Aircraft rating system
Formalizing Aircraft Status
Based on various mailing list discussions since 11/2007, it is getting clear that the current method of classifying aircraft development status is not satisfactory to adequately describe an aircraft's development progress. Which can be pretty frustrating for developers, contributors and users, because of different expectations.
This is mainly because of the fact that different people may have different requirements and are thus viewing the status from different angles, possibly neglecting progress in other areas
This page is dedicated to providing a place to start collecting suggestions about how to describe aircraft development status more formally and reliably.
Given that people seem to be expecting different things when they read about an aircraft's development status being "alpha", "beta" or "production", it should be possible to address this issue, by starting to classify each aircraft's individual components directly, rather than the overall aircraft itself.
This classification process should preferably take place by following certain conventions, so that it is likely that the majority of aircraft types, as well as their various features, are covered.
This could for example be achieved by starting to evaluate aircraft based on factors such as the following:
- status/realism of FDM configs (performance characteristics)
- status/realism of exterior 3D models
- status/realism of cockpit panels (2D/3D)
- status/realism of aircraft-specific instruments
- status/realism of systems modeling
- status/realism of failure modeling
- status/realism of integrated checklists/procedures
- status/realism of integrated help (i.e. in the form of help dialogs)
- status/realism of available documentation
- status/realism of overall usability
Furthermore, it might also be worthwhile to consider evaluating aircraft based on additional criteria such as:
- available support for multiplayer
- available support for runtime customization (i.e. liveries)
- available support for eye candy/effects
- available support for saving/loading and continuing flights