Can Hardware Influence Performance?

[Ovy]

  This has been buggering me for some time...

  Whenever I am flying online I find that my plane is having less performance than the similar ones. I tried it several times only to make sure it wasn't related to fine tuning of the plane. Shortly - if I fly alongside the same aircraft using exactly the same settings ( fuel, payload, throttle, pitch, rads, trims - the whole bunch) I am slightly (but noticeable) loosing against it. The same applies when climbing or turning...

Can that be related to the performance of my computer ? or is it me doing ?

 

Oh, by the way ...I will not take "buy a new computer" for an answer ...or maybe I should start saving some money ...I forgot to mention i'm running XP

 

~S~

Ovy

 

[delta7]

The short answer is no, your computer specs should not the cause. IL2 is so old that even medium grade computers run it well.

You can check by pressing SHIFT+TAB keys to bring up the consol and typing

fps START SHOW

this will show your frames per second and should be smooth if you have vsync enabled. compaire online and offline performance, post back with figures aspecially when you run the black death track

It might be your internet connection, if this isnt smooth then you might get slight lag and see planes zoom away but this would be errratic and you would see the green bars on your screen go up and down. Another way to check is to use a program called pingplotter   http://www.pingplotter.com/ run this and put the dogz server in and see if your pings are smooth

 

For smooth fast flying one of the main things you should watch is pitch, even small errors of pitch up will have a big effect.

watch your instruments , make sure the ball is centred so no slip

 

hope this helps

[Ovy]

Thanks m8, I can only think at decreasing the sensitivity of the joystick , maybe a very slight movement of the control surfaces (unwillingly or not seeable) induces little drag which causes the loss of speed. Or maybe I am too rough on controls too. Or both of them...

)

 

~S~

[gec]

thing is if u follow AI he always have better trimmed plane than you. also always when following you are making small corrections to stay in the same position related to the leader. those small corrections slow your plane down. That's why leading plane in the formation should never fly with 100% throttle cause others will have problem following. In my experience, for a good formation in the flight of four or more leader can not go over 85% of throttle. 

[Perfesser]

When you lead a flight can the rest keep up with you at your settings?

I find nobody can use the same settings as the flight leader and keep up.

Last plane in the flight is the worst, seems it never has the power of the leaders plane. If I take the #4 I'm almost at 100 just to keep up to his 80/80.

 

I wonder how the lead planes from 2 different flights would compare? Seems like something fun to test.

[T_O_A_D]

This has been in existence since the onset of this Game.

 

Leader of the flight when in formation, always has to pull back throttle to no more than 80percent it works better at 70 percent to allow the rest of the flight enough throttle responses to maintain a formation.

 

It even does it in Clod, ROF another developer also has this problem, but not at noticeable.

 

Why? Who knows it often makes me wonder how we ever catch the bogies???

 

As mentioned above, but I'll try to clarify.

 

If your game is making 30fps or more on and average, your hardware is not causing you a problem to affect game play.

 

Once your machine is at that level you only need to worry about your connection and packet loss.

 

This can be anything from your ISP, Nodes along the way, or even your Net settings in the game.

 

But it will be noticeable as warp of objects and aircraft in the game.

 

Like when your in formation and your wing-man's aircraft is rubber banding back and forth beside you from a quiver to several simulated feet.

 

Quiver is a small amount of net lag the larger amount is more net lag.

 

IMO in game Net setting should not be over 10,000 I've proved several times through the years, with several Server admins.

 

We tried it at 100,000 the last Seow and had nothing but troubles with my warp.

 

Went back to 10,000 and so far every server I've been on has been smooth.

 

The df.dangerdogz.com:21000 server setting are 10,000 I get 135 ping to it, located in France, if I change my net speed to 100,000 I get warp terrible warp.

 

But if I set my settings the same 10,000 its smooth as silk. Work through it with FT the other day to confirm.

 

Il2 server and clients try to share the same amount of info in the same amount of time, from my understanding.

 

Lets say the server sends out 100 pounds a minute the client will want to receive that 100pounds in whole, in that one minute.

 

If the Server/Client sends that 100pounds out in one bill and it gets lost both Server and Client loose. =Big warp

 

But if the Server/Client sends it out in 10 pound increments, and only 1 shipment gets lost neither of them loose as much. = quiver

 

Ideally all 10 shipments make it through and everybody is happy for that one minute.

 

And if One of them is sending out at 100,000 and the other is sending at 10,000 it just causes an imbalance of all if it.

 

The thing is if the server/client has a great connection it can handle the larger number, but not all Server/Clients do have, so its best to assume no one has a super connection and get them all to run at the lower speed of 10,000 so it's network traffic among all is more balanced.

 

Sort of went out in the deep end there, and went over and beyond the answer to your question but its out of me LOL

[Ovy]

Thank you all, i have a much better idea on it now... looks like i'm not the only one noticing that. And  the game has its limitations from the real thing.

~S~

Ovy

[B16Enk]

Packet loss will always occur.

 

It is UDP to keep the payload down (less over head for delivery guarantee and management) so it is best endeavours to deliver, and no receipt required.

 

Bit like special/signed for delivery - that is what TCP does, recipient has to sign for the packet and sender is notified of delivery.

 

With UDP if packet gets lost there is no resend, and as T_O_A_D so ably put it, the larger the packet the bigger the loss if it is not delivered. Minimal packet size, as low as you can get it, is ideal.

It will have a knock on effect, both systems have to process more packets, and each does have a slight overhead in the delivery/addressing part of the packet.

 

Big packets will reduce that a small amount, only one address label for a hundred pages vs 100 address labels for 100 pages sent individually.

 

Current hardware, from CPU to NIC can all handle this extra overhead without breaking a sweat.

 

The old rule of thumb used to be set it to 56k (10,000?) and it was found to be perfect.

 

Shocked to see that people are trying to re-invent this without a full grasp of what it is they are trying to do.

[FoolTrottel]

Thanks for this Rog.

Finally someone who can use the right wording so it makes sense...

 

Me thinks Gec should read this...

Packet loss will always occur.

(...)

Shocked to see that people are trying to re-invent this without a full grasp of what it is they are trying to do.

[gec]

well, to spam Olys post all the way...

 

yep gec did read this. to me It is also shocking how many people there it is that believe they figured it all out. including me.

 

i also have read a lot a bout the subject (nothing was definite about it) and spent many hours testing different scenarios. and found something that is logic to me and it seams to work. for our US friends it is to be expected to have at least some lag due to the high ping. i did not hear people from europe complaining about the lag.

 

about the udp and the 10k or 100k. udp is kind of protocol that does not recheck it packet and just drops them. and it is also true that the bigger the chunk the bigger the loss. 

 

but what the speed has with the size of the chunks? i did not find anywhere that the chunks are bigger with the speed. as far as i know they just go out more often with the greater speed. what i've learned is that the speed should not be to small nor to big. with the average upload speeds that are way higher than it was in the time the game came out, and increased number of players per server, it is logical to me that the speed setting should be adjusted accordingly. 

 

but yes. i am discovering hot water all over again. cause everything i've read so far about the subject and compared to the knowledge i have about networking, did not give me explanation good enough for me to fully understand how this speed thing works.

[B16Enk]

http://dangerdogz.com/forums/topic/460-flying-sunday-july-9/page-2#entry4100

 

Some stuff there from Sparx who ran Warbirds.

[T_O_A_D]

Yes Sparx is one of the old originals that I help test this stuff with years ago, He also helped when we were filming and had 99 players for some of the Mysticpuma movies.

[gec]

http://dangerdogz.com/forums/topic/460-flying-sunday-july-9/page-2#entry4100

 

Some stuff there from Sparx who ran Warbirds.

 

interestingly enough, but this post represents exactly how i feel about it and again, explaines nothing why he thinks this is like it is. only thing is speeds are today much higher than before.

 

i find this, how to call it, guide?, opinion?, ... much more useful from the server point of view although also not 100% clear.

 

reading through it again and i see that i did misunderstand something and mathematically the best speed for the clients really would be 10k just like Toad said. But what would that mean to the Coop server? This is not a DF server that has server settings (confs.ini) where i can control client connections. SEOW server is a standard game with the  client conf.ini. 

[FoolTrottel]

Me thinks the same key in conf.ini ( speed=<value> ) is in order for the SEOW Server : it is basically a client that hosts a mission, is it not?

[gec]

yes. but clients need to set their speed to a value that combined with the number of clients does not exceed servers capabilities. that's why client speed is set to 56k (10000) although clients actually have much faster connections.

 

what that means for the server? should it be matched to the clients or it has to have it's speed set to real upload speed? in mi case 100000 (10Mb connection)?

[B16Enk]

Nope. Server should be set to match the client. When there is a difference between server setting and client setting, this is when lag and warp occurs.

[gec]

k. wi'll try it that way to. but i really doubt this will fix the lag that few has. like Sparx said, it is imossible to fix everyones problems. on the last mission client speed (well most of them) was set to 100k same like the server and max upload actually never exided 4Mb

[T_O_A_D]

The idea is to force the Server/Clients to the weakest link (IE) connection, then rely on the  Hardware to crunch the numbers at the required flow of things.

 

We all have machines built within the last 5 years most likely, and we all have some sort of broadband connection.

 

So we have the hardware to crunch the numbers no problem. Broadband's biggest advantage is it  allows more players/moving objects per game/mission.

 

Oleg had it right enough in the beginning to handle 20 players on 56k, now days those kind of speeds would just piss us all off.

 

Whether he changed the way the game handles the net traffic since then I do not know. But the same settings appear to still work. 10k/10k regardless of advancements in hardware and connections through the years.

 

If you still have clients affected by warp etc. from that point, then we need to double check that clients, Net speed setting in conf.ini, and if it is correct we need to find out that persons true connection speeds, and packet loss. It may well be that that individual just doesn't have enough connection speed/bandwidth to handle the traffic of 40+ clients connected to him.

 

I've had 30 machines networked together at LAN parties 8 to 10 years ago, and the 100,000 worked fine, but when allowing friends from around the world join in to the LAN party on my 5meg IIRC connection back then we had to drop it back to 10,000

 

It's got to be a language barrier here, I can't beleive were having so much trouble with this conversation and the understanding of it.

[B16Enk]

Just do 10,000 on everything.

 

Key is all parts in the chain need to be the same.

 

And it is not server is 100,000 with 10 users @ 10,000

 

Server sends big packets to clients expecting smaller packets = warp.

[gec]

i understand that part Rog. but u also saying to the server: "mi speed is max 10000" that'll make hem divide 10 000 on 60 players. that's at least how i see it. DF server is built to serve. On the DF server netspeed is where u say what is a max client can draw from the server. On the other hand, coop is just a client working as a server. 

 

just as Sparx saiz: if we all would have lag problems, than that would be a server problem. but that's not the case.

 

i'm not going against you guys. just making you see the thing from my perspective. once i have enough info i'll maybe stop

[B16Enk]

Ah..

 

It is not 'max speed' it is the packet size.

 

As Todd said above, if on a local LAN you could set that way high because all are directly connected on equal speeds, and have near 100% reliability so there won't be much (if any) packet loss.

 

As soon as you introduce switches and routers, along with distance, into the equation the likely hood of packet loss rises.

 

It is how this packet loss impacts the client losing the packet that matters, as well as of course the server in turn missing packets from some clients.

 

Think of it this way:

 

Packets are broken up into 1500 byte chunks (MTU size) so a 63k packet would be 47+ chunks, if one chunk gets lost the whole packet is lost. The bigger the packet (going to the 100,000 size for example) means more fragmentation and re-assembly, and increased opportunity for a chunk loss and total package rejection.

 

So small packet = less position update loss in event of one or more chunks going AWOL = less perceived warp.

Big packets = much more position update loss for AWOL chunks = greater perceived warp (not to add that there is increased chance of this occurring).

 

With the above it could be reasoned to make the packets as small as possible, and only monitoring of performance stats on CPU would reveal if there is benefit.

 

Yes a server can send out larger packets than clients do, and yes this will work. But those packets will still be subjected to the same fragmentation thresholds mandated by the lowest MTU size in the network - generally set to 1500 bytes.

 

FT experimented with Todd on our DF server that has a 100/100 connection running co-ops I believe they found lower was better.

[delta7]

as the guys have said while other players can influence what you see e.g. induce lag with print screen, wingtip smoke rapid flashing of lights it is more than likely your internet settings and connection that is at fault.

make sure no-one else is using wi-fi to your pc when playing, make sure no programs are updating automatically e.g. anti-virus and windows and then post your results from ping plotter to the dogz server.

 

The most important measure  is to see if the end host was reached without excessive latency or packet loss. If it is reached without problems appearing at the end host itself, then any apparent issues in the route in between are irrelevant, and may be due to low priority or rejection of ICMP ping requests in the route. Any issue seen in a traceroute that does not carry through to the end host (e.g. packet loss or increased latency) is not a real issue. Any issue that does carry through, however (that is, starts at one hop and happens at all the subsequent hops), may be an issue with the route.

 

In my opinion, for gaming,  under 100 is best , anything over 300 is problimatic , however there is very little you can do about high pings unless the cause is the first hop. this is the link from your pc to your service provider hub, called the bam server. IF the fault is here then you should contact them and get hem to trouble shoot the problem. If you are on dial=up then it could be your phone line, the phone junction or the server is overloaded and you would need to check all of these out.

 

here is my results and I get no lag