PC Aviator US download speed?

[Guevorkyan 69]

Hey, I've been having serious issues with the download speeds at PC Aviator US. My internet speed is 10mb and regularly download at 1,5mbps at other vendors.

 

But with PC Aviator I can barely get to 100kb/s. Funny thing though, if I download several addons at once, I can pile up to 1Mbps in total, but the addons will top up to 100kbps each. I've tried to contact them by email regarding this but no response.

 

I wonder if it's only me or anybody else having the same problem. This has been dragging on for several months now.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I use them exclusively to purchase photo scenery and have had no problems.  I have used them to purchase many other products too as I have found they have frequent sales and I can get something a bit cheaper than going to other FS Stores.  If I found a problem with missing textures or files, I would e-mail them and they would issue an immediate update (okay, sometimes it would take a week to fix leaving me with missing textures until the fix has been released).  Download speeds vary just as they do for all of the commercial stores.  Sometimes the download is super fast and sometimes I let the download run while I do other things.  I can download up to 8 - one GB files (without using a download manager) at a time and those take between 30 - 45 minutes to complete before I go and download 8 more. 

This topic about PC Aviator USA has been discussed several times in regards to download speeds and support services (lack thereof) so best you conducted a search of our forums regarding PC Aviator.  I have been fortunate, but then, I identify the problem to PC Aviator and get a response via an e-mail sent to the community notifying all customers the product has been updated.  I do not recall ever getting a response to any of my e-mails.  It is important for any store owner to make sure the purchase and the download goes as fast as possible so I do not think PC Aviator is slowing down the downloads on purpose.  I'm trying to figure out what he can do at his/her end to make your download go faster. 

Download speeds vary around the world.  Some vendors, like Orbx/FTX are super fast with downloads... uh, most of the time.  One may have to use a download manager if there are downloading problems.  It is hard for the vendor to ascertain problems with download speeds.  There are hours that the servers may have a lot of users or, if a new product has been released, lots of users trying to get the product downloaded at the same time.  If the downloads are consistently slow or you do not receive support for your products then you need to quit purchasing from this vendor and find a new store.  As I have stated often in several posts about the lack of support from this vendor, PC Aviator is an FS Store and not a product developer.  So, if you want support for that product, you go to the developer of the product.  For instance, I purchased AS16 from PC Aviator but go to the HiFi website if I need support/help for the product.  I also download updates from them instead of going to PC Aviator and downloading the product again with the updates.  

Best regards,

Jim

 

[Gartro 18]

For about the last three years since I started using Internet Download Manager, I have noticed slower download speeds from both the US and Australian stores of PC Aviator. I am assuming that both stores use the same server for this purpose.

Here in eastern Australia, I don't have fast internet speeds compared with some of the speeds mentioned on Avsim that posters in other parts of the world have.

Therefore, in a discussion such as this, I find it more useful not to speak in terms of measurement of speeds but to to do a comparison with other flight sim sites in terms of proportionality, so that the speed at the receivers end does not directly come into the equation.

No matter what time of the day I have done a download of a purchased flight sim product, a download of a purchase from one of the PC Aviator stores has consistently been the slowest (I did keep records of the download speeds from various stores in August and December 2016) of about 12 flight sim websites (including those of retailers and developers) I have used. I consistently found that of the others, the next slowest varied between about two and three times faster than the PC Aviator download speeds.

The slow speeds had the added burden of the the PC Aviator downloads being the only ones which IDM told me that there was no multi-threading or resume capability available.

I then had to balance what I saw as the speed/time downside of such download purchases against still wanting to buy as much as possible from the Australian store (because I believe that the service and attention Dean gives there is unsurpassed by any store I have dealt with (Simon King at Just Flight coming a close second)). I did that by setting a maximum size limit of the product I would buy there so that downloading at a slower speed/longer time than I could get the product elsewhere would still be bearable to me (even if not optimum).

Gary

[Guevorkyan 69]

I know that downloading speeds depend on where you are and where the file(s) is, and servers and stuff.

Right now, I'm downloading EDDF V2 from simmarket at 1.2 Mb/s, and TRYING to download Washington X from PC Aviator at... 50 Kb/s (top!). Something is wrong here, and don't really know what is the problem with PCA's servers and my IP, but it's been like this since my first ever purchase at PCA.

I should have known better.

Oh well, still 15 more addons to be downloaded at this speed, gosh.

[Guevorkyan 69]

Update: Finally got 9 of the 12 sceneries downloaded (the smaller ones), thanks mainly to luck. Download speeds won't go over 200kb/s before plummeting again to 20kb/s and then getting an error "the connection timed out". For reference, I get over 1,2Mb/s with any other vendor.

The other 3 sceneries are 2.5, 3.8 and 5.3 Gb. Hopelessly tried to download them over the last week. Mails were sent and no response.

 

NEVER AGAIN PC Aviator.

 

Feel free to lock this thread :(

[Jim Young 2,356]

I can guarantee you will not get a response to any e-mails.  That's well known as there is absolutely nothing they can do about download speeds.  A large store and lots of customers.  What are they supposed to do?  Set up a secret download server just for you?  Like everyone else, you need to continue to try to download the products.  It's a pain I know but you need to have some patience.  When there are hundreds of individuals trying to download a product, download speeds decrease significantly.  Not a problem of PC Aviator IMHO.  See the AVSIM Photoscenery Support Forum for other complaints.

[Gavenger 18]

Most companies would set up additional mirror sites to compensate for traffic.  Also, host the downloads on servers or in server farms that can handle the traffic if they cant support more mirrors.  Google or AWS can allow you to have a small footprint and can spin up additional VMs as load increases and would spin them down accordingly.  This would save cost, assuming your pricing structure is set up correctly.

[Jim Young 2,356]

Maybe they already have this capability.  All I can say, if the download speeds or customer support is not up to your standards, then one needs to find another store or have some patience, understanding owner's of stores are trying to support the community the best way they can.  I have found slow downloads at other FS Stores in the past and understand these owners are small businesses.  I am certain that a store owner is not providing slow downloads on purpose to get you and many others very upset and probably looking for other ways to speed up the downloads.  Technology is changing daily. 

[Guevorkyan 69]

You can get slow downloads everywhere, sure. But most of those sites have resuming capabilities and/or multi-threading.

PCav, for what I can gather (and experience), doesn't have that capability and my downloads would fail to resume when the connection is momentarily lost (not in my end). Pausing a download is no-go, as it would make the file to be downloaded all over again. 

And not adressing any emails (give us an automated one, really, anything), is very disconsiderate. I cannot find any other way to successfully download the content I purchased. 

It may very well that it's not their fault, I get it. But they could nevertheless know of this issue with the feedback from emails. Right now I don't know where they are at.

[Ted Striker 338]

I just called PC aviator on a different issue a few days ago and got connected with someone quickly. They were very helpful. You might want to try that approach. You might not get someone on the weekend though.

Ted

[casv 14]

Hi,

Has anyone experienced low download speed from PC Aviator the US store?

I am trying to download a purchased scenery but get 20-50 Kbit / s. That makes hard to wait long time, sometimes the download breaks and then the download manager is restarting the download, and starts from 0.

i have whatsoever no problem with my internet connection (approx 400 mbit/s). Even tried at the office, that has a 1 gbit/s connection.

kind regards.

[Greggy_D 935]

Yes, the past few days I tried to download some of my previous purchases that had updates.  I'm seeing the same slowness as you.

[johnnycrockett 43]

Yes same problem here too.

[Patco Lch 1,459]

A couple days ago I purchased FSDT KMEM and noticed the same. About 15 minutes to download.

[Gartro 18]

Have a look here: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/508836-pc-aviator-us-download-speed/#comment-3609710

Over the Christmas/New Year period, I bought  seven products from different vendors (some from retail outlets and some directly from developers) in the US, England and Germany..

I downloaded them on the same day, one after another. The average speed from PC Aviator for me on that occasion was lower than what I have historically experienced from that store - it was that day averaging less than one seventh of the speeds I was experiencing from the other sites.

Gary