.....if this is going to turn into a regular occurence then the VA will have gone down in my asteem.
You have mail, I do not want to enter this converstaion in the forum as I do think it will produce a meaningfull result and I do not have the intelligence to win therefore, I admit defeat and respectfully surrender now!
@Miko (and others) - We ARE trying to encourage the use of online flying and ProPilot..... Unless I am mistaken though, we have in no way said that you can not fly for EHM unless you use PP or fly on a network merely that if you choose to add realism or whatever you want to call it then you will be rewarded.... Never forget though, you can still fly how you want and when you want as we will allways maintain a roster system that is far more leniant than most if not all other major VA's
@ Karsten -
Originally posted by EHM-0361 Karsten
Originally posted by EHM-1703 Philip Firstly, I agree, long haul flyers do have a tendency to overnight and leave the controls, but if you do that on PP you do so at your own risk, too many variables can occur that result in crashes and or penalties.
If what our CEO here is saying is the company policy. Then perhaps it time for me to pack it in. And I mean especially when we are talking PP I'm asking myself isn't PP suppose to simulate the real thing. I really hope this wasn't meant the way it came out. I would really like to believe that when someone fly for 8 - 10 hours, that they do it and are not sleeping, in school/at work or something like that.
The quote above merely means that I know it happens, I can not stop happening under our liberal system but we do not encourage it!!!! Company policy remains unchanged and you will all be welcome to comment if and when company policy ever changes. (not planned at this time, we have far too many other things to do first!)
I hope this clarifies my opinion, keep the discussion going, your input is important and this topic has opened my eyes to how things are percieved, I honestly had no idea! :$
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Dear friends,
As a long time member of the airline, I always had and have my eyes on the decisions of the management. In the MT, both the subjects "online flying encouraging" and "propilot encouraging" have been discussed. My point of view is that encouraging is fine, but over-encouraging/pushing is wrong. With his in mind, I adviced the management on this matter.
When I review the current situation I can only conclude that no one is forced in any way to fly online or to use ProPilot. To be honest, I never fly online and I barely use ProPilot :$ , but I never feel pushed :).
About the formula. With every change, some people will like it and some people don't like it. We all make our flights in different ways (long flights, shorts flights, different aircraft), so we all have different personal requirements to the formula. Personally, I think this formula can keep things in balance.
If you ask a person why he likes EuroHarmony, he'll most likely answer that the open community attracts him. An open community that allows the members to come up with suggestions and comments (both positive and negative). All our posts are being read by the management and they take them in account when making decisions. This also counts for the new FAC algorithm. If the new formula turns out to be less effective than the MT expected then the MT will take a look at it and improve it. That's why the opinions of the whole community are important!
Regards,
Maarten
p.s. And why should be afraid of bad FAC scores? Fly your plane right and you'll have nice scores. No matter what formula is being used :)
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Originally posted by EHM-0005 Maarten
p.s. And why should be afraid of bad FAC scores? Fly your plane right and you'll have nice scores. No matter what formula is being used :)
Exactly, the Idea of ProPilot is to help improve your flying skills...
And anyways, chances are that Bruno will be at the bottom so at least you will be above someone!!;) just kidding mate...you're a good pilot inside...
Good to see a nice lively debate here...Give me a few hours while I think of something to contribute to this discussion...
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I understand that some will not gain any advantages of this new FAC calculation, and get hard feelings abou that. Myself included since I doesn't fly much longhaul it will not gain me in any way. I think the MT idea was not to decrease your joy of flying. It rather to increse it. However instead of "going for the MT's throat" wich doesn't do any good, a better idea might be to give the MT your opinions and suggestions for any improvements that you feel would gain Euroharmony.
This would let us keep our advantage as a openminded including VA.
The only thing this going into the throat's of each other contributes to is:
Keeping members away from the forum and make a more closed society.
Myself would not like to enter these discussions as a new member of EuroHarmony, if my only possibilty is to join a fight over an issue I really don't know anything about.
Let at least the new FAC calculation get a month or two, before we hammer it down.
The MT deserves that, after all they spend a lot of time letting us have fun.
I'm sure if the FAC calculations have room for improvements it will be corrected.
Working on projects like this often make you have tunnelvision, not seeing all the possibilies when making something.
Therefore I think it's our job as members of the airline to give our opinion not to blast the idea out of the sky.
"A pilots ego equals the wingspan"
So if everyone starts flying class one the probem is solved:s
Despite of this new FAC calcultion, I hope that we can still enjoy ourselves here at Euroharmony
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Would it be in any way possible to take into account the cost of a lost aircraft.For example a larger penalty for the loss of say a 747 and a smaller penalty for a B1900D.Perhaps this could be used in conjunction with the aircraft catagories.
Steve
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Bruno is the man to reply to this, but he's not available at this moment. More news about this soon...
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I have been following this topic with interest. I read all of the banter, but I decided that instead of fuelling the fire with talk, I would instead fuel it with some thick, dense, boring analysis of the new FAC algorithm :P
General
We can break the algorithm into two parts, additions and deductions.
Additions:
Total flights - the number of flights you have done is divided by 2
Total online flights - the number of online flights you have done is multiplied by 0.9
Total minutes - total minutes flown multiplied by 0.3
Deductions:
Total extra penalties - the ones you get for crashing, multiplied by 0.7, i.e. 700 per crash
Total penalties
The only ones which are big enough to really make a difference are the Total Minutes addition, the Total Extra Penalties deduction, and the Total Penalties deduction.
Per-flight
Let's look at the algorithm on a per-flight basis.
Flight 1. Imagine a 2 hour PP flight on IVAO. I get 0.5 points for doing the flight at all. I get 0.9 points for doing it online. I get 36 points for flying for 120 minutes. Total additions: 37.4 points. Now the deductions: Say that I exceeded 4500 FPM in the climb. I get 240 penalty points. For this flight, my FAC has now been reduced by 202.6 points, even though the flight was of moderate length, online, and there was only one fault registered by the system - which may well have had more to do with the aircraft type, it may well have been a quick climber - than the pilot's skill.
Flight 2. This flight will be a very long-haul flight. It is 9 hours long, online. 0.5 points for flying, 0.9 points for online. 162 points for flying for flying for 9 hours. There were no penalties. 163.4 points were added to my FAC.
Flight 3. Now let's imagine a flight the other end of the scale. A 45 minute offline flight. Again, I get 0.5 points for flying. I get 13.5 points for flying for 45 minutes. Total of 14 points gained. The flight went very badly. I stalled the aircraft, and exceeded the G-force penalty on landing. A total of 730 points worth of penalties. Net score: 716 points are deducted from the FAC.
Here's the bombshell. Imagine on the very same flight I crashed the aircraft. No other bonuses or penalties are given in the event of a crash (I believe). I would have 700 points deducted from my FAC (1000*0.7). Thus, it would have done less bad to my FAC if I had crashed the aircraft than if I landed hard and stalled during the flight.
Conclusion
I think the figures above speak for themselves. In flight 1, which was not all that bad, I was penalised 202.6 points. Flight 2, which was excellent, I gained not as much as I lost before, only 163.4 points. Flight 3 was terrible. I was penalised 716 points. But, had I crashed, I would only have been penalised 700 penalty points.
My Opinion
Although I recognise that the MT have put a lot of work towards it, I am opposed to this system. I believe it is much too heavy on individual penalties, not heavy enough on crashes, and that the 'bonuses' received for doing lots of flights, long flights, or online flights are so small as to be ineffective. However, I don't see it as a lost cause. With some major tweaking, the values can be evened out, and I believe that it has the potential to become a very fair way of doing things. With the system as it is, many, if not most of us will be well into the 'red'.
I recognise also that it is very very difficult, if not impossible, to create a FAC algorithm that everybody likes; however, I think that what is been proposed is not the best solution to the difficult problem.
If anyone feels I have made a mistake here, please do not hesitate to correct me. As far as I can see though, my analysis is correct.
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Is this supposed to be a Virtual Airline or a Virtual Academy for mathematic studies ;)
Tastes a little bit like achievement control and not like "harmony". Good to know that it is only one department of EuroHarmony.
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LOL, I was bored. But hopefully you get my point ;)
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Yes, of course, Iain, it helps to show the lacks of the system - I am sure it would help to integrate Einstein's antigravity constant - provided that it is compatible with FSUIPC 3.7 :]
(Sorry to all who are tired of my jokes about this topic - this was definetily the last :s)
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Very nice conclusion there Iain ;) I think you are right, maybe the scalers are need to be analized ans maybe increased/decreased but I would say lets give it a try first.
I think the only mistake in the anlysis is that you always got penalty points ! If I look at the ACARS sometimes, I can see that most of the flights that have been done were not penalized at all. And maybe this is the positive thing in the system. I mean, if you do your job perfectly, you gain only relatively small scores, but if you made something wrong, you got relatively high deduction. And I think this will not let anybody to break out from the average. But lets see, how the numbers are performed in reality.
The good thing is, your flight records will remain the same regardless the FAC score. If we feel that the sytem needs to be modernized to reach HARMONY ;D , it can be done easily with changing some factors "only", and the system will recalculate the new points automatically. ;)
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The calculations Ian made are correct , also the conclusion to crash your plane if there are more the 700 penalty’s is right, leave crash penalty on 1000, and in new version off propilot take out the penalty message on screen from propilot and make also not visible in acars screen, make them only visible after the pirep is send.(there must maybe crypting be done)
The system has lack off one thing and that’s there are no bonus points if there is a zero penalty flight, compare it with your work if you do a good job you get paid for it.
These bonus points are needed because if a pilot say makes 2-3 or even more crashes he will end in a very large negative number and with no bonus points it will take a longtime and many zero penalty flights to become ever on the positive side, and at the end he/se will do no longer do any propilot flights.
And Suggest also to make the factor for online 1.2 because a factor off 0.9 has little effect in the total calculation.
Example-1 (http://weblog.flyingsim.nl/media/FAC-1-Example.jpg)
Example-2 (http://weblog.flyingsim.nl/media/FAC-2-Example.jpg)
Example-3 (http://weblog.flyingsim.nl/media/FAC-3-Example.jpg) (full screen)
The total time in the exampel is restrictid to less then 24 hours because off the extra programming in exel for times >24h.
Rgrds EHM1328-Willem
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Again, I think quite bad examples...too much short flights.
Let me introduce my PP career from the view of both calculations. ;)
The story in numbers (http://www.fw.hu/btm/ehm/pp-career.gif)
At the beginning my FS was quite unstable for some reason and I did not like to fly on PP, but did some flights. It was quite mixed: short-middle-long flights. I collected a lot of penalties, once almost crashed a plane, at that time my FAC was around 300 and I felt very bad, that how is it possible I am so bad ! Then came the US Airmail event which changed the scene a lot... I expected the event, with relatively short and easy flights, lots of possibilities for zero FAC flights ;) After it I made a little off-track with some extra-long flights, some penalties and oh my God...my first crash ! Without it, I could get around 350 by the new system, but now I cant push the score too much, just below 80 points...
I did not do a lot of online flights, but you can see it does not count as much as you worried about ;) What count is to collect more time, and avoid crash, which is a nightmare, not only in your career, but in your score as well.
My dream was always to get inside top 10 during my PP career, which I could never reach, but I think even with this negative score, I could get in now according to the new system. And do not panic, if your score would be even too low, then maybe PP is not your business and it is time to practice your skills with the offline system.
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Originally posted by EHM-1001 Robert
Anyway, I think that long flights count a little more, because you may leave the cockpit for minutes, hours, even though you spent more time with flying, you dedicate more time and more energy to EuroHarmony. It is not a cheating.
I fear you may be slightly lax with the rules Robert ... you and many others and maybe we should change the rules or start expecting them to be followed ... we do have a number of pilots who fly ludicrous hours...some are putting in well over 50 hours in a week!!
Under paragraph 4.7 - flying online it states:
"You should not leave your computer while flying online,"
Seems quite clear to me.
The rules in the EHM regulations (paragraph 4.6 if you wanna check) state:
"On long flights, check at least every 10-15 minutes the status of the plane" - clearly there is no system in place to check this and consequently many pilots fly hours of flights without being there. Don't know where the line should be drawn cos it would be fairly daft to expect folks to be infront of their PC all the time but such are the current rules.
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Originally posted by EHM-1500 Jim
There seem to have been a number of management decisions in recent months that have punished those of us who dont have a huge amount of time.....if this is going to turn into a regular occurence then the VA will have gone down in my asteem. When i first joined this VA over 2 years ago it was very much open to all with no judgement of how much flying you did or how good you were - beginners to experts, short haul to long haul, all were encouraged. Now it seems i have to fly every day, for many hours in order to be considered a good EHM pilot - well rubbish to that i say and i hope that is not what management are wanting to achieve.
I dont use pro-pilot much these days so i guess it wont affect me much. Why not? Well, i base my flights around on-line ATC on IVAO and 9 times out of 10 there isnt a plane at the airport i want. I was also sick of getting penalties for excessive rate of climb and descent with the pmdg 737 whilst it is flying in VNAV mode.
The whole Pro-Pilot thing from my experience tonight seems hideously buggy Jim. I'm tempted to agree with you...I've flown with EHM for years but Pro-Pilot seems a headache too far. My FAC is already a made up number based on a false crash report from the US Air Pioneers event and now I have another false crash!! I log on at the end of the day to unwind after a day's work and enjoy thte experience...seems a bit daft to be accepting stress from one's hobby. Interested to hear what other folk feel. EHM is a great VA ... no doubt, but for me Pro-Pilot needs more work before its ready and the whole drive for extra hours seems unnecessary. The point is to get online and enjoy the flying experience. Just an opinion but glad to see that Jim seems to share it too and it's not only me questionning some of this stuff.
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Again, I fear I am throwing fuel on a fire but.......
Philip,
I will try and address your comments and concerns, please don't feel that I am flaming you or your ideas, I am just answering your posts.....
First Post
I will try to clarify what I posted earlier in this topic.... We know the rules, we are not going to change the rules, we know people do not abide by all the rules. Our liberal system of reporting allows for the breaking of these rules but to remove the liberalism would affect too many people in a negative way and reduce the flexibility that attracts many people to our airline.
If you have conclusive proof that somebody is not abiding by the rules, please feel free to contact your Hub manager or any member of the MT and we will take action. I racked up many hours for the airline when I was working from home and could fly long haul and work at my desk at the same time so please do not throw accusations around that can not be substantiated, it will only alienate other members, this sort of thing should be done in private please!
Second Post
ProPilot is called that for a reason...... It was never intended to be easy!!!! If you want to come home after a hard day at work and fly for fun, then please feel free to fly a tour or a mission or just a regular scheduled flight, file the pirep on the website or with the flogger and have a great deal of fun while you are doing it!!!!
If you want to add a bit more excitement to it and fly on the edge of your seat then use ProPilot..... No one is saying that we are going to switch to this system exclusively and certainly no one is saying the sytem is perfect! That is why we are making changes now and we will continue to do so for the foreseable future. ProPilot has been a huge investment of effort and will not be shelved. It was introduced to offer a system and a way of flying that was not being operated by other virtual airlines. Of course we want everyone to use it...... By the same token, of course we are always going to be aware that people dislike it or don't want to use it, that is why we still have manual Pirep Validation and a normal flight system, so people can fly as and when they want to.
In general to all
Whichever way you fly, all pilots are welcome here and you WILL NOT be judged a better or worse EHM pilot whichever way you fly.
Please, if you have a constructuve point to make about the proposed FAC, please make it in this topic. If you have genuine concerns about ProPilot or any other system or person at EHM then please start a new topic or email relevant member(s) of the MT with them.
The long and the short of it is...... Some members of the MT have invested a considerable amount of their own time trying to improve ProPilot and for that matter many other parts of the airline, by posting damning comments about this work you will undoubtedly reduce the amount of development that takes place and that will not be a good thing for any of us!
Lastly, I am getting the impression that some people are not happy here or with the way things are developing???? Please, if you have concerns, ideas and input or if you feel that you could be a valuable addition to the MT, then email Myself or Bruno or any member of the MT you feel comfortable contacting. We are open to your input. We have a growing community of pilots and it is our aim to grow further!
Thank you all for flying with EHM, it is your airline, help us to make it grow!
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Really not trying to alienate other members by throwing around unsubstantiated accusations. Quite the opposite...I quoted a comment from a person that substantiated the fact that some EHM members choose to fly while not infront of PC. Fine ... doesn't bother me but feel if that is the case, why not relax the rules and make it OK rather than having rules that we ignore. Same is true of the whole online thing.
I appreciate Pro-Pilot must be some considerable feat of coding and is unique to EHM but having sat in front of a PC where after nearly an hours flight the situation reset and pro-pilot falsly reported a crash I think I'm entitled to be a tad ticked off - especially as flying on pro-pilot was the only way to take part in this event. That's thirteen evenings towards a now unobtainable goal...that or somebody resets my score manually...thereby kind of negating the point of pro-pilot in the first place.
I'm not unhappy with how things are developing. I do feel however that there is an exclusivity around what is still a 'buggy' pro-pilot. In the days prior to pro-pilot we had events that had times on them and came through divisions. This gave folks who had completed tours but still wanted rewarding challenges something else to do. Now, the prime effort is on pro-pilot events which would be just fine if the system was faultless.
Please don't doubt my appreciation for the work that folks do for EHM and the enjoyment it gives but in this case I think it's entirely reasonable to question these issues. Why are events only flyable on pro-pilot? Is this a benefit to the users of the VA or just a coercing of folks into using pro-pilot?
So, coming back to the proposed FAC changes ... my comment was implicit in my previous post: If it encourages pilots to ignore the rule book and leave the PC unattended for hours what is the point? Sure, EHM gets more hours racked up but is this a real reflection of dedication? And the FAC if it does what was sold initially to members should reflect pilot skill. It should reward take offs and landings therefore and not autopliot unattended flights. Just an opinion ... like to hear what others think.
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Hi Philip,
I would like to clarify my quoted sentence above: you are simply right, and that is a fact ;)
You cannot leave the cockpit while flying online, but that is not even an EHM rule...it is a rule of IVAO/VATSIM. If you do not follow it, they will simply ban you from the network for days...so EHM is not necessary to check that at all.
While during offline flights, there is not a rule for that. Also, you can use time accelerations to shorten the time you spend in front of the PC. I do not know others habits of flying long-hauls, the most cases I leave the cockpit occasionally for minutes/hours, but many cases I am watching TV, or working at the desk with the headset continously on my ear. I guess the other long-hauler pilots do the same, and it is not against rules, while you fly offline.
About the buggy pro-pilot, FS is a giant application that can fill around 1GB of RAM, with thousands of small individual programs running together, and you cannot blame on Pro-Pilot only if your system is unstable. And I even did not mention that if you got a crash that you have not deserve, and it is able to follow on the ACARS, then you will get back the plane and the penalty ;) You do not need to worry about it.
You are also right, that the number of landings is important, that is why the number of flights is considered in the FAC score, maybe a larger scaler would be better ;) But I hope you agree with me that a longer flight needs more time and more energy than a short one. As we cannot check if you spend all your time in the cockpit, neither we want to say anybody that he is a cheater by default, we need to consider in the FAC that the longer flights counts more.
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Originally posted by EHM-1199 Philip
I appreciate Pro-Pilot must be some considerable feat of coding and is unique to EHM but having sat in front of a PC where after nearly an hours flight the situation reset and pro-pilot falsly reported a crash I think I'm entitled to be a tad ticked off - especially as flying on pro-pilot was the only way to take part in this event. That's thirteen evenings towards a now unobtainable goal...that or somebody resets my score manually...thereby kind of negating the point of pro-pilot in the first place.
Please see Bruno's post: Here (http://www.fly-euroharmony.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=3505&page=4)
Originally posted by EHM-1199 Philip
I'm not unhappy with how things are developing. I do feel however that there is an exclusivity around what is still a 'buggy' pro-pilot. In the days prior to pro-pilot we had events that had times on them and came through divisions. This gave folks who had completed tours but still wanted rewarding challenges something else to do. Now, the prime effort is on pro-pilot events which would be just fine if the system was faultless.
Propilot was developed over a year ago and has only received minor changes. This is now the 4th ProPilot tour we have run and I admit, we had problems early on with planes getting stollen but this was resolved.
We still have missions, tours and online events that do not run on propilot! These are updated frequently but should we appologise for developing the ProPilot idea by running events that utilize this system? I understand that these events will not include persons who do not like or do not wish to fly on ProPilot, just like the Online Fly Ins do not include the people who only fly offline.
I can not appologise for moving forward with ideas that not everyone appreciates or likes..... After all, we can only please some of the people some of the time! You will not like everything we do, just as long as you like most of it! I am sure there are people out there who like ProPilot.
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Convo ended from my part. Clearly tis the way forward ;)
Just felt and still do ticked off over wasted evenings. As I've said elsewhere - maybe its just my system and if so then sorry for ever criticising something which in essence I love the idea of. However, I'm gonna leave pp until I've had a chance to resintall fs and see if that helps. Have to take the wrap for something here i guess if nobody else is having any issues.
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Hi,
I am back on duties now (at least on a relative way of speaking) and I want to answer some of your posts ... :)
Well, first of all I would like to thank your answers. Some of them, in my opinion show a constructive effort on getting a better FAC algorithm, others, unfortunately, mix other situations that don't really need to be discussed here.
As you all know, the current FAC algorithm doesn't actually reflect pilots that spent more time flying on ProPilot, comparing to others that can do only one flight and gain a direct entry to the Top Ten chart.
This situation is completely unfair, and it should be changed as soon as we, MT, had a chance to think about it.
This new FAC algorithm should reflect pilots who actually spend more time flying with more flights and have less penalties than others. And we cannot assume that the pilots will put the airplane on the air and go to sleep because we dont' have a camera pointed on his bedroom to check that.
We must assume that when a pilot does a long flight, he is following EHM rules, and those rules tells us that he must not leave the computer for more than 15 mins. So, where's the big deal here ?
If someone doesn't follow EHM rules, and if we caught him, the flight is, logically, not approved. And if we suspect of that we will talk to the pilot and ask him some explanations for that.
We based the new FAC algorithm to previlege pilots who do more flight minutes (and not longer flights), that is because they put more effort, and sacrifice their personal life time on behalf on our VA. Because of that, they should be more rewarded than others that do smaller flights and jump to the top ten with only one flight.
Because of that, we are introducing a new variable here that must do all the difference and it's fair. It wasn't on the past, where pilots Bruce Woodbridge (not to mention others) who dedicate their personal life to fly, and still they don't get rewarded because of that.
Some of you are saying that we are pointing to previlege longer flights. We don't. We previlege the total flight minutes from all of your flights. It's better for you to have two flights counting 60 minutes, than 1 flight counting 60 minutes. So, again, why so many incorrect conclusions where you all say we want to give relevance to long hauls?
This topic is already going much far, and I will try to give more answers along time (if my baby permits it) but the ProPilot system was made for two reasons, flight analysis and simulated airplane movement, and the real-life simulation part is not on the flight analysis (pilots on real life don't get their salary cutted off if they do a flight where they overspeed the airplane) but on the airplane movement operations.
In conclusion, we are always opened to new constructive thoughts, but much of what I readt here was not on that side and if it were, the necessary conclusions were not right. For that I give some answers from some of you:
Willem said:
"First this system dont change anything to the system, many pilots will be end in negative numbers and it will take them years of flying without penalties to become positive.(put it in a spreadsheet amazing figures)."
Of course not. As soon as you start to stop the penalties on your flights, you will grown your FAC much more quicker than on the current way where the FAC doesn't took in total minutes condition neither the online flight condition.
"One other thing get rid off the ridicules system off suspension, ít’s a hobby, also it takes some work away from the hubmanagers (they don’t react and if they do its to late) . "
I apologize if you got some late answers. We already corrected that by talking with our Hub Managers. If you still have problems, please send us an email.
The suspension is necessary so you can relax a bit without getting another airplane on the air and crash it again without knowing the reason why you crashed. This is also a way for us to see why our pilots crash, and try to improve our services.
Jim said:
"There seem to have been a number of management decisions in recent months that have punished those of us who dont have a huge amount of time....."
We didn't took any of those decisions outside of the ProPilot world. Even so, I don't understand why you say "recent months" while we didn't made anything on that matter until now.
But even so, you're not right because I already explained that we previlege pilots who fly more often, and also do more flight hours. Not only one part of that sentence.
"Now it seems i have to fly every day, for many hours in order to be considered a good EHM pilot - well rubbish to that i say and i hope that is not what management are wanting to achieve."
We are not considering this outside of the ProPilot world. ProPilot is a piece of our VA. But we have much more options that can fill you up, so, you cannot judge us like that because of one rule that we applied, on one piece of our VA.
Regarding to Iain's conclusion, I must say that even now it's possible to have a worse FAC score at last, than crashing the airplane. You can get almost a 2000 FAC score on a flight right now (!!), and on the future it will continue to be possible because the penalties are accumulated on your flight.
The only way to solve this is to give the crash penalty a bigger value than the sum of all the flight penalties that you get. That way we could have Iain's conclusion solved out, but if so we would open a Pandora's box where pilots that crashed once, simply would leave the ProPilot system because it would had become impossible to recover from that mistake.
To end, when we build a so special system like ProPilot, it's impossible to be appreciated by everyone. And it's normal to be like that because all of us are different.
But what we didn't create was the obligation to fly on ProPilot and we will never do. Like we don't create the obligation of using the Flight Logger on every flight that you do. So, you will always have the possibility to choose to fly on it or not. What we cannot accept is pilots that somehow don't accept ProPilot and his rules, don't fly on it as they should, and still come here saying that it's unfair this new algorithm.
Finally, we are completely opened to constructive opinions. If some of you want to wash out the dirty clothes from things from the past, please send an email to us. As you know we are always here to listen to you, because without you we wouldn't exist.
Regards,
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I have just noticed something, if the bigger our PP score, the worse it is, then how can it be in negative?
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With the current scalers, and relatively lots of penalties, you cen easily go into negative ;) Just check my career picture above some posts ;)
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At the risk of stirring up trouble I'm going to say this. Phil and Bruno I find your opinions and answers to subject of the rules in paragraph 4.6 a little weird.
First of all I agree Phil we do have a liberal reporting system. However that system don't apply when it comes to ProPilot. When you are using PP theres only one way to report it. But you are not going to change the rules, and I guess that is that. We can either live with it or take our flying business somewhere else.
But I think it's a little funny to have a rule and say we have this rule. But we know not all is following it. But we are not going to do anything to make sure that people do. It sort of like running a shop, where people them self use a scanner to check out the items they want to buy. At the exit a big poster says: "don't shoplift." How long is a store like that going to stay in business when people figure out that, there no alarms on the items, because the store owner trusts people and their moral.
Okay I have said what I wanted to say. You can either agree with me or disagree with me. Don't really mater.
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Originally posted by EHM-1001 Robert
With the current scalers, and relatively lots of penalties, you cen easily go into negative ;) Just check my career picture above some posts ;)
So negative would be good or bad? :s
Since the more you have, the worse your FAC, the less the better, so if negative, how will we work our way back into a positive number which means a worse FAC? Im confused...reading through earlier posts to see if i missed something...
Edit: Oooh, nvm, i guess i missed out the main post of the thread:$
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Karsten,
Regarding the "be at the PC" rule (I'm guessing that's what the guist of your "complaint" is about) the problem is that in an offline situation it's difficult to enforce. IVAO/VATSIM have it easy - if an ATC/Supervisor suspects a plane is flying "dead-stick", all he/she needs to do is send the pilot a message (voice or text) - if the pilot doesn't answer in X minutes, they can "legally" be kicked off the network and if necessary banned.
Now, since PP flights *require* the use of the FLogger, it could do something similar. After X amount of time where the FLogger hasn't been interacted with, pop up a dialog that expects the pilot to answer a simple question and click OK (that would stop someone developing a "if a message pops up from this parent program that reads like this, OK it" program). If the question isn't answered in say 15 minutes (which I believe to be the EHM "rule"), the FLogger can mark the flight as "suspect" and not automatically accept it as a PP flight. It would then be up to the Pilot/Hub Manager to discuss the flight before it gets included as a PP flight.
Only problem is that such a system would need a fair bit of development of both the PP system and the FLogger (Bruno, you are welcome to have this idea for PP/FLogger).
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Originally posted by EHM-1821 Javier
So negative would be good or bad? :s
To my reading, negative is good, but I'd like to see the FAC work more naturally - negative = bad, positive = good.
And just picking up others, there definitely needs to be "bonus good" things. That would be treading on FS Passengers "territory" but would give the most "professional" pilots a goal to work towards; to equate such things to cash - a negative score means you got some thing(s) wrong in the flight (you owe the VA this month), a zero score means the flight was acceptable (you get a basic wage this month), a positive score means you went "above and beyond" (and get a bonus).
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Oh no. Basically you continously gain points with successfull flights, just like the salary. ;) But any penalties you got will be substracted from these points. And if you did your job bad, you will got too much substracts, which can lead to a negative score overall. ;)
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ok, thanks guys, cleared up my mind;D
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Originally posted by EHM-0361 Karsten
At the risk of stirring up trouble I'm going to say this. Phil and Bruno I find your opinions and answers to subject of the rules in paragraph 4.6 a little weird.
First of all I agree Phil we do have a liberal reporting system. However that system don't apply when it comes to ProPilot. When you are using PP theres only one way to report it. But you are not going to change the rules, and I guess that is that. We can either live with it or take our flying business somewhere else.
But I think it's a little funny to have a rule and say we have this rule. But we know not all is following it. But we are not going to do anything to make sure that people do. It sort of like running a shop, where people them self use a scanner to check out the items they want to buy. At the exit a big poster says: "don't shoplift." How long is a store like that going to stay in business when people figure out that, there no alarms on the items, because the store owner trusts people and their moral.
Okay I have said what I wanted to say. You can either agree with me or disagree with me. Don't really mater.
Karsten,
I do understand what you are saying, honestly, but we have here a number of conflicting views from many different pilots and MT members about the "away from the controls" point.
The only way I can see of combatting this situation is to introduce a reporting system where you either have to interact with Flogger or the website every 15 or 30 minutes. Other airlines do this and if we introduce it, I feel we are going to lose pilots, I guess what you are saying if we don't do it we are also going to lose pilots anyway, so I guess we are damned if we do and damned if we don't......
Lets leave it for a while and let the Dakar event get put to bed and then we will discuss this matter further when we have all had a chance to formulate views and ideas about the topic.
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Originally posted by EHM-0361 Karsten
At the risk of stirring up trouble I'm going to say this. Phil and Bruno I find your opinions and answers to subject of the rules in paragraph 4.6 a little weird.
First of all I agree Phil we do have a liberal reporting system. However that system don't apply when it comes to ProPilot. When you are using PP theres only one way to report it. But you are not going to change the rules, and I guess that is that. We can either live with it or take our flying business somewhere else.
But I think it's a little funny to have a rule and say we have this rule. But we know not all is following it. But we are not going to do anything to make sure that people do. It sort of like running a shop, where people them self use a scanner to check out the items they want to buy. At the exit a big poster says: "don't shoplift." How long is a store like that going to stay in business when people figure out that, there no alarms on the items, because the store owner trusts people and their moral.
Okay I have said what I wanted to say. You can either agree with me or disagree with me. Don't really mater.
Hi Karsten,
The PIREP reporting system for ProPilot had to be done like that because it's the only way we have access to some automatic information given by the Flight Logger that needs to be checked with the information given by the pilot when he flies it.
So, if we implement a system where a pilot could insert an offline PIREP we would loose access to that information.
That's the reason why we can't change it.
You're worried about pilots that actually don't spend 8 hours on front of the computer ... Then you should also be worried about pilots that do the flight on one aircraft and submit the PIREP with another one, pilots that don't use flight logger and report flights that they actually don't do, besides much more situations that are impossible to prove otherwise.
This is a web site Karsten, where you should understand that we don't actually have a camera pointed on every home of our pilots, where we actually could solve your problem and really see that the pilot is flying :).
What we need to do is to create rules that tell our pilots what they should do, but it's impossible to check all the rules, and that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do them. They need to exist in order to mantain the business organized.
It's like when you drive a car and you see a street that has a sign that shows you cannot enter there. The Goverment placed that sign there but actually you can go there! The problem is if you get caught, you're nailed down with a traffic ticket :) .. That's how rules, on the society applies.
To end, I am really unpleased to hear from you, an ex-MT member, that you don't care about what we said and that you even think we don't care for what you (pilots) says. It's not my type to enter on this personal discussions but logically it isn't the first time you give that thought to us...
Regards,
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First off, don't want this to turn into a personnel yelling where I'm at one and and member of the MT are at the other. So I'm going to e-mail you Bruno and Phil. Because it seem like you don't really get what I'm saying . But let me say this much, I have never said anything about that I don't care about what you said, and if you read my English like that, then I guess a need a course in English.
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I think this one might need resting now. Seems a shame that Bruno with all your current time pressure now had to explain away an issue with such a long posting. Phil was right; in this case you can't please everybody. And, it really shouldn't be a matter that makes folks leave EHM. For what its worth having thought about how things go part of the reason for joining EHM years ago was the relaxed atmosphere and this great website.
Considering my irritated posts of last night this might sound odd coming from me but let's not loose sight of that. How cool in a way that a proposed change to the FAC algorithm is a source for discussion here. I say, let's trust the guys doing the work and if the changes bring about discontent then this may well be the forum to discuss how things could be better.
I do think that the reward should weigh in favour of tougher conditions so the move to reward online flying is positive. I'm not completely sold on the reward for longer flights but I think in the cool light of day I don't feel strongly enough to mind too much. Let's try it and see.
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ProPilot – New Algorithm – Targets
-More online flights
-More PP flights
-A more fair system
To consider :
-PP is optional, nobody is obliged to fly on PP. EHM has much to choose, for beyond ProPilot.
-PP is a demanding challenge and does not have to be used to relax
-PP does not have to be used for pilots with little experience
-The pilot with little experience must use only the Flight Logger and verify the ACARS, to see the penalties , correct them in futures flights and only after improving its PP skills, to use the PP.
-How to have more people flying online?Giving them some bonus in PP.
-How to have more people flying with PP? I don't know.
-How to have a more fair PP System?My answer is bellow
IMHO with the new algorithm long flights vs short flights is a false question :
1 flight with 10 hours
10 x 60 = 600 minutes x 0,3 = 180
1 flight x 0,5 = 0,5
Total score = 180,5
Versus
10 flights with 1 hour each
10 x 60 = 600 minutes x 0,3 = 180
10 flights x 0,5 = 5.0
Total score = 185
The risks are different but they are balanced, the10 hours flight only has a landing, but it has many items to verify, as to avoid overspeed, take care on winds changes, climb/descend angles to control during more time, etc,etc... in the same time, in short flights more landings, bigger score. I think it is fair.
I made few long flights, only the necessary ones from the EHM Divisions and EHM World Tour, this ones without PP and I never leave the cockpit for much time.But I wanted to take a 767-300ER to the USA and I made a long flight on PP and IVAO from Zurich (LSZH) to Boston (KBOS) .
Take off from LSZH at more or less 02:00 AM and two hours later I fell in a deep sleep at the desktop and when I woke up had some penalties on PP, overspeed, stall, Maximum 4500fpm vertical speed excedeed....only fortunately I didn't crash the airplane..........Therefore to make long flights in PP without following them is an immense risk...
I was flying the LevelD 767-300ER and until today i can't understand how it happened....strong winds changes?Touch with my sleeping head on the keybord?..i don't know.......
In the current PP system If I want enter and keep me in the Top of the PP what I must do?
1 – Fly easly controlable airplanes.
2 - Fly offline with good weather, that I can select as I want, clean sky and without winds.
3 - Make many short flights, without exceeding the 250Kias and not above of 18000ft.
4 - Choose easy airfields, with long runways and ILS.
Fly with the above conditions does not have any interest for me, but sure i 'll be always on the PP's Top.........LOL
Why is the current system not fair?
-It does not consider the flight times, (more time = bigger risk)
-Considers equal flights made in airplanes of different difficulty
-Considers equal flights made in different circumstances (online versus offline)
With the current system it is possible to enter to number 1, with some minutes flying on PP and 1 or 2 flights, against others with hundreds or thousand hours of good flights.(hundreds of zero penalities flights).
What must be done to reach a more fair PP for all?
1 – To Consider the flight times and not only the number of flights.
2 – To Consider the different difficulty (complexity ) of the different airplanes.
3 - To consider different the online and offline flights
4 - The total amount of the penalties does not have to be bigger that the value of one crash.The penalties values must be review to balance with the crash value.
5 - The Popup Murray's idea, is a good ideia.(only read it, while I was posting this).And it finish the flights with the pilot far away from the cockpit.(Pilot in bed, in bathroom having a shower, in kitchen or walking the dog on the street or sleeping.....heheheheh)
And if you want a more complex PP, include penalties for take offs on wrong winds direction,touch down angle on landings, smoothest landings, hardest landings...etc...etc...
I speak on this, without problems, because the most important for me, is not the score in the PP Top 10, is important, but it is not the most important.
The important is that we must have a fair and challenging PP system that reward or punish people on the same way with similar circunstances.
A new system 'll not benefit me, but i want a new and more fair system.
At this moment I have a comfortable FAC of 82,10 and with the new system and without values correction I 'll have a score about 4000 negatives.....eheheheh.....
I fly ProPilot from the beginning and I have 5 crashes in my curriculum.(No problems with that, everybody as his own learning curve)
I rested always with the feeling that I could prevented them, and after the bad feeling that one crash provokes me,I am sick with a crash.
I always learned something new in each crash.And i remember all of them and i remember the causes that provoqued them as well.From the first until the last.
I will always fly in the PP system as much as possible, make the new algorithm, stay with the old one , but never will take off me the pleasure and the challenge to fly in the PP.
Ufff.................Forgive me for this long post, but it is only my opinion
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Luis, bravo. I am following this loooong debates about PP, but after reading your article I must confess: THIS IS IT! I have very similar or even equal oppinion about using PP, and since I started with PP last year in November I am a real fan of it. Since then I made only one flight out of PP( Razza is guilty for that ) and all the rest on PP. And even if I am sometimes mad as a hell due to some stupid and ununderstandable penalties from PP, I adore it.
The very simple solution would be: let it try experimentaly and we'll see the results. We should try this experiment in the duration of one, or two months and after finishing just make a careful analysis. All the rest is just theory. And experiment costs nothing.
Maybe we should close the existing PP for the time of the experiment and start for the certain period of time with brand fresh PP, based on new alghoritm. All of the users would start from zero and this way would be the honest and most useful, especially concerning the comparative analysis. Bruno, Phil, Armando, would be this too complicated?
Peter LGAV Hub Manager
Peter
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Originally posted by EHM-0471 Peter
And even if I am sometimes mad as a hell due to some stupid and ununderstandable penalties from PP, I adore it.
This is the thing. It drives me crackers when it seems to be going wrong but it is quite good fun. When stuff goes wrong there is a real feeling of injustice but when its going right it is a real wheeze :)
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Having browsed through many of the posts on this subject, it is quite clear that whatever is the final outcome it will not please some people. I would have thought that the idea of joining this great VA was the community, the varied choice of aircraft, and the relaxed way in which it is run. Some of the posts now look as if the object of the exercise is to obtain a high/low FAC depending on the final outcome, yes a good FAC is important but not to the point that we are chasing numbers. With regard to the long/short flight issue, without doubt the possibility for more penalties is with the many short flights, the largest risk is during TO/Landing, while these risks are there on a long haul flight they are only encountered once per flight, once into the cruise the only penalty you will incurr is an overspeed, and if you don't fly any closer than about 20Kts to the overspeed mark you will not get an overspeed. So flying on the autopilot for long periods is a breeze as nothing disasterous is going to happen, until Propilot starts to introduce failures, then I would agree that a bonus for long haul would be justified. Again this is just my opinion.
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Hi,
Regarding Luis Post:
1 – To Consider the flight times and not only the number of flights.
We do consider.
2 – To Consider the different difficulty (complexity ) of the different airplanes.
We don't consider.
3 - To consider different the online and offline flights
We consider.
4 - The total amount of the penalties does not have to be bigger that the value of one crash.The penalties values must be review to balance with the crash value.
We consider.
5 - The Popup Murray's idea, is a good ideia.(only read it, while I was posting this).And it finish the flights with the pilot far away from the cockpit.(Pilot in bed, in bathroom having a shower, in kitchen or walking the dog on the street or sleeping.....heheheheh)
Not possible to implement for now, and still complex to decide.
So, we will think about the airplane difficult coeficient, and we will give an answer soon about it.
Regards,
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Just one other possibility Bruno...what about a weather factor, is that possible? So, if somebody is flying online and the weather has been particularly challenging can that be scored in too?
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Originally posted by EHM-0948 Bruno
5 - The Popup Murray's idea, is a good ideia.(only read it, while I was posting this).And it finish the flights with the pilot far away from the cockpit.(Pilot in bed, in bathroom having a shower, in kitchen or walking the dog on the street or sleeping.....heheheheh)
Not possible to implement for now, and still complex to decide.
Just to add a little more to this suggestion of mine, make the pop-up system modal and it won't matter if you run FS full screen or not, the pop-up will appear above everything else. Further, if you've forgotten to turn off "pause FS when it doesn't have focus" it'll pause FS until the dialog is dealt with.
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Hi,
But on that case the full screen mode will turn off causing the user to be annoyed with it. It's not practical in my opinion ...
Logically we will discuss this internally and see what we can do about it (there is already a thread about it on the MT forum) :)
The rest will be mantained.
Regarding to the weather factor, right now we don't want to code on the Flight Logger. We just want to create a new FAC based on the inputs that we already got from it. Maybe later we can improve the Flight Logger, and improve the FAC again :)
Regards,
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Things like this can be discussed forever. Why not let a few frequent PP pilots try a new algorithm to see what the actual result will be? There are always beta-testers for new versions of things.
One thing that strikes me is this: You are rewarded for the number of online flights you do. One argument for this new algorithm was that longer flights should be rewarded more than short flights. The reward for the number of online flights instead for the time online, directs pilots into this direction: Short flights should be done online, long flights offline. My suggestion is, since this is supposed to encourage online flying, to reward the time online instead of the number of flights online.
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And what about fuel?
I think one of the most important thing for a pilot is to monitor his fuel quantity (a recent ATR crash happened because of the wrong gauge installed on the aircraft and insufficient check by the crew). In the beginning I used to fly always with full tanks and 'unlimited fuel' setting. Later, starting to use FSPassengers, I checked more often my fuel, trying to consider the most economical/fast way of flying, with sufficient reserves at destination.
Now, since FLogger monitors the fuel quantity in the aircraft, wouldn't it possible and fair to imagine a penalty for too low/negative fuel at destination? Or even for too much reserve? (but this may be too hard to say for each kind of aircraft).
As far as the fuel matter is concerned, I believe something wrong occurs in the Flight Analysis: sometimes fuel burnt and minutes of flight seem to be incorrect. In my latest flight, for instance, (F1 B747 to YMML) the Flight Analysis indicates fuel burnt during climb equal to 85.241 lbs in 30 min (which would give about 170.000 lbs per hour), instead of the actual consumption of 19.363 lbs. Moreover, the cruise time indicated is 22 minutes instead of 7 hours and 2 minutes.
For what concerns the new FAC calculation, I am positive as long as a new scoring table is created alongside with the present one, which would remain in effect, at least for a period of time. The FLogger would give two scores at the end of the flight, one for each table, so that we could compare them. Eventually, if the new table is satisfying, the old one could be disregarded (maybe with a sort of merger between the two).
Safe ProPilot flights to everybody!
Luciano
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... you're asking too much in one time Luciano :)
We can't have 2 FAC's running at the same time. Has much development complexity envolved and our development schedule doesn't permit it.
The fuel consumption could be a good thing. Maybe you could write it down on the Flight Logger 3.0.9 suggestions ;) ... We will think about it.
The ProPilot bugs: Send me an email please.
Regards,
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Hello All,
for what it's worth I'd like to share my opinions on the debate.
The PP and especially the FAC will always have inherent limitations and as said earlier it's can't be all things to all people. Times change and we should change with them. Let's see what is common in our views and implement it, without focusing on what we disagree on.
It looks like a lot of people feel pasionately about issues but let's not forget, we're all members of the EHM family and each of us is respected equally.
Regarding people, reporting flights they have not done, or fooling around with A/P's overnight and so on, well, that's their choice. I don't personally see what advantage logging flights you haven't done can bring but I also respect the guys that do.
I have been here for a small while, not as most of you. But even now, I do have a feeling for which pilots tend to fly a lot and which ones don't and also for some of the better pilots out there.
EHM for me is more of a community than a competition. Yes, I have flown PP and crashed too. So what? given time, I'll improve. But for me the real fun is sharing news, views and goals. We're all 'harmonians' and at the end of the day how each of us choose to experience this virtual 'home' is up to them.
I felt very welcome coming here and it's a pleasure to read from you guys every now and again. Let's keep the harmony and prove true to our name.
P.S. From some of the posts I read it would look like we have dedicated team of S/W engineers working on the new PP. Let's respect the limitation of this exercise. IMHO, the team has done more than most, and so it's easy to assume they can do anything.
Keep up the good work and let's all enjoy our time here
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Wise words Sotiris :)
But also I think that our community is one of the best. Definately this kind of healthy and hard debates just bring us more further, but also, sometimes, pilots loose a little the context out here. Something that we cannot avoid :)
So, next monday the MT will debate the FAC and with the poll results will take a final decision to implement on the current next week.
Regards and safe flights!
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Hi,
I personally feel that faults are done by the pilot at maximum during the take off and descent procedures only. Cruise is the time when the autopilot is on full blast and we take time off for leaks and refreshments. So long cruises should be given less preference.
But at the same time, if the flight is online, then he should be given points, so points should be I think with an if condition where in an online flight gets more benefits of the cruise, while an offline flight should not get the benefit of the cruise.
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Hi,
We are going to implement this new FAC as soon as we can. Expect more news in some days.
Regards and thank you for all of your opinions! Surely it is very healthy to have a community like we have, where we can express our ideas, and have a MT team that will hear them.
I am very happy that we had ended to a good FAC, and all I can say is that we will see if this is the best FAC or not. If not, we will be here to again discuss it.
Regards!
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Hi everyone, here's my opinion for what it's worth.
The new FAC algorithm (as well as other improvements to PP) don't have to be perfect as soon as they are released! I have been reading through the posts in this thread and while I've seen some great ideas come along I think we are either getting too impatient or we are losing sight of the fact that ProPilot is still a new system, unique to EuroHarmony. It is still being worked on and it may take some time before we, as an airline, have 'perfected' it - until we have found something that fits most (can't please everyone at the same time) pilots and what they want.
Maybe we should just be a little more appreciative of Bruno, Phil and Murray for the work they've already put into the system and for the upcoming labor required to make it a better experience for the rest of us? Without doubt there will be more revisions made to it; so just remember that we don't need to add everything that we want to it at this PARTICULAR improvement.
And, for an airline where participation and membership are optional, I'd say the management are doing a d**n good job at keeping pilots (the number of active pilots is at 160!!), so they're doing something right.
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Thanks Ben,
I have little or no technical input though.... Our beavers behind the scenes are indeed Bruno, Murray, Maarten and now Magnus. These four guys are pretty much responsible for every thing we do now at EuroHarmony and I would like to take this opportunity to also tip my hat and say thanks for the great work they all do! :)
Cheers