Blog Post

To my fellow users,

It’s been a busy two months at YSFlight Headquarters, having implemented many changes as part of Project Kaizen, YSFHQ’s summer project to improve the YSFlight community. We’ve accomplished many objectives, and I am already seeing many new players online. I am excited to implement our brand-new leaderboard in the next month or two, providing a new form of competition and fun to YSFlight. More on that later.

If you are a new player, welcome! We always love to have some new users flying with us. There are many different groups to join and activities to do, so we highly encourage you check them out. Visit the forums to check out the heart of the YSFlight community.

Some of the changes we have implemented in the last few weeks:

• Updated Forum Structure — Our old forum order was quite cluttered and overly complex. This new structure of forums brings much-needed discussion back [from the old Drupal site] which is leading to more visits to our forum overall. Thanks to our partnership with YSUpload (thanks to wingzfan99), we were able to split our forums into a gameplay/general tab and a modding tab, so now it is easier to navigate through each section. Additional forums have been added as part of this split, so now we have a forum specifically for scenery development, among others.
• Redesigned Forum and Website — Our old designs on both the forum and the main website were quite gray, and were often confusing to new players. The redesign provides a clear focus for a person visiting YSFHQ for the first time, and offers many different links to YSFlight resources. Additionally, the redesign of YSFHQ.com is mobile-friendly, so users can now visit YSFHQ on all their various devices. However, more design changes will be made in the coming weeks as new features become available.
• YSFlight Promo Videos — Our members have been hard at work creating promotional videos for YSFlight, so we can show off all the different features to prospective players. Most recently, VNAF ONE developed an aerobatics promotional video using a great deal of footage from the recent VNAF Airfest. Additionally, TB1 has created a “Civilian 101″ video for new players looking to get into the civilian YS community.
• Tutorials and Guides — Many of our veteran players have created lots of tutorials and other helpful resources so that they can share their knowledge with a newer group of players. On the modding front, decaff_42 has been creating scenery editor tutorials on quite a regular basis, in addition to other videos around addons. Many modding tutorials have been organized into the new “Engineering School” forum located under the YSUpload.com tab. We look forward to new contributions as we move many tutorials to the wiki, where they can be edited with greater ease.
• YSFlight Wiki — Over the last few weeks, some of the YSFHQ staff have been at work updating the YSFlight Wikia with some brand-new content, as well as adding much-needed updates to existing content. One member, decaff_42, has already started moving tutorials to the wiki, while other players organize important content on the forums to be moved. We are just getting started.
• Scoreboards and the Server List — Thanks to the work of Combat Administrator Bombcat, we now have a combat reporting system in place, allowing players to log their combat kills on the forum. This will eventually be an automated system (see below) but it has been working great so far. Additionally, we have brought back the old server list made by Vincent, which is a much faster and accurate system than what was on the Drupal site. However, as the Drupal-based server list had some additional features, we plan to roll these out on the current system after the leaderboard is complete.
• New Hosting — Last but not least, YSFHQ has gotten a hosting upgrade, so we are now hosted on Amazon Web Services. This upgrade provides a much-needed speed increase, and allows us to grow well into the future. You can read more about this host migration on the YSFHQ Engineering Blog.
• Administrative Improvements — The YSFHQ staff has been hard at work ensuring the community runs smoothly, and to do this multiple improvements have been made to increase the efficiency of our moderating team. These changes also ensure that rules are better enforced and that each member is able to get assistance from staff when necessary.

However, we still have much more to do before the project can be considered finished. Here’s what we have planned next:

• YSFlight Leaderboard — This will be a brand-new way for players to compete against each other as they work their way to the top. The leaderboard will rank players by many different options, such as combat A2A kills, flight hours (in a civilian aircraft), most stunts completed, and many more. Many of these features are still in planning, so we hope to have them rolled out by the end of the year.
• YSUpload 3.0 — YSUpload, in partnership with YSFHQ, is working on a brand-new addon hosting system. This will be a redesigned version of the existing YSU, providing similar features and some new ones as well. The new version will be able to integrate with the YSUpload forum, so all comments will take place in a forum thread. A still tentative feature is a “News Feed” type page, allowing logged-in users to see what kind of addons their friends have downloaded, as well as addon uploaders to see what activity is taking place on their uploaded addon.
• “The Kneeboard” — This brand-new page will give the YS pilot everything they need to take part in the community, have a fun time online, and much more.
• Mobile-friendly Forum — A new forum theme is in the works that will make the forum compatible with mobile devices, even more so than the current edition.
• YSFlight Marketing Campaign — As a culmination of our efforts this summer, the marketing team will carry out a historic marketing campaign that will bring YSFlight to prominence over many gaming communities.

As always, I thank each and every one of you for being part of our community and making some much-needed contributions. Myself and the entire YSFHQ staff are excited to see what we can come up with next. If you haven’t contributed to the wiki, I encourage you to do so – we need all the help we can get on that front. The content of YSFHQ.com will be based off of what we have on the wiki, so completion of the site really is a group effort.

I am honored to be part of such a tight-knit community such as in YSFlight, and I look forward to great things ahead. I’ll see you all in the skies soon.

Warm regards,
Eric Tendian
Chief Technology Officer
YSFlight Headquarters