Speedbattle Team needs a break

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desktopsimmer
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Post by desktopsimmer » Wed Aug 06, 2008 10:42 pm

Hi Stefke and Andreas, thank you for the hosting of Downloads, SB, SBC and others services you have provided. It is sad news that we'll miss this services, but enjoy a well deserved break. Hopefully we'll see you in the virtual skies :)
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JCK
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Post by JCK » Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:49 pm

Dear Andreas and Stefan,

The service you have provided for the last two years is exceptional.
Many thanks for the efforts of the SB Team.

Let the standards of the professional and reliable service that you have provided be the measure by which all others will be judged.
This will be a tough act to follow :(
I feel sure that you have inspired many to take to the skies.

We only hope that others with the necessary skills will rise to the challenge!
The Condor fraternity salutes you :D

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Freebird
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Post by Freebird » Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:57 am

Just been away for a week & the news is a bit of a shock but understandable. Got to thank you guys for the amount of flying I have done & enjoyed with SB, SBC & VHWW, hope you enjoy your well earned rest but don't forget to come & fly with us once in a while.

Tonyh
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Post by Tonyh » Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:44 am

Many thanks from me too for all you guys have done for us. Your contribution has been huge and has added to this great sim tremendously.

Enjoy your break, you deserve it, but I do hope you will be back. Condoe just wouldn't be the same without Speedbattle team.
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MoWa
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Post by MoWa » Tue Aug 12, 2008 4:55 pm

Definately a jolly good job, chaps! Thanks for everything! I sure hope you'll be back some day. :)
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Jono
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Post by Jono » Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:29 pm

Thanks guys, you have provided Condor with everything we need and have vastly expanded the community. Your servers will be greatly missed :cry:
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cruiser
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Post by cruiser » Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:03 pm

This is a bit of a shock, but I understand it well. It takes time and lots of strain to put such a professionally organized service to public audience.

Thank you for providing us with an entertainment over the last 2 winters.

Have fun and enjoy your new free time :wink:

Jarmo K
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Post by Jarmo K » Wed Aug 13, 2008 1:42 pm

Referring back to FL's post on page 2 with quote about the SB, SBC and Linux download server costs, I think the 5,- EUR attendance fee for SBC08 was ridiculous low; should have been 10-15 EUR.

Speedbattle Team will have well deserved break, but is there any chances that our community could collect enough money so we could keep the extremely good Speedbattle page up and running? (Who will master that is next problem, but not having highest priority at the moment).

And we should collect enough money also for a professional quality "competition" server (like SBC08), that could be used by any bigger competion organizers. I'm really fearing that without these various pilots and nations uniting bigger competitions we will in the end have only smaller competions with smaller groups of pilots.

(Full negative mode on: This big friendly community will die and we end up having isolated, only finnish, british, german, polish... possibly pw protected races for closed groups = not funny at all :evil: )

Anyone noticed what is happening with SilentWings? They have been struggling with online racing reliability from the beginning and currently there is hardly 10 more active pilots attending races....

JKK, who wants to race longer competitions :!:

Btw, e.g. 20 - 50 EUR/pilot for one year online competitions would be really low price to pay for that much of fun...
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Tonyh
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Post by Tonyh » Wed Aug 13, 2008 2:02 pm

I was having exactly the same thoughts and was thinking that we need some sort of fee paying club to fund resources and infrastructure. I'll post a poll in the general section and throw the idea open for comments.
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Freebird
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Post by Freebird » Wed Aug 13, 2008 3:55 pm

Referring back to FL's post on page 2 with quote about the SB, SBC and Linux download server costs, I think the 5,- EUR attendance fee for SBC08 was ridiculous low; should have been 10-15 EUR.
Was far too low & for that reason I always donated much more than the minimum.

Silent wings is (I know they wont like me saying this) almost dead as far as multiplayer is concerned when compared to Condor (one reason why I did not buy it) With Condor now we have 6 permanent servers that have gone offline possibly forever.. its a big hole in the server list & there's not a big choice of tasks left especially if you want to be able to compare your times with others.

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Cadfael
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Post by Cadfael » Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:48 pm

We all are happy that Stefke and Andreas decided keep SB download center for sceneries alive, but is not very fair, that they are paying all costs for this infrastructure from their own money. So whats about modify of SB downloads for example by this way: If we will pay for example 5/10 euros for year ¨subscription¨, these people will have quick access for download as a existing premius users. People which have no interest / possibility participate at common costs will have less links with lower speed and new free sceneries with delay. So I mean anything like existing system but with greater participation at costs from our side. I think that at this case would be possible keep SB alive for long time.
I am looking at this problem from scenery developer point of view. If we will have not SB or similiar services, we have only next possibilities for sharing scenery:
- torrent - some of users have no skill used it. We tried it three years ago during LLC without great success
- ShareIt - payble sceneries. There are many extra costs for scenery developer - commercial licence for Condor scenery toolkit (I listen it is hundreds of euros - CST can be used free only for free scenery), tax, payment to ShareIt - so at this case would not be possilbe sell scenery less than 10 euros by this way.
Many from us wish to share our sceneries with others free, but without greater interest of whole community participate at costs it will not be possible to the future I am afraid.
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arn72
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Post by arn72 » Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:58 pm

i dont like this turn towards having to pay for competition, sceneries etc. it might be possible for us grown ups who have jobs;
but for young people who might use simulators to get interest for the sport it is a big turn off if they have to spend much money to compete and be updated on sceneries. i agree server costs to run competitions and downloads should not cost the nice people who host. but the rest should be free based on interest and voluntary work.
NB: my thoughts. :)

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Stefke
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Post by Stefke » Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:27 pm

Thank you all for your kind words, it was a pleasure for us to organize SB :D

The Condor community is really a very special phenomenon. It is a friendly worldwide virtual soaringclub, with all the fun and trouble we know from our rl club :wink:

We need a break, because things have changed for us (job, motivation...) but it has :!: nothing to do with money :!:.

Jarmo K
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Post by Jarmo K » Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:12 am

Stefke,

we do know that money was not the issue, but what we want is that there will be no "iceage" while you two pioneers are having a well deserved break.
Talking about money is only to find out how much we need to have all these great services still usable (SB, CCC, competions).

Honestly said, this short period without online SB tasks has been terrible and I really do not want that we loose all that good work you guys have done :(

JKK

Btw, Thierry (BOD1) is also one of these guys to whom we must be very gratefull :!: for great unselfish work.
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andreas.kippnick
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Post by andreas.kippnick » Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:44 pm

Hi,

to be honest, I have started a new job in January 2008. Since January I didn't write any new line of code for the speedbattle projects. We wanted to start the soaring paradise in 2008, a other big project was RAS and I wanted to redesign the download section. But since January 2008 nothing has happened.

A few weeks ago during my holidays on Bali (didn't have a Notebook on the Island) I had a big motivation to do something new - finish the CCC frontend for RAS, the backend is already finished since the 2nd SBC has started last year, Make a new downlaod section make the SB multilingual, create the soaring paradise .... But after one week in job I didn't do any coding.

So Stefan and I have talked and we both thought it won't be a problem to run a 3rd season of SBC based on our well known system but when we do something we do it 100% and not just that it has to be done.

Maybe in a few weeks, month we will be back, I don't know. And I think that you all know that we don't do it because of the money we did SB and SBC because it was a great fun for us to provide those competitions.

I think there are some other people who are able to provide a big competition in this winter season.

The download section still will be online and I think in a few hours a new scenery will be online :-).

Andreas
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