Some mixed sim testing with 1.3.2

[picnic]

I setup a virtual PC tonight and installed 1.3.2 in to it running on Port 6113. No sim or anything. Then did some testing, I had a PC with P3D and a separate PC with XP 11 (Steam) running on it, both also had 1.3.2 installed. These connected to the server using a local IP. I then had 2 friends connecting externally over the Internet using FSX or P3D.

I gave my friends the magic number JFS gives you but they both received an error, paraphrased as "Invalid Join Address select a Bookmark or use an address in a format described in the manual. First friend had 1.2.8 installed as well as 1.3.2. Entering the same 030...:6113 address in to 1.2.8 allowed for a successful connection. When I asked him to repeat the test in 1.3.2 to confirm the error it also now worked! 2nd friend only had 1.3.0 installed and that's how I got the error description as he had the same problem. Both could connect to the server using my public IP and the 6113 port. Interestingly after connecting JFS showed the server address as the number I initially gave them that it said was incorrect.

On to the flying. Mixed bag really. Things seemed pretty good in the FSX games but the XP showed some strange behaviour. Initially I had only 2 AI as that was sufficient until friend 2 joined. I increased the AI count in XP and saw the new player, however XP lost the 1st player (or so I thought). I did a disconnect of the network on the XP PC and a reconnected. Player 1's helicopter was then merged with my plane. I could see my P3D plane in XP and it had 2 props one, 6" behind the other. I moved my P3D plane and I could see that friend 2's plane had actually been merged with my P3D one. Another network disconnect/reconnect and I had planes merging again.

Here's a picture, that's a helicopter merged with a C172 and other C172 further away. The closest plane in mine in XP, the jets in the background are static models (I don't think they were AI)



P3D was showing the other aircraft parked correctly around the apron.

I then lost friend 2 from the session on my P3D system after shutting down XP (not sure it was related). The FSJ User View showed him being present but the connected column said no. Checking the server had he was connected OK. Something a bit strange was my 2 PC, connected to the server over the LAN, were reported to be on Port 6112 (even though I entered 6113) while the external players were on 6113. This was noticed when all the users were reported as connected, I'm just making it clear that this happened and surprised me a little. No idea if it has any relevance.

No doubt we'll do some more testing in the coming days.

Great work Peter and it's reassuring to see XP support coming along

[Peter]

Hi,

thanks for the detailed report.

First, the address problem sounds like it might be a bug in the decoding of the address. Could you PM me the exact address as copied, and I should be able to reproduce the same thing here.

The merged plane and wrong port number might well be related. It could be that it's given two clients the same IDs. I'm not sure if that's a network problem or just an XP problem.

So you had three JoinFS clients locally and then some external clients joining. How did you configure your port forwarding on the router, as this is quite critical. Let's say your three devices are called A, B and C. The JoinFS settings for choosing a port should have been different on all three. For example, A uses port 6112, B uses 6113, C uses 6114. Then you need to set port forwarding on the router so that port 6112 links to the IP address of A. 6113 to B and 6114 to C.

That would be the most reliable way of setting up that three machine scenario. Is that similar to what you had?

Peter

[picnic]

My address is 03087 51997:6113. The server is running at the moment if you wanted to try it.

I had a virtual PC running the 'master' JoinFS and 2 clients locally on the LAN, one XP one P3D. When joining the server from the clients I used the local IP address and port 6113. So 192.168.22.22:6113.

I enabled port forwarding on the router but only for port 6113 and that was forwarded to the server instance, 192.168.22.22.

I'm a little confused by your A,B,C port example. Is this problem I'm causing by running 3 machines inside the LAN? Could I 'cheat' the system by telling the local clients to connect via the public IP? I'm just a little concerned that if I want my client(s) to connect to an external server I'll forever need to be changing my port numbers.

[Peter]

Ah, there shouldn't be a second colon in that address. Just a space. Try '03087 51997 6113'

As you can see the problem is that JoinFS shouldn't have put a colon in the 'Me' box. I'll fix that.

The problem isn't connecting your two PCs to your 'master' JoinFS. You're doing that correctly by specifying the internal IP address. The problem is for the other people connecting externally. How are their JoinFS clients supposed to connect to your two PCs? They won't be able to because all three machines appear to be coming from the same IP address and port number, in other words, for them it's just one JoinFS client. I think that's why you are getting the merged aircraft. You're basically trying to share a port between three clients, but that's just not going to work I'm afraid. Each one needs its own port and needs port forwarding set for each one. It's a fairly easy change to make.

Peter

[picnic]

Thanks Peter, I'll give it a whirl. Probably tomorrow evening, something else on tonight I'm afraid.

Normally you don't need to setup port forwarding for a single client, I guess you somehow open up a connection. Might I get away with just specifying different client ports and keeping the forwarding just for the server, everyone's initial port (ha ha) of call.

[JarangMandi]

Peter,

Following on from this, I was testing with the same people as picnic (another Peter) was last night (we're all Bristol Flight Sim Group), but using different server equipment, and I was seeing the same behaviour...

First of all, configuration.
Single client instance running on our server with no simulator attached.
I was running a single client instance on my machine with XPlane (11.10b7) and your JoinFS plugin
"B" was running a single client instance on his machine with P3D2
"S" was running a single client instance on his machine with P3D4

JoinFS was reporting - for me at least - direct connections to all three remote systems. We were all behind different IP addresses, all on port 6113, all with different IDs and latencies of less than 50ms.

Three of us were parked up at different parts of the airfield (EGGD unsurprisingly) in our respective simulators.

To start off with, "B" and I were connected - we'd both connected via the server address. We could see each other fine - exactly where we expected to see each other. The Aircraft window of JoinFS reflected what we'd expect to see from our respective locations.

Then "S" joined, again using the server address... Despite being parked elsewhere on the airfield, and despite the information in the aircraft window telling me that he was where he thought he was, he was rendered by XPlane in exactly the same location as "B". The map in XPlane confirmed that they were colocated; similarly a third party app which also shows aircraft position (littlenavmap) showed both aircraft in the same place - which isn't surprising considering it's probably getting its information from the same place.

"S" could disconnect and reconnect at will, and would always disappear and on reconnection show in JoinFS in the right place (i.e, range and bearing), but in XPlane, he was always rendered under Barry.

Then I asked "B" to disconnect. When he did so "S" continued to be rendered in the same place as "B" was despite him being on the other side of the airfield. When "B" reconnected, he appeared where he should, as "S" moved to where he should be too. When "S" then disconnected and reconnected, he appeared back under "B".

All connecting and disconnecting was from the network, not the simulator. This was totally repeatable.

Incidentally, XP frame rate was particularly poor during disconnections and re-connections...

Hope this is enough information to work out what's going on, but if there's anything else we can do then please let us know.

[Peter]

Thanks for that. At least that eliminates the router and network from the problem.

I'll have a look at the framerate issue during connection, but I think it's just X-Plane loading the model. It's a bit surprising because it ought to be able to handle the asynchronous loading correctly. I'll see what happens when I change the AI aircraft model during single player, however I think it loads the model while the menu is still up just after clicking continue, so it's effectively hidden at that point.

Peter

[MartinCANCoast]

Similar issue here Peter. One pilot using FSX-SE and three using XP11. JoinFS running on a 5th computer as a HUB. All connecting to that hub using ver 1.3.2 Seemed to be OK in the air but we found these issues:

1. Two aircraft connecting at on different parts of the airport but seen as "joined together"
2. XP11 would pause when another pilot changed his aircraft or used model matching to change another pilots aircraft
3. Pilot view would change. ie watching from outside view would change to inside view. Seemed to correspond to aircraft model matching changes.

We disabled WT3 plugin but the issues persisted. as for the views pausing it may have something to do with an incompatibility with the X-Camera plug in. On our next try I'll disable X-Camera and see where that takes us.

Overall in flight, seems to work well and this will surpass by a large margin anything currently out there for cross platform flying.

[Peter]

Thanks, Martin.

One of the good things about X-Plane is that the plugin can update the aircraft position every frame, which makes the network aircraft move very smoothly. At some point I might try doing it that way on P3D.

The good news is that I tried a three pilot test this morning and we all saw the merged aircraft bug, so I should be able to get that one sorted out.

Peter

[MartinCANCoast]

Just a quick update on the freezing of X-Plane when another pilot loads or changes aircraft. It is definitely an X-Camera issue. Here's some of my log

1:27:53.251 I/ACF: Loading airplane number 2 with Aircraft/Laminar Research/Cessna 172SP/Cessna_172SP.acf
X-Camera: TrackIR has been shutdown
X-Camera: TrackIR interface -- initialize OK.
X-Camera: TrackIR Window handle registration was successful.
X-Camera: TrackIR cursor stopped
X-Camera: TrackIR data transmission started

Several of these for each time a pilot changes an aircraft in model matching. The freezing only occurs when using JoinFS. So there is a conflict between the two.

[Peter]

Did you try it with X-Camera disabled? Did that still freeze?

Peter

[JarangMandi]

I don't have XCamera installed - and it freezes for me...

Wasn't going to mention this until I'd had the chance to investigate further, but at one point in the testing we did I moved a large distance away from the airfield in a single jump and the performance went to complete pot. The XPlane log was showing the system re-loading both other aircraft every two seconds - which slowed it down significantly to the point where it was unflyable.

Eventually it settled down, but that could have been one of three (or possibly more) issues... a) I was getting closer to the airfield where my two colleagues were on the ground, b) one of them (the one who was appearing under the other chap when he reconnected) disconnected so there was only one aircraft on the airfield, or c) I had substituted the model for the chap who'd disconnected with a non-Laminar model.

I'll look into it some more when I get some time. The important thing for me is to get across that I don't think a conflict with XCamera can be causing this.

[Peter]

I've attempted to fix both the co-location and loading bugs in 1.3.3.

Let me know how it goes.

Peter

[FireRx]

so far so good, Peter. will test more situations.

[JarangMandi]

Just to re-iterate what FireRx said...

No recurrence of either issue when flying with a mix of pilots - including picnic who had an FSX and a P3D instance sat on the same LAN.

We'll carry on testing though and let you know how we get on.

[picnic]

including picnic who had an FSX and a P3D instance sat on the same LAN.

Who had X-Plane 11 and P3D on the same LAN I did ensure my 2 computers had different local ports but I didn't have port forwarding enabled to either of them (I forgot )

Things did indeed work very well last night. Great job Peter.

[Peter]

That's great news, I can relax now.

Thanks
Peter