Outsourcing to the community?

#1

Is it possible, and does infinite flight team already do this? Is it feasible and worth it?

What if the IF Develpment team outsourced some of its easy, basic work, to some interested community members (for free of course)? Possibilities such as; liveries, taxi/ground lights, airport layouts, ground graphic rendering, etc… nothing that would significantly modify the sim, but basically a worker bee job. Something that is tedious and will be very repetitive that would take a long time and be easy at the same time.
After the community member has completed what they where assigned to complete, they could send it to the dev team, and then the dev team could test it for proper functionality and operation before deciding wether or not to implement it.

I feel like with the community here, there would be hundreds of people that would be Ecstatic to help the team out! Willing to put an hour or two of their day aside to share the work load and improve on the already best sim on the App Store. I am positive we would all aim for perfection just as the IFD crew has been doing.

Thoughts? And would you offer your help?

#2

Airport layouts are currently outsourced to the IFAE team.

Other than that, if they can find qualified individuals to lead such projects, then I think it could work.

#3

I would absolutely love this, but some complications could get in the way of this. (If the users device has a virus or something)

#4

I feel like this is a great idea except that it seems it would get out of hand really fast. But other than that, I would love to do that!

#5

I feel like the devs could institute a good chain of command and small unit leadership. Layout instructions.

#6

I dont find your idea bad, but keep in ming that there are 48800 users on IFC. Imagine if everyone of them desings a new livery, or has an idea about the graphic rendering and taxi lights or etc…and then sents their ideas to the FDS, the FDS crew wont have time to make our own requests come true (clouds,new ac) in time because they will have ro amswer to all of our ideas.

#7

That’s the thing though, they could easily pick and choose. And they would not be obligated to do anything with what we would do. I’m not suggesting everyone does something, just whoever the devs feel could contribute. And as for liveries I’m sure rules could be set in place as well. But I feel the tedious long work of lighting and other similar issues could greatly help the devs…

#8

Perhaps, as motivation for the commmunity, FDS could add free days onto a pro subscription depending on how much you contribute to the development of IF.

#9

Outsourcing livery design could be a great start. Ryan could head the little group of handpicked designers and approve the designs to ensure quality. This can help tremendously to speed up the process of bringing highly requested liveries to IF

#10

Possibly. But I would, and I feel most others would as well, do it for free. I know how much work they have put in, and how much they have left to do. I would be proud to help.

#11

Well, for starters, profiting off work people do for free is actually illegal, regardless of if the person working has given consent or not. It’s even more illegal if the worker is under 18.

The only way that it could be legal is if Infinite Flight became open source, and nonprofit, meaning that FDS would not have money to keep servers running or to feed their families, rendering the idea impossible.

#12

Even if it was simple stuff like fixing a graphic on a cockpit. That’s stuff that the devs probably don’t want to spend ten hours a day not picking. But community members could easily pick up on. Especially if they fly the particular aircraft in real life.

#13

So they pay us 1 cent. Lol. That would not be a huge concern of mine. :)

#14

Same rule applies. It still counts as worker exploitation if minimum wage isn’t paid to people contributing to a company that profits off their work.

#15

How exactly would an individual’s malware infect a file sent to FDS? Even if it was possible, FDS would more than likely would scan all files I’m guessing.

#16

They already outsource to the Airport Editors. There must be some way to get around that, whether it be ‘volunteer work’ or something along those lines because they are already running a successful operation from the looks of it.

Nevermind :)

#17

The Airport Editing is open source, so it’s a different story.

#18

Oh, alright. Not really sure on the differences there so I don’t know if this user’s idea could be converted to an open source operation. Sorry about that.

#19

That would be wonderful!!

#20

So that means this is possible. To the extant that the team would be willing to trust members. And not mess with the performance to much.