airdailyx.net - whats going on?

[cowpatz]

D'Andre promised great things when he agreed to a management change of the popular Flight sim website AirDailyX.net.
There was to be indepth reviews and several writers contributing (instead of one) to make this the "go too' flight sim website.
I am not sure how long the effects of this change will take in order to produce the final mature product but it certainly isn't there now.
New articles are spasmodic, there have been no reviews for months, if not years (despite a plethora of quality releases) and barely anyone leaves comments anymore despite the comment posting conditions being relaxed.
It certainly seems to have lost it's mojo.
Anyone here know why this might be?

[toprob]

Yeah, I was very interested in the 'new' AirDailyX, because one of their plans was to help fund development -- following my Kickstarter project, it became clear that this sort of thing was possible, so I really wanted to see if/how it was implemented. I have no idea what is happening there now, but it certainly doesn't do them any favours having the half-arsed site as it is.
Getting my FS news has become a bit of a struggle, and I'm back to trawling the forums. FSElite was a possibility, but it is slooooooow, and constantly crashes my browser. ADX was always way ahead of any of the others, simply because D'Andre was so involved in the community, he was always in the centre of things, which annoyed some people for some reason, but it certainly worked for me.

[cowpatz]

Yes I have my morning ritual surf of the FS sites whilst sipping my coffee.

It usually goes:
NZFF
Simflight
FSLite
ADX
AVSIM

.....followed by the Herald online (which I am fast losing patience with as it has become something of a gossip magazine with trash articles). Anyone could be excused form thinking that Mike Hosking was the editor of it. It is hard to get away from the narcissistic peacock as he is on all 3 media.....TV, radio and the Herald.

FSLite was good until they "updated" their website. I now find it somewhat confusing and too busy.

I too was keen to see what D'Andre had in mind for funding developers.

[Splitpin]

"narcissistic peacock" ..... ain't the truth

[MichaelBasler]

FSLite was good until they "updated" their website. I now find it somewhat confusing and too busy.

You mean FSElite, aren't you? Which I still find excellent.

I am afraid it's as usual with AirdailyX. It was superb as long as ONE person managed it as a passion. Now it's been handed over to a bunch of guys who do their jobs. It just lost its soul, that's it.

Kind regards, Michael

[cowpatz]

Hi Michael,

Yes a typo there. FSElite it is. I just find the white background a bit intense and the layout a bit scatter gun in comparison to the previous site.
The content is still excellent.

[Pacificexperience]

Firstly with Dom it was a wild bearpit, something different, while every other FSsite toed the line and got free review products and painted a clinical (and very boring) picture of the market, visiting the AirdailyX site as a developer while Dom ran it left me feeling sometimes both a little uneasy and excited, wondering if you might be the 'target for tonight'

With D'andre it changed a lot, it became a kinder fairer place, I think maybe the passion for simulation increased, but in a different way with less bear-poking and more glitter, D'andre set about actually helping smaller developers gain more exposure if they were making quality products, the website grew and grew, and maybe became too much for him to keep up with


Since D'andre left I feel this 'energy' has died, the user base is split in 20 different directions with all the simulators we now have, and I rarely bother to visit anymore to be honest, I'm not sure how the funding system is working out, I was not a part of that myself due to working for a large publisher already, but I can see it would be handy for people like Robin, personally I dont see it working out in the long term, the FS developing world is littered with corpses, backburned projects and dreams that faded

Cheers, TimH

[toprob]

Succinctly put, TimH.
The funding is not something I'm looking for personally, I tried Kickstarter, which worked out for me, so I know that a little funding at the right time can have a great effect. However when AirDailyX announced their plan, I could see a lot of obstacles to overcome, whether or not they are insurmountable is yet to be seen.
I keep hoping that there's a lot of design/planning going on behind the site, but even if this was the case, they didn't do themselves any favours by keeping it ticking over -- they may have been better off just putting up a banner 'Coming Soon!'

[toprob]

I did mention that I had problems with FSElite, when I loaded the site, the tab in Edge would crash instantly. I may have been too quick to blame the site, though, as I've started to have this problem with other sites. I've now reverted to Firefox, although I did give Edge a good run since it was released...

[Agent X20]

As you say ADX seems a pale shadow of its former self. D'Andre might have been highly divisive and sometimes abrupt, but his passion shone through in spades. Now it's almost a ghost town. Bit of a shame really but I'm sure it took its toll on him with him basically working through the night. I did like the fact he and his old crew would do flyins etc.

I've taken to reading FSElite content as well, but what I really dislike is the way they do their competitions, requiring you to grant controls to your youtube account to some third party. Despite FSElite's assurances it's all safe I don't really believe them. I'm convinced this third party hoovers up more data than just checking you're subscribed to FSElite, so I don't enter any of their competitions.

[toprob]

A 'new look' AirDailyX today, plus a quick post from D'Andre -- not sure whether this is all part of the plan, or a hail-Mary, but if D'Andre is still active I'm excited.

[MichaelBasler]

Neither a new layout nor a message here - maybe it's only for the Kiwis...?

He/his guys had plans for a relaunch with a new layout, but I don't see it yet.

Kind regards, Michael

[toprob]

Hmm, I noticed that my saved link has gained some extra 'archive' junk which still shows the old site, try going directly to airdailyx.net.

[MichaelBasler]

Thanks Robin, this worked indeed. Will go investigating now.

Kind regards, Michael

[jpreou]

I like the new site, but I hope they don't just "parrot" the press releases like they have with Skyforce ... I can go direct to the vendors for marketing speak ... I want the real opinions and early news announcements