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Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: mutha on April 21, 2017, 08:39:11 PM

Title: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: mutha on April 21, 2017, 08:39:11 PM
Can anyone explain when the rubber bullet phenomenon occurs? Judging from CH2 comments, it seems to be arena based.

I've been having this happen lately and checked my internet connect and ping, which is in the upper 60s.

I reviewed films that showed definite strikes on various enemy AC, but no damage, and I also accidentally shot up a friendly bomber, got multiple "you have shot yourself" messages, but no damage to my plane!

-Mutha
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Skuzzy on April 22, 2017, 05:39:21 AM
What makes you think there was no damage done?

If there is no damage in the damage list it means you did not hit any components in the damage list, or you did not hit them with enough bullets to damage them.

If you see a bullet strike, then you hit the object and damage is assessed.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: mutha on April 22, 2017, 10:01:24 AM
What makes you think there was no damage done?

Good question.

I reviewed the film and from my view it clearly shows multiple strikes in a 2-3 second period from 400 out, dead six astern. I walk the strikes from right wing to fuselage, and pieces come off the target. All the usual feedback that tells me I'm doing severe damage to the enemy A/C.

When I switched views to the targeting A/C, I see strikes but no parts coming off. The plane continues to fly fine, and continues on its way.

So, I'm getting feedback from the game that I'm hitting the target (strikes, parts flying off, etc.), and based on my experience, I'm putting enough rounds in to do at least some damage, but when I viewed the targeted A/C, there doesn't seem to be any damage registered at all. 

I wouldn't bring this up unless it's been happening multiple times, over multiple days, as well as others in the arena commenting about it as well.

I'm sure it will go away - I was just curious as to what causes it.

Mutha
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: The Fugitive on April 22, 2017, 10:53:43 AM
As far as I know, you never see any data from any other plane when you jump into them in the film viewer. Bullet strikes, damage, their rounds firing and so on. You will see your rounds and where they passed/hit but you wont see the damage.

Rubber bullets usually come from lost packets. If your internet connection is dropping packets at one hop or another I think it could give you rubber bullets as the info isn't getting to the other computer to assign the hit/damage.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: hitech on April 22, 2017, 12:03:21 PM
As far as I know, you never see any data from any other plane when you jump into them in the film viewer. Bullet strikes, damage, their rounds firing and so on. You will see your rounds and where they passed/hit but you wont see the damage.

Rubber bullets usually come from lost packets. If your internet connection is dropping packets at one hop or another I think it could give you rubber bullets as the info isn't getting to the other computer to assign the hit/damage.

Bullet strikes can not be lost with out getting discoed. Post the film, I can give you an exact account of what happened. But expect the results to be you simply did not hit the same component enough for it to fail.

HiTech
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: puller on April 22, 2017, 12:16:33 PM
Bullet strikes can not be lost with out getting discoed. Post the film, I can give you an exact account of what happened. But expect the results to be you simply did not hit the same component enough for it to fail.

HiTech

Hitech done this another time with someone else...it showed the guy shot the bombers up and didn't hit the sweet spot enough....
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: The Fugitive on April 22, 2017, 01:50:05 PM
Bullet strikes can not be lost with out getting discoed. Post the film, I can give you an exact account of what happened. But expect the results to be you simply did not hit the same component enough for it to fail.

HiTech

Is it a percentage of packet loss that get you discoed?

As for the rest of the info, when jumping in another plane in the film, it is correct in not seeing their data, right?

Thanks Hitech
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: mutha on April 22, 2017, 02:15:08 PM
Bullet strikes can not be lost with out getting discoed. Post the film, I can give you an exact account of what happened. But expect the results to be you simply did not hit the same component enough for it to fail.

HiTech

Film attached - the hits in question occur at 0:11:00.

To be clear, I'm not accusing the game of failing, being hacked, etc. I do know connection issues can cause problems, and was curious about them.  I'm still getting kills!

Thanks!

Mutha
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: LilMak on April 22, 2017, 10:56:29 PM
Last two times I killshot myself I got hit with 15+ rounds and did no damage. I assume the kill shooter is 1 for 1. I find it difficult to fathom that I can hit a plane with 15 half inch API rounds and not break something.

The frequency to which I lay into other fighter aircraft with 8 fifty caliber guns four or more times and watch it fly away is entirely too high. It should be the exception, not the rule.

When AH3 first rolled in and the arena numbers were low, myself and many other long time players noted the 50s seemed to hit like they should (hard). After a couple weeks they were as bad or worse than ever. I was told no settings were modified. If that's true, 50cals are simply more effective when fewer people are playing.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Vulcan on April 24, 2017, 02:17:49 AM
Last two times I killshot myself I got hit with 15+ rounds and did no damage. I assume the kill shooter is 1 for 1. I find it difficult to fathom that I can hit a plane with 15 half inch API rounds and not break something.

The frequency to which I lay into other fighter aircraft with 8 fifty caliber guns four or more times and watch it fly away is entirely too high. It should be the exception, not the rule.

When AH3 first rolled in and the arena numbers were low, myself and many other long time players noted the 50s seemed to hit like they should (hard). After a couple weeks they were as bad or worse than ever. I was told no settings were modified. If that's true, 50cals are simply more effective when fewer people are playing.

I thought hits were calculated by the shooting client?
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: MADe on April 24, 2017, 12:17:49 PM
V-sync

v-sync can cause dropped frames. You may not see a frame rate drop persay tho.

Because of something another player pointed out, I started playing.

I use a 60Hz HDTV. I disabled v-sync in video settings, kept it disabled in NVidia profiles global and AH3. Used MSI afterburner to cap the frames at 59. Set my HDTV to 59Hz.

I started HO'ing, and I was surprised. I saw hits, impacts that never seemed to manifest/display before.

Anyways, the slower Hz monitors could benefit from this. Known that v-sync is not good for latency. The modern hardware is out pacing old standards, and these older implementations seem to be getting in the way.

My take on rubber bullets, for what its worth.

 :salute
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: JunkyII on April 24, 2017, 12:51:53 PM
Is it a percentage of packet loss that get you discoed?

As for the rest of the info, when jumping in another plane in the film, it is correct in not seeing their data, right?

Thanks Hitech
Unless it changed from AH2 you can see the damage on AH3 planes to include if someone is PWed, I made a film in AH2 from the enemy perspective of me killing him , pinged him gave him PW then shot his wing off on second reverse.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: bustr on April 24, 2017, 02:08:52 PM
V-sync

v-sync can cause dropped frames. You may not see a frame rate drop persay tho.

Because of something another player pointed out, I started playing.

I use a 60Hz HDTV. I disabled v-sync in video settings, kept it disabled in NVidia profiles global and AH3. Used MSI afterburner to cap the frames at 59. Set my HDTV to 59Hz.

I started HO'ing, and I was surprised. I saw hits, impacts that never seemed to manifest/display before.

Anyways, the slower Hz monitors could benefit from this. Known that v-sync is not good for latency. The modern hardware is out pacing old standards, and these older implementations seem to be getting in the way.

My take on rubber bullets, for what its worth.

 :salute

If you have an older NVIDIA card try "adaptive sync" which will be available in the drop down selection for vsync. Changed to that and ran some tests offline, saw more of the hit sprites and damage along with slightly better long distance resolution. Tree and building shimmer on the ground reduced more to a mild waviness.

Just remember results for different players may vary.....
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: bustr on April 25, 2017, 12:12:40 PM
Last night several of my squad mates who have GTX10xx cards tried "Fast sync" with good results in the MA. I found in the MA with adaptive sync because I have an older GTX760, that a lot of the micro warping and super funky chicken went away. I could also hit what I was aiming at now since the motion of aircraft on my screen seemed to be in real time and not slightly lagged.

Older NVIDIA cards under the vsync settings in the desktop CC will see only adaptive sync. Newer cards will see adaptive, fast-sync and G-sync. I believe G-sync is specifically for a G-sync compliant monitor.

From reading around, screen lag of different types seems to be a problem with HDTV and flat panel monitors used to display games. I started hitting planes again using the 37mm manned gun. From the cruiser in sea mode, lining the horizontal yellow hash bar up to the water line of ships didn't cause the ship to have a slow constant micro blur movement that kept me about 100 yards off with my aim.

As for rubber bullets, some players no matter the map seem to have a router between them and Texas that wants them to not get shot down. All I know is last night with adaptive sync, I was having more success even with that router helping the con, pouring rounds in and seeing hits. If we were playing a first person shooter game like Halo, those impossible to kill players remind me of guys who would run a DOS storm on their PC to ghost and be untouchable until they turned off that localized DOS storm they usually had mapped to a hot key. I guess Hitech has a code function that accounts for DOS on the localhost COM port.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: bustr on April 26, 2017, 12:06:45 PM
Last night all of my squad mates who have changed to adaptive sync or fast-sync reported better outcomes in the game. I saw no funky chickening, strange warping and spinning by FW's, and everything I aimed at, I hit for a change. And I was hitting planes again with a wirbel. Haven't landed a 5 kill string since AH3 went live due to all of the weird lag and funky chickening issues. Last night I finally landed a 5 kill string.

I'm not sure what AMD's equivalent is, and my GTX760 menu only allows me adaptive sync with fast-sync grayed out. It might help if someone more up to date on how HDTV, high speed monitors and other displays are targeted by adaptive and fast-sync.

Oh and yes I disabled AH3 Vsync and the NVIDIA adaptive sync holds my FPS 59-60 with no tearing. NVIDIA recommends enabling Triple Buffering if you select adaptive or fast-sync. 
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Drano on April 26, 2017, 12:48:04 PM
Gonna have to check this out. Thanks Bust!

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: LilMak on April 26, 2017, 01:23:42 PM
Thanks bustr. Think I have a 760 on my machine. I'll have to check it out.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Wizer on April 27, 2017, 11:37:16 AM
Thanks for the info Bustr.  I have a Nvidia GTX 970 and today I switched settings to Adaptive with remarkable  results.   I actually recorded kills versus assists  lol.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Hungry on April 27, 2017, 12:02:08 PM
I have two adaptive settings looks like full and half? Which one should I use?

Thanks
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: MADe on April 27, 2017, 12:47:01 PM
as I said disabling v sync and capping frames at monitors refresh rate served best. Unless you have a G sync or Free sync monitor.

disabling v sync in game video settings is most important.
triple buffering, pre-rendering, adds latency.
Its about not dropping frames, you want each frame rendered and displayed, none tossed trying to match with v sync.
I have yet to see a screen tear. at 60Hz, frametime is 16.5 ms+/-, You want to maintain that 16.5 ms as best as possible.

Yes dropped packets cause issues, but v-sync, is the rubber bullet problem.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Skuzzy on April 27, 2017, 12:48:37 PM
Can I assume you guys, who are dinking with your video card settings, have disabled power management in Windows first?
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: TerryRF on April 27, 2017, 10:25:23 PM
My Win 7 power settings are on "Balanced" setting with "never sleep". Not sure if that is the info you are looking for.

I can confirm that with Vsync OFF in AH, and in nvidea Control Panel with  Vsync set to "Fast" I get Zero screen tearing and frame rates are between 120 - 200s consistently. My card is a GTX 1070. Monitor is a BenQ 27" without G-sync and a 60 refresh rate.

In the past I tried vsync off in AH and had screen tearing so I turned it back on. After reading bustr's settings I tried it  and the results are very good. So far zero, nada, zip screen tearing.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: MADe on April 28, 2017, 12:51:58 AM
Can I assume you guys, who are dinking with your video card settings, have disabled power management in Windows first?

yes, capping the frames tho helps prevent over working the card. You cannot beat 60Hz, that's the limit, but if you remove v sync and cap at 60 for a 60 HZ display, as long as your system maintains that 60f/s, you will not be dropping frames. Your card will render at a frametime of 16.3ms, as long as it can maintain, no dropped frames. That's in a perfect world so your system will not always maintain. But you can help by adjusting quality affects to maintain that 60f/s. Imagine a movie film, that film strip cruises by, every frame has an image, not start blacking out frames, randomly because the system fell behind. Difference here is that we interact with that directly so a missed frame means........................ ............IMHO

I have mentioned before how I always felt like I was out of sync with the game. It was and is V-SYNC. Your basically turning off pre or post processing of a kind, yes.
 :salute
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Skuzzy on April 28, 2017, 09:24:55 AM
Having any type of power management enabled will impact performance, especially for those multi-core computers as Windows is rather stupid about parking cores when power management is enabled.

To get the most out of your computer, set it to "High Performance" then "Change plan settings"  and select "Change advanced power settings".  Once there set the following as indicated.

Hard disk: Never
Wireless Adapter Settings: Maximum Performance (only important if you are using wireless mice, keyboards, and so on)
Sleep: Sleep after: Never
Sleep: Allow hybrid sleep: Off
Sleep: Hibernate after: Never
USB Settings: USB Selective suspend Setting: Disabled
PCI Express: Link Power State Mangement: Off
Display: Turn off display after: Never

Hit "OK" after making those changes.

Windows 10 users really need to tweak power management as Windows 10 does not consider playing games as an activity and it will put things to sleep, or attempt to hibernate devices while you are playing.

Windows 7 power mangement is just flat out borked up.  They never did fix it.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: mutha on April 28, 2017, 09:37:55 AM
What started as a simply query turns out to be great trove of info for maximizing performance for a better gaming experience.  Thanks everyone!

Mutha
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Skuzzy on April 28, 2017, 10:13:43 AM
That's just the way we roll. :)
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Skuzzy on April 29, 2017, 06:18:14 AM
I forgot to mention.

Windows 10 users, be sure to check your power settings, from time to time.  Microsoft will revert them back to defaults, from time to time, and not notify you they did.
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Bizman on April 29, 2017, 07:18:17 AM
Skuzzy, my settings are as you suggested, except for that I have my Display set to turn off after 15 minutes. After reading your post I started thinking about the potential connection between that and the occasional one second freeze. Is it possible that the current game doesn't tell Windows clearly enough that the computer is being used?

Win7, E8500, 8 GB, GTX 970 (same issues with HD6970)
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Eagler on April 29, 2017, 01:08:02 PM
Thanks for the settings Skuzzy!

I think it helped.

How does hit percentage score rubber bullets?

As mine is sub par - I'll see if it goes up next month with the edited power settings.

<S>
Title: Re: Rubber Bullets Phenomenon
Post by: Skuzzy on April 30, 2017, 08:42:55 AM
Skuzzy, my settings are as you suggested, except for that I have my Display set to turn off after 15 minutes. After reading your post I started thinking about the potential connection between that and the occasional one second freeze. Is it possible that the current game doesn't tell Windows clearly enough that the computer is being used?

Win7, E8500, 8 GB, GTX 970 (same issues with HD6970)

Power management has never worked correctly for games.  Microsoft claims they have it fixed in the Windows 10 Creator update.

The problem stems from DirectX never being fully integrated into Windows.  Up until Windows 10 it has been mostly a standalone API.  Windows 10 fully incorporated DirectX for all the graphics, desktop included, and that is when Microsoft finally realized why it was broken.

I cannot say, with any certainty, it is the cause of the pauses in the game, but it certainly could contribute.  If you run with a VR headset, it will certainly be exacerbated.

I added the power management settings to the "hints and tips" post.