New Flightplan site "Clean"?

[Guest benvanboom]

Good evening,Last week on the news section of Avsim there was an announcementabout "Simroute", a new routeplanning service to simmers.I would like to point out the announcement on http://rfinder.asalink.net/free/ and hope you will investigateweather the new site "simroute" is clean or not. Thank you very much for your attention.Kind regards,Ben van Boom

[AWACS 12]

I just had to chime in here, before even noticing this post, I was checking out the simroute page the other day after Avsim had announced it and just typed in KLAS to EGLL to see what I'd get, and to my suprise, I got the sort of flight plan that Routefinder would give and I said to myself, "Either this site is hosted by the same folks who host routefinder, or they are using Routefinder's page or resources to generate these flightplans. I don't personally use Routefinder anymore because they offer simplistic, generic routing (not necessarily a bad thing to some), but it doesn't matter, simroute *IS* using Routefinder. And even though no money is being made either way since both offer free flightplanning, it is still someone's property, I belive they call it "intellectual property" now a days.Jeff

[DadJokeCinema 145]

Yes, they've made an announcement about it on RouteFinder. I'd suggest we do the same.

[Guest benvanboom]

>Yes, they've made an announcement about it on RouteFinder. >I'd suggest we do the same.Sounds fair enough to me !they do try to maken money with it because people can advertise on simroute.....Thanks in advance, regards,Ben

[dg75 0]

Dear fellow simmers,It is not with pleasure that I have to confirm this: sim-route.com relays its queries to the RouteFinder and in practice uses our datacenter resources for that webmaster's advantage.Potentially this may even become a financial exploitation as it is clear (at least in my opinion) that the webmaster wants to attract advertisements on that page.At first I just watched and wondered how far this would go.Then sim-route started to be announced in "big style".And I published an announcement on the RouteFinder frontpage, so that at least visiting people would know what was going on.After several days passed, this morning (seeing no feedback from the offender and no change in attitude at all) I have started to return fake data to sim-route.Now, I come back from a busy morning at the airfield and see that sim-route's webmaster loaded his getroute.php script on another server he maintains (binddate.co.uk) so that he can exploit RouteFinder from a different IP address.This will probably happen again and at some point he will find a way to force us to either accept this exploitation, or shut down the resource.I don't like to advertise RouteFinder, and also don't like to put advertisements on its pages. It existed for such a long time that whoever needs it, knows that it exists by now, and that it's a very light and quick tool to use (and far from perfect -- no doubt).The time for advertising will come when and if RouteFinder evolves.. but not right now. But still, the exploiter found it appropriate to advertise itself very well. Funny world...I think it would be fair to let everyone know what the offender is doing. I am not seeking free advertisement for RouteFinder, so you can omit the name of this resource if you ever decide to rectify the sim-route announcement.But if possible, again, I think it would be fair to at least expose the problem (without offending anyone, just stating the findings) so that everyone can think and draw their conclusions.This is not the first time it happens, but by now it's getting tiresome. Even a flight handling company some time ago tried to package a re-branded proprietary interface to RouteFinder and sell it. To real airline companies. Go figure. Excuse me for venting... and have a nice sunday.Kind Regards,Davide GiacopelloRouteFinder teamASA srl - Italy

[Robert W 3]

Davide,I posted the news that day. After looking at SimRoute site, it looked legit to me. I'm one of those people who was not aware of your website, but I am now.If you need to handle this situation offline with the originator of SimRoute, please do so off-line (not through our forums.I hope that this will be satisfactory to your team and the simmers out there who use either website.

[dg75 0]

Hi Robert,Thanks for replying, I see your point.Kind Regards,Davide

[Guest ielchitz]

Hello all,I just wanted to state for the record that I was somewhat shocked to see this new site open out of nowhere while at the same time "inching in" on the brand I've built over the past 7+ years.For the record, the sim-route.com website has no affiliation what so ever with my route planning database located at http://www.SimRoutes.comIt is my hope that the community does not confuse these two sites. So far the publicity has NOT been good for my brand as I have received a few messages from people accusing me of screen scraping data from Davide Giacopello's fantastic Routefinder application.If the allegations that sim-route.com has been scraping data from the RouteFinder application is true, then I must admit that I am completely appalled by such behaviour. Over the past 7 years I have engaged in a very healthy competition with both RouteFinder and EURoute (now VRoute.net) for traffic. We've had nothing but friendly communications and a high level of mutual respect for each other's work. Seeing a new site come up with a name so similiar to my own as a commercial application has really hit me where it hurts, and has caused me to truly debate whether I should continue to support my SimRoutes.com website which over the years has cost me much of my own time and money, while at the same time providing the service to the community for free.I honestly hope that AvSim, as the second to none starting point for our community does not support this new commercial venture sim-route.com with any future publicity or announcements.Respectfully,Ian ElchitzCalgary, AlbertaSimRoutes.com