John Venema Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Hello everyone, Effective immediately, we are restricting the number of Orbx products you can download whose licenses you transferred from FSS. The restriction will be set to ONE product download per customer per day, until further notice. NOTE - this restriction does NOT apply to any new products you have purchased from OrbxDirect, nor freeware demos or downloads. That is, anything you have purchased from OrbxDirect since November 1st has NO download restrictions. We have requested Adrian at FSS enable the validation server for all your old FSS wrapper installers so you can re-install from those at any time. Again, this is a temporary measure. We have not yet heard back from Adrian regarding this request but I am sure it won't be a major technical issue for him to implement. Why are we doing this? 1. PANIC DOWNLOADING. It appears that a "panic" has set in with all customers who transferred their FSS licenses to OrbxDirect. Because the old FSS wrapper installers can no longer be validated after the transfer of licenses, we think people felt insecure about a potential PC or Windows crash/reinstall without any backed up installers. This has caused a mad rush of downloads on our servers, generating over 50TB!! of data downloaded in less than a week. That is 50,000GB of data. 2. CUSTOMERS NOT READING INSTRUCTIONS. Despite our best attempts at creating a FAQ, step-by-step guide, video and answering countless customer questions, the message has still not gotten through - YOU DO NOT NEED TO DOWNLOAD EVERY ORBX PRODUCT WHOSE LICENSE WAS TRANSFERRED FROM FSS. 3. UNNECESSARY DOWNLOADS. Just because with OrbxDirect all products now use a different installation method (FTX Central v3), and use a different backup (encrypted nested ZIP files/folders), does NOT mean you should download and create backups for EVERY Orbx product license you transferred from FSS. After all, if they are installed and working in your simulator before you transferred your licenses, why do anything at all - unless you are literally planning a PC rebuild, OS re-install? I doubt that many of you are in this situation. 4. REBUILD AT A CONTROLLED PACE. Even if the worst were to happen and you had to re-install all products, downloading them from our servers is not a major headache, nor does it necessarily need to be done all at once. After all, as has been said numerous times, can you really visit every Orbx product location in one day, or one session? No. So we find the need to download and create backups for your entire library rather odd behaviour to say the least. 5. ARE WE ARCHIVE LIBRARIANS OR SIMMERS? Can I make a comparison? I recently purchased a new laptop. I installed FTXC V3 and installed Prepar3D V3.4.9, then downloaded FTX Global, Vector and openLC NA. I then enjoyed many flights in the sim in between doing other tasks. I also installed Steam and began to download some games I had previously purchased. Since many of them are > 30GB in size and I only have 7.5Mb/sec broadband, I usually installed one every few days, or one per week. Many times these downloads I would leave running overnight. I then began to add other Orbx regions and airports, perhaps one a day. My point is that it was unreasonable for me to expect to re-install my entire Orbx library or my entire Steam games collection all at once. Nor did I even create backups of my Orbx and Steam installers, since it's just easier for me to install what I need, when I need it. I am more interested in flying or gaming, than being an archive librarian. Keeping archived installers also takes a LOT of space; in the case of Orbx it's 200GB excluding freeware. I understand this restriction will be received with some negativity from certain people, but frankly - we can't justify the cost of 50-100TB of data transfer per week - that would erode any profit from our sales, which would limit Orbx's future expansion and growth plans or new product rollouts. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. The only reason we offered to transfer your FSS licenses in the first place was to make it easier and simpler to manage ALL your Orbx products you have purchased from day one - in one place, with one store, one installation method and one way to apply updates, patches and service packs. We did this to make things easier for YOU. What we did not expect was such a crazy demand on our servers for archiving the entire collections of old purchases. It would have been easier to allow old FSS installers to remain active and useable, which is what we are reverting to now. Sorry for the blip in programming - with anything new, there are bound to be warts and tweaks, so we're doing our best to provide you with a seamless customer experience, but not at the expense of eroding all profit margins on bandwidth costs, sorry. This is a temporary measure only. We will review bandwidth over the coming months and adjust download limits accordingly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurel42 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Just to be sure I understand this correctly: 3 hours ago, John Venema said: I recently purchased a new laptop. I installed FTXC V3 and installed Prepar3D V3.4.9, then downloaded FTX Global, Vector and openLC NA. So with the new rules in effect, you would have been able to enjoy P3D again, with the most basic set of OrbX products, after just two to three days? Cheers, Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uncle_adolph Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Just to say the panic doesn't apply to all customers..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trevor Bagnell Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 I am glad I got all my downloads in before this rediculous decision was made. I just rebuilt by OS and reinstalled everything from scratch. Because I was essentially forced to download all my purchases through the Orbx servers due to the Flight Sim Store activation permissions being removed ( a condition caused by Orbx) , I find this blaming of your customers causing your data woes to be rediculous. I keep a local copy of all my purchase downloads on a fileserver hard drive. They wereall completely useless to me without the Flight Sim Store activation process. They are all going to be deleted now as the next time I rebuild my system it will be by disk imaging. A little planning and some more announcements with a grace period for downloading and activating product from the Flight sim store would have likely avoided this panic downloading. I have many Orbx products including every region except the newest Northern Germany region. if I were limited to one download per day it would have taken me over a month given these new rules. think about that. When people rebuild their systems due to perfomance issues, they dont want to take a month to do it. Perhaps I should have not purchased so many Orbx products. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olli4740 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 When I reinstalled FSX just recently, I started with a handful of ORBX titles: Global Base, two regions, two addon airports. I would feel more comfortable with a daily limit of 5 titles, for example. Then again, I have a full system backup on an external drive, my old wrappers and my not-yet-transferred FSS licenses. Looks like currently some people are nervous on both sides. Hope this will settle down quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AKar Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Darn. I had to re-install my sim from scratch as certain sim platform update caused unsolvable issues. I specifically put it on hold for a couple of weeks as v.3 was announced, to not have to run through all the wrappers again. Luckily I didn't clean up the old installers just yet. Server demand appears to be the same thing to the internet that the first good snowfall is to the road traffic... it surprises 'em every year. -Esa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ak416 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 3 hours ago, John Venema said: 5. ARE WE ARCHIVE LIBRARIANS OR SIMMERS? Can I make a comparison? I recently purchased a new laptop. I installed FTXC V3 and installed Prepar3D V3.4.9, then downloaded FTX Global, Vector and openLC NA. I then enjoyed many flights in the sim in between doing other tasks. I also installed Steam and began to download some games I had previously purchased. Since many of them are > 30GB in size and I only have 7.5Mb/sec broadband, I usually installed one every few days, or one per week. Many times these downloads I would leave running overnight. I then began to add other Orbx regions and airports, perhaps one a day. My point is that it was unreasonable for me to expect to re-install my entire Orbx library or my entire Steam games collection all at once. Nor did I even create backups of my Orbx and Steam installers, since it's just easier for me to install what I need, when I need it. I am more interested in flying or gaming, than being an archive librarian. Keeping archived installers also takes a LOT of space; in the case of Orbx it's 200GB excluding freeware. Is this a joke, or are you really that out of touch with reality? The tone of this message as a whole is so condescending its embarrassing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Sounds reasonable John, you make a good point that you'd never visit them all in one session. And I'm glad it won't affect any new purchases like, hopefully Innsbruck soon? You have to do what you need to do in order to stay in business. I owned a small business once so I know exactly what you're talking about. 9 minutes ago, uncle_adolph said: Just to say the panic doesn't apply to all customers..... Agreed. I never understood this "panic" mode anyway. It went very smoothly for me unlike the fiasco last summer with the migration. I can see exactly how this would pertain to new PC's, fresh OS installers, and the like but no, I for one ain't an archivist. I need my SSD space. The Cloud is now a fact of life and being the old dog that I am I have come to accept it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
btemp1981 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 First post, and I hate it has to be this way. While I understand the frustration from a cost standpoint, and I personally have no issue with the solution you are implementing, I find the wording of the notice and the e-mail sent to be profoundly unprofessional. A simple explanation of having to set restrictions temporarily in order to handle heavy server loads would be sufficient as opposed to pointing fingers at your users, telling them what they should or shouldn't do with the way they do installations, etc. I've never seen a company send a message like that to its users before. Pretty shocking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurel42 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 I guess it's another case of DRM only ever hurting the honest customer. If the customers had non-DRM restricted installers on their disk, they wouldn't have to worry about redownloading "out of panic" just because the DRM system changed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gent Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 John Why can't you put the wrapper recognition and validation system into Central 3 so it could install from the wrapped file that everyone has? That would take FSS servers out of the picture and also prevent the re download problem. I am one of your few that is moving to a new PC. Another way would be to have Central 3 convert all the FSS wrapper files into Central 3 backup files. That seems like an easy process to me? What am I missing. Thanks Terry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BG2518 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Customer relations John, not good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olli4740 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 1 minute ago, Gent said: John Why can't you put the wrapper recognition and validation system into Central 3 so it could install from the wrapped file that everyone has? That would take FSS servers out of the picture and also prevent the re download problem. I am one of your few that is moving to a new PC. Another way would be to have Central 3 convert all the FSS wrapper files into Central 3 backup files. That seems like an easy process to me? What am I missing. Thanks Terry Good point. FTXC already does updates and auto-migration, so that sounds like 99% of the solution to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Expo Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 I downloaded the new files from my personal account, showed Central where they are and he still tries to download all full, and at the minimum speed. I downloaded the Global for 27 hours, LC europe for 33 hours and VECTOR already swinging 12 hours. In this case all of the files have been downloaded in advance. fixed it fixed it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viperxbr Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Wow, not good PR here at all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlavioSSA Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 For already installed FTX addons is that a way to create the backup files? (ALREADY INSTALLED ... Not downloading) Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meta Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Probably a wise move. Glad this is temporary. Question: If someone does rebuild their sim from scratch will they have to redownload all of those installers again or will Central3 'remember' where it downloaded them so that they can just be reinstalled? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjoman1960 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 so when i want to reinstall only the globalbase,Trees,vector and Lc this take 4 days........very nice.....Thank´s wat happen if a download fail.you have a free try or wait a day?...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulrunge Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 I totally understand the situation in which Orbx finds itself. Unfortunately for me I just began a FSXSE and have been busily re-installing a heap of Orbx scenery, some of which needed downloading again from FSS as I didn't backup 100% from the git-go. Sorry there are so many pissed-off people out there, but hey guys, this is not cancer we're dealing with? Have a little patience - things do occasionally go sidways in life. No if I can just figure out why FTX Central 3 won't allow me to update the few packages that need it?? "You do not have access to this build" is the error thrown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
addman Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 33 minutes ago, btemp1981 said: First post, and I hate it has to be this way. While I understand the frustration from a cost standpoint, and I personally have no issue with the solution you are implementing, I find the wording of the notice and the e-mail sent to be profoundly unprofessional. A simple explanation of having to set restrictions temporarily in order to handle heavy server loads would be sufficient as opposed to pointing fingers at your users, telling them what they should or shouldn't do with the way they do installations, etc. I've never seen a company send a message like that to its users before. Pretty shocking. I have to totally agree with this. You can't blame the customers for this, we didn't create FTX Central 3. It simply could've been "Sorry, we are running over cost-capacity on our download servers due to the huge amount of traffic being generated by downloads through FTX Central 3. We unfortunately have to restrict amount of downloads until we have implemented a BETTER way to deal with the huge demand on our servers right now." Instead of listing reasons why the customers has "done wrong". Poor show JV, poor show. Fortunately there are no limits to how many uninstalls we can do.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
picnic Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Lucky me got all my downloads done before this restriction. In my case this problem was one of Orbx's own making. By telling me what a wonderful thing OrbxDirect was going to be I held off downloading and upgrading everything since I last installed P3D. I only had the essentials for what I had been doing and thus had several regions and nearly all my airfields to do, not an inconsiderable amount! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlavioSSA Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 I preview 43 days to install all my ftx addons If the restriction goes for FSX AND P3D installs, double this number. (In middle February 2017 i think i´ll have everything installed) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjoman1960 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 8 minutes ago, paulrunge said: "You do not have access to this build" get the same when i try to update LIDA....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmorvay1971 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 1 minute ago, FlavioSSA said: I preview 43 days to install all my ftx addons I feel your pain and to make matters worse, if you have an add-on that is rather large, it may download extremely slow, with the possibility of dropping the connection. I would say 43 days minimum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 I own ALL ORBX Addons. Plus, I bought a brand-new system, just in sync with the event of FTX Central 3, to take advantage of it. Now it's FSS credentials again. And re-downloads later, whenever, 130 times, no matter if now or later, it's 130 times twice the work. But I guess no one will care. Anyway, this will certainly leave a bad feeling in my heart. Even more, as this situation could have been expected and proactively remedied. Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjoman1960 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 6 minutes ago, FlavioSSA said: I preview 43 days to install all my ftx addons If the restriction goes for FSX AND P3D installs, double this number. only for one sim it take me nearly 100 days then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olli4740 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 On a lighter note: JV's opening post has already received 5 upvotes, so it could become a very p o p u l a r post ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmorvay1971 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 13 minutes ago, pmb said: I own ALL ORBX Addons. Plus, I bought a brand-new system, just in sync with the event of FTX Central 3, to take advantage of it. Now it's FSS credentials again. And re-downloads later, whenever, 130 times, no matter if now or later, it's 130 times twice the work. But I guess no one will care. Anyway, this will certainly leave a bad feeling in my heart. Even more, as this situation could have been expected and proactively remedied. Kind regards, Michael So Michael, are you referring to the fact that you are using the old installers with FTXC2? You know, I am sure glad I didn't delete the archive I have on a backup external of my FSS purchases then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted November 10, 2016 Author Share Posted November 10, 2016 I'm really sorry guys, I knew it was going to cause pain but the bandwidth that was being used is unsustainable. Sorry also for the bluntness of the email and post; that's the way I roll - I say it as I see it. We're all adults here so let's not be precious about condescending posts or political correctness. I also won't pull punches about blaming people who are downloading every product when there is no need to. Think about it for a moment won't you? We can work through this issue together. Perhaps we need to establish a ticket system for people who are doing system rebuilds or complete reinstalls can provide us some proof of their system state so we can lift the download cap for those in crisis without Orbx addons installed. I would imagine that is the vast minority of you. I am more than happy to work on a solution that works for everyone. We're not a bunch of a-hole dictators here, so any productive, sensible, consultative, non-aggressive, non-trolling suggestions are welcome. We are all ears. Remember, we've asked Adrian to turn the FSS wrapper validation server for you if you have the old installers. Again, the only people feeling pain right now would be those doing full sim re-installs, which should be an absolute minority. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Sawyer Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 5 minutes ago, olli4740 said: On a lighter note: JV's opening post has already received 5 upvotes, so it could become a very p o p u l a r post ... In all fairness he did say it was only temporary right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmorvay1971 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 How about a Premium Download Service? Some sites, such as FlightSim.com, allows for paying members the opportunity to have no download/bandwidth limits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjoman1960 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 i get this message ,i have try to download the first for my backup,the download has not work,and now i have to wait one day for the next try??? i have no one downloaded,because i have trust...... tell me that is not true......... Thank´s Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted November 10, 2016 Author Share Posted November 10, 2016 What are you downloading Banjoman, and why are you downloading it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teecee Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 The tone of JV's post seems to indicate that all this trouble is the fault of the clients..Not a good Idea John It looks like I was one of the lucky ones..I never got past trying to install Cenral3, and have been patiently waiting for "an update and fix" that was "being worked on" within hours of the initial release, one that would solve my problem, but to date this has not shown up.. Thank goodness all my saved zips still work. Teecee. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertPilot Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 In my case, about a month ago, I needed to do a complete reinstall of P3Dv3, as my configuration had became messed up for reasons unrelated to Orbx. I would have used the FSS installers, but as I was busy with life and with OrbxDirect being promoted as the preferred method, I decided to hold off and let OrbxDirect take care of the reinstall of all my Orbx products over the past two days. I'm just saying my 200GB of downloads over the past two days (I also own every Orbx product), was in no way panic downloading. It was just a honest, well-intended effort to go along with Orbx's recommended method of reinstall. If I had known of the severe bandwidth impact, I'd have just used the FSS installers. I did make sure to archive every download, mainly to avoid future download costs both to myself and Orbx should a future P3D reinstall be needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kimo Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Not happy about this. Transferred all my licences and now I have this restriction I hope it get's removed very soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banjoman1960 Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 1 minute ago, John Venema said: What are you downloading Banjoman, and why are you downloading it? i have try to download the first airport on my 100 downloads,for a backup,after i read this.........and the download are failed,and ihave to wait a day for the next try. so when a download at central fail,you have to wat a day then for the next try? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted November 10, 2016 Author Share Posted November 10, 2016 Quote In my case, about a month ago, I needed to do a complete reinstall of P3Dv3, as my configuration had became messed up for reasons unrelated to Orbx. I would have used the FSS installers, but as I was busy with life and with OrbxDirect being promoted as the preferred method, I decided to hold off and let OrbxDirect take care of the reinstall of all my Orbx products over the past two days. I'm just saying my 200GB of downloads over the past two days (I also own every Orbx product), was in no way panic downloading. It was just a honest, well-intended effort to go along with Orbx's recommended method of reinstall. If I had known of the severe bandwidth impact, I'd have just used the FSS installers. I did make sure to archive every download, mainly to avoid future download costs both to myself and Orbx should a future P3D reinstall be needed. DesertPilot, your use of OrbxDirect is the exception rather than the rule. You needed to download everything because of a system rebuild. So that's cool, we understand that, and there's no blame pointed your way at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walkabout Posted November 10, 2016 Share Posted November 10, 2016 Anyone tried to download the encrypted nested zip folders (Manual download, rather than the FTX Central route which can take hours). I tried one and found 138 zips, with 13 zips inside each and more files inside those zips with no way to combine them, so had to resort to a 3 hour download via FTX Central. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted November 10, 2016 Author Share Posted November 10, 2016 1 minute ago, banjoman1960 said: i have try to download the first airport on my 100 downloads,for a backup,after i read this.........and the download are failed,and ihave to wait a day for the next try. so when a download at central fail,you have to wat a day then for the next try? You did not answer my question. What are you downloading and why? To make a backup of an airport already installed and working? This is precisely what is causing the excessive bandwidth. We are asking people to cool their heels, slow down and not do any downloads just for the purposes of making backups. It's hurting Orbx and we're asking you to consider the hurt and stop doing it for a while until the majority of customers have moved to the store and the bandwidth is spread out over more even usage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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