Participants in SNAPSHOT, "A Milk Run", post comments here:

[Sunchaser]

Every large bomber formation I have ever flown in in AH has been mostly wiped out and lag is definately a factor.

I have no idea how it looks from the fighters point of view but all we in the bombers usually see are darting, warping fighters impossible to sight.

The only solution I see for AH scenarios is massive fighter escort that does not let the attacking formation through enmass, they must be broken up prior to attacking.

I am not criticizing escorts, although as I landed in my chute there were 3 on the deck dogfighting with LW planes.

The bomber formation was a bit strung out too, a core was together but many were not tight.

Another thing, the target was known to all and we flew right over the LW bases.

I gotta hand it to the LW guys, I saw their formation, looked like 1 large dot and the escort I could see were individual dots all over the sky.

I wonder, could it be that from the bomber gun we see more than the fighter guys, thus suffer more lag and warp?
We see many of them coming in and any bomber in our line of sight and they only see the bombers and fighters in front of them.

I think I got shot first as I was way behind, some idiot had lowered my RPMs and I could not close at full power, wonder why?

Lag was not a factor in my ill fortune, I just never saw him coming.

[ra]

Sunchaser,

Fighters are much warpier than bombers because of their speed and manuevers.  When a fighter attacks a big bomber formation the warps he sees are bombers zipping forward or backward, or sometimes just freezing in space.  It makes lining up the attack difficult, but as soon as his target stops warping for a second the fighter can get his shot in, if he's still in position.  I concluded back in my Warbirds days that the technology just isn't here yet to simulate a really big fight.

A short term solution may be the 4-buff-per-pilot box planned for 1.09.  IF the 4 buffs only take up the bandwidth of 1 buff, then we may be able to have smoother formation attacks.

ra

[ 11-25-2001: Message edited by: ra ]

[jpeg]

"Lag was not a factor in my ill fortune, I just never saw him coming."

I have to completly agree with that above quote (for my case).

Lag was not a factor for me at all (cept when we were on the runway..but that should be expected..there were 9+ b17s on top of each other)

We needed more escorts, they did their job but we just needed more.

I blame myself more then anyone.. this was my first major b17 run in a snapshot and I was just awe struck by the amount of buffs flying together, I was soaking in the scenery and suddenly I look to my 6 and I see a 190 swooping down at me,  600 yards and closing FAST.

I start firing and he starts firing.. I end up killing him but he did serious damage, I was still able to fly but about 10 - 15 secs later another 190 is on me, I damage him but my b17 explodes (which is another matter all together).

My SA went to crap, I was nervous and I was excited. Out of the 5 - 6 ppl behind me someone should have given me a "check 6" but still I should have been scanning the skies better.

I also have film recorded to show everything from point where we gained some alt to the point where I went "boom".
Let me know if anyone is interested.

[Flossy]

Unfortunately (or fortunately, as I would have been another dead B17!) I missed yesterday's Snapshot.  I don't know about lag, but I have noticed on odd occasions I have been part of a large group of bombers in the MA that my frame-rate plummets!  Now, in AW (sorry, I know! <g> ) in this sort of situation (which did also happen in the scenarios with large bomber formations), we could reduce the detail which helped enormously with the framerates.  I remember during one Scenario (Longbow) I regularly had to reduce the detail or the attacking LW planes would appear to warp around the sky.  The ability to only have enemy icons in AW also helped enormously.

Could this have been what the problem was rather than lag?  Are there any similar settings which can be altered to reduce detail, and help increase framerates?  Also, is there an option to only show enemy icons?  I think a combination of these two options would improve matters greatly.

[Flossy]

Originally posted by Flossy:
Also, is there an option to only show enemy icons?

Checked the options online, and it seems the nearest option is Friendly-only icons, but no Enemy-only icons....  

[Specterx]

Originally posted by Buzzbait:
S!

My mistake, Spectrex was flying a P-47D11.

 

I think I did pretty well then... and I only died when the dang LW made two passes on my plane that was gliding with no engine and gear down  .

[Blue Mako]

Originally posted by Specterx:
I think I did pretty well then...

I'll say.  You got me as kill #4 I think...  I was still trying to recover from getting up after less than 5 hours sleep to play the SS.  Make a couple of passes on the B17s, couple of assists, what's this?  P47 scissoring me?  Oops he's behind me, oops I'm pilot wounded, ruh-roh... now I'm in my chute.  Oh well, back to bed.  

P.S. The lag was terrible for the LW even before we got near the buffs.  Made formation flying a nightmare.

[Blue Mako]

Originally posted by Flossy:
I regularly had to reduce the detail or the attacking LW planes would appear to warp around the sky.  The ability to only have enemy icons in AW also helped enormously.

Could this have been what the problem was rather than lag?  Are there any similar settings which can be altered to reduce detail, and help increase framerates?

<S> Flossy,

I think that reducing (graphics?) detail woul only assist in lag reduction if your FE was having trouble drawing all the planes.

The lag experienced during the Snapshot appeared to be caused by the large number of players in a small area overloading the server.  My FE had no problem drawing all the aircraft, just that the server couldn't deliver all the info to my FE quick enough.

I may be wrong but as I understand, the server only sends complete information packets (ie. giving aicraft orientation, velocity vectors, gun firing info etc) when the other aircraft are in visual range.  Thus if you have many aircraft in visual range the information transfers from the server to the users goes up exponentially.  (32 aircraft each interacting with 32 other aircraft...)  This would mean that reducing the detail on your FE would unload your computer but would not effect the data being transferred through the server.

Did anyone try using the alt route for the SEA?

I saw similar warpiness (in fact worse) during the last frame of the 7 days in September TOD.  Is there anyone at HTC/Skuzzy looking at the SEA server?

Is there anything we can do to alleviate the problem?

[daddog]

The tools for the CM's are limited. Icon choices are long and short, 9k and 3k.

Any detail changes have to be made on the players FE.  

We have had events before with a large number of players without so many problems of lag. I am crossing my fingers this is an exception and will not become the norm.

[chunder']

Would it make any difference to have half the players log onto the main route and the other on the alt route?

[Nifty]

only suggestion to Buzz is not to close the logs so early.    There was still a Jug over on our side of the Channel after you close the logs.  I got a nice prox kill as he flew over a coastal ack cluster, tho I was d600 and closing fast.  

[Vruth]

From what I'm hearing, a lot of us suffered from lag in the bomber formation when we were jumped by the Germans.

Is the solution then to break up formations into groups of 5 or 4 planes each?  There were a lot of buffs in the sky and there really wasn't any chance for us as the 190's were warping around.

Perhaps for the Big Week, if we could break the bombers into smaller clusters it would give buffs a chance.

What do you guys think?

Vruth

[Buzzbait]

S!

Unfortunate about that prox. kill.

I did broadcast 3 times asking if anyone was in the air prior to closing the logs.

No one replied, so I shut `em down.  

[Nifty]

Originally posted by Buzzbait:
S!

Unfortunate about that prox. kill.

I did broadcast 3 times asking if anyone was in the air prior to closing the logs.

No one replied, so I shut `em down.    

   was trying not to hit the ground, as we were nap o' the earth.  didn't even see your msg asking if we were still engaged.  

[Aiswulf]

Well from my end things went pretty well until the end which came rather abruptly for me  
During the flight to cruising alt I only saw the occasional B17 warp. For the most part we were all pretty steady flying.
Once we were jumped by the 190's I didn't really have a chance to watch the other buffs but the 190's were definately warpy.  I took 2 pings and lost a wing and thats all the fat lady sang for me.  For my part I continued to sing her song by screaming all the way to the earth.
I came up as Buzzr's gunner but he was smoking bad from both wings and we were dead about 15 seconds later.  The 190's were still rather warpy but I did manage a few hits against 1 or 2 this time around.

I think the main reason there were little to no "check 6" messages was due to the fact that most of the buff pilots were already in gun positions ready for the incoming 190's.

Without the lag I think this battle would have been another whole song and dance