EuroHarmony Community Forums
Archive => ProPilot => Old Forum => ProPilot Main Forum => Topic started by: EHM-0948 Bruno on June 15, 2008, 01:32:39 pm
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Dear pilots,
We are planning a new ProPilot version.
Tell us what do you like us to improve, change, correct or implement.
Your ideas will be listen, and, if possible, implemented ;D.
Regards and thank you.
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I'm not sure if its possible but maybe if it said what you did wrong and said what you could do to avoid the penalty next time.
:]
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Better integration with FSX would be nice - it often doesn't recognise when you start a plane, and you have to stop and restart.
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The FAC should have a way to reward the online flying as well as the PP events participation. The actual algorithm recognises only the number of online flights but does not take into account its duration as the total PP flights does.
Regarding the events, it should be recognised the high level of commitment that the pilot acquires due to the time constrains involved.
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I propose not a penalty for lights off below FL100 in deparure.Penalty will be on if lights on after FL100 and if off below 1500ft.
If we want to fly a VFR flight at 4500ft will have the lights on all the way.Thats not so real.
Also if a pilot book a flight and not doing in 48 hours and expire to penaltize him with 10 points.(or another value but low one).
One more is someone to monitor the plane hours for maintenance.
Thanks
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Here are some ideas I gathered up in 5 minutes
Support for legs, on ultra long haul, instead of two separate flights, allow us to refuel the plane and keep counting it as one long flight, saves time and effort.
Better reward for perfect flights, and I mean, a visible positive number, instead of 0. Something like "Well done pilot, perfect flight. +100 PP points". Also it could be that different flights yield different amounts of points if done perfectly but those "higher paying" flights also yield bigger penalties if done wrong. An example is a special mission in the EHM Business that youre transporting 5 VIPs, where you have to be extra careful with them, or else the company's reputation would suffer.
Extra points if a flight is "successful" after a failure... Like a nice landing on 1 engine.
Extra points if the conditions at landing are very demanding, like strong crosswinds or near zero visibility...
Some sort of graphical user interface to see where the planes are stationed... I mean, there could be a plane stranded in some weird place for months without anyone knowing, this way, by checking a map, someone would go "What the hell is that 767 doing in Congo since september? Let me bring it back to a main hub...."
Could also use this to show where our pilots are stranded :P
(this would use the same kind of map our ACARS currently use)
Maybe a newsletter that can be posted on the pilot's lounge that will bring the latest news to the pilots... Like... "EHM Informer
Mariano De Ascencao just crashed our last 757 this morning just outside of Rome. Passengers survived but the plane was totaled and this pilot has received a penalty of 5000 points"
... Scratch that last idea :P
Randomly generated missions, that yield more points than usual. A little script that would just randomly pick a cause, a descritpion, an airplane type and destination for the pilot from a bunch of pre-made sentences... Example
"Mr. pilot...
One of our A320 had a malfunction and had to do an emergency landing in Panama City. The pilot is under investigation for suspected pilot error so we need you to retrieve it and bring it back to the Atlanta hub. Emergency repairs have been done to the plane and it is in flying condition but we would want it back in a EHM hangar as soon as possible. Please reply before (insert date here)
The EHM Management
Accept? [Yes] [No]
Something like that... maybe thats too much to program but it would be interesting to see which scenarios our management would come up with =)
Of course the cause for the mission, the kind of plane, the airport and destination airport are randomly generated and have to be of a class the pilot can fly.
Just my 2 cents...
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1) Random Failures ;D
2) As one-way trips are unrealistic and it is frustrating to see planes left in remote airports for months, a system which allows a pilot to select whether he will be flying a round trip or a connection to another flight when flying out of a hub or a connection airport so that no plane gets left behind or forgotten at some far away airport and the airplanes will always start from a hub.
Something like in the lock plane window, it first asks whether you would be flying a round trip or a connection. If you select a round trip, the flights from there will be shown. You select your flight and lock it, the reverse direction of the flight will be locked too, so the pilot will have to fly a round-trip. (eg round trip: EHM-3004 EGLL-EDDF, EHM-3005 EDDF-EGLL flights will be locked)
If you select connection, it will show flights from the hub you're flying from that have connecting flights from the destination to places other than back to the hub for that class (class123/class456/class7). after selecting the first connection flight, the window will then ask again whether the pilot would like to fly a round-trip or another connection. If there are no more connections, only the round-trip option would be shown. After the round-trip option, the pilot would have to fly the plane back to its hub via the connection flights in reverse direction, maybe list out all the flights the pilot will have to fly in the window (eg on 2 leg round trip: EHM-3004 EGLL-EDDF, EHM-3501 EDDF-ELLX, EHM-3500 ELLX-EDDF, EHM-3005 EDDF-EGLL)
A pilot cannot just stop at another hub and leave it there (eg EGLL-EHAM) but will have to fly it back to its original hub (EHAM-EGLL)
When a pilot locks his flights but does not start the first one, it will be unlocked in within 48 hrs as the current system does, but if he does not fly after flying his first flight, he will have to fly all the flights before he can locked other flights.
That said, I hope you guys understand what im trying to say because i got confused by myself as i was typing all that :]
3) As Mariano said, a reward in the PP FAC system, i don't really like seeing a 0 after a perfect flight, makes me feel that i haave not done anything right :]
Maybe something like you start off with your normal pilot salary (eg. +1000pts, bigger plane/longer flight = more pay), and with every mistake you make or any damage you cause, the penalty points (as they currently are) are deducted from this "salary". Also, when a failure is triggered by PP (assuming there will be such failures ;D), some penalties would be automatically disabled (eg. explosive decompression at altitude failure and the descending at more than -4500fpm penealty)
4) Waaayyyy unlikely, but just to mention, some way for the FL/PP to interact with FSPassengers so that when generates a random failure, the other is aware of it and so you won't need to shut down one of the programs to continue the emergency :]
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I verify that a lot of pilots are offline on their flights. Using this way of flight, is a valid option, but i have noted that we learn more online, with human ATC. We can choose Vatsin or IVAO, does not matter. Now my really suggestion is the pontuation, we must have mor points or other for ourselves choosing flying online, and meet together.
Thanks
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Dear pilots !
Mariano, Javier, Rocha, ... told the most I wanted to suggest.
I think you should show the ranking again like you did it. Its a challenge to see if Im close to the top 10 or where are my competitors.
Why I did not like anymore flying propilot? It was the new system! for ex. I made a long haul online-flight with bad weather landing - "perfect" from FSPassengers but got penalty because after leaving the runway, I wanted to put out the landing and strobe lights and made the mistake with the "anti collision" (but I puted them on again immediately ) - 60points. Last time I got from the ATC a high speed approach - we were 7 aircraft in approach and I got the next penaltys. For a perfect long haul I got only +29 points ! This is a bad relation! - After aircraft crashes I have so many penaltys, that I have to fly the next 20 years for getting in positive rating - this is not very encouraging me.
It seems that some pilots with a lot of points are flying 20 hours a day (I never see them online), but this does not say anything about their skillness. If you have to study or work or have a family, you cannot match with them.
Why not starting with a new competition. Beginning at every new year - every pilot has to make at least 5 (or 10 or whatever) PP-flights and at least 1 long haul a month with aircrafts like PMDG, LEVEL-D, Ready for Pushback, Captain Sim 707, PSS Airbus, 757, 777, Flight1 ATR, 727, etc .... and at least 1 EHM-Tour in the year and ONLINE !!!(for offline - 50% of points). Or devide in ONLINE and OFFLINE Division. And at the end of the year the top ten pilots get their AWARDS. For pilots with many hours should also get awards, but not in propilot! Or - you can make as many flights you can do, but only the 10 best reults a month will be registered.
So it could get more interesting again !
Greetings from Salzburg
Franz
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I strongly agree with the idea of the long haul problem of trying to split it into two legs. Maybe that can be solved by a button on the Flogger which when pressed acknowledges that the next landing and takeoff are "fake" and should not be recorded?
I also think that a few random failures need to be put it, and if you get a PP failure with a FSP failure at the same time, what can I really say apart from fun?;D
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Keep posting guys ... all of your opinions count.
Thank you to the ones that already gave their 2 cents.
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What?! I paid 2 cents to post my comment?! :] ;D :p
Originally posted by EHM-1800 Franz
I think you should show the ranking again like you did it. Its a challenge to see if Im close to the top 10 or where are my competitors.
Why I did not like anymore flying propilot? It was the new system! for ex. I made a long haul online-flight with bad weather landing - "perfect" from FSPassengers but got penalty because after leaving the runway, I wanted to put out the landing and strobe lights and made the mistake with the "anti collision" (but I puted them on again immediately ) - 60points. Last time I got from the ATC a high speed approach - we were 7 aircraft in approach and I got the next penaltys. For a perfect long haul I got only +29 points ! This is a bad relation! - After aircraft crashes I have so many penaltys, that I have to fly the next 20 years for getting in positive rating - this is not very encouraging me.
It seems that some pilots with a lot of points are flying 20 hours a day (I never see them online), but this does not say anything about their skillness. If you have to study or work or have a family, you cannot match with them.
I definitely agree with this, i still fly on PP though and i'd like to see the top 10 too ;D the penalties are given tooo fast, we don't get a chance to correct them if we accidently hit some key, eg. turning the strobes off.
What's more, its so difficult to get back a positive score after crashing or getting penalties.
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One other thing I can think of for the new PP version is to include the fuel management as responsability for the pilot.
Also, I agree with previous ideas on round trip flights. I propose that once a pilot leaves his/her hub with a particular plane, that plane MUST be returned to the hub no matter how many connecting flights have been performed.
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Hi,
Definately the FAC system (pilot ranking) will be changed on the next one.
What I would strongly suggest is that you fly the best that you can, but fly there.
Because when the new FAC system comes out you'll surely get a better position than others that don't fly on it.
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Hi Bruno and all Pilots !
Only a short mention.
On my online - flights from Peking - Paris I made a landing in Krasnoyarsk UNKL. It was one of my most difficult approaches, heavy rain and gusts, visibility 300 mtrs, no ILS, no Pappi no Vasi. In real it would impossible to land under such conditions. Not enough, FS Pax made a failure, but I landed the aircraft safely and got in FSPax over 1000 points for that exellent flight, but in ProPilot I got ludicrous 29,70 points !!!:$ I was dissapointed. For a ridiculos mistake with landing lights you get 100 pts penalty! Or 150 poits for "overspeed under 10000 ft" as the controller gave me once a high speed approach. It means, you have to make more than 5 perfect flights to even out this !!! Thats no good relation and not encouraging pilots to fly with PP.
I hope you find a good solution !
Cheers
Franz
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I think that Propilot should be made compatable with helicopters, because at the moment if you make a vertical ascent or decent you are penalised with a high AOA, vertical flight in a helicopter is common practice, I have flown helicopters in Propilot with no penalties and the trick is to keep a low forward speed during the ascent or descent, could you not inhibit the AOA penalty when a helicopter is selected?.
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Please, no random failures. They used it in USAirways flight logging program. And if you are unlucky like me, you get a lot of failures, when another pilot don't get failures at all.
As ex. me and my brother was flying for USAirways, and of my last 20 flights I got random errors in 9 of them, and had to turn around and go back. And my brother did fly the same amount of flights, and did only get random errors once.
If we want to fly together, it's not so good to get random errors for one of the pilots, and the other one can fly the rest of the leg alone.:(
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In a way, I have to agree with Glenn.
The telephone rings, someone's at the door, an involuntary key press, disconnection.
And it all seems to happen 3nm from touch down, we have all been there.
Who needs random failures? we make our own.;D
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Would it be helpful having the FAC base line at zero,? it saves falling into the bottomless pit that we have today.
This will save pilots from a heavy negative score before they acquire reasonable experience, and keep them thinking positive It would also bring all the members with a negative score back to the starting line, yes, that includes me with -3000 to my credit. :]
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Originally posted by EHM-1829 Trevor
Would it be helpful having the FAC base line at zero,? it saves falling into the bottomless pit that we have today.
This will save pilots from a heavy negative score before they acquire reasonable experience, and keep them thinking positive It would also bring all the members with a negative score back to the starting line, yes, that includes me with -3000 to my credit. :$
I agree. I have an embarrassing -18,997.50 FAC (the majority of which comes from planes I crashed when I wasn't very good), and with the possibility of only earning 20 of those points back with a flawless flight from Frankfurt to London Heathrow, there's a lot more flying to do :o
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I tried searching this thread for this but I didnt re-read all the posts, so if I'm reposting, please forgive me.
Customisable Transition Altitude. I guess this is more of a flight logger thing, but something should pop up asking us for the TA where we are flying. This is very useful for people who fly online and abide the rules (Lets say, TA=6000 and propilot would give a penalty I belive if we went below FL180 and we dont change the altimeter to local, although that only should happen at 6000).
Of course, there should be another button in there saying "use standard" for FL180 when we're flying offline.
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Picking up Mariano's "customisable TA", it'd need to be a client-side setting (as I'm sure we all realise) but I agree with it it general terms - set the TA/TL for dep/dest prior to engine start, or FL180 is used "per default"...
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Message original : EHM-1671 Ben
Originally posted by EHM-1829 Trevor
Would it be helpful having the FAC base line at zero,? it saves falling into the bottomless pit that we have today.
This will save pilots from a heavy negative score before they acquire reasonable experience, and keep them thinking positive It would also bring all the members with a negative score back to the starting line, yes, that includes me with -3000 to my credit. :$
I agree. I have an embarrassing -18,997.50 FAC (the majority of which comes from planes I crashed when I wasn't very good), and with the possibility of only earning 20 of those points back with a flawless flight from Frankfurt to London Heathrow, there's a lot more flying to do :o
Totally agree. I made a mistake and went past the VS limit once and it's going to take me more than a few flights to get it back to where it originaly was let along getting a good FAC score!
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Some thoughts regarding ProPilot...
I agree with making the scoring system more positive, it can be a turnoff to only get negative scores.
I find the altimeter penalty trivial & anoying...pressing B should be the co-pilots job, not mine ;)
I have nothing against a random failure system as long as the occurance rate is similar to real world ops.
I would like to see rewards for smoothly/skillfully hand flying (i.e. without AP) the aircraft. I'm not sure how this would be measured though. Rewarding "aircraft handling" and "airmanship" could balance out all the arbitrary number penalties...IMHO
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Hi Leon,
Welcome to our community! and thank you for your suggestions :)
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First I'd like to second Marianos' ideas about graphical interface (or at least a very improved interface) for finding stranded aircrafts.
Planning tools to plan several hops, and change aircrafts along the way (without needing to lock all the flights). Would save at least me a spreadsheet.
Visibility of the status of awards - ("You are missing 2 countries for silver european award, press here to plan flights to them now"). Would save me another spreadsheet.
I'm totally against putting any hard constraints on the flying such as forcing to return to hubs etc. For me at least I'd stop using PP if that came into place, since I fly casually, when I have the time and I like bouncing around, changing aircrafts as often as possible and not visiting hubs too often. What keeps me coming back to EHM is the lack of constraints of when and whereto you fly. Set it as an option when planning the flights instead. (Maybe return aircraft automagically to the hub after 2-3 months or so, if the aircraft model is missing at that hub).
Failures should also be optional in my opinion. Mainly because if they are really realistic thay will be too rare for anyone ever really noticing. If set so everyone will have failures now and again it can get extremely annoying. Personally I would probably not use failures - I usually manage to screw things up all by myself. (Maybe have the realistic as a forced standard setting and the more often as an optional.) If implementing, have some sort of notification on failure - I might assume that something was wrong with FS or my computer and restart the flight.
Change the way the altimeter penalty is 'awarded', I've had it hit me when flying in low pressure conditions and watching the altimeter closely trying hard to get it right. Tolerances really needs to be changed on that one. Also tolerances on the lights as has been suggested.
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Hi mates,
Very nice! I am really happy to see so many suggestions! ;D
The new ProPilot system will started to be built on January/2009, along with a mega-project that we will have, so keep giving your ideas.
I would also like to "hear" what do you think about having some extra features, like a real airline operation regarding to ticket prices, pilot's salaries, etc ... do you think it's worth to have that on the new system ?
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Originally posted by EHM-0948 Bruno
ticket prices, pilot's salaries, etc ... do you think it's worth to have that on the new system ?
Sounds cool ;) but what would they do?
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haha! :)
Well ... I don't know :o .. More real airline simulation ?? :o:o
(Where are my tutorials Ben? :) .. Don't tell me you can't write them in Europe!) LOL ... No need to answer here, ok ? ;D
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If we can earn V-money, we would need something to spend it on, no?
Perhaps pilots could save up for one of the VFA aircraft for personal use...I've always wanted to loop the seneca :)
Alternatively, pilots could choose to lend their v-money to poorer pilots. Other pilots could then invest in the returns from these loans with their own v-money. Then, when the poorer pilots fail to repay their loan, we can have our own virtual credit crunch!
...would make it more like real life...lol :o
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I was at another VA that had quite a complex financial system.
Pilots got paid for flights and as staff members. You could spend your money on all sorts of stuff like cars and houses and the like. And there was a sophisticated investment program where you could buy stocks in the VA and the aircraft. Stock values would go up and down depending on how many flights the VA was doing and all sorts of factors.
It was good and added some realism... but ultimately it was all a bit pointless. Pilots had millions in their bank accounts and just spend it for the sake of spending it. It meant nothing really. However, if you could use the cash to buy custom aircraft, or custom paintjobs. Or to buy your way into elite clubs that offer things like member-only flights and tours, for example. Unlocking or buying something special that you can actually use would be something to aim for instead of just random virtual junk.
Of course, the big danger with this kind of system is those flights that don't pay as well will not be flown as often. You'll get people grinding the money flights. It'll be like WoW with wings lol
Dunno, just thought I'd share that with you all.
Mark
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In my short EHM "career", my biggest PP frustration was the landing lights penalty. Especially when you fly short hops with class 1 planes at relatively low altitudes it is unreallistic to switch them off for those 5 minutes you reside above FL100. Then, of cause there was a setting that switched LL of together with landing gear retraction (it does not do that anymore; don't know what I've changed...). That would make a rather rediculous looking flight, with landing gear down up to and down from FL100!
As a more sophisticated rule, I would suggest LL need to be "on" from take-off 'till at least alt=2000; then the limit could stay at 2000 untill 8000 is passed (or another number), at which point the limit to turn them back on on descend is set to that value. I don't know if there are real life values. The above are just my examples.
A simpler rule could be LL "on" when airborne AND below 2000; LL "off" when above 10000.
Note: high altitude airports should be compensated for, so altitude is Above Departure Airport Level altitude. Maybe there's the difficulty withthe current system?
Another suggestion:
Make the penalty rules easier to find; when I did not find them soon enough I just switched off my LL 15 min in flight at alt=8000; "Landing Lights not turned on at take off"; arghhh. I wouldn't call that take off anymore. Not that those 100 points amounts to much with all the rough landing penalties I got so far ;)
Instead of deducting points for bad airmanship, could we not hand out pints to quickly forget the mistakes we made? ;)
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Just thought of another one:
When I flew the SU-80 to EHAM, and landed on RWY18R, the taxi to GA took me about 1/2 hr. When filing the pirep, it gave an error: "more than 25 minutes between touchdown and engines off. PIREP cannot be submitted". Argh!
I re-did the (short) flight, and took out the GPS to monitor my GS. Kept it at around 20 kts all the time, except for sharp turns. Still I needed 18 minutes to taxi. If this were an online flight, I would probably not have been alowed to race across EHAMs taxiways. Or at least not all the time.
Anyway, what I am trying to say is that it is pretty tight at EHAM (and I imagine EGLL and other large airports will have the same thing) to taxi fast enough from one end to the other, without exceeding 25 kts of cause. Perhaps this time requirement should be loosened a bit. Wouldn't like it if this happened after a long haul...
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I do not know if it was mentioned before, so excuse me please.
I would like to see a "respawn" feature. We are loosing too many aircraft from the fleet. I would put them back "alive" to the departure point if it was proven from ACARS that a system crash had happened during the flight. Penalty points would remain, but the plane could be available again.
Another thing is the balancing of award/penalty points. Currently you can ~10 times easier penalized than awarded. This will lead to GIANT negative points. I would divide penalty points by 10 to have a better balance among the scores and to give more smile to pilots ;D
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Due to the length of this issue I would like to wrap up my suggestions:
1.- Put more weigth on both the on-line flights and PP events in the FAC algorithm. No doubt that both activities need much more attention to the pilot.
2.- Make compulsory for the pilot to fly the return trip allowing for a reasonable time for doing it. This will avoid the high number of planes left on the airports all over the world, If the plane is not flown back and not an explanation is sent to the hub's manager, a penalty should be applied.
3.- Fuel management should also be part of the FAC
4.- Allow ProPilot for stop overs in long range fligths no longer than 24 hrs.
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Keep posting guys!
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A positive score (of sorts) recorded after every landing, even if the passengers prefer to return by ship.;D
In the event of a crash, the points deducted are enough to respawn the aircraft back to it’s Departure Airport and save losing an aircraft and it's history. (See Roberts input above)
Reset the Pilots crashed aircraft list to zero, 490 crashes in 3 years is bad publicity.;)
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I agree with the Landing lights penalty. 100pts is alot for lights! I was descending below 10000 from 12000 and at about 10100 i went to turn on the landing lights before i knew it i had a penalty at alt 9998 c'mon abit harsh!! Should have a 1200 +/- range before the penalty kicks in!
Also like the idea of random failures, maybe add an option to have random failures turned on. And if you do select this the rate would be roughly that of real world rates so it will likely not happen but could! These could also range from very minor to major!
And penalties should end at 0 and not go into the negitive.
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Originally posted by EHM-2416 Arron
I agree with the Landing lights penalty. 100pts is alot for lights! I was descending below 10000 from 12000 and at about 10100 i went to turn on the landing lights before i knew it i had a penalty at alt 9998 c'mon abit harsh!! Should have a 1200 +/- range before the penalty kicks in!
Also like the idea of random failures, maybe add an option to have random failures turned on. And if you do select this the rate would be roughly that of real world rates so it will likely not happen but could! These could also range from very minor to major!
And penalties should end at 0 and not go into the negitive.
Mmmm the lights penalty has like a 1000 feet forgiveness... Up and down... It seems to me your altimeter wasnt in the correct setting :P
But thats also a shortcoming of F-logger cos it always considers the altimeter has to be STD below FL180, which when flying online, it's not...
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Hello,
I have read all the commments and suggestions and fully agree with them: we should implement actions which would encourage all of us to fly more on pro-pilot. I'm not saying that penalties should be reduced or modified, but at a certain point in time, maybe once a year, all the counters should be restarted, keeping track of the best pro-pilots of all times on a separate records. It is indeed very difficult (impossible) to reach a reasonable classification after a crash because of the "poor" reward you gain after a zero default flight...I'm sure some arrangements will be made... In any case, I fly as much as I can on PP, as I find it challenging, even too severe sometimes.
Gian