MP could most certainly do with a make-over. I’m increasingly using QGC for setups, but MP still has the edge in flight planning (just).
I also don’t understand why this is so contentious.
Question for Proficnc: With hiring Michael, will this prevent him working on MP?
This is quite a thread!
@camti I like a lot of what you posted above. The insight and feedback is welcomed.
@Naterater Similarly, the suggestion for an open voting system on issues/feature requests has merit. The dev team has discussed the concept before, but it was a long time ago and in my view worth revisiting.
Regarding the general feelings expressed regarding transparency and communication: I’m really open to suggestions.
The devcall and minutes are open, the monthly Partners report is published here.
Between email, gitter, Skype, slack, Facebook and here, we try to keep engaged with as many as we can. Ways to provide better coverage more efficiently would be great.
All of that is off topic for this thread, but I wanted to let the participants know that the message has been received.
On the topic of this thread: Michael has provided what is probably the worlds most recognised gcs tool, and deals with bugs and new features incredibly quickly, until now in his spare time. I’m sure he and Hex have seen a lot of the feedback/suggestions here, in Facebook and in GitHub. I for one am looking forward to seeing where he takes Missionplanner now he’s full time.
@james_pattison thanks for stopping by and communicating that the message is being heard and welcomed. I certainly appreciate the engagement of the team on the channels you outlined, the openness expressed, and am thankful for the work of all the devs and Michael’s huge contribution of skill and time. Add to that some communicated focus, and the HDOP will allow for arming and take off in no time…
I have found the minutes, and this is not only helpful but also quite promising. It’s probably worth stopping by there more frequently.
I have also now found a roadmap (in devs > How the team works).
Yet in order for new/ potential adopters and “general users” to grasp where things are headed, maybe these items would deserve a more prominent place on the website, even the home page (in addition to latest posts)?
Please point me to the partners reports you refer to - I could not find them. If partners could be granted a more visible place where they can feature their integrations and share their successes by using Ardupilot, maybe this encourages more partners to join.
Should the team find that running a survey to get a better picture of the AP/ MP users helpful, and would like assistance in creating one, feel free to PM me.
G’day @camti, the Partner’s reports are usually linked into blog posts, and can be found here: https://discuss.ardupilot.org/tags/monthly-update. Sorry that they are hard to find - I think you’re right that these should be more visible.
I ran a short survey last year, leading up to the Developers Conference, to help inform the Roadmap. I intend to do the same for 2019, and will put it out over the next month or so (Developers Conference is mid March).
Re marketing/media for Partners: I completely agree! We encourage Partners to make blog posts for product releases (and help with that quite often), and coordinate shared presence at some trade shows, but are really reliant on the Partners to drive their own marketing efforts.
@james_pattison Thanks for pointing these out - and for working with the partners. I hope they will see the value of being more active in this manner.
The survey you referred to (and intend to do again) - was that geared to devs primarily or to Ardupilot users at large?
The only direct request for public feedback that I have seen recently was in a google docs survey last year prior to the developer meetup. @james_pattison posted it here: Have Your Say: a short questionnaire to help the Unconference shape ArduPilot. There were quite a few comments about mission planner from users, and that was part of the reason I haven’t dropped the conversation. It’s interesting that about 50% of the users who responded are hobby users.
I shared the link to a few groups on facebook to get more appeal. The posts looked like this:
@Implicit, I also don’t understand why it’s so contentious… but I’m following this thread to understand why we all have differing opinions. Like @camti said, it’s a concrete vision that should unite us, and right now we each have a different one.
It is contentious because the different users all have different needs. But the biggest point is that there is no they out there to do this type of work. You just don’t seem to get that volunteers are what drive this type of organization beyond the core developers and it is not appropriate for the people with highly technical skill set to be managing user advisory committees etc.
So if you want it done you have to do it.
I think what I quoted before remains worth noting:
For this project to be sustainable, be trusted and relevant, I believe it has to grow and look towards new horizons. This is unlikely to work without a sharpened focus.
Thank you for the clarification. I also hope that my stance can be clarified a little. It’s no doubt my stance on how MP should be improved, however I do not blame anyone or hold anyone here accountable. I’m not demanding that anything be dropped or re-prioritized, I can only suggest. I do, however, expect some communication to know what’s going on and what’s being planned. That helps me and everyone expand and focus their efforts without waste. If I go fully document MP right now, and then in a month it goes through this awesome change, you might see that everything must be re-done.
I think it would be great if there was more focus on finding more resources or personnel to support MP. I hope that @proficnc follows through and MP is actually focused on, but I still don’t know. Just like an unstable market, there’s little certainty without communication, and the volatility doesn’t make it attractive to invest (contribute). I don’t know if there is/was a search to have more people help on MP, and it didn’t really appear on the roadmap.
I think that we already discuss the MP makeover many times and each time we don’t manage to agree on something.
To be honest, I don’t like it for 3 reasons : C#, not really cross platform, and a big mess inside its codebase…
Instead of a makeover, I would really love a clean new GCS that people can easily contribute too… But as always, that is not the same amount of works and knowledge (without speaking about the transition for user and branding or commercial mess)
Sorry, @khancyr I splitted the thread upon request of the original poster. Perhaps, if you feel appropriate, could you repost this message to the MP thread?
edit:
I splitted again here, per request of the requester 
@khancyr that is invaluable information related to this thread. You appear to know what’s going on a lot better than most of us. Said another way, I’m hearing that it’s more worthwhile to start new than improve MP. Is that correct?
Is it really that much effort to change GUI’s?
Yep, that is my opinion. But as always, not everybody share the same point of view.
Moreover, the task to make people accept a lot of change at once is a real challenge… You can see that with chibios for example! People complain that it is a waste of effort, suddently find issue due to chibios(without reason), etc. Or you can still see people using old apm2.5 board…
Creating a new gui will be costly and need some guys that know gui development but should be a huge gain in future.
Agreed, I think it was a strategic mistake a long time ago not to support qgc but continue with a windows software.
100% agree with you
Corrado
We do support QGC.
As a little history, APMPlanner2 started out basically being a new UI over QGC, as users (at the time) preferred the Missionplanner interface. Both APMPlanner and QGC are valid cross-platform options (as is MAVProxy).
I think there’s merit on having options for users. QGC is the option of choice if using iOS.
If this is the route that we end up going (QGC for user friendliness and cross-platform), then I’ll put more effort toward it instead of MP. I just really love MP features and wish it could really shine for everyone.
I can’t use qgc because it doesn’t support rc override so i can’t use joystick with it. It does support manual but arducopter doesn’t support buttons in manual.
