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Author Topic: Somthing to really think about.  (Read 4814 times)

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Offline A. Roy

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09 March 2004, 18:33:35
It has been some time since my last post on here, but I always read the new posts at least
weakly. Dan, I am sorry I never replied to my sound problem post...I have come to the conclusion
that it is a video interference and I am sure it will be resolved in the next version. Thank you for
the list of things to try, your time is valuable and I appreciate it.

Ok enough of the ego stroking and on to my post. I am sending out a request to all you
astronauts out there. My request is to make an AVSIM equivalent for Orbiter. I have had Orbiter on
my system now for the last 3 years and the entire time I have never been able to go to just one
place and find all of the add-on's and "must haves" (like Dan's sound and DG-III). No offence to
you Dan, your site is great, but let´s be honest, you don't likely have the time or server space to
accommodate an AVSIM type file service.
I have been watching sites come and go over the last few years and for the exception of just a
mere handful, most have not been updated since the 90's. And every time I go to AVSIM it is
sooooooooo bogged down from the MSFS2004 scene, you can hardly navigate around to the new
downloads section; making the task of staying up to date in Orbiter near impossible for the
beginner to intermediate simmer. C'mon guy's and gal's, Orbiter is BY FAR the BEST space
simulation on the market and it is FREE, we at least owe Dr. Martin a dedicated site for all of his
fans to gather for DOWNLOADS. Mind you I think this forum is the best for Orbiter, Dan you keep it
clean and informative. Keep it up. But we really do need a one stop shop for all your orbiter needs
and to have Martin clean up his links page (more then half are DOA). I will be posting to the main
Orbiter forum shortly with the same request; I think I will have better luck here though. You are all
a fine group and I am proud to be a part of such a mind bending absolutely frustrating (only at
times), eye-crossing experience only to be found in Orbiter.

Thanks for the time.
A.Roy

P.S. to all of you sitting there wondering....why doesn´t he do this himself, well if I had the money I
would, but as it is, if Orbiter were not free.....I couldn't afford it.

As I soared through the air just starting to thrive, I crashed into the ocean and instead learned to dive...SCUBA "the other place with space"

Offline harmsway

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Reply #1 - 09 March 2004, 19:39:53
Well yes someone has.

http://www.orbithangar.com/

The only difficulty is that the site blessed by Martin is AVSIM. So you can't find everything at Orbiter
Hangar.

Gene


Offline DocHoliday

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Reply #2 - 10 March 2004, 10:25:47
Hi A.Roy

I agree with Gene, whatever site we come up with, will have to be endorsed by Martin, at least to
some extent. I also agree it would be nice to have a dedicated site. However, AVSIM works well
enough and none of us need to administer the site in any way. As for navigation, I suggest you
just bookmark the Orbiter category in the Library like this:
http://library.avsim.net/index.php?CatID=Orbiter&Sort=Added&ScanMode=0&Go=Change%2BView

But if you insist :) I have a hosting service with currently 200MB available space (upgradable),
possibility to register any domain, PHP and MySQL support, which should be sufficient for the time
being. What I do NOT have, is the programming abilities to set up a website, that would handle
the uploads, categorize them and enable downloading in a manner AVSIM has. I would also love to
include a tutorial ONLY forum there, because I personally miss a dedicated site of this sort, so we
could gather (or rather receive) stuff people have prepared and host on their own indvidual sites,
including Gene here ;)

Now if you can, or you can find someone who would be willing to set this up, we can talk
business :)

Cheers,
Janez


~~~

"Mood is a matter of choice. I choose to have fun!" -Vidmarism No 15

Offline DanSteph

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Reply #3 - 10 March 2004, 14:07:13
Mhh perhaps I'm biased but setting up a site is not that difficult.
It's always the same code with 3-4 tag you use almost all the time.

About php it's pretty straight and there are a lot of script for free
and ready to use.

Anyway as usuall something that will take you 5 mn to learn with someone
next to you that explain you the basic and how it work can take you weeks
of study if your alone with only some doc.

200 mo ?  :applause:

I have 240 but 80 is pure FTP and 80 is .... :grrr: :wall:  REAL media place
that I can't use for anything but REAL....

I HATE the real media, it suck, the software suck and the hosting guy
that sell us this space suck. :grrr:

So in fact I have only 80mo :sad:
And it's a problem I'm at 90% space and I had to
delete my Virtual sailor site to add some ressource to the orbiter one.

About add-on the problem is not where the file are hosted but
how people set their add-on, most doesn't contain the release
version of orbiter and a clear explaination about how to install.
I even don't bother downloading an add-on that need some others
because I know most of time it will be painfull.

To reply to you a.roy:
Freeware maker doesn't get any money from their work, my personnal
reward is to keep this site alive with people coming here and writting
in the forum.
See the Iss add-on, before it was integrated in the base of Orbiter
the Project Alpha's site was an alive place and everyone know that
andrew was the author of this stunning work.
Now that it's integrated nobody know that he done this work, his site
don't get any visit and Andrew is totally forgotten.
(And last but not least his site seem to be dismissed now. I'll update my link)

Again the problem is not that we have a lot of site, the problem is
that most of them are outdated and a lot are also unfinished
so are their add-on.  And I'm affraid there is no solution for that.


Dan


Offline harmsway

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Reply #4 - 10 March 2004, 15:01:46
Wow Dan what's taking up all your space? I found that a good deal of my hosting space was my
usage logs which contained a lot of pie and bar charts. I was able to regain much of this space by
limiting my stored history.

I feel that people have the natural bend to complain about the big guy. Such as MicroSoft. In this
case AVSIM. Just a couple years back everyone wondered why we didn't have a download site at
all and begged Martin to convince AVSIM to include us. Now....well nevermind.

My problem is not AVSIM it's myself. I just can't keep up with all the addons. And I have wasted
too much time fooling with promising downloads that only fustrated. The biggest fustration is that
they would actually be great addons if they would preform correctly.

To get quicker response from AVSIM sort by date in scan mode. Then only view the addons that
interest you.

Gene


Offline glObalist

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Reply #5 - 10 March 2004, 16:25:03
The first problem is that over at AVSIM, nobody gives a flying one about keeping the Orbiter
repository up to date and/or organized. For example, what the hell is MrBatman's Edwards AFB
add-on doing in the Orbiter software distribution section?

The second problem is AVSIM tends to suck at available bandwidth. Just check out the current
message saying "bla bla, sorry for this speed inconveniences":)

The third thing is that addon makers have recently been submitting to Orbit Hangar only. This site
has a lot of pot3ential IMO, it'd only need to take over and sort out the rest of the addons from
avsim to be a good foundation for a future "perfect add-ons repository".

And finally, I personally can get around all the add-ons, so I don't really care if in the future
something like that crops up. But it'd be nice:)

"Wherever you go, there you are. Wherever you are, there you orbit."

Offline DanSteph

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Reply #6 - 10 March 2004, 17:15:59
I don't like AVSIM because you don't have the hand on
updating/deleting your add-on.
Adding a new one is a pain also, the process is long and boring.

So Avsim end with ridiculous things as 13 files for the same add-on
(seen in FS section , one base file with 12 patch and add)

Anyway one things that is practicall as you said Gene
is the "sort by date" you have a good chance that the
newer add-on work well.

About space: the forum, the add-on , the admin things
that allow me to control the site without ftp and control the forum,
screenshot etc etc,  byte after byte it make 90%.
If I clean the whole things and take really care I can clean
up to 70% but still not enough room for my virtual
sailor site.

about Orbit Hangar this is the way to go but an effort can be made
on the interface, it's not really appealing. (immo)
When you buy food the food is important but the box
that contain it must look good also :)

Dan


Offline DocHoliday

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Reply #7 - 11 March 2004, 08:54:27
Dan,

The provider I'm using is Hosting Matters (www.hostmatters.com) and they have extremely good
prices for what they offer. I actually get 250MB (they just increased it!), 16Mb/month transfer limit
(which may be too little), 20 subdomains, multiple domains, unlimited alias, 60 POP account, 20FTP
accounts and 4 SQL databases, etc. And all that for $16 per month. PLUS you have a full web
control panel to set up all of the above, and aditional scripts for forums, chats, blogs, websites
with automatic installation.

And considering the dollar's value is dropping it gets cheaper every month :) Details at:
http://hostingmatters.com/web_hosting.html

They even have dedicated hosting options, but that is probably more costly.

Come to think of it. The website would not necessarily have to be at one physical site, the site
could span several "providers". At least the files could reside on several machines, but be
accessible from one single point.

Well, the programming aspects you put very nicely. It would take you hours, me with your help for
example days, me alone, weeks. I am completely illeterate at UNIX (setting up directories,
priviledges and all that) and PHP I only have a basic grasp but no practice at all.

Anyway, I don't think the problem is acute at the moment, but in the mid-term, this idea should be
developped. I also think AVSIM's upload procedure is complex, and the lack of upload altering and
deleting, really makes it obnoxious with all the versions the people are forced to upload.

Cheers,
Janez


~~~

"Mood is a matter of choice. I choose to have fun!" -Vidmarism No 15

Offline DanSteph

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Reply #8 - 11 March 2004, 10:09:00
10pm and I still didn't slept, :wall:

I just finished to put on-line my map add-on (see other thread)
I'll reply you after my sleep :)

Dan


Offline A. Roy

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Reply #9 - 12 March 2004, 06:31:47
OK guys,

 My objective was not to slam AVSIM or start a fragging thread on Dan's nice site. It's simply not
worth the time wasted. As far as a programmer to make a site, I can do that, what I am really
looking to do it make a site large enough to host all of the add-on's in a logical fashion and
really "clean up the mess". I think you all agree that the add-on's are scattered all over the place
and with very minimal documentation (or at least documentation that makes any sense) and the
support the newbie gets is...."it must be YOUR system cause it works great on mine". As
a "newbie" at one time I received that email back from quite a few mod makers for Orbiter. So as I
stated in my first post of this thread, I want an AVSIM equivalent for Orbiter. Getting Martins
approval and endorsement I would think will be easy, once he sees something worth endorsing.
Now, Janez, we can talk business but honestly 200mb isn't enough to even do a lot with,
realistically I will need at least 5gb with a minimum of a T1+ connection (1.5mb/s down/ 768kb/s
up). I don't know about you guy's but I keep an eye one the hit counters of the Orbiter sites
scattered around, and to prove the amount of newbie´s in the Orbiter scene, the sites that have
not been updated in ages still get at least 100 hits a day. There is defiantly a HUGE following to
the Orbiter scene and I think a lot of people are "silent" simmers and are still in need of some
good materials, good advice, and a logical download structure all in one place. I think having
separate forums for things such as MFD's and Extra-galactic travels and so on, make it a little
easier for the average beginner to find the useful threads not just heaps of the ones where we all
talk about how much coffee Dan has had. I don't know, you all play around with it some more and
keep the input positive even if it isn't a positive post. Last thing all of us need in times as these is
to get fragged by a fellow daydreamer.

Aric

As I soared through the air just starting to thrive, I crashed into the ocean and instead learned to dive...SCUBA "the other place with space"

Offline A. Roy

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Reply #10 - 12 March 2004, 06:45:55
Oh yeah,

I also wanted to use a newsgroup so direct email is an option for any late breaking changes (ie
Orbiter version release, new DG-III etc.) And the problem with spanning accross several sites is
that if you separate the data accross the different systems( ie 250mb per free hosting site) then
when one goes down a portion of the hosted downloads will not be available, and in all honesty
the people who aren't paying for the hosting( the ones with the 250mb for free) will get the short
end of the bandwidth every time. The only other way to use several sites to to actually Mirror the
data in which all of the hosting mirrors would have to be 5 gb+ the same as the main site, then
the main site would have to work like a RAID card and upload the data to all of the mirror sites
every few minutes to keep up the syncro. Listen, I didn't say it was easy, I just asked if it would be
useful and possible necessary to have this site.


Aric

As I soared through the air just starting to thrive, I crashed into the ocean and instead learned to dive...SCUBA "the other place with space"

Offline DocHoliday

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Reply #11 - 12 March 2004, 10:22:55
I agree and am gratefulfor the additional info.

Now even 5 gigs is no problem but it is not free and I can't say I'm prepared to cover for it on a
monthly basis. Now either we get sponsors, or devise a plan to share costs, which is a doomed
idea in advance. I will try talking to my provider about sponsoring webspace.

The connection itself I think shouldn't be a problem, just the traffic limit, but again, that too can be
increased.

Assemble all the requirements and post them here, so I and possibly others can check with their
providers. Let's see what can be done.

Cheers,


~~~

"Mood is a matter of choice. I choose to have fun!" -Vidmarism No 15

Offline A. Roy

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Reply #12 - 12 March 2004, 20:42:25
Janez,

I think you are on to somthing using a sponsor type hosting. I may be able to do some surfing to
find good banners that pay well when hit. At that point I would just leave a message in the front
page of the site requesting everyone click a link for our sponsors. I dunno, just a thought. The one
thing I can't stand is pop-ups and pop-unders which alot of hosting sites are notorious for using.



Aric

As I soared through the air just starting to thrive, I crashed into the ocean and instead learned to dive...SCUBA "the other place with space"

Offline DocHoliday

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Reply #13 - 15 March 2004, 13:01:38
Aric,

Banners are okay, but not popups. I HATE those. Hopefully the obligatory front page clickable
banner won't be necessary. It'd be a real turnoff :)

Maybe we can get a provider to be satisfied with say a banner, present on all pages, or maybe
some kind of special deal for new user accounts. Some sort of tradeoff.

The problem: the more banners you have, the less exposure they have individually, which means
less satisfaction for the sponsors.

If we are able to very narowly define the requirements we have for the site, we may be able to
negotiate a lot by droping services we don't have = we need more space, but we need no email,
we need high traffic limit, but we need to extra domains, unlimited FTPs etc. Then what's left is the
net value, the sponsor must be compensated for and this can come down to maybe a single "ever-
present" banner or so....

Advice anyone else?


« Last Edit: 15 March 2004, 13:01:38 by DocHoliday »
~~~

"Mood is a matter of choice. I choose to have fun!" -Vidmarism No 15