Features and Votes -> ever successful?

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Hey everybody!

I have seen a lot of different posts with features and trying to get people to vote.
BUT: Is it ever successful?

What is considered successful?

I’ve seen a few features with 150+ votes but the post is from like 2017 (for example) and they are currently still voting on it. So, it’s safe to assume, even topics from 3 or 4 years ago with a lot of votes still haven’t made it into the game.

So, who decides how many votes are enough to fulfill something?
Are they ever been made?

I understand staff is so busy with PM and other things, do they have time to look up all the features and how many votes each and individual topic has?

Anyway,

this might be confusing to some but I thought it’d be interesting to know what actually happens to our votes.

Thanks

MTB

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The Devs are constantly working on something new, but remember they are a small team. They take all the features request and social media requests into consideration. Depending on what aircraft or feature they are working on, the Devs will most likely include the feature

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The more votes it has; the more it is considered…

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The Infinite Flight Staff team uses the Community Features category as guidance for what the community is most passionate about. But the features category certainly isn’t the only factor that goes into choosing a new feature for the app.

Different Factors:

  • They gauge interest through the forum (Features and other means)
  • They gauge interest through their many social media platforms
  • They select based on where they want the simulator to be headed in the future

“We are community-driven, not community lead. Whilst the input of forum votes and the community is encouraged and welcomed, it is our decision what features are included in the simulator, liveries included.” - Misha (Community Manager) → Linked Here

From what I’ve seen during my almost 5 years on the forum, your votes do matter. The Infinite Flight Staff and Development team try their hardest to implement highly voted features here on the IFC. Just with 50+ topics reaching over 100 votes, it does become quite impossible to implement every feature at once. It takes time.

Some examples of community voice being heard:

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I’m just wondering why some features are in the game with less votes than others?
Like a livery for example got 80 votes and made it, but other features with 150+ votes did not.

Who decides that? What made them decide that?

I understand they’re a small team. I just want to know what actually happens to my vote and if it’s worth it?

Does voting actually do something or is it just a “cool feature” on the IFC?

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Hmm, I don’t think so… for example, take a look at the new easyJet livery A320 request with almost 180 votes. How is that not in IF yet while there are the 3 Southwest special liveries that got added with very few votes. Clearly there’s some bias here? 🤔

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They take them into consideration, but for US and western Europe :|

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Correction: US and Western Europe only

Central and Eastern Europe are just as neglected as other continents like Africa

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That’s what I mean! There are some topics who have like 150+ votes but those features are not in IF, but others got 50 or 80 votes and it’s in the game…

I just wanted to be sure my vote is actually doing something and not just be “discarded”

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Voting is definitely something that impacts the decisions. Often requests with lower vote counts are added because that aircraft might be in the process of a rework. For example, a feature request for an A330 which is scheduled for a rework, will probably come before a livery that isn’t on the A330. This is because one aircraft is being worked on, therefore it’s easier and more efficient to add these liveries.

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What exactly has that got to do with how votes are counted? I think this excuse is thrown around for far too many issues/complaints…

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Sometimes not even Western Europe tbh

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I just think, that a topic has 180 votes, it should be in the game.

But how do they take the votes into consideration?

If they decide themselves, then why vote?

I just don’t understand why a topic with less votes gets featured and features that have been open since 2017 just don’t - and they’re still voting on it!!

When is “enough” truly “enough”?

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Just because something hasn’t been added yet doesn’t mean it won’t ever be seen. Though I do agree that there has been some bias towards the North American liveries, I do not agree that votes never work. I’m sure the staff has taken into account this livery, as well as any other feature requests. One good example of this was the ANA 777-300ER. Though there were many votes, it simply wasn’t enough to push it into the update. Many of us from ANVA were very upset, and probably share the same feelings many of you do when you guys don’t feel that votes do anything:

I’d honestly like to know the rational behind not adding this livery. Because from mine and many other people’s point of view you added other liveries with FAR less votes, and those liveries quite frankly won’t really get flown that much. Not to mention the IRL importance of the livery, with just a quick Wikipedia search you can see how ANA has more 77Ws then the likes of Air New Zealand, United, and so many other liveries in game.
So we know that those two things don’t go into adding a livery. I mean do you guys feel like the 772 compensated for the lack of 77W? Well then what about American, United, KLM, Air France? They have both, and United has 2 772 liveries, and KLM has the orange pride too? That can be the reason either can it? I mean I’m honestly just a little confused here and like many others would like some sort of explanation.
Let’s also look at this from a business perspective. Which is going to be a better choice, a Crystal livery that will probably get flown around less then 40 times a month, or the ANA which will easily be flown 100+ times? You guys need people (us) to fly and enjoy flying, so why take that away by not adding what WE obviously want? It kind of baffles me to be honest.
But I’ll tell you this, we’re not gonna stop pushing until we see this livery, weather we need 150, 200, or 250 votes. It took Air India around 200 votes, if that’s the case we’ll rise above that benchmark to get this added. The sooner you guys add this livery, the better off everyone (the developers, IFC moderators, and especially the pilots aka the customers) will be.

(@KIND9624 , ANVA CEO)

And even though we were upset, we still had to show our support. And after gaining 200+ votes from the community, Infinite Flight’s Co-Founder, Phillipe said:

There are a few things we need to consider from a technical standpoint when adding more livery (we already have a hundreds!!)

  • each new livery increases our bandwidth cost since that livery need to be streamed to each user who is close to another pilot using that livery in live (even if they didn’t select it for themselves).
  • the more different livery a user is surrounded with in live, the more memory it will use. Each recent livery takes ~80MB of memory … having as little as 10 aircraft around you would take 800MB of memory just for the liveries . We mitigate this by loading a lower resolution of each livery for other pilots but it is still a significant amount of memory.
  • it affects the experience. Ever wonder why it sometimes takes a long time to see other aircraft in Live? downloading and loading liveries is what takes time.
  • it cost time and money to create many liveries

That being said, we have some ideas how to dramatically improve our livery management in the future which would help us with most of those issues but it might take some time.

So if something that already has a lot of votes doesn’t get added instantly, we have to remember that there is more than one factor that plays a role into adding a livery.

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Remember this aswell .

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I get that they are constantly working on things but some features have been made 4 years ago (or longer) and some of them have A LOT of votes.

I can’t ride this thing enough, BUT:

When do they decide “Oh yeah, a livery has been requested for 4 years and is still getting votes. Maybe we should work on it?!”

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And once again the “livery and diversity debate” has sparked. Why do we have to sneak it in every. Single. Topic?that’s rhetorical Yeah I’m all in for adding diverse liveries, but simply shunning others is just pure ignorance.

Think about it, though I wouldn’t want my business to fully revolve around my fan base. Why? Because it’s my business. Sure I can cater to others once in a while, but I founded something so that I can contribute what I envisioned in the start, so of course my ideas will take priority. And honestly speaking the IF team does a good balance of this sort of stuff. Community driven and community lead are two different ideologies.

Not trying to incite debate, that’s the last thing we want.

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I think it’s a justified topic.

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Business 101 is to listen to your consumers at least at some point. If you don’t, than you start to lose business. [ie. it took a whole bunch of people here to leave for the A350 to be added]

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I think they do. I mean, I’m not a dev so I don’t know what they are doing but certainly doing something for us. I’m not sure if you’re complaining that the IF team is not doing enough, but IF developers always surprise us with something new. On 19.4, IF released the A350 which we thought was going to come later. What I’m saying is that if they are working on it, some things take longer than others. It’s not just the developers’ decision, it’s also us :)

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