rec.autos.simulators

Almost every site I go to seems sloooow. I can hit on 200 sites in a day,
and the only slow ones (and I mean really sloooow) will be the auto sim
sites.

David G Fisher

Maybe because most of them are run by by enthusiasts who can't afford to
pay for a high bandwidth server and needs to take what they can get ?

I know it's that way with us, BHMotorsports graciously offered to host
our site at about the same time the ads we were running weren't enough
to pay for the server and line we used to rent, actually it never was as
Jan used to pay the dividend out of his own pocket

When someone does you that kind of favor, calling them up to complain
about the site loading slowly at times, and yes we've noticed it, is not
the first thing you do

If you can rustle up some sponsorship for us Dave...:-)

P.S., this is not intended as a complaint towards BHM who came to our
resuce at just the right point

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.theuspits.com

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

www.m4driving.sm  seems to be fairly quick, but you are right most sim sites
do seem very slow.

Andi.

says...

Because they're loading a whole bunch of baggage with the ***that
Microsoft has been foisting off on us for the last 5 years.  ActiveX,
ASP, XML, .Net, COM, Flash, and Java/Javscript steal bandwith.  Add
to that, the burden of displaying ungodly large graphics files
without specifying the image size in the HTML, banner ads, and other
bullshit, and THAT is why they're so slow.

So what do you think of our new layout John ? :-)

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels........"
--Groucho Marx--

says...

I think it takes too long to load some pages, and it's overly
difficult to navigate when you're looking for something specific.  
Throw in the performance issues, and the difficulty in navigation
becomes more than a simple annoyance.  I only visit the site once
every month or so, and sometimes not even that often.

After programming for 20 years, I crave simplicity and functionality
over flashy graphics and gee-whiz effects.  I'm probably not a good
person to ask for comments on a website that uses any of Microsoft's
or Sun's gadgets. :)

Some things I will comment on (and I hope nobody takes this stuff the
wrong way):

1) The banner at the top of the page stops shy of going all the way
across my 1280x1024 display.

2) There are some continuity problems as far as look and feel goes as
you navigate the site.  It's almost as if different people designed
different parts of the site.  Indeed, some parts of the site that
aren't actually run by ThePits, but maybe you have enough clout to
recommend a design change that is more in line with what tthePits is
using, or the sites should be relegated to a "Links" page.

3) It's not immediately obvious that there's a menu of links in the
header banner.

4) Even after having displayed the Sim Dowloads page, it takes an
uncomfortably long time to completely re-display the page, even when
doing something as simple as clicking the back and Forward buttons in
the browser toolbar.

5) I think the performance might be improved if you routed the server
through a different backbone.  Of course, performance issues are
relative, and what ends up being good for me will most definitely
suck for someone else.  It might be a good idea to sacrifice some of
the "ooh-ahh" in exchange for some "damn, that's fast".

I like the blue theme, though. :)

Yep. Not to mention the incredible amount of dead links (files, sites,
you name it).

I noticed both phenomena right away after I started to visit sim sites
this year. It's pretty darn bad, relatively speaking.

Regards, Ruud

Well, dunno, but the very first links I clicked on didn't work (Bullrun
files),
there's no menu on the index page (java dependent?!? Yuck), the menu
font is too small on a Mac (Mozilla 1.1, so that should be ok)... the
load time wasn't too bad though  ;)

Regards, Ruud

Well I would like to hear some comments on eRacer Garage.  Good or Bad :-)
The site is certainly not complete but we are working hard to get things
added and ensure links are both working and relevant.
Please take a look and let us know what you think or if you have good info
you would like to share please pass it along.

As for the issue of speed on most sim sites I think most are correct in
saying its an issue of cost.  Most are run out of the pocket of the person
developing them and thus are not able to compete with larger sites that have
high speed stable connections as those cost $$$.  I think everyone does
their best to make the sites accessible but I too agree many are slow to
load and updated.

http://schooner.gotdns.com/eracer

Well, at least we did *something* right :-)

Btw, our index page is roughly 8,3 Kb in size, there's little meat to be
trimmed to make it much faster I'm afraid, Jan actually believes in a
minimalist approach himself, the slow load times are because the people
hosting are having some issues and currently there's little we can do
about it other than to let them know, if you go to www.thenorwaypits.com
it will most likely load faster even though it shouldn't as it's hosted
on a server with only a fraction of the bandwidth of the main site

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy
"goyl at nettx dot no"

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--

FYI - The use of .NET and XML would have little impact on the loading time
of a page.  In fact .NET should make pages faster as most of the actual code
is now compiled on the server and is generated server side.
I agree that not all pages are optimized for sure but this cannot all be
blamed on companies like MS.  It's up to the developer to make proper use of
the tools.  Sometimes people's biases against companies like MS sometimes
override reality.  I use MS tools daily for development and like anything
they have good and bad points, it's up to the developers to make the best
use of them to meet the needs of the end users.

It *is* up to the programmers. But the problem is that most of the
sites we're talking about are NOT created by professional
programmers, under a budget (time AND money), or with proper
forethought or fundamental design.  They only see the "oohh-ahh"
stuff, and fail to realize that their web server might be throttled,
or just plain inadequate for what they want to do.  Many times, they
try to get away with using "free" web space, and often fall victim to
bandwidth required to display pop-up ads, banners, and poorly
implemented anti-intrusion code on those servers.

These problems don't prevent them from implementing crappy
java/javascript, questionable ActiveX controls, or requiring Flash,
Quicktime, RealPlayer, or WindowsMediaPlayer.  Most of the people
that "code" web pages don't have even the hint of a freakin clue, and
once the page is up, they don't periodically check to make sure the
links they included still work.

I have over 50mb of hand-coded graphics-intensive web pages on my web
site and there is  nothing but pure HTML in use, and they're damn
fast.  I fail to see the attraction to the java/javascript,
ActiveXcrement, Flash, .NET, or XML, and 99% of the web sites out
there don't need any of that ***either.  If they didn't use it,
their sites would be that much faster and easier to navigate.

I am not a fan of Microsoft because they push this ***out and try
real hard to convince people that it'll be a "good thing" (tm) if
they adopt it.  This shit is nothing more than an end-run around the
various standards committees, and as a practice it only hurts US -
the end users.  I don't appreciate it, and it pisses me off to be
FORCED to enable inefficient and unsecure web "features" (and I use
that term VERY lightly) in my browser just to view a few personal web
pages about the sims I drive.

says...

"This page cannot be displayed."

It took 30 seconds to display, and it's kinda short on content. I
didn't see anything aboyt any driving sims. :)

:)

Are you guys actually paying for the space, or is it being donated?  
If it's donated, there's not much you can do.

I use WestHost, and pay $14/month for 200mb of web space, 10 pop
accounts and 8gb/month bandwidth.  No banner ads, no pop-ups...

The latter, Jake Butner and Pekka Heino gave us an offer it was hard to
refuse :-)

Overall it's been very good and even if it was a paid for service we
would have had little to complain about, but lately it's been running
really slow, DL speeds of less than 20kb/s for instance and people
complaining about corrupted DL's, hopefully they'll get it sorted soon

Sounds like a good deal

Currently I believe we have about 1.2 GB worth of files....:-), which is
one of the reasons we decided to split it up rather than have two
identical sites, there's a surprisingly huge demand for some of the
older stuff, but the demand is not as intense of course and I can handle
that traffic on "my" lowly .5 mbit line (it's donated too :-)

Don't know how much bandwidth the main site use pr month, 8GB a month is
a lot if you have a website without too much file DL's, but if it's a
site where people mainly go to DL files I bet that would get used up
pretty quickly....?

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy
"goyl at nettx dot no"

"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

"A man is only as old as the woman he feels"
--Groucho Marx--