Projectfly down

[Bunchy 234]

His facebook page says this:

 

Afternoon - Matt here with an update (a very long one).

First off, I hope that you’re all enjoying the holidays. I appreciate that most people take time to enjoy their hobbies during holiday breaks and so taking projectFLY down during this time was, to put it bluntly, a dumb idea.

Another dumb idea was me essentially ignoring the fact that I have friends & family and focused on working to bring projectFLY back online - HUGE mistake (I spent Christmas Day at my PC working on pF, they were not impressed). They’re the most important people in your life (even if they don’t feel like it) and there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re not wanted by someone you love. Trust me, I know this all too well.

To continue being blunt, it would appear that I have messed up. I am not opposed to exposing my flaws as a human, as I believe we can all learn from it. I fully expect a reasonable amount of backlash from this and it’s probably rightly deserved but my driving force in fixing this will not be tainted by people insulting me & ultimately telling me what I already know.

During the start of 2019, we had a nice system internally which allowed us all to develop/create things efficiently. You’ll have seen regular updates from the Mettar Simulations blog, regular updates about pF development & all seemed great. That’s because it was.

You all know the story by now, but alas when it all went pear shaped in July, that entire system was ditched because there was nobody left (just myself and Dan). From that point, I took the stance of “Ok, time to do everything myself” and went on a 2 month break learning as much as I possibly could about the areas of development which I wasn’t strongest in. I also planned a system which would allow us to properly test versions, manage testers & their reports, manage user groups & allow the public to see exactly where we’re at in terms of progress.

I came back in September and essentially, with the help of 2 other developer volunteers (another Matt and another Mitch (not the original Mitch)), we continued to develop v4.

The issue is, I never put that original system or the planned system in place. We were just developing random, meaningless things with no real end goal in sight and more stupidly, no real plan.

Then in October, as a result of neglecting the finances (at this point I am just overwhelmed with trying to do literally everything), I go into a mode I shall called “v4 needs to be released now - forget all of your plans”. This was to generate revenue for projectFLY to self sustain.

Thankfully the community came through and funded it for October/November, then again in December/January. That was alarm bell number 1 for me. I’d let it slip to a point where IF the community didn’t fund this, it was the end. That is the 100% truth. I didn’t have a plan B at that point. I knew getting v4 out had the potential of solving this, but it wasn’t ready and thus I was in a predicament.

As a result of the successful crowdfunding, I had a few people come forward who were infrastructure experts and combining forces we had a plan going forward to tackle the costs. That did involve a move away from GCP, a move which would ultimately take 10 times longer than anticipated but was super necessary as it scaled costs back by at least 50%.

With my “v4 needs to be released now” mindset, I essentially steamrolled my way through Oct/Nov/Dec getting it to a point (with the help of volunteers) in which it felt ready “enough” to release.

Truthfully, it never got to that point of being ready “enough” but I knew the deadline for the next bills were approaching and again, I had no plan B so I essentially went ahead with pulling the plug on pF v3 and using the downtime (which was initially way longer than anticipated, but should haven’t ever taken more than 2 or 3 days) to bring v4 to a ready “enough” state.

Before I took pF v3 offline, for about 2 weeks, the testing team didn’t actually have access to a working copy of their version as the servers were down/misconfigured and I just couldn’t find enough time in a day to sort it out. In hindsight I should have prioritised this as maybe I wouldn’t have pulled the plug on pF v3 so soon. I don’t know, that’s just speculation - hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Once I pulled the plug on pF v3, it took me a solid week to get pF v4 online for the testers to play with. That’s when the problems started rolling in. It was one after the other. Add Christmas to that mix where volunteers are unavailable & you’ve got yourself a tropical storm that won't disappear.

There has been some tension behind closed doors in terms of our tester team. Lots of people leaving, one person was even removed due to taking things way too far. It’s just not been a fun time for any of us. projectFLY started as a community project - what kind of community project thrives if the people who are supposed to be helping test it, plus it’s core users are unhappy? The answer: none.

projectFLY has been 5 years in the making. It’s consisted of many people's efforts & that is something which I do not take lightly. It’s a constant work in progress and I feel that right now we’re going backwards not forwards. Their work, their name, it’s all being essentially word not allowed on at this point & that is not okay.

Irrespective of what has happened, it’s myself that is at fault - I am the Captain of this Aircraft (excuse the pun). I need to fix this & I need to fix this now.

So, this is how the immediate future is looking. Firstly, I am going to bring projectFLY v3 back online. This will allow people to continue logging their flights.

Secondly, I am going to restructure the testing side of things & implement the mentioned plan I had formulated way back in the late Summer.

Thirdly, we are going to do this the right way. I don’t want to release projectFLY as a “ready enough” product - it has to be 100%. I’m always first to criticize other peoples word not allowed standards, allowing it to go out now would be hugely hypocritical of me. It’s just not ready - it was wrong of me to give you that false impression & for that I am sorry.

I know finances have been a huge talking point over the past few months for projectFLY. Naturally without v4, it doesn’t self sustain. However, due to the generosity of people from the 2 crowdfunding successes, we have enough to cover servers/infrastructure until at least March.

I’m not going to give a timeline as to when it’ll be ready, but once my plans are implemented, you will be able to publicly see our progress. I am going to work on that as an immediate thing. I won't be moving forward with any pF v4 development until we have a solid development/testing process in place.

I understand that some people have voiced concern over certain people being removed from projectFLY over the last few weeks unfairly. If you believe that is the case, please send me a message (either on here/twitter/discord or email matt.davies[at]projectfly.co.uk) and I will look into it on a case by case basis. There definitely have been some deserving bans, but we were maybe too harsh in some cases.

Lastly, I am removing my “personal” side from projectFLY & Mettar as a whole. If you want to follow me as an individual, you can do that within the appropriate channels but you will not see me posting like this anymore. From this point forward, all posts will be from one of the team.

I enjoyed seeing projectFLY thrive as a professional outlet back from the start of 2019 through until the Summer. Updates were well received because they were done professionally, not by me encompassing every minor detail of the latest troll or the latest word not allowed post from somebody.

The issue with me is that I am very unforgiving when it comes to responding to people - I say it how it is & that doesn’t always work. We’ll keep it professional from now on.

That’s all I’ve got for this update. I know it’s a long one and I thank you for reading it.

Matt

 

Stu

[micstatic 4,478]

I tried to do an import to pull my vatsim flights from the time it was down.  Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be working.  It's not showing any of my flights from the time it was down.  Anybody else?

[environmental_ice 248]

On 12/29/2019 at 1:57 AM, Bunchy said:

His facebook page says this:

 

Afternoon - Matt here with an update (a very long one).

First off, I hope that you’re all enjoying the holidays. I appreciate that most people take time to enjoy their hobbies during holiday breaks and so taking projectFLY down during this time was, to put it bluntly, a dumb idea.

Another dumb idea was me essentially ignoring the fact that I have friends & family and focused on working to bring projectFLY back online - HUGE mistake (I spent Christmas Day at my PC working on pF, they were not impressed). They’re the most important people in your life (even if they don’t feel like it) and there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re not wanted by someone you love. Trust me, I know this all too well.

To continue being blunt, it would appear that I have messed up. I am not opposed to exposing my flaws as a human, as I believe we can all learn from it. I fully expect a reasonable amount of backlash from this and it’s probably rightly deserved but my driving force in fixing this will not be tainted by people insulting me & ultimately telling me what I already know.

During the start of 2019, we had a nice system internally which allowed us all to develop/create things efficiently. You’ll have seen regular updates from the Mettar Simulations blog, regular updates about pF development & all seemed great. That’s because it was.

You all know the story by now, but alas when it all went pear shaped in July, that entire system was ditched because there was nobody left (just myself and Dan). From that point, I took the stance of “Ok, time to do everything myself” and went on a 2 month break learning as much as I possibly could about the areas of development which I wasn’t strongest in. I also planned a system which would allow us to properly test versions, manage testers & their reports, manage user groups & allow the public to see exactly where we’re at in terms of progress.

I came back in September and essentially, with the help of 2 other developer volunteers (another Matt and another Mitch (not the original Mitch)), we continued to develop v4.

The issue is, I never put that original system or the planned system in place. We were just developing random, meaningless things with no real end goal in sight and more stupidly, no real plan.

Then in October, as a result of neglecting the finances (at this point I am just overwhelmed with trying to do literally everything), I go into a mode I shall called “v4 needs to be released now - forget all of your plans”. This was to generate revenue for projectFLY to self sustain.

Thankfully the community came through and funded it for October/November, then again in December/January. That was alarm bell number 1 for me. I’d let it slip to a point where IF the community didn’t fund this, it was the end. That is the 100% truth. I didn’t have a plan B at that point. I knew getting v4 out had the potential of solving this, but it wasn’t ready and thus I was in a predicament.

As a result of the successful crowdfunding, I had a few people come forward who were infrastructure experts and combining forces we had a plan going forward to tackle the costs. That did involve a move away from GCP, a move which would ultimately take 10 times longer than anticipated but was super necessary as it scaled costs back by at least 50%.

With my “v4 needs to be released now” mindset, I essentially steamrolled my way through Oct/Nov/Dec getting it to a point (with the help of volunteers) in which it felt ready “enough” to release.

Truthfully, it never got to that point of being ready “enough” but I knew the deadline for the next bills were approaching and again, I had no plan B so I essentially went ahead with pulling the plug on pF v3 and using the downtime (which was initially way longer than anticipated, but should haven’t ever taken more than 2 or 3 days) to bring v4 to a ready “enough” state.

Before I took pF v3 offline, for about 2 weeks, the testing team didn’t actually have access to a working copy of their version as the servers were down/misconfigured and I just couldn’t find enough time in a day to sort it out. In hindsight I should have prioritised this as maybe I wouldn’t have pulled the plug on pF v3 so soon. I don’t know, that’s just speculation - hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Once I pulled the plug on pF v3, it took me a solid week to get pF v4 online for the testers to play with. That’s when the problems started rolling in. It was one after the other. Add Christmas to that mix where volunteers are unavailable & you’ve got yourself a tropical storm that won't disappear.

There has been some tension behind closed doors in terms of our tester team. Lots of people leaving, one person was even removed due to taking things way too far. It’s just not been a fun time for any of us. projectFLY started as a community project - what kind of community project thrives if the people who are supposed to be helping test it, plus it’s core users are unhappy? The answer: none.

projectFLY has been 5 years in the making. It’s consisted of many people's efforts & that is something which I do not take lightly. It’s a constant work in progress and I feel that right now we’re going backwards not forwards. Their work, their name, it’s all being essentially word not allowed on at this point & that is not okay.

Irrespective of what has happened, it’s myself that is at fault - I am the Captain of this Aircraft (excuse the pun). I need to fix this & I need to fix this now.

So, this is how the immediate future is looking. Firstly, I am going to bring projectFLY v3 back online. This will allow people to continue logging their flights.

Secondly, I am going to restructure the testing side of things & implement the mentioned plan I had formulated way back in the late Summer.

Thirdly, we are going to do this the right way. I don’t want to release projectFLY as a “ready enough” product - it has to be 100%. I’m always first to criticize other peoples word not allowed standards, allowing it to go out now would be hugely hypocritical of me. It’s just not ready - it was wrong of me to give you that false impression & for that I am sorry.

I know finances have been a huge talking point over the past few months for projectFLY. Naturally without v4, it doesn’t self sustain. However, due to the generosity of people from the 2 crowdfunding successes, we have enough to cover servers/infrastructure until at least March.

I’m not going to give a timeline as to when it’ll be ready, but once my plans are implemented, you will be able to publicly see our progress. I am going to work on that as an immediate thing. I won't be moving forward with any pF v4 development until we have a solid development/testing process in place.

I understand that some people have voiced concern over certain people being removed from projectFLY over the last few weeks unfairly. If you believe that is the case, please send me a message (either on here/twitter/discord or email matt.davies[at]projectfly.co.uk) and I will look into it on a case by case basis. There definitely have been some deserving bans, but we were maybe too harsh in some cases.

Lastly, I am removing my “personal” side from projectFLY & Mettar as a whole. If you want to follow me as an individual, you can do that within the appropriate channels but you will not see me posting like this anymore. From this point forward, all posts will be from one of the team.

I enjoyed seeing projectFLY thrive as a professional outlet back from the start of 2019 through until the Summer. Updates were well received because they were done professionally, not by me encompassing every minor detail of the latest troll or the latest word not allowed post from somebody.

The issue with me is that I am very unforgiving when it comes to responding to people - I say it how it is & that doesn’t always work. We’ll keep it professional from now on.

That’s all I’ve got for this update. I know it’s a long one and I thank you for reading it.

Matt

 

Stu

What a joke. I’m glad I stopped logging anything there months ago. At the end of the day he just collected more money  while V3 was down and I would bet at least half the people wouldn’t have contributed if they knew V4 wasn’t really coming but obviously they won’t get their donations back 

Edited December 31, 2019 by BusDriver321

[GSalden 4,734]

4 hours ago, BusDriver321 said:

What a joke. I’m glad I stopped logging anything there months ago. At the end of the day he just collected more money  while V3 was down and I would bet at least half the people wouldn’t have contributed if they knew V4 wasn’t really coming but obviously they won’t get their donations back 

It is time Matt is making this payware. Donations aren’t a steady income when there are bills to be paid.

You have been able to use this for free and that wasn’t a yoke...

[deetee 164]

I don’t know what functionality PF has these days but I enjoyed using it for a short time a while back when it used to be able to dispatch you a random flight for a chosen airline. That handy button disappeared during a version upgrade so I stopped using it and have since stuck with VAs. 

[ErichB 3,715]

I hope V4 works.  If it's a better version of PFv3 then it's payware worthy for sure. 

But I have watched enough of Matt's streams over the years to know that he surrounds himself with toxic people constantly.  That's how this goes from one drama to the next.   Maybe it's just the age demographic involved, lack of maturity and/or bad role models.  Whatever it is, he'd better sort it out.  No-one with any credibility in the industry would want to be linked to him or his business any longer.  Once central to the flightsim community, he's fast becoming an outlier and developing a charlatan-like reputation

  

[Bunchy 234]

I think Matt is a genuinely good guy.

He wears his heart on his sleeve and shows passion.

While this is a fabulous human trait, especially in the arts or sport, it doesn't come over very well in the professional business world.

I'm the same type of character in many ways, perhaps that's why I never made CEO of any company........ 😉

 

I hope V4 goes well, I love PF personally.

 

Stu

 

 

[environmental_ice 248]

16 hours ago, GSalden said:

It is time Matt is making this payware. Donations aren’t a steady income when there are bills to be paid.

You have been able to use this for free and that wasn’t a yoke...

Good for him. However PF doesn’t offer anything I would be willing to pay for, as a one time cost or as a subscription. Also the entire operation is obviously unstable. I wouldn’t dare log Anything there as there’s no telling when he will pull the plug. Furthermore he hasn’t been upfront with everyone throughout the entire existence of PF and if it actually offered something I was willing to pay for I certainly would think twice about it as I have no idea where my money is going to because at this point its only been going towards keeping the lights on and hasn’t been towards development of V4. 

Edited December 31, 2019 by BusDriver321

[GSalden 4,734]

7 hours ago, BusDriver321 said:

Good for him. However PF doesn’t offer anything I would be willing to pay for, as a one time cost or as a subscription. Also the entire operation is obviously unstable. I wouldn’t dare log Anything there as there’s no telling when he will pull the plug. Furthermore he hasn’t been upfront with everyone throughout the entire existence of PF and if it actually offered something I was willing to pay for I certainly would think twice about it as I have no idea where my money is going to because at this point its only been going towards keeping the lights on and hasn’t been towards development of V4. 

To me you sound as someone who likes to complain a lot about it but wants to use it as long as it’s free. No offense.

As far as “pulling the plug” : that is the reason the program needs to become payware. So the bills can be paid and improvements in development can be made.

Btw : Happy NewYear to everybody 😃

[Ricardo41 6,000]

On 12/19/2019 at 11:59 AM, Nyxx said:

 I hope the basic version will still be free.

And this is why they can't pay, or have trouble consistently paying, their bills. People want everything to be free. Free. Free. And, of course, they all promise to upgrade to the paid version. Ha ha. 

[Ricardo41 6,000]

8 hours ago, BusDriver321 said:

Good for him. However PF doesn’t offer anything I would be willing to pay for, as a one time cost or as a subscription. Also the entire operation is obviously unstable. I wouldn’t dare log Anything there as there’s no telling when he will pull the plug. Furthermore he hasn’t been upfront with everyone throughout the entire existence of PF and if it actually offered something I was willing to pay for I certainly would think twice about it as I have no idea where my money is going to because at this point its only been going towards keeping the lights on and hasn’t been towards development of V4. 

It's "unstable" because cheapos refuse to pay for it. It really is that simple. 

[environmental_ice 248]

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

To me you sound as someone who likes to complain a lot about it but wants to use it as long as it’s free. No offense.

As far as “pulling the plug” : that is the reason the program needs to become payware. So the bills can be paid and improvements in development can be made.

Btw : Happy NewYear to everybody 😃

Well if you read what I typed it would be clear it sounds like I don’t pay for it because PF does not offer anything I think is worth paying for. And While we’re at it logging anything on web-based applications or VAs is something I’m also not interested in. If that’s something you like then to each their own but I’m entitled to my opinion just like you. Finally why doesn’t he just make it payware then? Obviously I’m not the only one that doesn’t see value here.  It’s not just about being “cheap” plenty of people pay for Netflix, Xbox live and 200 dollar virtual airplanes (PMDG, etc) the cheap excuse is simply not true. 

Edited January 1, 2020 by BusDriver321

[environmental_ice 248]

33 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

It's "unstable" because cheapos refuse to pay for it. It really is that simple. 

And maybe more people would if he was more transparent about the development or lack there of. 

[Nyxx 6,996]

3 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

And this is why they can't pay, or have trouble consistently paying, their bills. People want everything to be free. Free. Free. And, of course, they all promise to upgrade to the paid version. Ha ha. 

 

3 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

It's "unstable" because cheapos refuse to pay for it. It really is that simple. 

Well it depends on your needs. I use 4 virtual airlines all are free and never ask for money and I log very few flights with PF so if he chargers I will stop using no big deal for me, if you use it and nothing else, sure pay if you wish. 

I would be careful with you cheap shots. BAV is the best VA out there imo. I would pay for it but they never ask and its runs like a dream. Would I pay for PF no.

Each to there own and I don't like being called a "cheapos", you know what you can do with your cheap shots remarks and its a place the sun does not shine.

I bought Matts PTA...and the new version.....!!!!

[GSalden 4,734]

iFly started as freeware and later they became payware so they could take their products to the next level..

People like free and that is no problem but free means “it is what you get”. And one freeware developer is able to do more than the other regarding his time and his money..