What is the point of using the ORS to look at the competition and figure out where my flights are rated when it never ****ing works? I’m on Devau and have not had it working for at least the last 2 weeks. 
We got two choices: Leave it out completely or leave it in but working only temporarily. Which one do you prefer?
There’s one way to tell when the ORS works: There’s a link on the bottom of the site that says ‘game status’. If you have automatic updating on, you can see the list of processing that your server is going through, and once you find that there’s no ‘waiting list’ for the server, go to ORS. There will be a huge chance that it will be working by then.
Not have us pay for what is apparently a beta version? What if your cell phone only worked sometimes and they said "Now that you’ve paid for the service you have two options, either not use your phone or only use when we feel like making it work".
Oh come on - that’s not the same - the aim of purchasing a cell phone is to call someone or send him a message. If the integrated camera is only available if the system of the cell phone is not busy in transmitting text or voice it’s the same like we have here.
AirlineSim is fo creating airlines and that’s what you can do. And to be sure the system has enough capacity to do so, the ORS is locked from time to time. And except of Idlewild and Devau where a backlog is open, on all other server it’s only a matter of a few minutes when there is an actual calculation running - then the ORS wil function again.
Surely the game has plenty of features to keep one busy should the ORS (occasionaly) be restricted.
I always end up spending more time on AS than I want to, and I barely get onto the ORS.
I generally just use ORS to inflate my ego in spare time. Mainly to see weird connections from lesser served airports just to see if pax would rather take my airline out of podunk town TATL to Amsterdam.
Its just a fun feature that happens to be extremely taxing on the servers.
Just saying. Something shouldn’t be implemented if it can’t be reliable.
The ORS, as much as some players stress its importance, isn’t a key feature on AS. Sure, the internal demand calculation depends on it, but the availability of the tool to the playerbase to check their connections is not a core function of the ORS. It’s an additional service to make checking your competition easier, when available.
In the many years I’ve played AS, I’ve never used the ORS for anything other than support requests (yes, we do get questions along the line of "why isn’t AAA-BBB not getting booked"), and I think my airlines are doing okay (considering the small amount of time I have available to actually invest in them).
Perhaps martin is right, and perhaps there should be a poll: Do you want the ORS if it means only having access to it whenever the server isn’t chewing on something?
As things stand, the ORS availability isn’t going to change. With all the things being worked on, it’s not currently a high priority of its own (unlike other server performance issues such as the recent problem with Tempelhof). As Martin said: Take it or leave it.
I still maintain there should be two ORS’. One for making the game work. One for player lookups. The one for player lookups can be updated less often… perhaps once per hour or something.
I share Tallman’s and ToiletDuck’s frustration. I think it is a sign that perhaps newer players need the feature more. I have read in these forums that the ORS is an intrigal part of the game play and strategy decision making.
One of the frustrating things about Airline Sim in general is that you cannot see how anything works before you do it. For example: You cannot see how many seats fit in an aircraft before you buy/lease it and configure it. You cannot see ratings of a proposed flight before you schedule it. And even after you schedule it, you can not see how it compares to the competition, because the ORS does not work well. It’s all very frustrating.
That said, I understand that maintaining and updating extremely large databases like these must be complicated. this is still the most comprehensive airline planning game on the market, and I am glad it is here. But I think all players would benefit from more visibility, and the ORS is supposed to be a key part of that.
Obviously you are right, but there is no way to solve the problem at the moment. I’m not sure if you really understand the work an ORS has to do - how can a “2nd ORS” be updated only once a hour? You want us really to program a tool, updating each possible connection each hour??? This one would need 16 hours to calculate - only a rough guess 
I never used the ORS in a serious way in 4 1/2 years of playing. So what do you talk so much about it? It’s maybe the most useless feature - or the only useless feature. Anyways, I think it doesn’t even show the reality of connections going on! ^^
Hi,
the club once had a plane with a speed indicator problem. The technician cleaned the pitot tube and I took off for a circuit around the field. Does that mean the pitot tube and speed indicator are useless ? No, it simply means that I knew the plane and flew by intuition, kept an eye on the slats (that automatically open near stall speed) and compared the indicated speed with what I would expect with certain engine and flap settings.
The ORS is a valuable tool. I used it a lot when I started playing the game and I can only advise new players to use it to their advantage.
I think what Tim said is meaningful… he is an experienced player who rarely uses the ORS. But when a new player has a problem with empty flights, he checks these flights on the ORS
Jan
SK:
I did not realize it would take that long to duplicate. I have seen other systms (non-game related) perform a similar function, but I am not technical at all.
However, I think we have a misunderstanding, and perhaps I am not describing it well. "ORS2" would be merely a duplicate of the running ORS as of some moment in time. I am not suggesting ORS2 hold all the data and then try to process it all at once on some interval. Instead, I am suggesting that at some interval ORS be "copy and pasted" to ORS2. Then, in theory, when users query the ORS, it would really hit the ORS2 database. This would leave the real ORS to churn out the game, and users would have more regular access to the data by using a second database.
Having said that, I have no idea what the time frame on the "copy/paste" process would be or the feasibility. All I know is that I have seen real-world systems use this archetecture where an on-going live database lives, but users need some kind of reporting mechanism, and it is not convenient to run against the live database. The live data base (in my example, "ORS"), other than the periodic "copy/paste" procedure is left to perform its function. All user queries are drawn off the copied data (in my example "ORS2").
Clearly, trying to process all the data currently done moment by moment in some larger periodic batch would never work.
I agree - this is not a short term fix. This would likely require a significant update to solve. I am not sure if there is an easy (or easier) solution - perhaps there is. If so, it has not been discussed publicly. I would welcome a different solution that makes the ORS useful.
I don’t use the ORS often, mostly because it is a frustrating experience every time. I feel that I would use it more if it were more accessible. I tend to use it when I need to diagnose some change that I cannot see elsewhere. For example, if I have a flight that suddenly loses a bunch of passengers, after I check other screens for fare changes, capacity additions, etc, I try to look at the ORS to see if my competitor somehow changed their ratings. I have found this useful on occasions. Clearly some users feel this is an issue, as there are regular posts about the ORS and its functionality.
As written before it is not that easy The ORS is not only the request of data from the database, it is also combining the possible flights, judging them and sort them - that need a lot of memory on the server and working progress. Of course you could mirror the database - but this can only be done in the data centre otherwise it would need us some hours and in this time the update will get a backlog too. And to mirror a server we need a technique which is not affordable with the current credit level/credit consumption - and there is no forecast when it might ever be.
Ors is very important to someone such as myself who jumped into a server that was already full and had to deal with the challenges of fixing new markets to fly into. Right now I’m having to add bases and simply create new routes. “take it or leave it” is not something someone should say to their customer base. I’ll probably be leaving it once my credits run out.
Perhaps you could add an additional system that works independent of ORS simply yo search routes without having to go through the conveluted process of adding it as a base and creating a route to see how much traffic it has.
Either way the original posters statement was that “ORS sucks” because it can’t be used most the time. Which is accurate. Telling him he doesn’t really need it doesn’t change te fact it still sucks lol.