FlightSim Magazine i14 - Fall 2016 | Page 19

SIMMAG.com from Europe, Singapore, or any other continent/ country. That’s just awesome! Our community offers the ability to make friends from all over the world that share the same passion for aviation that you do, that you might have never have met if it wasn’t for the simulator. Also, people with differing levels of flight experience, airplane spotting and photography, real world controllers, etc., are able to share their experiences, aviation pictures, stories, etc., all within our community. It’s nothing short of amazing. I also love the fact that I can work for FDS that is based in San Franciso, CA, but work from my home here in Alabama. I communicate with people on a daily basis all over this country, but also all over the world. I’m thankful for the friends that I have made and the people I have met through our community. It’s just awesome! Now however it’s time for the big one. I talked to Laura Laban, CEO and Co-Founder of Flying Dev Studio, about the development of Infinite Flight and how they hope to start viably competing with some of the bigger simulators out there. So without further ado; Laura, I think that the first thing that has to be asked is regarding the community, and whether you ever expected it to become such a vibrant, talented and productive environment to the extent that it is today? Is this the real driving force behind the continuing improvements and success of the sim? (Jack) FEATURE The community surrounding Infinite Flight is really striving. It’s a key aspect of the app that existed long before Live came out. The multiplayer mode has increased this aspect of Infinite Flight by orders of magnitude. We’re seeing fly-ins in the app almost every day, and users post many screenshots of their flights on the forum, on Facebook and other social media, and we’re continually amazed. Interaction with the community has always been a focal point of the company. From the very beginning, we had setup a feedback site where people could vote on the features they would like to see us work on next. This, along with Facebook were our main points of contact for our users. We’ve been very engaged with our users on Facebook, Twitter and lately Instagram by posting workin-progress pictures to keep up the excitement. We regularly reply to comments our users leave on there as well. To be honest, I sort of expected some level of community engagement when we started working on the app. At that time, there were not a lot of quality simulators for mobile, and I figured any newcomer with a decent flight model and feature set would be welcomed by the community. (Laura)