Rob Shearman Jr

I completely agree with you @Ryan S. and in my own personal sim flying I'll do a full readback of an IFR clearance every time, unless specifically requested not to by the controller. And I also completely agree that it's probably kind of a dumb idea not to do that, usually. However, the question posed above was what is actually required, and there is a distinction there.

@Ryan S. is that "near'universal accepted best practice" or actually required by FARs? http://imgur.com/HJYFATT

> "there is a wealth of very talented controllers itching to control pilots that know what they are doing." This is the sentiment I've heard rumblings of throughout years of active participation in forums and other discussion outlets of the online flight sim community. I have visions of seeing dozens and dozens of names emerge in the opening days of POSCON, renowned names that haven't been active in online flight sim communities for years due to the ever-declining levels of pilot education on the current networks. I have great hope that POSCON is going to unite the cream of the crop from all the others. I can't wait to see it happen!

As a relatively new streaming pilot struggling to build a following, I too would love a centralized manner of publicizing my stream to the network community. Great idea! Oh and twitch.tv/slantalphaadventures ?

My opinion is that each player's sim has the capability to handle this already (through add-ons like you mentioned, or sometimes their individual add-on aircraft); no need to centralize it nor tie up server bandwidth with it.

Yeah, it's hard to tell whether the "emergency" is a request for a legit situation simulation, or just someone attention-starved crying out "look at me! look at me!"

Jacob -- I agree with you that if the facts are as you describe, there's no obvious reason the controller in question shouldn't have been able to accommodate your emergency. But also we're only getting your side of that story. I don't agree that you can use that solitary example to claim what VATSIM controllers are or aren't trained for. To bring the conversation back to PosCon, my opinion is that a policy similar to VATSIM's on abnormal procedures (allowable with right-to-refuse by ATC) would be a good idea.

Wait -- I think I misunderstood what you meant by "buy VATSIM." LOL! I got it now. My unsolicited advice (from an outsider's perspective) -- wait for an official statement from the founders / owners of POSCON. In the other FS news posts & on Facebook, there are a ton of people posting speculation based on little infinitesimal pieces of that discussion that have leaked out & been posted out of context, which subsequent responders are assuming as fact, & then it just blows up from there.

I don't know whether POSCON's Pilot Client will support FS9 so I'll defer that to someone knowledgeable. However, just to clear up a couple points of confusion: VATSIM, PilotEdge, IVAO, and eventually PosCon are all separate multiplayer (<-- term used loosely) networks. You do not "buy" them, you "connect to" them. Each one has certain programs/apps you use to connect your simulator to their network. VATSIM has several different Pilot Clients; IVAO and PilotEdge each have one main one nm(I believe). Some networks are free, and some (such as PilotEdge) require you to buy a monthly or annual subscription to be allowed to connect to it. Hope that helps...

Hi Charlie -- pardon me for butting into the conversation, LOL. But I don't think the kind of "flying unrealistically and sometimes dangerously" on VATSIM is limited to military aircraft. Unfortunately, it seems like there's been an influx of members who don't understand that VATSIM isn't just a general multiplayer server where one comes to chill and goof off. (And, mark my words, I'm all for chilling and goofing off -- but in the multiplayer servers that are provided for that purpose, not on VATSIM or its analogs!) In seeing AJ's vision for POSCON and in some limited discussions with him about it, I'm confident that (a) the issue of network members understanding what's expected of them won't be an issue here, and (b) any training/certification burden implemented on POSCON won't be so severe as to deter people who legitimately want to engage in those types of flights from doing so. I'm looking forward to seeing this vision come to fruition!