LAN Lag

[GeorgeBoles 0]

Dear Folks,

 

I have just played my first game of MP via Lan against my son on his Vista laptop (nice new Toshiba Laptop something or other with Vista) and I have a newly built Intel E8500 3.16 Ghz with 4GB Ram and radeon 4870 1gb video card ... my first little luxuy computer. New install XP, with Office and HP printer programs, Norton antvirus and the as yet unused overclocking programs - the latter sitting in the system tray.

 

Hooked up via LAN, did the trick renaming cfs3.exe for Vista and flew.

 

But the lag was noticable ... even extreme with us hitting one another when our planes were CLEARLY pointing the wrong way. Had this with Red Baron too on my previous computer via LAN.

 

Where do I start decreasing Lag? I thought it would have been near zero. Must be doing something very wrong. Any clues?

 

In fact lag issues wrecked my experience with Red Baron MP LAN, and they are similar in magnitude on my new super computer. (I tried "safety mode" graphics whic might be a bit too extreme, because I couldn't get any sound or padlock, so I gave up that option.)

 

Time to ask the gurus.

 

Also:

Any tools I can use to even see how much ping there is in the game?

BTW is there a frame rate counter too?

And my next question is how to do cooperative missions. Each time I tried, both of us crashed out of the game immediately on entering, but that is another question.

 

I'm going to hit the sack now, though chaps ... 0:21 am ... :|

 

Regards,

 

George

Edited July 8, 2009 by GeorgeBoles

[sitting_duck 3]

George..

 

awhile ago, i did a lan game too,,,other computer was 3 feet away, and hooked up to the router with a 5ft cable. Could not belive the stuttering i got, which i think is what you are describing....

 

Lag generally causes the planes to stop for a split second, and then reappear in another location,,,maybe 30-40 ft away....the stuttering and spinning planes is a situation in dog fight that has existed for some time now.

 

If you hit the z key, you get a information box in the upper left of the sceen,,it shows latency. The host is always zero. When we do multiplayer,,,40-70 is good,,,,80-120 is average,,and ppl connecting to hosts across the ocean can see anywhere from 140 to 300

 

Z key also gives you fps. If you want a fps counter that is bigger, get the teamspeak overlay (www.teamspeakoverlay.com), and it gives you a nice big counter that is easy to see.

 

I try and do game and teamspeak tuturial on wed evening 730ish edt (boston). Vasco (from your neck of the woods) was thinking of doing the same thing for pilots in your time area.

 

I highly suggest pm'ing him, and I know he is more than willing to set up a time to get together with you to get you on teamspeak (so you can both talk to each other), and help square away any other problems you may have.

[Winston DoRight 3]

It's probably not lag/latency that gave you an unpleasant multiplayer experience. Multiplayer in OFF is quite broken and we're hoping the developers will start to repair these problems.

 

Planes appearing to fly backwards, jittering, warping, or spinning in circles along their flight path happens quite often and is not a connection issue. I've flown both the original CFS3 and the European Theatre of Operations add-on and can assure you that no such similar problems exists in these products even with rather high latency marks. Your LAN connection should be fairly free of latency compared with an online connection that may be thousands of miles away.

 

We have a few dedicated users who play OFF multiplayer almost every day and we have just recently begun to give the development team some multiplayer bug reports and hope to hear soon that they will begin to solve these problems for us.

[von Baur 54]

I admit to being moderately computer and internet illiterate, but this comes as good news to me. I'd always thought that my experiencing these problems were due to an iffy wireless internet connection. But if people get the same thing through LAN (which, as a direct connection, I would think should be lag-free) then maybe it is largely something in the game that's causing it. Never having any interest in CFS3 until OFF, I never tried it online. Does anyone here know if it had the same problems? If it's something in CFS3's multiplayer coding it might be unfixable, and that would be a sad thing, to me. Because, while I like OFF's single player and believe it's the best campaign since Red Baron's (and a very close second, IMO), I also like online play with other people as well. And as much fun as that is right now, it would be fantastic if these bugs could be exterminated.

[Winston DoRight 3]

First a suggestion to GeorgeBoles. Make sure your two computers are up-to-speed, so to speak. Try OFF on them single player and see that there are no problems with jumpiness, or excessive micro-stutters, and the like. If your computers are experiencing any difficulties in SP, that will be magnified in MP. Some things to check would be:

 

1. Can you turn off your Virus protection for OFF sessions? Doing so with mine gives me more than 10 FPS more and fewer micro-stutters.

 

2. Turn off all unnecessary programs for OFF sessions, check your taskbar tray, lower right for all the things that can muck down your system during game play.

 

Now for von Bauer's very important question. he asked if the original CFS3 had the same MP problems that we are experiencing in OFF. In my personal experience, no. I've flown a few MP sessions in the original CFS3 and quite a few lately in the ETO mod and experience none of them. However OFF has a level of detail that CFS3 or even ETO doesn't come close to.

 

The more I play multiplayer and talk to other users and modders, the more I understand about OFF. Spend a little time in the rear seat as a gunner in any bomber and you'll see the problem with the smoke trails and why they'll appear to go crazy in multiplayer. As explained to me the level of detail of the OFF aircraft may have a direct connection to MP issues. Since the LOD is so very much higher in OFF than in the original CFS3 or even ETO, that MP issues are present like jitters, warping, and impossible flight paths even though lag is low or minimal. Unfortunately this may not be fixable unless you'd settle for a lower LOD and that would make the OFF aircraft look fairly ordinary, something no one wants.

 

Open for discussion, anyone.............? anyone..............?

Edited July 11, 2009 by Winston DoRight

[sitting_duck 3]

at some point in time, i am going to hook up 2 computers and mess around with this. Whatever the problem there is with qc, the fact that it does not exist in mission mp leads me to belive there is a solution. Not sure if its the planes the game is using, or the executables the game is using, or a combination of both.

 

If anyone wants to get online with me and try some different things out, let me know.

 

winston,,,still need the cfs3.exe from eto

[GaryR 0]

It's probably not lag/latency that gave you an unpleasant multiplayer experience. Multiplayer in OFF is quite broken and we're hoping the developers will start to repair these problems.

 

It's my understanding that the OFF team has no access to the MP code and can do nothing to re-write it and what it is it will always be. Is this incorrect? After flying sims like Aces High, Falcon 4, IL2, etc. etc. the bad positional data problem just kills the online experience for me. Mig Alley had the same problem, loved the sim but hated it online... It's the Campaign that keeps me flying BHaH, absolutely love it. Now if the MP could be fixed and you could fly a Campaign online I most likely would fly nothing else!

Edited July 23, 2009 by GaryR

[Axgrinder 0]

It's my understanding that the OFF team has no access to the MP code and can do nothing to re-write it and what it is it will always be. Is this incorrect? After flying sims like Aces High, Falcon 4, IL2, etc. etc. the bad positional data problem just kills the online experience for me. Mig Alley had the same problem, loved the sim but hated it online... It's the Campaign that keeps me flying BHaH, absolutely love it. Now if the MP could be fixed and you could fly a Campaign online I most likely would fly nothing else!

 

One of our regular online pilots has figured out how to convert single player campaign missions into multiplayer campaign missions. You can now fly the same campaign missions you were flying by yourself offline, online with other players as your squad mates. Fly online with us on Sundays and you will be pleased with what we have done with MP campaigns.

Edited July 23, 2009 by Axgrinder

[GaryR 0]

One of our regular online pilots has figured out how to convert single player campaign missions into multiplayer campaign missions. You can now fly the same campaign missions you were flying by yourself offline, online with other players as your squad mates. Fly online with us on Sundays and you will be pleased with what we have done with MP campaigns.

 

Yep, I understand that part Ax, he actually sent me the steps to save the missions and use them.