Erik

Aww man he came equipped with the guns and the haircut. Atta boy! Congrats on the new addition to the family.

I actually have quite a bit of experience with MP and DirectPlay. The problem isn't the host. The problem is with the players joining in. The way internet traffic (read: packets) is shuffled between players in DirectPlay is the common problem for all those issues you're talking about. I won't get into a long drawn discussion as to why since we all know it happens. More importantly here are some of the fixes. Locking frame rates. In MP8 the amount of data your computer sends to other players is directly tied to your frame rate. If there is an option in CFS like in MSFS to lock your frame rate at a target, set it below 30. The reason is if you have a powerful machine and good internet connection then it's possible your computer is getting say 60 frames a second, it's great for you but for the other players they are receiving updates to your position through MP at the same rate 60 updates per second. Now if someone connected to the game has a marginal setup and they can't handle all the information you're sending them they start to lag behind as their computer slows down. This slow down causes them to start sending position updates slower and you'll see jumping or false aircraft positioning. One of the fixes in MSFS X was to change the way the position reports are sent to other players, it's not done at a more reasonable rate of 5 position updates per second regardless of the frame rates you're getting. Not sure if the latest CFS platform got that update, but I don't think so. Routers - Firewalls. If you have a player that is behind a firewall and they are not able to receive or send traffic openly with other players then you'll have problems. It just takes one person to join a game that's behind a poorly configured router to cause everyone to get dumped from the game. DirectPlay makes the assumption that if you can't connect with every person in the game then it's been disconnected. Fix remove routers and firewalls before joining a game or make sure you've properly unblocked the ports necessary to play. Make sure you have a public IP address and not some internal network IP before joining. If you use a software firewall turn it off. Software firewalls sniff each packet that comes through your ethernet adaptor and it's a drag on resources while playing in MP. Best environment. Since the MP Engine uses everyone connectivity and processor ability to successfully host and enable MP game play it's essential that everyone joining a session be confirgured for optimal gaming. If you have a group of high speed FIOS or cable users playing a game don't throw a 56K connection into the mix. If you have a group of good machines with nice frame rates don't throw someone is poorly configured into the mix. The bottom line is it's everyones responsibility to make sure they can join a game and that their gear and internet connection is configured in such a way to allow everyone else to enjoy their time. The only way I've found to do this is just take the time to walk everyone through setting up their equipment. I'd still like to host a platform for game play and voice that everyone can enjoy if not experiment with to see how we can offer something terrific for the community. Let me know what I'm going to need to get it done. IE. CFS3 and a copy of OFF? Forgive my novice sounding question and be sure to point me in the right direction of the person I have to strong arm for a copy of OFF if I need it. E

Glad it's fixed!

The problem seems to be that your being forced to use a skin that should not be available to for our site. I've made some changes to your account's skin selection. Can you tell if that changed anything for you? I also use Firefox because it's simply the best browser available, IMHO. I have had no problems and certainly nothing of this caliber. I've been through all our features and areas of the site without problem. If the main page is working for you and you can get to the forums then the site is working as it should. What I'm trying to figure out is how it's not displaying correctly on your end. The site uses Java. We require cookies be set in your browser so we can keep you logged in. (Note* in the image you sent above you are NOT logged in. I think that's odd.) Makes me wonder if somehow the Guest mask is screwed up. I'll go look at that. Staying logged in, as I mentioned, requires your machine to accept cookies from us. I've seen this as a constant problem with Internet Suites like McAfee, and Nortons. They both think that a session cookie is the kiss of death and treat them as spyware. It takes some tinkering to get them to allow cookies. Try turning those types of software off to help diagnose the problem. A note on cookies: The session cookies we send to your machine are very simple in nature. They include simple parameters like who you are (read: username) and that your logged in by sending us your password correctly. Once set these simple session cookies allow us to share that information back to the site as you make each new page request. How horrible would it be if we asked for your username and password every time you clicked a link to move throughout our site. These cookies have very limited life cycles. They are only valid until you close your browser connection to us. [rant] I often wonder how any dynamic site is supposed to have security if we can't share information back and forth between machines. The Internet Suite designers think somehow this is possible if the *site* aka CombatACE can always accept information from users but users can't accept information from us. I'll be the first one to tell you that our site has a better chance of being malware, trojan, bot, and virii free than most users machines. Just by the simple nature of the operating systems we run respectively. *sigh* [/rant] E

This might help. Try using the advanced search feature. Select the forums which replies would most likely be relevant. For your case start with WOV/WOE/WOI, then expand your search from there. Also use the following search tips to help improve the returned information. Search Phrase = Results apple banana = Find posts that contain at least one of these words +apple +juice = Find posts with both words +apple -juice = Find posts with 'apple' but not 'juice' apple* = Find posts with 'apple' and/or 'applesauce' "Some Words" = Find posts with the phrase 'some words of wisdom', 'some words' but not 'some noise words'

Thanks for the reference. It looks like DirectPlay8 is the MP engine. Released in DirectX 9.0 it was the basis for the Zone round tables, if that's where it was hosted to begin with. I would be interested in providing a static MP session(s) and static Teamspeak server for OFF. I would be interested to know what the "community" at large would need to make this a viable solution for always having a game up and running that could be joined and if this would be useful.

Check on question 2. Question 1, and 3 if anyone knows.

I'm calling in the pros! Question: Can CFS3 connect to Micro$oft Flight Sim hosted games? What's the platform you guys use to host MP games? Does OFF change the way CFS3 connects to MP hosted events?

This is actually a calculation that is done live everytime you hit the upload button. The system calculates the size of each file you've upload and determines based on our settings if there's room for you to add more. Checking your files and removing them is the only way to clear this error. Please keep in mind. The Gallery has no limits, you can fill it with millions of screenshots and link them right into your posts. Use your attachment space for things you don't want to put in the gallery and for files you don't want to upload to the file download section. I hope that helps. E

On the main page of the forums down toward the bottom where the member names are listed there's a link to reset the cookies stored on your machine for our boards. Click that. Then:: In Firefox > Tools > Options > Content Tab make sure Java is enabled. In Firefox > Tools > Options > Privacy Tab make sure accept cookies and accept third party (until they expire) cookies is enabled. In Firefox > Tools > Options > Privacy Tab > Accept Cookies to the right "Exception" button click > Add combatace.com + always allow In Firefox > Tools > Options > Privacy Tab > "Clear my private data when Firefox closes" I tick this to keep my browser cache cleaned. You can click the button to the right and select what to delete when Firefox closes. ((Handy Tool)) In Firefox > Tools > Clear Private Data (CTRL+SHIFT+DEL) Make sure to clear your browser cache. If that doesn't fix then something is really weird and I'd consider re-installing Firefox. E

What's really weird is that your using a skin that shouldn't even be an option to members for our our boards. I went ahead and updated the site's skin cache settings, and forced users of the default skin and IPB Pro skin to use our standard set of skins. If that doesn't work take a look in the lower left of the site and see what your skin selection is set to. Let me know. SAMPLE:

Yeah you've been a busy guy. To get to where I sent you in that link do the following: Click "My Controls" (Top of page under banner) > On the page that comes up look under "Options" and click "Manage my attachements". That will get you to the same place. Some ideas for you. Start a photo album in the gallery. There is no limit on the amount of photos you can put up there and you can link them directly into your posts it's the same thing except you never have to delete any of the images. If the files you are sending out for multi-player games and such are something you want us to create an upload section for or you can use one of the current upload sections for in the download area you might consider that. E

Wow if that's true you managed to fill up 40MB of space. You'd be the first person on the boards to hit that number. We should give you an award. http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?act=U...amp;CODE=attach <--- Go here it will allow you to manage your upload content. At the top of that page before you delete anything in the upper left it will tell you how much space you've used. Can you report that number back here? Thanks. Erik

I'd never.

Hopefully this is resolved for everyone. Let me know. E

If I'm not mistaken that was the #2 engine failure during T/O at Dover AFB.

Kevin ... not really, but when you and mom recover we'll be expecting them.

For most it does. If you're behind a router, then you should probably do a soft reset on your router and modem. If your ISP caches routes then you're probably SOL and won't be able to read this until the cache updates. Either way it had to be done and there's never a good time to do it. Trust me when I say I try to minimize downtime to an absolute minimum and try to keep the community advised of upcoming events. If it was working would there be posts proclaiming my brilliance?

OORAH! Congrats man! Did you forget what causes those things?

*Stands up in front of everyone* It was me. I did it. *hides smoking gun* Truthfully though I had to make some last minute changes to our DNS records to bring a new piece of equipment online. Everything should be cleared up today if not already. Windows users can run ipconfig and flush their local DNS records to get a new lookup. START > RUN > Type CMD > Press [ENTER] AT COMMAND PROMPT: C:\some_directory\maybe_another> Type ipconfig /flushdns > Press [ENTER] AT COMMAND PROMPT: C:\some_directory\maybe_another> Type exit > Press [ENTER] CLOSE BROWSER WINDOW(s) AND REOPEN

Happy to help.

I tested the forum and it seems to be working correctly. Can you do the following for me? Reply to this message. Just the below the box you type in you'll see the "Attachments" Window. It's where you normally upload screenshots. On the left it should say something like. Attachment space used 4.01MB of 8.00MB If the first number is larger or close to the second number you've reached the maximum upload limit. Currently your user group is set to a maximum of 8.0MB of upload space. There are a few things we can try at this point. 1. Manage your attachments - You can manually remove older attachments by using this link. http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?act=U...amp;CODE=attach -or- you can us the "My Controls" link at the top of the forums and find the manage attachments link in the left navigation bar toward the bottom under options. 2. Instead of using up attachment space for images and if you upload a lot of images I might suggest creating your own album in the gallery. You can use the "My Controls" link at the top of the forums then from the left navigation bar under Invision Gallery click the link for "Your Albums". -or- click here: http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?autoc...&req=albums. Once you've created a personal album you can upload unlimited images to it and then link them directly into your posts. 3. We can negotiate for more space on the HDDs for users. Suggestions welcome. Erik

Testing image upload feature.

As with the rest of the community I wish AVSIM a speedy and if possible full recovery. As Dave mentioned and I'll just add to. Anything connected to the internet is vulnerable to attack. The contingency that most people aren't prepared for is total connected loss which is considered loss of data across an infrastructure. It is the same as having four hard drives in your local machine, a diligent daily backup to solid state or removable media, and then the volcano 20 miles away that you never knew existed erupts and buries it all in molten lava. Backups made to local hardware are only for convenience or single point hardware failure they can never be considered backups just copies. There's more work to do here after the two moves back to back, but we're about 90% there.

I was fighting not to change our IP addresses so we wouldn't have to go through another lengthy name server update, but I lost that battle when the configuration I wanted built couldn't be done in the physical server space so they built us a shiney spanking brand new server from the ground up. It was easier and less costly for them and in the end we got something much better than I wanted. That almost never happens, so I went with it. The DNS Saga: DNS (dynamic name servers) keep up to date records of where a website can be found like a physical address but in the computer world a physical address is known as an IP Address. In the real world Mary Jones lives at 1242 Elm Street, in the computer world http://www.combatace.com lives at 216.104.36.210 aka http://216.104.36.210. We submit our IP address changes to our name server record keepers by giving them our new IP Address (physical address) they in turn update their records and as if by magic all the name servers around the world get changed. Sometimes that process can take a day or two. In planning for the change I changed our TTL (time to live) in all our SOA (service oriented architecture) records. SOA records are *supposed* to tell name servers how long to cache (keep on file) our IP address before asking our name server for a new updated record. As it turns out only some of the name servers actually obey our SOA records and the other half just do what they want. For those name servers that have hard fast rules as to how long our IP address remains in their cache before they renew it they will not know where we have moved to until their records update. The members who use those name servers will be directed to "not found" pages. Here's something they can try however. Flush your local DNS cache: 1. Open a Command Window - START > RUN > Type "CMD" > Press [ENTER] 2. A command window will open > At the prompt type > ipconfig /flushdns 3. The DNS cache will flush > At the prompt type > exit Something else to try: http://www.combatace.com http://combatace.com http://216.104.36.210 Both go to the same place but require two different look ups in the name server. Maybe one will work for them and the other won't. If one does, both do, or both don't it's probably due to DNS propagation and will just require 24 hours or so to fix itself. Sorry about the downtime. E