Hello Ben,

I am delighted to read that you agree with the general gist of my message.

Concerning the OS data, I meant exactly some statement like the one you wrote. It is nice to know how the data is collected and that the IP information is not analyzed in detail, that the summarized statistics might be held for quite some time (that’s of course the reason for the collection), but personally identifiable data like the specific IP adresses gets erased after a rather short time (and not only “anonymized” like some services pretend to do).

Summarized: Even my small concerns are put to rest and I am looking forward to the further progress of X-Plane and its components.

Thanks and have a nice day,
Björn

Hi Björn,

I agree with almost everything you’ve said here. And there’s no question that if we were ever to auto-collect what airports you’ve been to, that would need to be opt-in – that’s usage data.

The auto-update OS configuration logging is, to me, a gray area.
– We -are- collecting anonymous data about your system, e.g. Mac/Windows/Linux. So should it be opt-in perhaps?
– On the other hand, _every_ single web client in the universe puts some kind of self-identifying ‘user agent’ into the HTTP request – that’s how the information is going in.
The ‘collection’ of platform data we do now is just the normal apache web logs that we naturally retain for a limited number of weeks, like all web servers do.

Hi Ben,

please consider that other parts of the world
(e.g. Germany), see data protection in a different
light. Opt _in_ should always be the default or you
need a big dialog window in the installation/update
process, which clearly explains the data collection
and there the collection might be turned on by
default, but at least the user should have been
actively asked at least once before ever sending
usage details. Collecting data without asking is
sooner or later wrong. Whether this point is
reached at usage statistics for airports or perhaps
later at information about third party addons (or
whatever), will differ from user to user.

Please give us the active choice to decide about
sending data, without having to hunt down a
configuration in the menus. Or choose the opt in
model. And while you’re at it, stating whether your
data collection of the infos at update time retains
IP adresses, location information or something like
that would be nice as well and should be
documented somewhere to be easily found.

BTW: I am sure you have the best intentions and
want to optimize the experience of the simulation
for everyone. Of course more data might help more,
but the point where it should not be done is more
easily reached than than you might expect.

Just my two cents…

Many thanks in advance,
Björn

A download counter doesn’t strike me as terribly valuable, simply because we expect the vast majority of end-users to wait until an X-Plane release to get an airport. (Most, if not all of the downloads for an airport would come from other scenery authors.)

Would it be more useful to know which (if any) X-Plane release a particular pack was included in? (That’s information we have already—wouldn’t be difficult to display.)

On another note, a gateway for the scenery objects would really help. For example, I personally don’t like to add a hangar to the middle of the apron when there is a base with grass, fences, cars, etc… if there was a simple way to at least modify the default objects without making the whole package invalid, that would help. You could collect inputs and release them the X-Plane/WED updates.

Hi Leo,

I can say this: knowing the OS and platform breakdown is absolutely critical to making non-stupid decisions about the sim. One of the big quetsions is: how long will we remain 32-bit? Clearly we will support X-Plane 32-bit for the rest of v10, because it was part of the system requirements.

But at the next major version, do we keep 32-bit? If we can know if people are actually using 32-bit (or not) we can make a good decision.

Cheers
Ben

Hey Ben,

actually I liked what you wrote! Mainly because of two aspects:
– You’re absolutely right when saying it’s unfair that a feature should not be implemented because _one single_ user doesn’t like it.
-Having advantages because you help the sim by sending data is not so bad. I just never saw it that way, but as you said information helps authors (therefor the sim) and so the people giving away that information may have -some kind- of advantage. Totally agree with you. Btw I always click on send the data when the sim crashes because it might be helpful for you.

So I’m not one of those guys hating everything which collects/sends my data. If there’s a good reason for collecting data, I support that. Same thing with the data about my computer in the post you mentioned (I knew about that, because I really enjoy reading the blog since about 2 years).

Alright, so thanks for your detailed answer. You kind of convinced me that it’s not too bad to have such an optional “send where you fly”-function implemented. I think I wouldn’t use it but that’s my personal decision.

I also think that a comment section accessible through the gateway would work best. Find the airport, click on “add a comment”, type away. If this would be implemented like the comments for the bug section it would be fine, I think.
The author then get´s an automatic email (if he chooses so) that a comment has been added.

How about adding a menu-item in X-Plane to the “location” tab, like “comment on an airport” – this would launch the browser with the gateway site opening?
You could also add a hint during the loading screen, pointing users to the possibility of doing so.
The message should also encourage the users to say “what they like, what they don´t like, what should improve” – this way they know its not only for bug reporting, but also for saying that they enjoy the airport and maybe add their own little story of how they have a personal relation to it.
I always loved those feedbacks when people said that the airport I just made was the one that they went to as a child with their dad/learned to fly at/were based at X years ago, etc…

Thanks again for considering this, Jan (Litjan)

Hi Leo,

This may not thrill you either:

http:/2014/01/x-plane-platform-breakdown/

X-Plane is sending your OS’s name and version as part of its update request, which gives us an anonymous statistical view of the platform breakdown.

This information has been really valuable to us because it lets us know what OS versions are most important to support, when we can drop old hardware configuration, and where to focus our coding efforts.