This has often occurred to me. Being on a 56k connection I limit myself to 10 Mb or under so it's not possible to check out these huge files. Bear in mind that gauges & sound files do not compress much, if at all, when zipped. One aircraft I did try has its own panel & almost 100 3rd party gauges. The aircraft & gauges were posted separately & the gauges zipfile was 10 Mb - much bigger than the rest of the aircraft put together.......! There might also be several different visual model & texture options included. Texture formats & the image resolution also affects the file size. Then there's all the complex docs & images usually included. I'm sure the size of the average downloads could be reduced considerably if the authors wished to do so or knew how. I've always kept the end-users like me in mind when configuring my own files for upload.

When I first started in this hobby all these things were important. Most people seem to think that the bigger files must be better quality but this is not necessarily the case. Some of the finest quality FS98/CFS1 aircraft came out at 500k or less. Adding the all the unnecessary docs & images I mentioned could easily increase this to several Mb.  

With the increasing popularity of broadband & comparatively large hard drives these days, download size no longer seems important. Demand has also changed. I used to enjoy building all this up separately & most of my aircraft were unique, custom-built with a panel from here, a sound package from there & so on. People no longer seem prepared to do this & want everything in one package. Even with freeware, the average consumer expects not only an accurate, beautiful visual model with full DVC & pro-quality reflective/shiny textures but all the bells & whistles - original 2D panel, full "authentic" sound package* etc, not to mention accurate flight dynamics. This is the main reason it takes so long to create an FS aircraft these days.

Please remember, big is not always best.

*PS. Most people don't seem to realise that these huge panel & sound files included in packages are often exactly the same & they're simply duplicating what they already have or could download separately. I still don't see the point.

Yea, I like yourselves have some small file aircraft  that perform and look awesome. Some of these have file sizes under 1mb, and even have photo-realistic cabins.and all the other "goodies" that we all like to see. You guys have brought to light though some things I have'nt considered, and I'll be investigating those things. Thank you very much for the info!