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i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

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i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby limpingwrench » Mon May 17, 2021 3:06 pm

for anyone with dyslexia or any kind of reading disability, i strongly recommend against getting involved with the Flight Gear flight simulator.
the flight simulator is inaccessible to me because of my disabilities and the fact that there is nothing in the way of effective user support.
the available documentation is, at its best, incomplete and woefully inadequate. at its worst it is obtuse and opaque.
not one of the questions i need answers to are in the "FAQ".
the search functions on both the Flight Gear web site, and on the forum, have never found anything close to what i was searching for.
posting here on this forum has resulted in exactly nothing i didn't know in the way of information, and some ableist bigotry that dismissed difficulties i was having with the comment it was "a rather steep learning curve."
no. it is not a "steep learning curve."
it is an absolute barrier to entry.
after a month of doing everything i can to get it to work, i have nothing but frustration and $400 worth of equipment that was acquired for me that i now have no use for.
i give up.
goodbye and good riddance.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby Isaak » Mon May 17, 2021 3:17 pm

I feel sorry that you had this bad experience. This project is fully driven by volunteers. Many people do their best to provide a good experience and to help (new) users with their issues, but there are limits to what we can do. I hope you find a good alternative solution for your needs.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby danielHL » Mon May 17, 2021 3:36 pm

If you have a serious reading disability, then I fear there is little what people on the usual flightgear media (forum/wiki) can do for you - they are all heavily text-based.

So, if you are still interested, I'd like to offer you video/voice-chat support. Contact me and let's find some time to have a look at your problems via Zoom, jitsi or any other video chat platform that works for you and me.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby Thorsten » Mon May 17, 2021 6:16 pm

for anyone with dyslexia or any kind of reading disability, i strongly recommend against getting involved with the Flight Gear flight simulator.


Yeah, that's probably true - generally you'd be expected to do lots of reading.

the flight simulator is inaccessible to me because of my disabilities and the fact that there is nothing in the way of effective user support.


That's also true - there's no formal support like in commercial products, it's all volunteers.

Perhaps you expected something different? FG is what it is, I don't think anyone ever promised an easy entry with minimal reading (or even concise documentation). There's too few people working on things, and too much coding to be done - and too many people who expect someone else to do the work.

So yeah, I see how some other piece of software might work out better for your particular case - so goodbye and good luck! :D
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby Hooray » Mon May 17, 2021 7:41 pm

These are all entirely valid observations - however, this is primarily a volunteer-based effort, and as such what you get is provided by volunteers, often by people who faced similar learning curves - sometimes even much steeper ones.
Without wanting to offend you, but I'd suggest to do a reality check at this point: You yourself seem to approach the whole thing with a certain attitude or rather a set of expectations, that simply won't work in a volunteer-driven project like this one - the most constructive approach would be "be the change you want to see".

And now, before you start yelling at me for ignoring your condition, I'd just like to point out that this project even has blind users.
Assuming that you are not blind, but merely have reading problems, it seems somewhat far fetched to assume that you are facing more problems than someone without eyesight.

Again, this isn't to offend you, just to point out that it's a matter of expectations and whether people are willing to be the change they want to see, or if they'd rather deal with a polished product/service and end-user support.

That being said, if you think you are better served by a corresponding proprietary product, by all means, feel free to give it a try - FlightGear certainly isn't suitable for all people/use-cases, people with a serious/professional interest in flight simulation (flight training, proficiency) are often better served by a corresponding product, too (think ELITE IFR, Jeppesen).
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby MrMinimal » Fri Jan 07, 2022 5:09 pm

What an ungrateful post by someone who does not understand that this is a hobby project, provided for free by people who sacrifice their spare time to create something together.

If you have not contributed a single thing, you are in no position to complain about anything - if you are annoyed by something you could try and learn it and help others.

But all you could do was rant - no furter contribution than that. Very ungrateful, disability or not.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby Lydiot » Fri Jan 07, 2022 7:01 pm

limpingwrench wrote in Mon May 17, 2021 3:06 pm:for anyone with dyslexia or any kind of reading disability, i strongly recommend against getting involved with the Flight Gear flight simulator.
the flight simulator is inaccessible to me because of my disabilities


Sorry to hear that.

limpingwrench wrote in Mon May 17, 2021 3:06 pm:posting here on this forum has resulted in exactly nothing i didn't know in the way of information, and some ableist bigotry that dismissed difficulties i was having with the comment it was "a rather steep learning curve."
limpingwrench wrote in Mon May 17, 2021 3:06 pm:goodbye and good riddance.


Since you only have 6 posts I decided to read them, and all I saw was people trying to help you. Nobody who contributes to FG gets paid, so none of them owe you anything. Still people tried to help.

I understand it sucks to have dyslexia, but your attitude isn't helping either.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby flyboyz » Mon Jan 02, 2023 4:46 pm

for anyone with dyslexia or any kind of reading disability, i strongly recommend against getting involved with flying aeroplanes !


I understand it sucks to have dyslexia, but your attitude isn't helping either.


I have dyslexia and grew up before it was recognised in schools or had full victim status. It did not stop me getting a bachelor's degree in a hard science. It just made it hard work. Hard work works.

It's a shame OP dressed his comment in disablist whining because many of his criticisms are generally valid and nothing to with his reading difficulties. Even the forum editor does not add quotes properly : see above.
Last edited by flyboyz on Mon Jan 02, 2023 5:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby Gijs » Mon Jan 02, 2023 5:39 pm

flyboyz wrote in Mon Jan 02, 2023 4:46 pm:Even the forum editor does not add quotes properly : see above.

That's because you chose to disable BBCodes for your post (and the forum obeyed by ignoring your quote tags ;-) ). You can enable them by clicking the Edit button next to your post and then unchecking the "Disable BBCode" option.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby flyboyz » Mon Jan 02, 2023 5:52 pm

Ah thanks. I wonder about that and went back to edit it in the control panel. When I came back the post still looked the same ! I did not realise that "display option" was actually stored in each individual post. Thanks for the tip.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby S&J » Mon Jan 02, 2023 7:01 pm

This is how I was taught

Image

Dyslexia folk have it easy
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby wlbragg » Mon Jan 02, 2023 11:36 pm

FlightGear is open source and built and upgraded solely by volunteers of all kinds. That means you can make it happen without asking anyone else to do it for you!

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE!
Last edited by wlbragg on Tue Jan 03, 2023 4:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby flyboyz » Mon Jan 02, 2023 11:56 pm

Yeah, right. I was going to try a local build to see if the basic Cesna 172 could actually move forwards in dev version !
Even finding build instructions seemed another wild goose chase, so I dropped that idea.

Before I even think of investing time in coding I need to see it's something worth spending time on.
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Jan 03, 2023 11:48 am

flyboyz wrote in Mon Jan 02, 2023 11:56 pm:Yeah, right. I was going to try a local build to see if the basic Cesna 172 could actually move forwards in dev version !

if the current existing bug is triggered in the dev version the same way it is in the release versions, then the answer is "no, the craft will not move in the dev version"... you could build 1000 versions of FG and none of them will fix the craft-side defect that causes this... only fixing the craft's code will fix this...

"what bug/defect?" you ask? the one that is fixed by using the in-sim F10 menu to access the c172p's options where you toggle the damage on/off and back to how you want it... this resets the variables and then the craft will move as desired... i think it is the damage that needs to be toggled... the devs have not yet been able to track this defect down and eliminate it... i think this defect is listed in the c172p's issue tracker on github so perhaps adding your voice to this defect will help? there's only 100 issues currently listed and i suspect the majority of those don't even apply any more since they are several years old by now... there's less then 10 defects listed in 2022 and i think this particular defect has been around since at least 2019 or 2020...
https://github.com/c172p-team/c172p/issues
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Re: i strongly recommend against Flight Gear

Postby flyboyz » Tue Jan 03, 2023 12:57 pm

Thanks for the explanation. I don't know the stucture of the code but I figured pulling a clean dev copy would at least tell me if this had been fixed. By that I meant replacing the whole distro version with a dev copy, so presumably and aircraft fixes would be relevant.

I tried the toggle trick and it did not fix it. I was not going to spend all day banging my head on that wall, I just chose a different plane.
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