I sat down and did a dedicated Multi session on ATAG tonight!

[ATAG_Septic]

Originally Posted by pupo162

ATAG is probably the best server around but it has a huge issue. its on the other side of the world, and my entire squad based on europe has 200+ ping. this makes the game really hard, so we end up doing bomb sorties alone on our server without nobody to fight.

if only there was an Atag-europe, or other server where people would go in Europe...

Hi Pupo,

I and a few others connect from Europe without significant problem. I wonder whether you could expand on the issues you experienced as it should not be a game-stopper from UK at least.

It seems from UK around 130 ping is typical. This in itself has not caused any issue for me. There are a few problems with connection though on occasion. I have no expertise whatsoever in this field but I understand there are fundamental omission from the game in that there is no Net code yet for the server admins to tinker with. The server also has a very high capacity but can only use a fraction of the bandwidth it has because of a Steam or game restriction.

When the server is busy I do see some lag but whatever the cause this is also experienced by my colleagues who live close to Chicago. If all players were in Chicago I imagine it would probably be fine but still have the odd problem when sixty people are on.

Bliss or someone similarly knowledgeable can explain this with much more clarity but I know he expects some difficulty when the population goes much above fifty. [edit, 50 is probably fine, I think it takes a few more, nearer to 80 before there are bandwidth probs]

Don't give up old chap, it's certainly playable and enjoyable from Western Europe. There are a growing band of Antipodean players who are having some fun, although I'm sure they have a few problems. I understand their ping is often around 300?

Cheers,

Septic.

[pupo162]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Septic

Hi Pupo,

I and a few others connect from Europe without significant problem. I wonder whether you could expand on the issues you experienced as it should not be a game-stopper from UK at least.

It seems from UK around 130 ping is typical. This in itself has not caused any issue for me. There are a few problems with connection though on occasion. I have no expertise whatsoever in this field but I understand there are fundamental omission from the game in that there is no Net code yet for the server admins to tinker with. The server also has a very high capacity but can only use a fraction of the bandwidth it has because of a Steam or game restriction.

When the server is busy I do see some lag but whatever the cause this is also experienced by my colleagues who live close to Chicago. If all players were in Chicago I imagine it would probably be fine but still have the odd problem when sixty people are on.

Bliss or someone similarly knowledgeable can explain this with much more clarity but I know he expects some difficulty when the population goes much above fifty.

Don't give up old chap, it's certainly playable and enjoyable from Western Europe. There are a growing band of Antipodean players who are having some fun, although I'm sure they have a few problems. I understand their ping is often around 300?

Cheers,

Septic.

yest its still playable, but is a bit of an immersion maker, to be forming up a bomber squad, and then suddently everyone jsut jumps 50 meters to another location.

Is also an issue to have fighters jumping a bit around. this are sporadic issues of course.

im not giving up tough, its better than ever now. im pretty sure when more people start showign up an eruropean server will arise, without compromising the 40+ people on ATAG.

[JG52Krupi]

Originally Posted by pupo162

yest its still playable, but is a bit of an immersion maker, to be forming up a bomber squad, and then suddently everyone jsut jumps 50 meters to another location.

Is also an issue to have fighters jumping a bit around. this are sporadic issues of course.

im not giving up tough, its better than ever now. im pretty sure when more people start showign up an eruropean server will arise, without compromising the 40+ people on ATAG.

Odd I fly ATAG from the UK and don't see aircraft jumping around, but I do have a very good internet connection.

[ATAG_Septic]

Originally Posted by pupo162

yest its still playable, but is a bit of an immersion maker, to be forming up a bomber squad, and then suddently everyone jsut jumps 50 meters to another location.

Is also an issue to have fighters jumping a bit around. this are sporadic issues of course.

im not giving up tough, its better than ever now. I'm pretty sure when more people start showing up A Eruropean server will arise, without compromising the 40+ people on ATAG.

I couldn't put up with that either old chap but it's rare for me. I have no idea about how lag-spikes occur precisely. Maybe Krupi has a point about his good connection? Maybe more dedicated European servers will spring up if the current progress with the game is maintained?

Let's hope so

Septic.

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by pupo162

yest its still playable, but is a bit of an immersion maker, to be forming up a bomber squad, and then suddently everyone jsut jumps 50 meters to another location.

Is also an issue to have fighters jumping a bit around. this are sporadic issues of course.

Sounds like not a ping issue but packet loss issue (connection quality). There are certain programs that can monitor packet losses. Do not know which ones exactly.

[Blackdog_kt]

I'm in SE Europe and i usually have pings around 200, only yesterday was a bit higher.

I think Septic is correct though, it seems that the server is somehow throttled because of Steam or the sim itself.

I've listened to the ATAG admins on TS talking about it a few times, saying that the server is capable of streaming data at a much higher rate than its monitoring tools show it currently is. Also, whenever we drop to single digit FPS (it happens once every hour or so with a lot of people on and lasts for 5-10 seconds at most), it happens simultaneously for everyone.

This points to a network/bandwidth management issue. If it was problems specific to our installation or PC setup it wouldn't be happening to everyone at the same time. Bliss said that their server is sitting very close to or directly on top of one of the main backbones, which gives it good connectivity to almost the entire world.

It seems as if it's an occasional server side hiccup, since it affects people simultaneously, it affects players that have no FPS/stability problems otherwise and the server shows low bandwidth utilisation.

That being said, it's a great place to fly with helpful and friendly pilots, as well as admins who took the time to weather the initial storm, tinker and experiment with missions and scripts when almost nobody did (the other such server that was active from the start was Repka).

Plus, small problems like these are just that, small, and don't take away from the big picture. For the most part it's a very stable environment, i've been there with 90+ people flying last week and it was not a problem.

I don't fly online much, but lately i try to join in for a Saturday night session each week and it's a blast.

[furbs]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

I've listened to the ATAG admins on TS talking about it a few times, saying that the server is capable of streaming data at a much higher rate than its monitoring tools show it currently is. Also, whenever we drop to single digit FPS (it happens once every hour or so with a lot of people on and lasts for 5-10 seconds at most), it happens simultaneously for everyone.

Hmmm, maybe that's cause of my CTD?
Anyone else on ATAG TS say that's the moment that they CTD?

I was on for just over a hour last night and everything was perfect until then, FPS was great and almost no stutters.

[Gromic]

Hi Bliss,

quick one for you. To disable skin downloads, is the variable in the confs.ini still "SkinDownload=0", within the NET group, as it was in IL-2 or has this changed?

I'd like to disable this on the ACG server to remove the occasional half second lag spike when new players join the server.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers

Gromic

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by furbs

Hmmm, maybe that's cause of my CTD?
Anyone else on ATAG TS say that's the moment that they CTD?

I was on for just over a hour last night and everything was perfect until then, FPS was great and almost no stutters.

Could be the case.

Since some patches ago i would never get CTDs online, apart from the twin engine bug we had in the previous version which got fixed for me with the alpha.

With the hotfix i've had 3 CTDs so far in 15+ hours of gameplay. One was in such a moment of very low FPS but i don't know if it was just me or the FPS drop happened to other players too.

The other 2 CTD's i've had were not a big deal, as in both cases i had finished 2-3 bomber sorties (about 40 minutes to an hour each) and was taking a break with the game idling on some menu screen.

So overall, it is much improved for me and since i'm a tinkerer by nature, i believe it's better for the alpha to crash and provide them logs with bugs to fix, than have them slip by undetected.
I even try to make it crash so i can have logs to send them, i upped my texture resolution to high in order to strain my PC a bit

Then again, my PC is a bit low on RAM (only 3GB) so it's not irrational for me to occasionally stuggle with memory use.

Originally Posted by Gromic

Hi Bliss,

quick one for you. To disable skin downloads, is the variable in the confs.ini still "SkinDownload=0", within the NET group, as it was in IL-2 or has this changed?

I'd like to disable this on the ACG server to remove the occasional half second lag spike when new players join the server.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers

Gromic

There is an option in your in-game settings under the network category. I don't remember the exact name of it but its something self-explanatory. It's just a checkbox and you can click it to turn skin download on/off on your end.


P.S.
I was flying yesterday with a ping that was between 200 and 400 (i took note of it when exiting/rejoining the server between missions). No problems whatsoever with that kind of ping, no warping of planes, etc.
Since there were fewer of us around it seems to confirm the initial suspicions: it's not so much the ping that matters (as long as ping is stable you can fly with high pings too), it seems to be some kind of unintentional throttling issue on the server software that becomes apparent when many people are flying.

[ATAG_Bliss]

Originally Posted by Gromic

Hi Bliss,

quick one for you. To disable skin downloads, is the variable in the confs.ini still "SkinDownload=0", within the NET group, as it was in IL-2 or has this changed?

I'd like to disable this on the ACG server to remove the occasional half second lag spike when new players join the server.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers

Gromic

Hi Gromic,

You have to add it to your confs.ini. Just add "SkinDownloads = 0" to the [Net] section and it should work - just like 46.