Online hoplist users,


I have begun the preliminary phases of choosing and crafting another route for possible inclusion in the future. However, events in the past few weeks have led me to question whether or not doing so is worthwhile.

While I am not looking for accolades for coming up with what are in my opinion interesting routes, and I'm sure Shane is not looking for constant everlasting recognition of his valuable work in getting it into the server.....we have noticed a particular thing that at least has been bothering me a little bit.

Most of you who will read this are currently working on the Alaska/Pacific Northwest tour, consisting of over 100 hops. This tour was designed to do certain things:

1. Show off the amazing scenery/geography of the State of Alaska, along with the Pacific Northwest region of North America.

2. Encourage group flights together to challenging destinations, while using bush aircraft that some say are synonymous with Alaska itself.

3. Last long enough to keep users busy possibly until the new year or at least around November.


While I understand that the very northern parts of Alaska were kind of bland (such is the nature of the state in that region), it seems as if most users simply want to motor through the entire list as fast as possible, usually while using a fast turboprop or military jet aircraft. The hoplist status page shows users quite literally all over the map, resulting in their flying alone throughout the tour.
A couple of users are even close to being finished with this tour, which was only activated in the last days of June!

These factors seem to have perpetuated a mindset that this tour should be seen as an obstacle, rather than a tour. Users flying at 20,000ft at mach 1 over the scenery was not what I had in mind (except for the first few hops over tundra). It seems as if the new goal is to get these things done as fast as possible, rather than enjoy the flying experience. At this point in time, most of us can't even flying online together (in a formation sense) due to the fact that everyone is so spread out. I also thought that this would primarily be a weekend thing.

The above has indicated to me that hoplists such as this are more of a bother than an enjoyable experience for most.
We have some ideas for a future tour, but if it's simply going to be seen as an obstacle, I don't know if we'll see one online for a while...at least from me.

Let me know what you think of the current situation please. Good, bad, average, etc?

Thank you,

-Sean K.

Andy, did you see any of the hoplist?   

120 hops covering almost 6,000nm in only 4 days is crazy! 

What on earth did you use to fly it all with? 

ShaneG wrote on Jul 15^th, 2010 at 10:31am:

I saw all of the hoplist.

I flew 5 hours a day for three days.

I flew an F/A-18. It's a fast, military jet made by Boeing.

I just wanted to catch up to Paul and pass him to piss him off. LOL

I'm actually going to do the entire thing in the default Baron 58 now, flying IFR. It'll help me with my instrument training in real life. I'm also going to be looking for sceneries around the areas I'll be flying to in order to enjoy it more.

With the F/A-18 at the right speed, you can make it drop like a rock or climb like a rocket if you need to. Come in at the right attitude and speed and you're good to go.

I imagine it'll be 10x harder with the Baron 58.

Fozzer wrote on Jul 15^th, 2010 at 1:57pm:



Looking into that right now. 

Thank you very much for the feedback, guys.

This current tour is obviously going to be going on for quite a while yet...at least 2 more months I'm thinking....but we'll see what the overall progress looks like near the end of this month.

Shane and I have narrowed down the next theme to a couple of choices, and once we finalize that, I'm going to start crafting a route, probably during this weekend or into next week.

Just throwing out some thoughts here, but I think it would be nice if the next tour would be a weekend-only thing.
I know that a few of us here have time during the Monday-Friday week to fly at least for a couple hours, but I believe that part of the point of it being a multiplayer tour is for us to actually fly together....not just be online at the same time.
Just a personal opinion, let me know what you think.

Also, if anyone has any ideas on how to get more people involved in the multiplayer tour experience, or if you want to get more involved yourself, let me know. It could be anything from making a custom repaint for the tour, choosing locations/destinations, or anything else.
Currently, I create the hoplist routes, and Shane does the programming work for getting it into the server.

With this in mind, I just want to remind everyone to be sure that your connection/port forwarding stuff is squared away. Details are in the stickies at the top of this forum. If you are introducing someone to SimV online, we'd all appreciate it if you mentioned the connection requirements to them. Most people that are active on the boards here are in good shape though.

This current tour is certainly a long one, and while we are looking at an option of similar length, most other themes on the table right now are shorter. If the next hoplist is a shorter one, just remember to pace yourself, because it will be up for a while.....thus allowing anyone that is interested to complete it generally at their own pace.


Thanks for your understanding. Let me and/or Shane know if you have any issues/suggestions for Simviation hoplist operations.....and we'll see you in the online skies!

-SeanTK