Sunflower

If you fly a coop with Billfish you'll end up with a naked lady in your cache.

I seem to be able to host now.

170-200m, unless I might be strafing, then 250m.

Thank you sir. I think I'll put in a router, I want the NAT security but I'm going to play with this anyway... I can connect to a game, or at least I could before I messed with it, just couldn't host.

I can't believe he's missed this, I know he was up. Definitely PM him.

Thanks Rog.

I'm there, my level of incompetence! With the help of the phone tech I assigned my machine a static IP and DNS, I assume that's the internal IP I'm directing 21000 towards? What's the internal port number mean? 21000 only?

I was just about to set my cannons at the range the good HL shooters are using, Dave, just to see if I could train myself to hit out there. Mine are set anywhere from 170 to 220 for most, 250 for .50cal. I try to nevery open fire over 300 meters, for me that's really pushing it, 200 is about where I start to be able to hit.

Nice job Doubletap!! Dave, nice work with the tip stall through the whole fight, right up until it didn't quite work out...!

Oh you guys, soap and water works just fine for what you're thinking. It was taken to be part of the photographic proof that The Professor has dusted off his cleats. I suppose a can of chain lube is right out?

Just give me another year or two Jensenpark, I'm sure it'll happen. BG, as long as your doctor writes you a note saying it OK, but not before. That's Pedro's chain degreaser, a leftover from my other life as a punk bike racer. I had to stop when I my deltoids atrophied to the point of no longer being able to lift my bike atop the car.

Do you think I can get a job on a game show presenting prizes?

sorry to be so late, just made it back to my hut in time to try, I'll fly either side.

That was excellent but it was too short, like all good rides. When can we go again??

Very early last Friday morning my computer had an accident during a boot-time defrag, I believe. Upon restarting I could no longer stay connected to the satellite network. Calls to techsupport resulted, eventually, in the information that the satellite my dish points toward was having issues and they were going to assume that was causing my problem. That was Friday afternoon. Sunday night I return, same issue is still present. I call back, straight through to advanced support with my special PIN number, and a fellow tells me I have a bad TX. After finding out the closest technician is in either Minnesota or Illinois I decide to work the problem more myself. Out comes the old Dell I use in emergencies. It connects fine. I call tech support back and ask, "don't you think there's a software issue with the first computer?" He says, "no, that's an intermittent problem, it will come back, you should have your TX replaced." "But, but, that just doesn't make any sense," I say, doing my best Johnny Cochoran. I hung up and started dragging My Docs, skin folder and such to the D: partition and rebooted to get the F11 prompt for the recovery manager. 20 minutes later I'm sitting at my computer as it was 3 weeks ago and its connected to the satellite just fine. I used Acronis True Image Home 9.0. This can be purchased from Newegg for 30 bucks. If your machine runs nicely right now and you've got 30 bucks you can spare this could pay for itself at any moment. If I don't screw it up too badly, I think this means I don't have to reformat and reload windows again until this drive dies!

But that's my point, the pipeline can't be full if each client only needs 1.5 kbps. Its not a connection issue but a timing issue within the game code. As we discovered with BG's setup, its stability that is key, not bandwidth. Just because a p;ayer can ASK for more bandwidth because a player has a strong connection doesn't mean its needed or used and perhaps that's what's causing the timing problem- not a full pipe but too many that are nearly empty and they compete for a limited time window into which the packets must go if no warping is to happen. Perhaps turning the client speeds down gives more people a turn at a proper link with the server. If 1.5kbps gives seamless gameplay and each client is only asking for that (or 3.0) then we're not limited by the bandwidth in any sense. Consider this: when I ask for more bandwidth than I can use, MY gameplay deteriorates. I'll hazard a guess that anyone can get seamless gameplay at NET=2500. Those comments about the US aren't flaming, they're fact. The state of telecommunications in the United States is simply terrible and unlikely to get any better until the utility companies can roll out their product. The Telecom Act of 1996 caused an absolutely epic amount of capital to be wasted and the balance sheets and nerves of the players are only just beginning to recover. Balancing the interests of the bond holders in the SONET ring telecom gear with the interests of moving into the 21st century is the sort of thing that can get politicians excited to go to work. You'd have to kill off all the old ma Bell bondholders to actually make progress and it just isn't going to happen if not at the point of a gun. We have politicians who'd like to make the internet captive to each provider in this country- like a cable network. So it could actually get worse. I'm thinking that Roger is on the right track. Our boxes get bogged down running hardware shaders, etc and the timing of the packets becomes impossible to execute smoothly. I have an X800XL and its not up to Perfect in my estimation but I see people on the UBI forum say that they play in Perfect with the card at the same resolution that I do. I can't take the little stutters, even offline. There's no complaint about your rig Sged, we see this on more powerful machines too.

Roger, are you understanding what it is that makes all that bandwidth necessary when it does appear that a very small amount is actually necessary? People said, "don't worry, dialup will play fine" and they were exactly right. At 26.6 kbps I can play for hours without seeing a warp or lag and not once has anyone complained that I'm hard to hit. Seems like 14mbps wouldn't be necessary but apparently it is. Is that to have enough bandwidth to supply all the clients who are demanding a LAN speed connection?

If you click on the top slot in a coop room you'll be the host, so its available at all times for anyone with the game. Not having enough bandwidth to host, that's all I know about it. Ah yes, Knutsac, that is what my HL experience is, too. Its a fine thing in moderate doses because you get better but its so one-dimensional in terms of what happens that as entertainment it goes dry in a couple hours for me. Certainly good for learning what works and what doesn't.

I didn't realize that the ded server wouldn't run coops, I wonder why it is that CI has himself set up that way? and how he gets those results without making everyone turn their connection speed down? The gameplay on his server is excellent with many players and I think several of our players have machines that are pretty much top-of-the line. We should be able to get it going. "As far as going to hyperlobby or whatever, I guess I am not opposed to it, but wouldn't we then be at the mercy of someone else's game settings, mission choices, etc.?" Well, sort of, except that there are so many servers that you can find just about anything you want in terms of settings. As far as missions go, a dogfight map will often have ground targets that must be destroyed to "win the map." In this sense, its like the D-Day missions of DoubleTap's that proved to be quite a bit of fun. The up-side is that nobody sits around waiting AND there is something that lends coherance to the game- a goal. Some, if not most, HL flyers can't be bothered with that sort of stuff and simply hunt whatever they can. Consider them "uber AI." Each map stays "up" for an hour or two and then the next map "rotates" into play. Some maps I like quite a bit and when some come up I leave. If I understand correctly, the maps rotate in order so it would be possible to pick map that would lend itself to our group and arrive en masse just as the map comes up in the rotation. Again, its really quite a bit like what we saw with DoubleTap's stuff. Good fun and it doesn't have to be the only thing we do. Out of a 5-6 hour session, perhaps 1/3 could be spent on one HL df map. We could publish the settings/planesets/goals of each map and take a poll to see which one people would like to fly. Plenty of planes for groundpounding, for sure. This of course is a way 'round the server problem, not a solution. My tastes have evolved towards smooth gameplay over eye-candy and I play 1280-1024/excellent settings at all times. Might have a bit of a trouble getting Quazi to play that way- he thinks the water looks like outdoor carpet!

Sorry I couldn't stay yesterday, no sooner signed in than life called. 1) Roger's certainly aware of the problems with hosting we're having: a couple weeks ago he had everyone turn down their connection settings to ISDN to take some load off the server. Not sure it helped but it may be a battle of inches to get things right. On dialup, the stability of my ping is absolutely related to getting that setting right. If I turn it up above 2500 I immediately lose the optimum results. I had wondered if me, being the sole dialup victim at these things, was causing the problem. BTW, a truck from the telco is down the road now- it seems very likely I'll be on DSL sometime this year. HL servers routinely handle that many folks without trouble. I do wonder if its necessary to have the server running "in console" rather than generating the game AND an image for the monitor. Crazy Ivan's got a machine for hosting and he plays on another. My guess is that we need to go that direction. Something that would make me all hot and bothered would be to take a Sunday session to a HL server that features ground targets that move the map. Why not just take our party where the real fun is? We can use our own comms and fly in somebody else's sky. If we run into cheaters the strength in numbers could at least make it clear that that's what's happening. Some of those fighter jocks would probably love an chance to try to stop a squad intent on wiping out their ground targets with a coordinated effort. If we're half as good, we just need twice as many. When we've got that many players, our arrival would set the tone of the game, probably. If the host is running his graphic settings as high as he can offline and then hosts a game, I do wonder if that makes for real problems. The new clouds seem to be trouble. As a troubleshooting guess, I'm thinking that when we have that many folks the server should cut out the new clouds to see if that helps. 2) I practice taking off. I crash on takeoff about once every 3 months. When we get a big group together we need to assume a minimum level of ability that should include taking off. IMHO we're all old enough (except Emann, and he's older than his years anyway) to live with the consequences of our actions and decisions and if you're crashing on takeoff you should be able to accept that you're still climbing the learning curve. If its a big server and not a less formal get-together, leave the game and spend 15 minutes doing takeoffs in the plane you just crashed while your buddies fly the mission. Isn't that one sort of obvious? Focus is the key to success in anything. No restarts for takeoff accidents would probably serve to enhance focus. I realize there's a balance between friends getting together to relax with a game and having rules like this and I value the comeraderie far more than the gameplay but there needs to be a decent line someplace on this issue. To be clear, I don't mind restarting as much as the next guy. I'm quite sure because it never raises my blood pressure. We often sit down to play with a ton of other things on our minds (we do this to relax, right?) and that makes playing consistently well a challenge. As a general rule in my life, there is always something in the real world that needs 20 minutes of attention and when I goof up I try to get something like that out of the way and rejoin the next mission. Kelly seems to handle it this way often. Some of us aren't in that position and I'm sure the wait is annoying. 3) In my opinion this is good. Immersive. Looking around you is, after all, the basic fighter pilot skill. TrackIR whines not allowed. I have used it and its great but its NOTHING my mini-stick or hat switch can't do. Get over it and get your thumbs in the fight. 4) Breaking up the game into seperate channels helps with this. Also a fact of life using radio during WWII. Perhaps we're all too polite to those who jam the frequency without regard for the timing of their color commentary. This raises my blood pressure instantly. Its like somebody talking during your backswing at the tee. Do I have a personal problem? 5) I never leave a coop on HL because I've been killed and usually learn a trick by using externals. While we're not at that level, carefully watching how another pilot plays the game is usually instructive. Watching from externals on HL is a seat in a post doc class at Air Combat University. For me, it's part of the value I got when I bought the game. My two cents worth: I detest "Kill the Bot" missions in cooperative play. I get to play in time that doesn't fit into any real schedule and my choices are getting schooled on HL (if I can stay connected) or flying offline which, for me, is essentially shooting and bombing practice and has lost any attraction as an activity in and of itself. When I get together with my M8's I want a game experience I can't duplicate with my other play time, namely playing with and against other people. When we all mill about shooting at AI or groundpounding I'm reminded of a concept in child development- parallel play- where a group of children play with toys in proximity to each other but with no interaction. This is, I realize, just my opinion on this matter and where I'm "at" with the game and I apologize in advance for sitting out those missions: I don't mean to offend. Observation: perhaps the game has become Balkanized by all the squadrons. HL has about 1/3 of the players it did when PF came out. Showing up to play on HL as a group, if it became a habit, could lead to more players deciding that's the way to go. HL isn't a reliable place for finding coops. If we used HL as a way around our hosting difficulties we could be a brick in the wall to rebuild it as a place to meet other players for coops. Maybe extending some invitations to "fellows" like Seahawk, Billfish or Aviar to join us could help rebuild a coop community. What say ye?

I'm reasonably certain I've seen something like this TrueAim being used on Hyperlobby: no matter how well I'm shooting I can't bring down an Il-2 with an F-2 in the first few shots with any consistency and I'd need pen and paper to keep track of the number of times PUH=VANYA dropped a 15mm shell in the cockpit before I'd heard anything else and always from at least 500 meters. I'm also really sure that this is old news. Often when a couple ROSS players show up on a server it'll empty in minutes because people don't like playing against players that can't be beaten. I saw that happen over a year ago and many posters on the UBI forum had suggested it was already old news at that time. From what I've seen in the chatbar, I'm fairly certain that there is a political slant to all this: the users of these hacks take particular delight in pissing off Americans. When somebody complains that they're cheating they type "mommeeeee" in the chatbar. Seen it a dozen times at least and always from a player joining from Russia. I suspect these hacks make the users capable of using any view they want, perhaps making their own planes invisible, moving across the map instantaneously, etc. Like having a "god status" toggle. It also goes a long way in explaining what I thought was the most impressive display of airmanship I'd ever seen- tightly swirrling dogfights on the deck with the players typing insults at each other. I now realize nobody flies quite that well! What is amazing to me is that the hacks have been kept low-key for so long and that you CAN find servers where nobody appears to be cheating. This goes a long way in explaining why Bill and Joe at MagnumPC no longer play Il-2. HFC Batros is a cheater. I flew on his personal server from a HL slot and when he discovered I was an American all sorts of mysterious accidents started happening to my plane and when I'd be ready to line up a shot I'd be kicked from the server.