What about a "Freeware Reviews" section ?

[Daube]

Hi all,

I've been recently having a look to the X-Plane forums, and noticed they had a Freeware and Payware review forums.

I think it would be nice to have some Freeware Review forum on simviation too. There should be only one post per plane version (all user should post pictures/comments for that plane on the same post). Eventually, if a post is really good for a plane, the webmaster could offer a link to this post on the corresponding download page.

What do you think ? 90% of the times, the description of a plane on the download page really sucks, and offer no details regarding the presence of a VC, quality of the filght model, quality of the textures etc... Would be cool to have a link to a post with the precise descriptions and shots offered by the users

[ozzy72]

We did used to have reviews but they seem to have quietly died a death of late...

[Daube]

Oh, I see...  :P
Ok, too bad :/

[Souichiro]

We did used to have reviews but they seem to have quietly died a death of late...

Who did them and how and where?

T'is a nice idea!

[Daube]

Who did them and how and where?

T'is a nice idea!

Sure, but I'm jsut realizing how difficult it would be to maintain such a section as it should... you know, the typical problems:
- several users would always create several topics for a plane that has already been reviewed
- it may not be easy for the webmaster to put links to the forum on each reviewed craft
- the webmaster would have to parse all the reviews to see if they are good quality enough before linking them...
- etc...

That's a lot of work for sure, I did not realize it when I wrote my post. But you know, I was just upset about the description that some creators use for their aircrafts. Some time they wouldn't even give any details on functionnalities, just some useless historic stuff...
Something shoud really be done to improve the download section, at least a separation between real planes and repaints, and something that provide basic info on the plane, VC or not, sound or not, 2D panel or not etc...

[Daube]

Now that I think about it, it may be just enough to encourage members posting in the freeware screenshots section to put some tag on their post title when they wish to do a review, something like "[review] the mirage F1 by kirk olsson..."

[Souichiro]

You don't have to do the reviews for the purpose of outsiders... you can also just do reviews for yourself and the other members here..

We could all decide on certain criteria's like exterior, flight dynamics, fps friendliness etc... of course the specs of the rig it's tested on would be nice for the latter.. I nopw remember Clipper doing something like this.. mauybe you can ask him how he did it

[Sir_Jon]

I think its a good idea personally. When Clipper highlighted some of his favourite aircraft and few months back, it located for me some excellent aircraft and the reviews were always well written and gave an honest view.

[RichieB16]

I think the problem is, there aren't enough people out there with time to write reviews.  You can write a review on any plane you want and if Pete likes it, he will create a page for it and post a link on the SimV home page.  Several years ago I was the "SimV Staff Reviewer" for a short time and I wrote a handful of reviews.  Unfortunately, I haven't had time to write in the last couple of years because of school-but if someone wanted to write one I'm sure Pete would probably post it.

Here are a couple examples of the reviews I did:
http://www.simviation.com/fsreviews_fs9howard.htm

http://www.simviation.com/fsreviews_b7172k4.htm

Anyway, those are just a couple examples.  If anyone wantes to write one, the info is here on the main review page.

http://www.simviation.com/fsreviews.htm

One of these days, I'll get back to writing a couple once I have graduate school figured out and setup.

[Katahu]

FS2004.com has an indepentant review section for addons as well. However, the traffic in that area seems to have died down in the past couple of months.