I wonder why?

[gr31]

 I wonder why simviation does these things? I understand your a "commercial" site but, why cut the "free" download speeds to the point it's useless. A speed about double the present one would probably even attract more "members".
 The other thing I wonder about is why simviation does nothing to "reward" those who contribute the very files they make money off of. Not that I have contributed a lot, but it would seem that "contributers" should be rewarded somehow. Oh well, I'll stay with Avsim.

Ken Austin

[EirePlane]

Actually, SimV does not make money. There was a discussion on this a while back.

Simviation is a very big site, boasting over 60GB of freeware downloads and According to Alexa.com Simviation attracts more than 20 million users on a regular basis. These 20m+ users use up a phenomenal amount of bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money. The running of this site goes well into the thousands of dollars and advertising alone does not cover the whole cost of the maintance of the site and traffic the site generates. This meant that up until the membership scheme was introduced, Pete (The webmaster) had to pay a large proportion of those thousands of $$$ from his own pocket.

Simviation is not a business, It's a hobby. And an expensive one at that

[gr31]

 Which answers none of the questions. Since I run several sites, I'm very familiar with "not making money" on web sites, in fact with one of mine I refuse to have any ads etc on the site.
 
 The questions remain, why punish potential members with unreasonably slow speeds, and also fail to reward the very people who make the site worth visiting, the contributers?

Ken

[legoalex2000]

[quote]

[gr31]

[quote]

I don't think you understand the problem. This site is designed to be free. free design, free download, free play. what profit would be made by offering the designers money for product. they might as well just make it payware. who is gonna fork over the money to do this?

by lowering the speeds slightly, in encourages people who have the power to become a member. this helps the website provide so much to us for free. it's not a punishment, it's the webmaster trying to assess the websites needs and wants.

one solution which would solve many a problem is to mirror the entire website on another server. speeds will most certainly go up. help out instead of complain

[pete]

Hi -

You haven't said what speeds you are getting.

The 30KBPS that you should get is reasonable & better than I get on many sites.

If you are getting less than that then look at things your end such as firewall, download manager or ISP. AS we use FTP connections for the free site there may be something on your system that is having a problem with that.

There are several threads on this forum that compare download speeds with other major FS sites & we come out tops.

[Craig.]

i've gotta agree with Pete, Not being a fan boy here, but with the free site here the speeds are just about acceptable for large files. Try downloading off of  flightsim where you only get 5 to 10kbps a second you soon get bored of waiting for that large file.
As for rewarding contributors, I wonder how many actually do what they do for a reward? Most who want something go payware. I know alot of people who just do it for themselves and the fun of it, then upload to places like this just because they want to share what they have done with others.

[Saitek]

This is a rather unreasonable dig at Simviation. The webmaster is funding something that most of us would have long gone bankrupt over. The cost of running Simviation to date I was led to believe is a 6 figure sum. A reasonably small membership fee is nothing to those in employment and is very worthwhile for a regular user here. I personally rarely use the downloads here, but once I get employment I will get membership here just to support the site I have gained so many thousands of hours of fun on.

Now I downloaded the same file as a test to see the difference. The Xtra water package by Full Throttle Simulations which is about 5 or 6 megs file took 2 minutes and 42 seconds to download. 2 megs had already downloaded by 54 seconds.

On Avsim the same file took 1 minute 44 seconds. That is a difference of 58 seconds. Now to me, that is very insignificant and I think to publickly state here that basically Simviation is such an abhorent place is really quite ungrounded and immature.

[gr31]

[Hagar]

Ken. I don't know what all this is all about. I've been a regular user of this site since it first started in 1998. The download speed has actually been continually improved over the years & nothing changed when the member's site was recently introduced. The freeware site is still on the original server. AFAIK
I suggest you check things out at your end as he suggests.

Pete is too modest to admit it but he's been actively supporting freeware & the developers for many years. He's also a developer himself when he gets time. He gets little thanks for his generosity but I won't stand by & see him being abused like this.

[Saitek]

Ken, you never answered my post.

 OK, final comment. Pete, your comment is an "excuse", not an answer. Which leaves the only reason for the policy being to force people to pay.

 If you were to double that 30KBS, it might help, but the fact remains that whats going on here looks like the old "bait and switch" tactic. Lure people in with the "free" offer, and then get them to pay because the "free" isn't worth having.

 Like Craig said, most of those who contribute files here, like me, do the gauges, panels, repaints, aircraft, etc, because they want them and then offer them to everyone else, free. But if even the most prolific of those contributers want to use this site, they have to pay. Comparing to other sites is meaningless, unless you include Avsim.

 Why, can't even the "free" speed be reasonable (no 30 KBS is NOT)?
 Why are'nt contributers automatically "members", even if only for say 6 months after they post?
 The only answer I can see is..........money!

Ken

I have never heard such rubbish. If you doubled the non-membership access it would faster than AVSIM! I got about 37KBS with Simviation after 1 minute and 66 KBS with AVSIM.
It does not force people to pay at all. Far from it. I happily used it to downlaod a mideium sized file and I was happy with the loading speeds. The free offer is worth having and thousands of people use it every day. Get your facts straight.
Lastly it is not making payware out of the donations of freeware of hardworking freeware designers (there are lots on Simviation for that matter). To my knowledge only one person has complained and he asked for his work to be removed which is promptly was.

To give an example. Lets say you have a massive estate with lots of beautiful gardens full of plants and tree people have given free. So many people come that it starts costing a fortune at YOUR cost. This cost climbs higher and higher every year. It is now costing you tens of thousands of pounds. You have the option to charge a smallish yearly fee to cover the cost of track and path maintanance folks and gardeners to keep everyone happy. It doesn't cover the cost entirely, but you are happy anyway. For those unwilling to pay you have an option of just seeing sojme of the garden from the fence.  Now this isn't a perfect example, but I hope you can understand that if Simviation is not to go out of existance it is necessary.

Ben

[TSC.]

I've never heard so much whiny b*ll*cks in all my life gr31 - lets face it, when YOUR not paying a penny for the download, I think ANY speed you get should be acceptable.

Good god - it's free!!

If your waiting a little while for a download, then so what? make a cup of tea, go for a walk, get a life, do something else - you don't have to sit & stare at the monitor do you.

God, your complaint is the most pathetic drivel I've read this millenium.

Rant over,

TSC.

[gr31]

 Please, let's not get silly here. This is real simple. This is the "feed back" forum, for questions, comments, etc. I asked a question, Why does SimV have this policy. I got no real answer. I made a comment, that I think this policy is a bad policy, unless there is some real reason other than money. Fact is a quick test showed that I can upload to SimV at speeds that at times exceed 300 KBS. Yes, I'm on a commercial grade high speed. So if I upload a file that takes about 30 seconds, and then, when it's available, want to download my own file to doublecheck the content (yes, I've uploaded the wrong file before) it will take over 5 minutes. Does that make sense?

 But more important than an old fart like me, what about those, mostly under 17, who can't pay for downloads? My kids are older, but many who have the money have no way to pay because they have no cradit card, or "PayPal" account. And what about a couple of kids I know who have "donated" machines and can only "download" by going to the local library and using their system, which is time limited.

 If there is a good explanation for this policy, I would like to hear it. Otherwise, I still say it's just very bad policy.

Ken

 

[RichieB16]

Why does SimV have this policy. I got no real answer.

Ken, you have been given a very simple answer but you seem to refuse it-but I will try and simplify it with pictures to help.  This site requires a ton of bandwidth which costs money.

Although Microsoft has made the FS series, Pete is not Bill Gates.

Therefore, he likely does not have tons of money lying around to pay for the thousands of dollars this site costs.

For a long time, up until not too long ago, this site was completely free with very high download speeds and it was costing a fortune.  It appeared that there was simply 2 options.  #1: Close the site.  #2 Institute an OPTIONAL membership to help fund it.  This membership (which costs less than $20 per year) saved our beloved Simviation.  If you choose not to pay the membership because you don't have a credit card or whatever-than you can still access every file on the site for free.  Therefore, you are not forced to pay for everything.

I have been coming to Simviation for 7 years, and it is the best and most friendly of all the FS sites out there.  Pete ihas done amazing thigs for this hobby and has been nothing but a caring person and a good friend to countless FS enthuiasts over the years...including myself.  If he could afford to do so, I'm sure he would have kept the site completely free because he is that generous.  Just to prove it, several years ago a well liked member of this forum fell on hard times and was unable to pay for internet access.  Pete generiously paid his bill.  That is the kind of person who runs this site.

Calling Pete's answer an "excuse" is insulting.  He has done more for this hobby than any other single person and it is a slap in his face to make a comment like that.  There is not a more generous FS site on the internet than this one and you won't find the same kind of people anywhere else.  If you don't want to pay $20 per year to download at high speeds than thats your choice.  You don't lose any file access, you just have to wait a little longer.

[pete]

Well if I told you I sold my house to keep the site running before it went to membership would that help to explain? Without the membership I would be bankrupt & obviously no simviation. Any big site that has not taken steps to cover it's costs is now no more. Plenty went down. I have genuinely tried to keep things as fair as possible. Like others have said - Members subsidise non members. So when you download a file - even at 30KBPS - a member is giving you some money.

Distributing files on mass is expensive.

As it is membership & ads barely covers costs but at least costs ARE now being met.

This is called realism. Without a doubt we are the least commercial of the main 3 FS sites - but costs have to be met. I have a LONG way to go before I get money back I put into this - at least 7 years ahead. I owe money all over & am now slowly repaying these debts.

What more explanation do you need? You have a choice here.  + You have other sites if you don't like this.

Meanwhile I am passionate about Flight Simulation & Simviation & have & will continue to put my heart & soul into it.  8)