Resurrecting the Forum
After having a conversation with several long-time members of VirtualFlight.Online recently, we have resurrected the forum, bringing back a significant addition to the platforms already offered. Before explaining what the forum is and isn’t, a back story is probably in order.
How it all began
VirtualFlight.Online started life as a small Discord server used by a few friends to fly ad-hoc flights together in the newly released “Microsoft Flight Simulator”. In the early days we tried to cater for all of the popular simulators - including FSX, Prepar3D, and X-Plane through the “JoinFS” application. Very quickly the majority were using Flight Simulator, so we went with the crowd and doubled down on events - advertising flights in the official Microsoft Flight Simulator forums.
Our little community grew. Quickly. Far more quickly than anybody imagined it might - which presented it’s own headaches. We experimented with a free forum solution in the early days which worked pretty well - but then Discord released their own forum functionality, and we embraced that instead.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
The wrong tool for the job
While Discord is very good at text chat, voice chat and screen sharing, it’s never been very good at operating as a proper forum for a community. It has never had the most basic tools you might expect - such as being able to move something accidentally posted to the wrong area, to bookmark an interesting conversation, or to subscribe to notifications in a given area, or find conversations you’ve taken part in.
We’re also mindful that many people are either not interested in taking part in group flights (the primary reason for Discord’s existence), don’t like Discord (because it’s yet another application), or are quite happy flying airline flights, or doing their own thing. And that’s where a proper web-based forum solution wins - because people can dip into and out of it as they wish.
Try the forum today
You can join today - at https://forum.virtualflight.online.
The forum is based on the most flexible and powerful forum management solution available, and we own it - it’s not controlled or run by anybody else. I’ve invested in a really great design package too - making sure that desktops, mobile and tablets all work well - and have opened up the first “chat” channel.
All the forum needs now is you. The community.
We have deliberately not set out to build lots of subforums - we’ll follow your lead and listen to ideas and suggestions.
What does the forum give us?
The short answer? A lot.
Subscription to entire channels - optionally by email
Subscription to single conversations - optionally by email
Bookmarking of converations
Simple discovery of conversations you have taken part in
Simple markup within messages that non-programmers can understand
What will happen to Discord?
Discord is not going away. We’re not moving anything that’s already in Discord out of Discord either (unless it makes sense to do so). The forum is an alternative avenue to explore - and it’s free to use or not use. We already had the webserver and webspace, so it more a case of “why not?”.
Finally, thank you
VirtualFlight.Online has grown beyond any of our expectations, and we have you - the community - to thank for that. Without those of you that have gone above-and-beyond to create content, design liveries, run and take part in group flights, moderate, participate, help, and support, we as a community would not exist.