I’ve launched FlyBeside, and I’d love to get your feedback. What would make it more helpful for finding people for multiplayer flights? How would you search for people differently? How would you like to be informed that someone wants to fly with you? Are the private lessons a useful idea?
FlyBeside is a free website and desktop app to let you easily find pilots for multiplayer flights. You can also find one-to-one lessons on the marketplace, buddy flights and group flights, and flag that you’re currently looking for wingman or copilot (using YourControls).
You can sign up for free at www.flybeside.com , or read more about it here:
Does this sound interesting? Thanks for the feedback.
Given the lack of comments on the prior 2 announcement posts this month, I’ll chime in as I’m a product manager and know how important early feedback is, even if it’s not the best.
A couple important things about me that inform my perspective:
- I’m not an especially social person when it comes to flight sim. I almost am never looking for anyone to fly with. Maybe I’m not a minority, but I don’t think we’ve ever had good data on that from something as exhaustive as the Navigraph survey, for instance.
- Continuation of the above, but if I am going to fly with someone, it’s going to be someone I’ve probably already gotten to know fairly well via another group. I know there are people who will happily fly with strangers, but I don’t know if they are the rule or the exception to the rule (I suspect latter.)
- I’d never consider charging for teaching someone anything in flight sim. This is a hobby full of free addons, content and community and while I’m happy to buy payware aircraft and scenery, the idea of a marketplace for paid human services just feels unusual to me given how helpful everyone is for free.
- I’d never consider paying for someone to teach me anything in flight sim (for the same reason stated above. Admitted bias here as well: I have around 3 decades of sim experience, so I also just really don’t need this type of service on the receiving end.)
- I’m in a hefty number of flight sim related Discords, all of which have a channel devoted to group flights or some variation of that. That makes the buddy flight concept less useful to me, though I do think it’s nice to have that “looking to fly with someone” functionality consolidated in one app.
All of that sounds like bad news, but I will say that I think your feature list is good. The searchable group flights and consolidated LFG functionality, especially. It’s just that none of it is something that I feel compelled to use due to my largely solo approach to this hobby. I wonder if, to any degree, this is a solution looking for a problem. But more than anything, I wish you success in capturing people’s imagination with this tool as the more social simmer likely would benefit from some of this, and less experienced users might like the idea of paid user to user training services.
I will do some thinking of what features might suit my style more and propose them in your Discord if they feel like they might get people like me to sign up.
Edit to add a random thought: I’d actually probably like this app more for DCS as it’s so complex and intimidating. Having an IRL RIO or instructor show me the ropes there would have more value as for MSFS, most planes are extraordinarily easy to get started (with the exception of airliners, which I don’t fly, and which still don’t natively support shared cockpit in MSFS.)
If someone is paying for flying lessons in the simulator then they must really either be very new and know nobody else or simply have no friends.
There are 1000’s of people that would gladly help teach someone else to fly for no charge at all. I have had people teach me major systems (airliners, etc…) several times when we were flying together and I didn’t know how to use those systems. People jump in to volunteer to help out.
Maybe someone would pay for this…but with so many people willing to help out others in the hobby I don’t see it.
Also, as was stated above, there are 100’s if not 1000’s of Discord channels where people can find anyone else to fly with. Fun activities, group flights, etc… So as was stated above, is your site/app simply looking for a problem that really doesn’t exist?
I hope it goes well for you, but I don’t know anyone of the 1000’s of people I know and fly with over the years that would benefit from this.
Good luck!
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The problem with the thousands of Discord, Facebook and even the forum’s requests for flights is that the requests get lost in the noise, you don’t know who the requestors are, or their skillset, and its a lot of places to go to find a partner.
There are people who are willing to pay for flying lessons, as demonstrated so far in FlyBeside, who have bought lessons from several people. I acknowledge the percentage willing to pay the small amount is low, but the ability to easily search for the right lesson type, by the right person, is highly beneficial.
We only have a 130-140 users currently, with a smaller number being fully active, so like any social platform, the more users there are the more it will function. Without a large user base, its success will be hampered. It’s a catch-22 situation.