Helicopters

[Deano1973]

Hi Peter, hope you had a good Christmas and New Year!

We've been running JoinFS at MODsim for a few weeks now prior to the latest update, and all's been going great. However one of our users is complaining of terrible performance at low speeds. I don't believe that this is a faulty of JoinFS as others alongside him were not witnessing similar problems. I did grab a log from when I was on-line at the same time as him though, which I've attached. I suspect there's not much to go on but my sim did seem to have trouble adding him.

He appears as WAT06 in the log text and reported other helicopters flipping over, leaping about etc. It did sound a little like the "looping bug" to some extent. Any ideas?

Loving the addition of Objects! Properly working and sailing aircraft carriers in multiplayer will be a HUGE bonus!

Cheers,
Dean

log - previous.zip

(2.85 KiB) Downloaded 346 times

[Peter]

Hi Dean,

great Christmas, thanks. Happy new year!

The problem that you outlined sounds very similar to something I've seen with regular formation flights at my club. We usually fly with 5-9 pilots, and everything runs smoothly for everyone, except for one pilot, who sees other aircraft warp forwards and backwards a bit, and everyone else sees their plane do the same.

My suspicions are that it's not the network connection but something to do with the link between SimConnect and the simulator.

One extra thing that we noticed with the above situation was that when that person started recording the Teamspeak comms, their view of all the aircraft went really crazy similar to what you described, so perhaps it's something to do with hard drive performance and demand.

Was this person running FSX or P3D?
We're they recording the flight at the time, or doing any other hard-drive intensive operations?
When you say at low speeds, do you mean everything is smooth when traveling fast? What sort of low speed does it start going wrong?
Did the problem occur when flying planes rather than helicopters?

Regards,
Peter

[Skaldy]

If you only turn the computer on when flying and then close it immediately, it might be because Windows is not getting the time to download & install updates. Leave the computer on with no applications running, until "Task Manager" performance tab shows Disk usage and Ethernet usage around 0% - that might take a few hours.

It also might be because Windows is doing regular Maintenance (running Defender). You can alter the time it is supposed to run by going to "Control Panel\System and Security\Security and Maintenance\Maintenance...Change Maintenance settings" and specifying a time when the computer will be on but not gaming.

[Deano1973]

One extra thing that we noticed with the above situation was that when that person started recording the Teamspeak comms, their view of all the aircraft went really crazy similar to what you described, so perhaps it's something to do with hard drive performance and demand.

Was this person running FSX or P3D?
We're they recording the flight at the time, or doing any other hard-drive intensive operations?
When you say at low speeds, do you mean everything is smooth when traveling fast? What sort of low speed does it start going wrong?
Did the problem occur when flying planes rather than helicopters?

Regards,
Peter

The person in question runs FSX and were not recording at the time. I don't know if they were doing anything intensive at the time but I'll check when I next see them on teamspeak.

The problem seems to affect only helicopters which generally fly at lower speeds. It seems to me counter-intuitive that slower speeds would introduce errors but if the vertical component is an issue ( as per the looping bug ) then I could see how this could happen. I should add that we once had about 11 helicopters together during a test night some months ago and nobody had an issue so it's tough to see what's happening. I've asked the chap in question many times for a log to send you but to no avail.

While I think of it, I do see aircraft jerk about a bit if the pilot starts doing something else on their desktop, for instance. We've adopted a policy of not messing about with other programs when in close formation to avoid such issues.

Cheers,
Dean

[dan]

I can confirm that I only had FSX and TS running when flying. Also in response to asking numerous times for logs I have only flown a couple of times and with having to restart it up to 15 times to see airframes sat right next to me and restarting my computer to see if that worked the timestamps on the logs did not match the times that I was trying to fly along side a crazy circus. it is not just myself that has this problem its is also worth noting that what I was explaining somebody was seeing the same but from my aircraft. and other helicopter users have noticed big jumps in airframes when trying to fly close together. when and if I experience these problems again I will gladly provide the logs.

[Peter]

Thanks, guys.

It's interesting that is seems to be affecting just the helicopters. They are handled slightly differently.

Also interesting about the desktop activities, there must be some sort of priority issue here. JoinFS does use SimConnect calls very intensively so some disruption of the connection will cause objects to behave erratically.

Peter

[Ronald]

TIP1: Trim down all unneeded (foreground) programs and background services, so that your CPU can be only busy powering your flightsimulator:
You can use a tool like Game-Fire to temporarily turn off applications while starting your flightsim:
- https://www.smartpcutilities.com/gamefiredl.html

TIP2: If you want to know for sure which windows background services:
- do what
- you can safely turn off (on a Windows machine) look at Black Viper;s website:

His site is currently down (07-01-2017) but these are links to copies of his valuable information:
- http://www.gegeek.com/tech_reference/te ... ressed.pdf
- http://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/ ... ation.html

TIP3: Stop downloading, streaming anything while running your flightsimulator:
The more internet connection bandwidth and speed JoinFS has to communicate with the other players the better the results will be

Remarks:
I only run my flightsim (FSX Gold,) with the following tasks in my Windows Taskmanager:
- csrss.exe
- explorer.exe (this program can be eventually turned off if you like)
- <display-driver>.exe
- <firewall software>.exe
- winlogon.exe
- taskhost.exe

When i fly i've turned my virusscanner off, since my computer is clean and is saves a lot of FSX-loading time.

[Peter]

Thanks, Ronald, good tips. I may put those into a troubleshooting guide I'm putting together.

There's something else, Dean, that may possibly be part of the issue. When flying in formation everyone should have the same weather/wind. You can imagine what it would be like if there was a 20 knot discrepancy. Not only will you get different drift and trim settings, but because of the way JoinFS updates the positions in the simulator, it may make things a bit unstable.

So, basically, when you next see these things happening, go to the aircraft list in JoinFS. Click on each aircraft and, first of all, just check the current wind for each aircraft. If some are different then see if that corresponds to the pilots that see the problem. Then get everyone to copy the weather from one particular pilot. Just click on the aircraft and click Copy Weather. Wait a few moments for the window to get updated and make sure that everyone shows the same wind. Then see if that has had any effect. It would at least eliminate it as a cause.

Thanks,
Peter

[Deano1973]

Thanks, Ronald, good tips. I may put those into a troubleshooting guide I'm putting together.

There's something else, Dean, that may possibly be part of the issue. When flying in formation everyone should have the same weather/wind. You can imagine what it would be like if there was a 20 knot discrepancy. Not only will you get different drift and trim settings, but because of the way JoinFS updates the positions in the simulator, it may make things a bit unstable.

So, basically, when you next see these things happening, go to the aircraft list in JoinFS. Click on each aircraft and, first of all, just check the current wind for each aircraft. If some are different then see if that corresponds to the pilots that see the problem. Then get everyone to copy the weather from one particular pilot. Just click on the aircraft and click Copy Weather. Wait a few moments for the window to get updated and make sure that everyone shows the same wind. Then see if that has had any effect. It would at least eliminate it as a cause.

Thanks,
Peter

We operate by using JoinFS on a "server" PC which has Real World weather running on it via Open Clouds. All pilots joining the server select the server machine's weather as standard as we're often flying close together ( both rotary, heavies and fast jets ) as we're a military VA.

I did note that when instructing in the rear seat of a Typhoon last night, when the pilot pulled up into the vertical during a close combat training sortie, the dreaded looping bug re-emerged and the Typhoon appeared to be in an out of control spin when in fact the student was flying normally. I have the sense that the two flaws are related ( helicopters and looping ) as the erratic behaviour that results is the same.

We'll upgrade to the latest version at the weekend, and report back then to see if anything's changed.

[Peter]

I did note that when instructing in the rear seat of a Typhoon last night, when the pilot pulled up into the vertical during a close combat training sortie, the dreaded looping bug re-emerged and the Typhoon appeared to be in an out of control spin when in fact the student was flying normally. I have the sense that the two flaws are related ( helicopters and looping ) as the erratic behaviour that results is the same.

Perhaps you're right. The loop bug could certainly be making things appear a lot worse. I'm going to have another crack at fixing the loop bug, I may have a go this week. It is a big showstopper especially where aerobatics are concerned.

Peter