But… You’re not really flying an airliner. You’re not really flying an airliner the way airliners are flown. You’re playing a game of flying an airliner, the way a single person can at a home computer on the Internet. The things are different.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing Vatsim. I do fly airliners in reality but also do it on Vatsim sometimes, because it’s fun to see the similarities and differences. I fly GA IFR on the network because I will no longer accept the risk of flying single engine IMC in reality, and it’s fun to feel some nostalgia for when I did that in little airplanes.
Etc. The common thread is that it’s fun. And sure, some folks do it to learn (but caution has to be used by anyone who might ever go on to do this in reality, because much of what you learn on the network can create bad habits you don’t want to take with you into a real airplane), but they’re still learning for fun - not for any other reason.
I highly support learning for fun. I’m not bashing this. Look, I love history and archeology. I read archeology journals, and learn a lot by doing this. But I will never be an archeologist. Therefore, I’m learning… But just for fun. Which makes it entertainment.
In the end, a person can use whatever terms you want for it. The importance to the discussion is that every single person on the network is here because it’s something they have fun doing during their leisure time. The dedication and professionalism of people doing anything for these reasons is naturally going to be different than if it was a career or had real-world ramifications. Thus, policy makers must take that into account, or new policies are going to backfire.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re arguing against here - all of these points are things I more or less said in this discussion before myself and I’m completely with you that
The post you quoted was aimed at the completely separate discussion that has been going on in parallel about whether VATSIM is “just for fun” or if you need to be 100% realistic with everything all the time. Sure, from a certain perspective you could argue that it is at least peripherally related because the answer to this question provides the foundation for the difficulty/complexity discussion related directly to the change this thread is about.
However, VATSIM itself is quite clear about the level of realism and complexity it expects from its users; the About VATSIM page on the website states among other things that the network wants to create an “as-real-as-it-gets experience” and encourages “the pursuit of excellence”, while also catering to “people who are completely new to the hobby as well as to the seasoned flight simmer” and “maintaining a balance of realism and fun”. With that in mind, I think we can safely assume that any strive towards more realism is perfectly welcome and encouraged, but only if it can be done in a way that doesn’t unnecessarily overcomplicate things for users; thus, I don’t think there is any need for a long discussion on what level of complexity and realism the network and subsequently its policies and users should be at and we can instead focus on whether or not this trial/change falls within that level and, if it doesn’t, what could be done to achieve an appropriate balance between realism and ease of use - if I’m wrong and there needs to be such a debate on the fundamental principles, then that should take place in another thread, not only to make the discussion easier to find later on, but also because it doesn’t just pertain to CTAF, but essentially all VATSIM policies and beyond.
Your guarantee? Where’s the justification for that statement? Show us that your guarantee is worth something.
Re. your list of fun things about VATSIM, the first is a given. That’s what it’s all about. The second and third involve activities which anyone can engage in anywhere in social media. Not exclusive to VATSIM. In all of my RW aviation experience I have never had a “group flight.” Any flight I undertook where more that one aircraft was involved in the route, apart from formation flying, simply replicated the solo experience. The party time we had, once landed, was, of course, another matter!
I can talk to my pals any time I like. Including my pals on VATSIM, through forums and discords. I don’t need to get geared up to fly in order to have a social experience.
I think you may need to think what it is about VATSIM which is sufficiently unique to make it all worthwhile. Otherwise it may as well just be a stream of consciousness, like most discord “discussions.”
Oh, I was just disagreeing that it’s not relevant to this discussion of the CTAF changes. I think it’s relevant in the sense that, if we acknowledge that we’re dealing with a group of hobbyists who conduct their activities purely for fun, in a consequence-free virtual environment, then it’s a given we cannot expect the same level of professionalism and attention to detail that we would expect in real-world ops.
This speaks to my point: there’s already a problem with CTAF misuse or non-use on the network, so making the freqs harder to find is obviously only going to make that worse
So March 1st is a Friday when this goes into effect. Perfect…busy Friday night, with no FNO, should be quite entertaining.
It’s pretty simple though…if the CTAF is easily identified, use it, if not, then NORDO ops will be even more prevalent than with the current universal unicom. To be honest, I don’t mind that. It’s just a bunch of electrons being pushed around the interwebs, with no risk to life and or limb.
Interesting.
Just saw a video explaining CTAF.
It makes sense.
The problem i see is getting other pilots to look up the CTAF frequency and to use it. There already is a issue of not everybody using UNICOM 122.8 and now we are going to make it a bit more interesting. I am looking forward to this trial, and as i said it makes sense , but i just might have to turn off the crash detection.
First full day observation: When no CTR or Approach ATC, I highly recommend having CTAF frequency on COM1 TX and RX, and 122.8 on COM2 RX to listen for those who aren’t up to speed with this CTAF trial.
Quite frankly, I’m surprised you don’t have crash detection turned off already. Nothing worse than spending an hour getting the flight set up only for somebody to pop in right at your gate because they didn’t check to see that someone was already parked there.
Just my 2 cents but this is really a bad idea. The notion that we can do this as true to life as possible is well intentioned but in our niche environment it just is not optimal. Lets say there are 10 planes flying into the greater NYC area. There are 2 each going into KEWR, KJFK, KLGA and KISP… You have potentially 10 guys flying within 20 miles of each other on 5 different frequencies. The STARS for for one airport are made so they dont interfere with the SIDS of another. But what if someone in an A300 is coming in and is missing the altitude constraints because the VNAV doesnt work on the inibuilds a300 (and it doesn’t). Theyre coming in 1000 ft above where theyre supposed to be but this guy going into KLGA in his Fenix is right on track. Theyre on 2 different freqs and cannot talk to each other to sort it out. If you had permanent top down Center ATC the CTAF would work but this way there are so many different airports and CTAFs so potentially close together it just doesnt work. If everyone in the area was on the same freq, you would have much safer conditions. My $.02
I’m going to add my 2 cents and quote what Nick said above. “VATSIM is not and was not ever intended to be a place for casual gamers. The preamble to the Code of Conduct specifies that VATSIM aims to simulate real-world aviation.”
Again, if you can’t even take 5 seconds to check a frequency on a chart, chart supplement, or AIP, and think that all this is a game and for casual gaming, I’m sorry to say that VATSIM is not for you. AFAIK the devs are working on the possibility of looking up major airport CTAFs (The “First TWR Frequency”) on our pilot clients so it shouldn’t be an issue in the future.
“First tower freq” doesn’t work because freqs are published in different orders on different resources. No way to know where someone is looking them up. However, it sounds like a dot command has been added in Vpilot.
This is an excellent point I didn’t even think of, about multiple busy airports sharing procedures but with different CTAFs in Vatsim. That’s just just totally broken.
And it’s common! In the US alone I can think, off the top of my head, of a bunch. JFK-LGA-EWR-TEB, ORD-MDW-PWK-Schaumburg, SEA-BFI-PAE, LAX-ONT-SNA-LGB, ATL-Peachtree - others, IAH-EFD-HOU-others, the entire Dallas metro area, Denver, all of the Bay area…
Wow, this is going to be even more of a mess than I thought!
This is indeed a problem and part of the reason why a number of people in this thread have suggested keeping 122.800 as the advisory frequency for all airports that are controlled IRL and to only use a real world advisory frequency at airports that are uncontrolled IRL - that way, you would only have issues with people in close proximity not talking to each other where that’s also the case IRL, while in places where controllers would normally follow certain agreements and procedures as well as coordinate with other controllers to ensure separation in these dense airspaces, pilots would be on one shared frequency. It would also reduce the ambiguity of which frequency to use at controlled airports with multiple tower frequencies but no coverage on the network. Hopefully they take that into account if and when this moves beyond the trial (or maybe try to see how it works by adjusting the trial rules after some time).
STARs are not necessarily designed to be without conflict (their primary purpose is to provide an easy and orderly basis for leaving the enroute environment, not to separate traffic), so even if you follow a procedure to the letter, you might cross the path of another procedure.
And quite frankly, if a pilot has to rely on VNAV to meet level constraints but VNAV isn’t working as expected/supposed, then that’s not an issue with the policy but rather one with pilot competency.
PHNL doesn’t have a CTAF frequency listed in the VATSIM AIP, so that’s probably why it doesn’t work. Does it work if you try it with KJFK, e.g. - that airport has a frequency marked as CTAF in the VATSIM AIP.
