Faster way to get the sceneries?

[janjansen]

H'es not making a profit on others work he is simply covering the cost of the service he provides the community.

Might have been true 12 years ago, but if he is spending thousands of euro's on cloudstorage and bandwidth today then he should switch providers asap. You can get a regular seedbox with 2TB of storage and unlimited bandwidth for less than 20 euro per month. Wen using sia or storj, it could be less than 2 euro per month. When using torrents, personal google drive accounts, or offers from people in this forum, it could literally be zero. I contacted the developer behind pixeldrain, and he is happy to provide unlimited storage and ~5TB bandwidth per month at no charge, and a cryptocurrency equivalent of a few beers per month if it goes substantially above that.

But it appears many here do not want to see a more accessible and free alternative to download sceneries ? Im hoping the creators dont see it that way, but its their content and thus their call of course.

>As soon as you start thinking about torrents you have to remember that you are downloading from other peoples computers, factor in some people may have viruses, factor in some a'hole deciding it may be fun to modify a file on their PC etc and you open a whole new can of worms etc.

Thats not how torrents (or sia/storj) work. You cant modify the stuff you are seeding or inject some malware; every piece is hashed and checked for integrity by the client, so it doesnt matter from who you download what fragment from.

[Farlander]

I just seem a little doubtful considering Condor is the only game i have ever played with a solution like this. I have lot's of heavily modded games, some which are 50gb++ in mods, not even particularly large community games who are able to host big files cheaply (for free to enyone downloading). The difference between free and 12€ is quite large, and so i question where that money goes when others seem to make do without it. In the end it's up to the creators of the sceneries, but for the end user i can't see how it will make the experience worse in any way. There is probably very few file hosting websites in todays age where the free download option is both speed restricted and slots restricted.

edit:
But as OXO said, i think it's definately needed to hear from the scenery creators about the whole thing first before anything happens

[Cadfael]

I think that old times, when Condor was anything new and people were thrilled from it and did many things free to the smaller community of friends gone, unfortunatelly. Landscape needs skills and many time for development. I do not think there is a reason expect anything free - people do not consider things that are free and these things are not free at all. Condor Club is a place where all developers can share their work, people their add-ons, you can have a badges, races, tasks... It all needs some time and costs, and there is not any reason do it free. Prices are low, so if anybody wants to have any landscapes, add-on or services, he can do it personally or pay small money for it. And although I am not sharing my landscapes now from CC (except demo versions), Thierry also sent some money to landscape creators before when I have here free landscapes (I do not know how it is now), but I got much more money from Condor Club that from all other people, which could sent me any donate, but only about 10 people did it during five years. Condor is hobby, scenery development too, but if you are doing it so long, and nobody say Thank you or have some positive comments about it, you lose interest do it. I personally see future at paid services. And do not forget, that you need to have permission of all authors, if you like share their files.

[GregHart1965]

I for one would be happy to see my work available on another site. Not that I have anything against Thierry's site - I think it provides a service by organising or at least hosting competitions - I think duplicating that aspect of the site is pointless there is no need for more than one competition site where all the Condor races can be seen at once (if not actually hosted on their servers).

As far as this forum goes; a dedicated page where people could list their scenerys and the link to where they are stored (as well as an indication if they will be stored there permanently or if it is a temporary link). I dont think it is reasonable to expect landscape authors to store their scenerys on their personal Google drives for ever. There is normally only so much space on Drive and when we make the next scenery that will have to replace the last one.

In terms of storage elsewhere I think its perhaps a good idea. The Uploading to Thierry's site does take forever and you cant cue pending uploads. This normally means I stay up all night uploading as day time bandwidth in South Africa is a bit pricey, nightime is much cheaper. My concerns are: the integrity of the files (they need to be safe from being hacked) and also I would like to see some avenue where landscape developers could get payment, not just a donation (as hardly anyone pays into that) but an actual 'pay to buy' set up. Unfortunately the Condor2 dev's haven't yet set C2 up in a way where scenerys can be properly copyright protected. I would like to see that happen in future. I am one who, despite the tradition of free landscapes, would like to get paid for the hundreds of hours it takes to make a great scenery. Scenerys are getting BIG, which is great for flying but also implies a huge increase in the work load to produce them. Double distance covered by a scenery means 4 x the area and 4 x amount of work.

[janjansen]

Thierry also sent some money to landscape creators before when I have here free landscapes (I do not know how it is now), but I got much more money from Condor Club that from all other people, which could sent me any donate, but only about 10 people did it during five years.

If part of the condorclub subscription revenue gets redistributed to content authors, I think thats something that should be made transparent. For one, I wouldnt mind nearly as much paying for the "hosting" if I knew a non trivial part of the money goes to the people who make the sceneries. Condorclub has enough statistics to make this transparent and fair, eg, distribue x% of membership revenue pro rata number of downloads or based on how often the scenery is actually flown. If it worked in a similar and transparent way and content creators are happy with that, who am I to object? But then CC should make this clear and not claim its to cover bandwidth costs.

As for donations; first of all, none of the sceneries I fly even have a donation button, and I also think many people are already slightly irritated being forced to pay for condorclub membership just to download and feel "they already paid". If access to the sceneries was simple and free, maybe more would be willing?

[Xanix]

In my point of view; Condor Club is a great place, for players interested on online racing. It offers a good and useful service, for a small price.

For people like me that don’t care for virtual racing; only interested on getting sceneries, a free service would be better.
I only ‘go up’ for the joy of flying and admire new places, around the world.

We already have a great ‘trio’: the fantastic Nephi area, the lovely Scotland and the beautiful region des Pyrénées.

[arneh]

I haven't released any scenery for Condor 2 yet, but when I do I hope there is a free way to share it too, as many people don't want to pay the EUR 12 just to download a few sceneries. And with the larger sizes of sceneries with higher resolution textures in Condor 2, downloading from CC without a subscription becomes impractical.

Would be great if the scenery wouldn't have to be split into sub 1GB zip files, like at CC too, because as big as sceneries get now, then there will be a huge amount of files to download. For reference the scenery I'm working on now currently takes up 40 GB when installed.

Also any download page for sceneries should include the possibility to add a few screenshots too, so that you can get an impression of the quality without having to download it first.

[EDB]

Uploading the scenery to Condor-Club is now mandatory if people want to use the scoring system on Condor-Club.

I personally don't want my sceneries being shared from different locations, because I want to stay in control of the sharing. Because it might be possible that the data used in the scenery has its license form changed. So it might be possible that I have to stop all sharing of the data and I don't want to have to search for all the download locations. Condor-Club and maybe shortly after launch from my own server or Google Drive is more then enough.

I have made a very basic webpage for people to download Nephi. It is accessible from my signature.

Having a scenery index page on the Condor site is a nice idea I think. Editable by the scenery makers when download locations change and to report updates.

[Snoman314]

@EDB is this a recent change? If so, the Condor Club people really seem to be going out of their way to make themselves look worse and worse.

[EDB]

@EDB is this a recent change? If so, the Condor Club people really seem to be going out of their way to make themselves look worse and worse.

You mean that "Uploading the scenery to Condor-Club is now mandatory if people want to use the scoring system on Condor-Club. "...?
As far as I know this has always been this way. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong. For the site to work correctly it needs (some) of the scenery files...

I don't think that this makes CC look worse and worse... Why do you say that..? As said earlier; website space and download quota do cost money. All those web-servers need hardware, power and maintenance to operate correctly. That just costs money.

Also the (24/7) competition-servers from for example "Condorsim.fr" or "Virtualsoaring.eu" do cost money to rent. Nothing is for free on the internet.

You pay with your money, or with your privacy...

[KarlheinzV]

Just wondering:
What do you guys do with the sceneries.????
Just fly a bit around.?????
No competition. Use Google Earth all sceneries they are free include a flight sim.
Without CC Condor2 never would had happened. The main users are CC members. Not some scenerie collectors.
With the best wishes Karlheinz