Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Help and Training => Topic started by: Dinger on May 15, 2000, 07:22:00 AM
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Conditions:
My system: Celery 333@415 64k ram, Asus MB (BX chipset P2B-L or something) Creative TNT2 M16 (or whatever the cheapo slow vid memory is) 32 k Vram.
Offline, default setup, ammomultiplier of 10, ProtectObject off.
All weapons tested against a hangar
From initial tests with the 4x.50 cal of the M16, it appeared that there was no difference between the damage of a fighter hangar and a bomber hangar; therefore, no distinction is made. Moreover, differences in range to target did not seem to affect the damage results. Thus, ranges varied according to the test, although we did try to get as close to the hangar as possible. In the process of trying to do so, the lives of many virtual test pilots were lost. It is to them that we dedicate this post.
Complicating Matters:
Whether known or not, there is a serious bug in collision detection, probably FR-related. In some situations, some shots (or even rockets) would go straight through the object being fired at. This condition appeared to be far worse when firing in short bursts than when shooting a continuous stream. (For example, 370-380 rounds from the Type 99-2 on the N1k knocks down a hangar consistently, provided the "Firehose" method of shooting is employed. Firing in short bursts caused this number to go up to 500 and beyond).
Therefore, with the cannon and gun tests, I parked the aircraft so that its line of fire would traverse two parts of the hangar. I fired in continuous streams and counted the approximate number of rounds fired when the hangar fell. All numbers, therefore, are approximate
Additionally, there is a bug in the hangars' hit maps that causes hit flashes to appear in different places.
Furthermore, while I convert the data below into the equivalent in pounds of bombs (on the belief that 3000 lbs is the damage that hangars take), what little evidence I have suggests that the ratio of bomb/gun damage is not the same for hangars and other structures; of course, my modest test data could very well suffer from an even more acute "lost round" problem on the other structures.
I don't have the ROF data handy; that and ammo load are the keys to filling out these tables and computing relative lethalities.
So here it is:
Weapon Platform Hngr Hits Lethality.
100 lb.bomb B17 30 100
76mm HE Panzer 20 150
21 Cm WGr FW190 18 167
109G10 18*
HVAR 5" P38-L 20 150
3.5" Rock Typhoon 21 143
----
Mk108 30mm 109G6 140 21.4
HSMk2 20mm P-38L 345 8.7
F4U-1C
99mk2 20mm N1K 375 8.0
ShVAK 20mm La-5FN 400 7.5
151 20mm 109F4 400 7.5
---
M2 .50c M16 1250 2.4
P-38L
Breda 12.7 c.202 1600 1.9
131 12.7 109G6 2600 1.2
---
Brwn. .303 Spit-Vb 5000 .6
MG17 7.9 109F4 5000 .6
*The 109G series does not appear to respond to .salvo settings, and always fires the WGr mortars in pairs.
Feel free to go and verify the results, correct any errors, straighten up the table or post it somewhere (hint: edit the text, and copy it as formatted for fixed fonts). Just let me know (and give me credit if you can)
Dinger
4^ Stormo CT.
[This message has been edited by Dinger (edited 05-15-2000).]
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Did you by any chance have V-Synch disabled?
That has been a suspected cause of "rubber bullet" syndrome... just wondering.
Also... why no data for the HogC? Or am I reading that wrong?
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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/ (http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/)
(http://tuweb.ucis.dal.ca/~dconrad/ahf/lepht.gif)
"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
- Steve Earl
[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 05-15-2000).]
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So, you're saying V-Sync "on" or "off" for best gameplay?
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Er, that's just indicating that I tested the HS on both the P38 and the Hog-C. No appreciable difference according to A/C in round per round lethality was found on any of the weapons for which I tried more than one platform.
I'll look at enabling vsync, but that strikes me as an odd solution.
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I've read somewhere that it should be OFF, but I can't seem to find the option on my display settings (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/frown.gif)
Someone can please point me how to where that is ?
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<points>
(http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/biggrin.gif)
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StSanta
II/JG2
(http://saintaw.tripod.com/santa.gif)
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here here i want to know that too ...
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Control Panel - Display Settings - Advanced ->
It is somewhere there, depending on your video card.
You might also want to get one of the DirectX tweak softwares or video card control panels which let you tweak your hardware. A good place to look for (3dfx) tweak programs is http://www.voodooextreme.com (http://www.voodooextreme.com)
Hope this helps!
Camo
------------------
Camouflage
XO, Lentolaivue 34
www.muodos.fi/LLv34 (http://www.muodos.fi/LLv34)
"The really good pilots use their superior judgement to keep them out of situations
where they might be required to demonstrate their superior skill."
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DO NOT Disable V-Synch. By default it will be enabled. V-Synch means that your video card waits to draw a frame until your your monitor is ready to refresh the screen. If you disable V-Synch your video card will draw the frames regardless of whether or not it is "synchronized" with your monitor refresh, essentially drawing some frames or parts of them that will never actually be seen. Disabling V-Synch is mostly used to benchmark video cards, otherwise the scores all come out the same, equal to your refresh rate. (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/smile.gif) Disabling v-synch can give you a small FR bonus, but it's not worth it IMHO. Because of how the hit detection works, I suspect strongly that by disabling V-Synch your FE may not "detect" hits you get. Hence rubber bullets.
If you have not tweaked your V-synch it will be enabled, so you can leave it alone. If you have messed with it, you should go back and set it to ENABLED, at least when playing AH.
Really, other than the framerate number, what good can it do to have your video card draw frames your monitor won't show? There is some small benefit from your card not having to wait for synchronization, but it's a small gain IMHO and not worth it.
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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/ (http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/)
(http://tuweb.ucis.dal.ca/~dconrad/ahf/lepht.gif)
"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
- Steve Earl
[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 05-16-2000).]
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Absolutely DO NOT disable V-sync. This causes many problems and does not really increase your framerate when you think about it. What you are doing is telling your video card to ignore the refresh rate of your monitor and render as many frames as it can. The problem is that your monitor is refreshing at a much slower rate, so you never see all of these frames. This can have a strange affect on gunnery, so keep v-sync on.
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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS
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Dinger your data suggests that some of the louder whining on this board has no basis in fact.
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This test only takes into account the "hitting power" of the round. It doesn't portrait the total lethality of the weapon, which is highly dependant of rate of fire, for example. And that makes this test so good, because it leaves less room for assumptions!
Knowing this, especially the .50/12.7 mg test results are pretty interesting:
"M2 .50c M16 1250 2.4
P-38L
Breda 12.7 c.202 1600 1.9
131 12.7 109G6 2600 1.2
"
The american mg packs TWICE has as much punch as the german mg? Is there a reason for this? Is the round twice as heavy, or does the .50 perhaps have double the muzzle velocity?
Camo
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The Browning fires a 48.5g round at 870m/s
The Mg131 fires a 34.6g round at 730m/s
I make that 1.99 times as much energy. The MG131 has a higher rate of fire, but when you take synchronisation into account, the final energy figures show the Browning delivers 1.95 times as much energy.
Why does the HVAR cause more damage than the 3.5" rocket? From what I can find, the 3.5" hada slightly larger warhead.
[This message has been edited by Nashwan (edited 05-17-2000).]
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Yeah, I left out the ROF, Muzzle Velocity and ammo load data because A. I don't have it and B. I reckoned someone else could do that. C. I'm lazy.
Anyway, About vsync: My understanding is that you would think that enabling vsync makes it run as fast as the screen can put out, but for some reason, it doesn't (Gets caught up waiting for one frame and misses the next?). Anyway, I tested again with vsync enabled, and I got the same results with respect to missing rounds:
Again, it takes ca. 140 mk 108 rounds to destroy a hangar, if you fire them all in one burst. If, on the other hand, you rapidly tap the fire button, releasing 2-, 3- and 4-round bursts, on my machine you need around 170 rounds. The lesson? Spray-n-Pray. Go the whole nine yards.
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Gosh I hate to be left out of this kind of stuff so I will measure some rates of fire. Here's the first few.
.50 M2 800
Hispano II 650
Mg151 20mm 700
Mg151 Syncronized 625
I'll try to get the rest today.
Hooligan
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Originally posted by funked:
Dinger your data suggests that some of the louder whining on this board has no basis in fact.
? if the (HE)leathality of the rounds is within 20% of each other but the game effect vs AC is much different then that. doesnt that concern you?
Also this indicates that the mine shell for the 151 is not modeled in the game. As it would be a lovely round for leveling unarmoured structures..A task for which kinetic energy and velocity) are totaly useless.
Like most testing people will read into it what they will
Thanks Dinger...good job
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Dinger,
If you do not have V-Synch enabled I would view your results as highly suspect. That issue with rounds going through the target is EXACTLY what I would expect to happen if you have V-Synch disabled.
Enabling V-Synch is not a "solution" to any bug. V-Synch should ALWAYS be enabled, and by default it is enabled. If you go messing with advanced settings that do silly things to get the highest possible framerate number HTC can't control wether that breaks something in the collission detection or not. The ONLY valid reason I can find to disable V-Synch is for benchmarking high-end video cards that will turn in frame rates higher than your monitor refresh. It should be enabled for everything else you do.
In addition, you did these tests offline. I'm not sure that the offline server code is nearly as good or exact as the online stuff, especially for things like buildings. To be valid, you would have to do test vs. other airplanes, and do them Online.
It's great that you went and did some testing, but there are some issues with your test platform and setup that put the results in serious doubt. While we all appreciate the effort you put in, lets try and get some better controlled data. (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/smile.gif)
------------------
Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/ (http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/)
(http://tuweb.ucis.dal.ca/~dconrad/ahf/lepht.gif)
"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
- Steve Earl
[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 05-17-2000).]
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I'm sorry, lephturn, but I don't see that either.
The computer holds an internal model of events, from which information is sent to the video card and thence to the monitor. Whether vsync is enabled or not should have nothing to do with the internal model the CPU holds. Hit detection is done by the internal model - it doesn't depend on what's on your monitor or video card.
If rockets or other projectiles are going through the hangar, then my first guess would be the same as Dinger's - it's a bug that may depend on framerate. If framerate drops below a critical threshold, the WB FE loses hits too.
But I do agree with you, leph, that disabling vsync is a bad idea. Your gunnery suffers. The reasons are complex, but I'll try for a coherent explanation if anybody really wants to know.
Dinger, thanks for the hard work. I have some idea of how long this sort of thing takes.
avin
[This message has been edited by avin (edited 05-17-2000).]
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Avin, while I understand what you are getting at, I have run into this before. Regardless of WHY it happens, I have seen several cases where folks were reporting "rubber bullets" that were fixed when V-Synch was re-enabled. My reasoning as to why is purely conjecture on my part, I've just seen evidence to suggest that disabling V-Synch can cause problems with either hit detection or damage assessment. Could be that the hell it plays with gunnery just makes it seem that way I suppose though... If we make sure it's enabled, then we're don't have to worry about a possible problem it may cause. (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/smile.gif)
However, the idea of doing this OFFLINE is still a bad one. Sure, the hit detection and damage routines are the same, but I don't know about the server side code. If we do some tests online in the TA, it will eliminate any possiblility of bad data. Also, that way somebody could taxi a B-17 or a C47 out on the RW to be a target, so we have a more valid test than a building. All we prove otherwise is that the hit-detection is busted for buildings. (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/smile.gif) Good stuff on the ammo testing, I guess we'll have to bug-test separately. I'll see if I can't do some of that tonight.
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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/ (http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/)
(http://tuweb.ucis.dal.ca/~dconrad/ahf/lepht.gif)
"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
- Steve Earl
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I said "suggests" Pongo. (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/Smileys/default/smile.gif)
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Ok, Lephturn, as I stated in my post above, I enabled Vsync, and ran some "Control" tests with the 20mm cannons on the N1k and the Mk 108. I got the exact same results.
As for online vs. offline, I also ran a control with the .50 cal online. In fact, I have destroyed several hangars in combat conditions with an m16 using around 1300 rounds of .50 cal. The big problem with online tests is that netlag and server lag make it very difficult to determine exactly when a building falls. Add to this a bug where firing in short bursts (so as to arrive at a relatively precise number of rounds fired) results in shots being lost, and frankly, the online environment has too many results to control.
Testing against aircraft is even more difficult, because you have two connections to deal with, as well as the host-side damage model. I concur completely that caution should be used when translating these figures into air-to-air lethality, because there could very well be other factors modelled, such as penetration, hit location and so on. Heck, it takes 25 AP shells to destroy a hangar, and 20 HE shells; but the former are much better against tanks. Then again, they may not be modelled; mk 108 30mms should be relatively useless against armor, but instead they're quite good.
In short, these results show:
A. The relative damage on hangars of all the weapons in AH, translated into equivalent pounds of bombs.
B. The ground attack efficacy of these weapons.
C. The existence of a serious and repeatable bug in hit detection, at the very least with hangars (actually at least two of them: a. in some places the hangars are 100% transparent, b. on the "solid" parts, some shots travel straight through -- and,no, I don't think it's just dispersion mixed with a.).
C. does limit the validity of the results, but since applying the "firehose" technique of shooting generated results that were 100% repeatable on my FE (in different A/C and vehicles, and regardless of whether I was at a large, medium or small field), I hope its effect is minimal. Of course, it would serious mitigate the results if, say, its effect were more pronounced with the number of projectiles in the air.
From these figures, you could go and calculate relative lethality data, which Hooligan has done in his laudable tables. But if you throw in the Aircraft damage model into the mix, you increase the number of variables considerably, many of which are unknown. I'd like to see someone construct a controlled experiment under those conditions.
If there would be a next step, for me it would involve confirming my results on a completely different setup, and testing the relative lethality against a non-hangar object (such as a city building), as I don't think the proportion guns/bombs holds steady between hangars and other ground objects.
Oh, and yeah, this test is really useful. Did you ever think about how much damage a b17 could actually do to an HQ building if, instead of bombing and leaving, it deacked, bombed and strafed? Or if some dweeb drove a cannon hawg up to the entrance?
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Actually Dinger, its been my contention that "bombs and rockets are way too weak and have little to no blast effect" for quite some time.
And your right, the quickest way to take down the city is to use a single bomber to de-ack it, and then use a couple of -1C's to strafe it into ruin.
Much quicker than trying to do it with bombs.
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Vermillion
**MOL**, Men of Leisure
"Real Men fly Radials, Nancy Boys fly Spitfires"
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Dinger,
fwiw, the WB FE starts to lose a fraction of projectiles at 6-10 fps. At 1-3 fps, you can drive a plane right through all solid structures - all hit detection stops working. I'd be curious to know if this is what's happening, or if part of the hangar is indeed transparent as you suggest.
But leph is correct when he says you should fly online with vsync enabled. It's very important for your gunnery.
Disabling vsync doesn't cause what would be a hit to become a miss. What it does is: it causes the picture on your monitor to be more (often considerably more) often out of sync with the internal model the CPU holds to calculate hits. It makes it harder to predict where the bogie is going to be when you estimate lead for a gunnery solution.
If hit feedback isn't appropriately scaled to the number of hits (so you get hit flashes whether you hit with 3 bullets or 20) this can look like rubber bullets.
avin
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I'm not saying your results are not valid Dinger, it's good work. We just need to be careful not to apply it to A2A gunnery. Thanks for trying all the control issues to clarify what's happening. Pyro will be more likely to listen to good data like that. Have you posted this in the Bug forum?
This bit with short bursts going through the target is extremely distressing though. I'm going to try this with planes and see if I can make it happen.
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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/ (http://users.andara.com/~sconrad/)
(http://tuweb.ucis.dal.ca/~dconrad/ahf/lepht.gif)
"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
- Steve Earl