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

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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  is what im trying to say.

what i cold suggest is a paypal donate item.

Ramos - proud member, and always willing to help out the V.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

I think this guy won't be content until you have sold your self into slavery to pay for the costs Pete. Then when that money goes, he'd probably complain that you wern't more sensible in bringing in funds before to cover the costs to keep it running.
I'm still struggling to comprehend that someone has the cheek to come on here and say all this and after one explanation after the other from members are totally ignored he still demands an answer.

You just can't please everyone.

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And I think I speek for almost everyone around here when I say "Thank You." 

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I can remember being on dial-up when I first joined here. I also remember trying to download GMax and it took nearly 8 hours 

Also, as Richie said, a VERY big thank you to Pete for all he has done for us over the years