VFAT 2010 Prebriefing

Now that all the 2009 related threads were moved in to the archives, it is time to start thinking about VFAT 2010.
The VFAT Staff looked at everything that went good and less good last year, to come with the following conclusions and solutions.


VFAT 2010 dates
The Virtual Festival of Aerobatic Teams 2010 will take place: December 03/04/05 2010.


VFAT Sign Up
The VFAT 2010 Preliminary Registration Thread will be open during the month September.


Camera Men
Since the first time we started to stream VFAT live back in 2007, we always had difficulties finding enough camera men. We greatly appreciate the few people who did this important work, but having only one camera man for 5 different shows with about one week to prepare does not improve the show quality obviously. Seen that camera work is such a key element of the whole presentation of a virtual airshow, a camera man should have perfect knowledge of the airshow sequence.

For this reason, the VFAT Staff decided that providing a camera man is a requirement to sign up for VFAT 2010.
(by "providing" we mean to arrange your own camera man, this person does not need to be part of your own team)

The message we want to send out to the virtual aerobatic community is that a camera man should be as much part of a team as a pilot. We strongly encourage teams to create their own livestream channel (it is for free!) and find out how it all works in preparation of VFAT 2010. Feel free to discuss and share your knowledge and/or problems about streaming and camera views in the Tech Corner of the forum.


Simulators
We invited two new simulators (IL-2 and FSX) to VFAT 2009 for evaluation and to make VFAT more diverse in the future. The outcome is that both simulators are basically suitable for virtual airshows. Still though, we had to make a decision what simulators we want "to fly with" on VFAT.

Our choice is to present Lock On, Black Shark and IL2 at VFAT 2010.

The reason for taking this decision is that FSX basically doubles all the aircraft (jets/helos/props) we already see in these three simulators. We also consider the large FSX community fully capable of creating their own diverse virtual airshows on a VFAT scale.


Airshow Quality Control
Since VFAT 2008, we reached the maximum capacity of participants (+/-30 shows) at every VFAT. This is a great development of course, though this success also has the downside that we can not show every signed up participant.

And so, we brought the "Airshow Quality Control" to life. This Airshow Quality Control is based on two elements. At first, we have the VFAT ACE-Standards which is basically a guide for participants with a set of rules. Second, we have the entertainment level of the airshow. Both the ACE-Standards and the Entertainment Level were checked (through watching tracks) by the VFAT Staff to decide which participants pass the Airshow Quality Control. Now, even though we hate to reject people, we will have to keep doing this.

What we can change though, and this goes along with the camera man providing requirement, is to judge Airshow Quality not only by watching the "lifeless" track but watch the final product, a live show with music, narration, 3D models, skin and of course the camera work. We found this method to be more fair to the participants that put a lot of efforts in to all the elements of a virtual airshow.

The Airshow Quality Control of the signed up participants will take place in the month October. Shows will be judged on a private livestream channel.
Prepare your team and camera man to be airshow-ready in October!!!


VFAT Rehearsal
Since the beginning of VFAT back in 2005, we always organized a rehearsal the weekend before VFAT. This was to test servers, time schedules, streaming, connections, mod installs and such. This always stressed the VFAT Staff to the limit because basically, we organized not one airshow weekend, but two. Now that all participants at VFAT 2010 will have their own camera man, and they can test everything themselves, we consider the rehearsal not as a requirement any longer.

The VFAT Staff decided that VFAT 2010 will have no rehearsal weekend.

The VFAT Staff will still give teams the opportunity to do some sort of VFAT fly-in (lets call it VFAT Arrival weekend). The VFAT Livestream channel will be available for those teams but the teams must make their own announcements to get viewers.


VFAT Organization and Livestream
Many participants were complaining about the late release of the show time schedules which only came out a few days before the rehearsal. We will take that in to account and like every year, we will push the organization of VFAT further forward and start as early as possible. This though, is only possible if every participant responses to emails with informational forms as quickly as possible!

In general, the VFAT Staff is fairly satisfied with the organization of VFAT 2009. The main thing that made the difference between fairly satisfied and fully satisfied, were the livestream problems. After looking at all possible causes on our side, we could not really point out anything specifically. And so, we have written Livestream for an explanation. Livestream admitted there were some server load issues on their side during the VFAT weekend and that is most likely what ruined a couple of our shows. We assume that these issues are exceptional and so we will keep Livestream as our prime stream provider. After all, 75% of our shows were without any major problems.

The VFAT Staff is looking forward to once again have a thrilling VFAT in December!