O/T Game Server Letdown

[Dave Torkington]

Hi fellow simmers,

I'm in need of a short rant to hopefully make myself feel a little better and to make others aware to beware!

A good buddy and I have been renting an FSHost server [paying monthly] from a UK based game server provider [name witheld] for many months. The service was very good initially, but within the last twelve months and then very recently it got pretty dire. It got to the point where we'd paid in advance for the following month and the server was down for two weeks out of four, even after submitting a 'high priority' ticket...

So, my point - choose your game server provider carefully! Beware when you're given positive responses and promises and days, then weeks go by without any action. I should have noticed when links to Forums and 'Get Support' on their homepage didn't work. Thankfully, I can still get to the ticket system.

Ok, it's only $13 a month, but I wonder how many other folks have been paying up front in advance for a service that was far from reliable! We've since cancelled the account and are now running our own FSHost session [thanks to a good friend] and wondering why we didn't do this long ago!

Thanks for watching :salute:

[Reddog]

WHY would u pay a server fee when u can set your own up for free! I'm running 2 of them on and old P4 machine and they work just fine.One is passworded for our club but the other one is open to anyone and it's up 24/7, look for it on FSHostSpy as Reddogs Freeflight server.I usually have some sort of hopslist on it but u can fly were ever u like.

[Dave Torkington]

WHY would u pay a server fee when u can set your own up for free!

Exactly Reddog - I just had no idea that it was so easy or even possible to set up an FSHost server on a beat up PC... dumb or what!

Actually, paying a server fee worked well for our group of buddies because the responsibility to provide, run and maintain the server was with the provider rather than any one person, especially when it's maybe a good friend... Make sense?

Dave.

[paiken]

Then there is the SOH Flight Server... located here. Bandwidth already paid for by member donations and Ickie wondering where all of the flyers are.
http://www.sim-outhouse.net/
Happy flying!

[Francois]

I had the same problem with finding and maintaining a Windows host server to run FSHost on. Gave up after paying a lot of money for many years (and no, the donations never covered it ;-) ). Running one's own server may not be difficult technically, but you Do need one to run 24/7 in that case...... and I don't think I want to do that personally. Costs a lot and I don't like equipment running unattended when I am not home..... Oh well.....

[Tako_Kichi]

If it's just a few buddies flying together in FSX you don't even need a server. Some of my best online flying was done via a 'direct connect' in FSX with six or more of us connecting to the one with with fastest, most capable computer. We used Skype for comms and one of the participants not hosting the FSX session would host the Skype group call to even out the load.

It was way smoother than FS Host with no jerkiness or lag and we regularly flew tight formations through some pretty testing terrain (valley running in the Alps was a lot of fun with 3-4 ship formations in Hunters).

[Dangerousdave26]

Actually the title of this thread should be Game Server Hosting let down.

FS Host runs fine you just got a provider that went bad.

It was a very happy day for me when Ickie announced he was going to lease the Windows server for our game server. To me it immediately meant I could shut down my FS Host server saving me $50 month. Yes that much the old Dell Poweredge 2500 server I have really draws the power. I turn it on and the lights dim for three blocks.

[falcon409]

I'm with most everyone else here. I ran an FSHost server off my home computer for several years for Lago. Every once in a while I'd shut it down after advertising that fact so no one got dumped in the middle of a flight but otherwise it ran 24/7 and it was nothing more than my home computer. I'm sure there are instances where renting a server is necessary, but just to have a bunch of folks fly off and on. . . .no reason to pay for that.:salute: