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

I've played some multi before, on and off, but tonight was the first time I've really sat down and played some Multiplayer.

1st, ATAG's server is absolutely kick @#$. There were 40+ players on when I joined (more than any server at any given time in IL2 1946 has had in a loooong time).

The current beta patch has really improved my performance, and my machine is pretty high end. I can see targets (dots) from pretty far out, and they begin to render with increasing LOD's much further than IL2 ever did. I was easily able to identify targets from close a 1KM out, much easier with larger targets.

Fir the first time, I had a ton of fun in this game doing something other than troubleshooting and playing quick mission.

I'm really excited for the future. YAY

Agree, these last two updates have made me quite optimistic.

So there's a workaround for the hotfix not showing serverlist?

Serverlist shows fine for me with the hotfix on, but you could always just do a direct connect.

When I logged on this morning there were 50 players on atag serve1 and 8 players on server 2. Server 2 not patched. Atag rocks,

S!

Enrages me not being able to fly as my Warthog is being fixed, waiting for a new one to arrive and that will take some time :( Sure could join ATAG as gunner for sure :D These 2 latest patches have taken CoD to the direction it was supposed to be from the beginning :)

I believe that was a Steam problem and not the game.

Make sure to join the atag ts3 server. Comms take it to another level.

Had a ball too
 

Jumped onto ATAG and had a blast. The hotfix is spot on. I didn't need to turn off grass etc, only clouds. It was great to be able to fly around enemy planes without any freezes at all. The whole time flying was smooth as.
It's definately on the right track. I reckon they can make the Beta/Alpha patch the official patch now, through Steam.

Won't be long and I'll be seeking an Aussie Squad again and get right into it. :grin:

Just give it some time to refresh the server list. First launch with the new minifix I though "damned where are the servers" as well. But after one or two minutes of waiting (may one time switching between LAN and back to Internet) it did the trick and the list appeared like normal. I guess it just needs some time to recreate itself after a patch. was the same with the first install of the ALPha patch

Yes, if switching to LAN and back to Internet does not help, create a your own server for a minute.

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.

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.

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.

Indeed, what ATAG with their server did (actually, they run two servers) was the best promotion for CoD and the best morale-boosting effort for all of us de-moralised IL2FB pilots when the CoD days looked really bad.

RESPECT & THANKS!

[and to the couple of other server-hosters, too]


~S~

Check out the Real Aussie Air Force (RAAF)

Great bunch of guys

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.

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.

Repka?

I hope we get an official patch soon.

I miss flying with you guys.

:(

You should just d/l the patch El, it works very well for most.

Hi Flanker,

You may want to try the Thrustmaster TM16000 stick (and keep it as a spare for when your repaired Warthog comes back). Not only is it relatively cheap at $41 (
http://www.amazon.com/Hercules-29607...6926188&sr=8-1) ---- it uses the same Thrustmaster TARGET programming software as the Warthog.

I have one as a spare. It's well made, uses Halls sensors for X- and Y- axis, and has a good feel to it.

Understandably, you may feel it's a waste of money to buy a 2nd stick when you already have one. If so -- so be it! :grin:

Pupo,

Trust me in saying you should be able to play IL2COD just like old IL246 with 400 ping without having any issues.

But as I've reported several times now, the netcode is broken. The game simply will not allow the server to stream all the bandwidth it wants to.

To give you an idea. Our server uses around 6% of the CPUs (we have a 12core monster) with 90+ players on the server. The server is basically sitting at idle running a full server of IL2COD. The bandwidth comes from one of the main trunk lines of the internet itself. It has a 10 GIGABYTE per second connection both upload and down. We are the epitome of overkill.

The netcode of the game is the problem. When it finally gets fixed, we'll see that 125 player massive online action. Until then, anything from the mission, to the number of objects, and number of players, all has a choke point before things will go to crap.

:shock: Who does your hosting?

Hesitant EL is hesitant...

In the past using betas would mess up the official install when it came out, as I recall. I'm not much for doing it over and over till I get it right anymore.

Or is this a non issue these days?

Oh, and what Doggles said... :shock::shock::shock:

If you want to take your game back to official just verify it in steam, it 'should' be problem free.

I personally would delete cache and then do a Steam Verify.

Hmmm....

Perhaps you will talk me into this.

Is Luthier aware of the netcode issues?

Im still waiting till that "125 player massive online action" becomes possible without issues.I have faith, not much but I certainly have it. :)

Some issues are reported in the bugtracker, but definitely not all. Please report and vote.

BTW netspeed per user can be defined in confs.ini file. Freezes can be connected to skin download if it is ON, especially if AV is set to scan all incoming files (exclusions list not defined).

Yes I always forget to say that!

Good move El, I hope that you have a strong rig. I was on ATAG and I had about a one third reduction in fps over off-line use. In fact I was near the French coast, spotted 2 Spits that spotted me. Tried extending away but with them behind me, I had a real slide show going on 1 fps...with all that going on, no CTD so I guess that's good...very disappointing though, the slide show that is. I'll have to do a major upgrade to be able to fly any combat on-line. :cool:

Well, I just flew the Spit IIa offline in the single mission over the channel.

No idea how it will be online.

I know I am a total n00b again. Flying IL2 and RoF in no way prepares you for CloD, I forgot how much better CloD is in the realism dept.

I'll venture online a bit later tonight, so you blues will have a nice easy target.

:cool:

Nuclear Fallout is where the server is. INTERNAP Network Services is the ISP. They are the ones that sell to companies who sell to companies who sell to companies to finally get down to home ISPs such as comcast, roadrunner, timewarner cable etc. They have a 10 terabyte per second connection and throttle us down to 10 gigabytes per second for their main users.

No point in doing a speed test as there isn't a free speed site out there that could handle that much data, but for giggles here's a .02 (the needle ran a split second before it stopped) test before it stopped lol. It's not about to run out of bandwidth playing any sort of online game ;)

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1949127027.png

I would hope so. I've commented on this and started several threads over the network stuff. Servers currently connect like clients (need steam running) and could be bogged down by steam as well. All I know is I can watch the problem happen in real time by monitoring bandwidth.

I don't believe the netspeed setting for client or server does anything tbh. I've tried anything from a netspeed = 1 - 10000000000000000 and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

When the game 1st came out we all suffered terrible FPS hits, could not disable skins on a server, etc. All those combined made the game a laggy mess online, considering FPS/netspeed go hand in hand. But as an analytical bastard, (I like problem solving), I took screenies of the bandwidth at the time. This is with over 100 people with one of the most original versions of the game almost a year ago. You'll notice it's streaming over 20mbps of upload - which I would find normal for the map size, the amount of players, etc.

Here's 100 people 1 year ago: (notice the graph looks normal not many spikes, jumps, etc. - this is how it should look) Notice it's streaming 21mbps of upload speed which I would consider normal for that many players.

http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/4...idthnormal.png

But today you reach a certain point and upload goes to crap (the important part) while server download keeps increasing. There's a choke point somewhere. Perhaps it's just down to finally getting some real dedicated server files that have settings. About the only thing a dedicated server can do in IL2COD atm is change difficulty settings and number of players. There's not really any other settings that work IMO.

This is what it looks like before it goes to crap: (around 45 players) So this still looks normal:

http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/4219/bandwidth1.jpg

I was going to post a graph of real time to show just how crappy/spikey the upload looked when things went south, but I sadly can't find where I saved it. Might have to do an edit later.

Edit: Here it is! Notice the upload spiking all over the place (not rising like it should) while download keeps going up and up. This is not normal! If there were more players in, it would have been better (shown far worse on the graph).

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/88/bandwidthbd.png

But needless to say, when the patch 1st came out the server had 99/99 players. It was streaming (not kidding) 2.6mpbs upload and 2.5mbps download. It was a mess and a far cry from the 20+mbps it should be at/using.

When this gets addressed/fixed things will definitely be able to pick up both for mission makers and servers. But until then there's only so much you can do.

For those wondering about the graphs. Upload is in green. Download is in blue. Those are pictures of graphs by the hour in real time. I also have weekly and monthly graphs as well. The big break in bandwidth in the second graph is during a mission end / server restart if anyone is wondering. But to me it's pretty obvious what 1 of the problems is.

I'm not going to complain about it though. I think these guys are on the right track with the latest patch and hotfix and all sorts of problems will be addressed in the coming weeks/months. Just have to be patient ;)

Well I went on ATAG Sunday night.

Went over an hour before launcher crash. I guess that's better. But still unsatisfactory.

If I do try again I'm going to fly Blue. No sense fighting in the RAF aircraft as they are now.

Still a very long way to go IMHO.

:(

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.

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

I'm not sure that they ever have any free time to read threads. This issue would be voted and become numeral uno on the bugtracker list, but no one ever listed it.

Roy, I look forward to that day, 125 players online will be epic!

Regarding euro lag I would have to guess it gets us all equaly, my ping is in the 20s and Im close to Chicago but the incidence of lag seems to hit me as much as my euro colleagues when the pilots fill up the server.

I'm sure the Dev's will take a look at that sooner or later;)


See ya in the air!

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 :-P

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.


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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Thanks Bliss. That's exactly what I needed to know.

Cheers

Gromic

Today I created a bugtracker issue about Server disconnects for Steam http://www.il2bugtracker.com/issues/303
Please everyone vote.

Bliss, could you create another one with all your net graphs please as I can hardly guess what it is all about. I am sure the devs do not usually read threads other than Patch thread and Bugs thread. B6 mentioned that they will visit the bugtracker more often when CTDs are gone (he was there this Sunday http://www.il2bugtracker.com/users/29 )

How much bandwidth per user your graphs shows? Ingame LAN setting is 100 000 bps or whatever per user AFAIK. Many use xDSL I think. Maybe overall server traffic is limited at user side. Just guessing.

Could spikes be skins upload?