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

[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.

[furbs]

About the skins, is there no way to allow JUST stock skins? would be better than seeing every plane painted the same way.

[Gromic]

Thanks for the feedback Blackdog

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

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.

The ACG Server runs within a dedicated server environment. It's started with the command "launcher.exe -server" effectively giving you console instead of a GUI.

I'll check to see if any GUI settings met will also be forced on a dedicated server environment.

Thanks

[ATAG_Doc]

The last dll file fixed my CTD issue. Could not reproduce it at all in several hours of online play. I never single play any more. It could be removed from the code as far as I am concerned. But I believe my CTD is done.

[ATAG_Doc]

Originally Posted by Gromic

Thanks for the feedback Blackdog



The ACG Server runs within a dedicated server environment. It's started with the command "launcher.exe -server" effectively giving you console instead of a GUI.

I'll check to see if any GUI settings met will also be forced on a dedicated server environment.

Thanks

In the client settings - the people that connect to it??? They will disable it under network settings.

[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.