Not seeing all planes network issue

[Robert]

I think we sorted at least one cause of this at a group fly yesterday. One of the participants was having difficulty seeing all the planes in the group. He'd see less than half and I believe he would even have planes occasionally come and go. Everyone else was seeing all the planes just fine so it was odd.

Turns out the issue was that the person having the issues was also running another computer on his local network running an instance of JoinFS as an always up server and the port forwarding was pointing to that computer. He changed the port he connected to his server JoinFS instance and could see everyone properly.

Just a heads up to anyone possibly having a similar issue.

[Peter]

Thanks, Robert. Good one.

Peter

[Blackbeard]

This problem has unfortunately plagued our three groups quite badly.

Peter you yourself have flown with our T-28 Trojan group and witnessed it first hand. Last Wednesday we were flying with seven Ants Tiger Moths in our weekly group meet. We were all using Ver 1.12.

At any stage, each individual aircraft could only see a maximum of four others, meaning two aircraft were invisible (none the same) to each member of the formation. This caused utter mayhem in our formation.

Some of our members are still members of CiX VFR who also run a Tiger Moth formation. From what they tell me, the CIX Tiger team is not reporting this problem in their forum posts. This is very perplexing as we seem to be fielding the same average number of aircraft, of the same type, even at the same time on the same day of the week The only difference we can make out is the geographical location of our members. Two are in the US, one in Belgium, myself in South Africa, and the balance (more than half)in the UK. From what I've heard, the CiX Tiger team is all UK based but I cannot be certain of this. We've checked the latency and this does tend to fluctuate to quite an extent between us all.

Could this be the problem? If so, any solution on the horizon? We are in a bit of a bind as many of our newer members across all 3 teams (Tigers Trojans and Warbirds) are non-FSX boxed users and we have had no choice but to revert to Multiplayer as the disappearing aircraft are causing misery and misunderstanding as pilots are "run-over" by others in complete innocence not knowing that the "perpetrator" cannot see them.

Kindest.................Mark

[Peter]

Hi Mark,

this is very likely to be a network and/or PC configuration issue. You mentioned the CIX Tigers. I am a member of that group and yes, we flew last week without any problems. All eleven pilots could see each other for the hour flight without any issues. We had pilots from UK, US, Denmark and SA.

The first thing to check is whether you can see each other in the Nodes list window. This should help identify any network problems. Then check the aircraft list. If this list looks okay and you can't see other aircraft, then it's likely to be a substitution problem. However, if you all have Ant's Tiger Moths installed from the start then there shouldn't be any need to do any substitutions if everyone flies one of those aircraft. You may need to make sure that everyone has done a scan from the File menu, Scan For Models. Just to make sure that the models are getting loaded. If you get everyone to check the aircraft list and make sure that each aircraft is listed as a Tiger Moth model.

If you are finding that the aircraft list is not getting populated as expected, then there could be some network issues. Because of the way JoinFS works, it tries to reroute data if necessary. However, if very few people in the group have port forwarding enabled, then it makes it much more difficult for JoinFS to fix any routing problems. I would suggest that you try to get a few more people in the group to enable port forwarding on their router and use the default port 6112. There's a reasonable chance that will solve the problem.

For formation flying make sure that everyone has ATC Mode disabled in the JoinFS settings. This can make other aircraft wander off course a bit.

You could also experiment with the Low Bandwidth option in the settings. Try it without first, and then if someone has problems or their latency is high, then try getting that person to enable it.

Hope that helps. It's likely to be some small issue, the JoinFS code seems quite stable at the moment.

When do you next meet up? it will be easier if I could tag along and check things out.

Best regards,
Peter

[Blackbeard]

Hi Peter,

Thank you very much for your quick and informative reply.

We would be honoured if you could join us. We practise each Wednesday evening at 19h30z. Next one is tonight. I will PM you our TS address.

Kindest.................Mark

[Peter]

Hi Mark,

sorry I wasn't able to find a solution to the problem tonight. However, I've been thinking about it and I may be able to try a few things out over the next few versions to work around the problem. I'll keep you posted on this thread.

Thanks,
Peter

[Blackbeard]

Hi Peter,

All of us greatly appreciate your time with us last night. A great many people would benefit from a breakthrough in that area. As an example most of internal Australia runs on the exact same connection as mine.

Again, your time and efforts are very much appreciated.

Kindest...............Mark

[Peter]

Hi Mark,

There's a new test version 1.1.4. I've tweaked a couple of things that should make the routing more tolerant and hopefully sort out these connection drops. When you next have a group flight if you could get everyone up to 1.1.4 and then let me know which of the following applies:

A. No appreciable change.
B. Significantly better.
C. Fixed.

Thanks,
Peter

[Blackbeard]

Hi Peter,

Thank you very much for your work on version 1.14. Our first group flight (Warbirds) is on a Monday evening. Unfortunately due to various social engagements most of our members were not able to attend, so only 3 took part in the test. All 3 of us were flying the A2A Spitfire however which has traditionally triggered the most problems with Join FS we believe (maybe mistakenly) due to the complexity of the aircraft.

Although with not enough numbers for a conclusive test, the problem of missing aircraft was completely absent. What we did notice was that my aircraft appeared to jump forward and back slightly when viewed from the other two aircraft, but nothing like on the scale that we've witnessed before. Whilst still in cruising mode on our way from RAF Valley to the beginning of the Mach loop we ran a latency check. From my side Steve and Chris (both UK based) were showing a steady 350-420 m/s). From their side they were showing 70-80 m/s to each other, and 350 -420 to me. Unfortunately JD, Tony, and Ray, with whom you identified port issues, were amongst the absentees.

After two very successful and smooth laps of the Mach Loop, we proceeded out over Cardigan Bay and performed an intense series of formation aerobatics followed by a return transit to, and formation landing back at RAF Valley. We are happy to report that the previous problem of aircraft appearing in really odd positions whilst inverted at the top of manoevres is also now completely absent. Manoevres we did included loops, rolls, Cuban 8s, chandelles, and immelmann turns. Steve took a recording of some of the aerobatics which I am sure he will share with us.

On the whole our Graue Adler display team (Grey Eagles) has a very good feeling about the vast improvements we witnessed last night, and we look forward to reporting back to you once we have performed the acid test with our usual complement of members.

Thanks once again for your help and input Peter!

[Peter]

Hi Mark,

thanks for the update. That's good news that there were no issues, but as you say, we'll get a better picture when you have the full group flying. Sounds promising though.

The minor issue of the aircraft moving forward and backwards slightly is something that has been seen before. It often happens to the same person rather than being a random thing. It may be due to a bad connection but I need to add some metrics to the node list and see if that correlates at all with that particular problem.

I'm quite surprised that the aerobatic bug appeared to be fixed. Perhaps it was a side effect of the above changes that I made, but anyway, it's all positive

Best regards,
Peter

[Blackbeard]

Hi Peter,

Last night we held our usual Tiger Moth practise. All went well initially. We had 5 including myself with no issues at all, until Ray joined us. Ray could not see me, & I could not see him. I left, rejoined, and initially Ray was visible, then disappeared. Although the aircraft that I (and the others) could see were perfectly stable, Ray reported that all of the aircraft were jumping around to him. Ray is UK based, and I was the only non UK and 3G connected participant.

This is becoming similar to a Poirot whodunnit Problem is we don't have a flying butler!

[Peter]

Hi Mark,

So, was it noticeably better, or no different?

Peter