TraxusIV

The fact that most games have you connect to external servers is well understood. Let's look at one specific example, since a single counter example will disprove the hypothesis that this port forwarding nonsense must be handled by the user. The example is ArmA 3. You can host a game where clients connect to your computer, and you run custom missions. This is done without the host having to change any firewall or router settings. Counter example provided, assertion disproven. There are other examples, but we only need the one. It CAN be done without the user having to muck with things. I assert that it therefore SHOULD be done.

@flybynoob lulz (re the video). @Zaelu Tested with canyouseeme.org, and it sees the service on port 10308.

@Pman: Ok, credentials, since we seem to be playing that juvenile game now: I am a physicist, and I program actively in 3 languages and am familiar with 8 or 9 more. I have been playing multiplayer games since before the internet was a thing (dialup bbs for the win). While I am not well versed in network coding, I do have a brain and am capable of comparing how DCS does networking, from the USER'S perspective, to how other games do it. The fact that in most cases forwarding ports and setting up firewall exceptions takes only 10 minutes or so is beside the point. It is something that is not a standard user level action and therefore should not be required of a user unless absolutely necessary. The fact that there are so many games which do not require the user to do it proves it is not essential for it to be done by the user. You claim that there are many other games that require messing with router and firewall configuration, and that it is a perfectly normal thing. I'm calling you on that. Provide a list. Going through my list of Steam and non-steam games, I cannot find a single one which has ever required me to mess with router and firewall settings, excepting DCS. Hell, even setting up a MINECRAFT server doesn't require me to mess with them, and that is far from being a class A title. Provide me an example or two of professionally made games that require messing with those settings just to get a multiplayer game going. And now you're using the MEGALOL smilie to convey that you are laughing at me, and you think you are aren't being rude? Ad hominem attacks, constant insults, and you think you are not being rude? Yes, YOU are the only one in the thread to call me rude and arrogant, but even if you weren't, two people calling the sky orange doesn't make it so. Stop with the self promotion and aggrandizement. I didn't start this thread so you could stroke your epeen in front of everyone and talk about how popular your server is, or how your mom and dad are cooler than my mom and dad. I started it so that attention can be brought to the fact that ED is selling a product which has a rather glaring deficiency, in the hopes that it might be corrected. The fact that it's based on old code is NOT an exoneration of it, but further incrimination. Unless you wish to posit that old code is somehow magically superior to newer developments. So stop trying to hijack this thread to show off and stroke your ego. Quit insulting and belittling me, and quit trolling.

And pman, I reject your assertion that the user should be responsible for dicking with firewall and router settings. Those are things that the user should never have to mess with just to get a multiplayer game going with a friend. And btw, that stuff does not fall into the simple category. No chance in heck my mom could ever forward a port. If my mom can't do it, it's not simple.

We can connect to established hosts just fine, but cannot connect to each other, nor do either one of us show up in the server browser. Zaelu, we'll give that a shot and see what the results are. Thanks for the link. And as to clicking new search, we've done that plenty.

The issue is not connecting to a host but being the host. Let me clarify that my goal here is not to obtain assistance in troubleshooting the problems we are experiencing, but to highlight the need for changes to the game to make hosting a game more simple and reliable. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but i believe that ED does monitor these forums, and my hope is that they will take note of the issue and address it. Of course, if we get the problem solved in the process, that's a nice side effect. Side note: pman, you do realize that you are the one who is being insulting and rude here, right? You are personally attacking me without knowing anything about me or my knowledge base. I am simply attacking deficiencies that I see in the software. Unless you are the guy who wrote that code, I don't see how you have any grounds for getting pissy at me. If you ARE the guy who wrote that code, then I understand your offense, but it still stands that the MP hosting capability is SUBSTANDARD.

I'm not arrogant, I'm indignant. The problem is not my home network. I am able to host many other games with no problem. The problem is the way DCS does networking. Why use an oddball port in the first place, for example? Why use their own server browser instead of GameSpy? The bottom line is that other companies can get multiplayer game hosting to work seamlessly. It is NOT an industry standard that hosting a multiplayer game should require the user to set up port forwarding and firewall exceptions, etc. It IS standard that all that stuff should be invisible to the user. DCS does not meet that standard. DCS needs improvement to its networking functionality, period.

and yes, we did the Internet/LAN stuff already.

Sierra99 you say "We've all been there." I say none of us should have been there.

I'm not missing the point, I'm contesting it. There is no justifiable reason that the networking aspects of DCS should not function as well as ArmA, Team Fortress, or any other A class title. DCS is a full blown sim, and that means that in terms of gameplay you can't expect it to be like other titles, but in terms of basic connectivity, yes, I can and do expect it to perform. The community is full of geeks who are used to dealing with complex hardware and software issues, and we have collectively forgotten that stuff does NOT always have to be complicated. You say I'm trying to force a square peg into a round hole and I'm telling you the damned peg ought to be round. There is no excuse for it not to be in terms of networking. I expect DCS to perform as any professionally created multiplayer software package should be expected to perform. If it was free software, then I'd have different expectations, but the fact that we pay a premium price for each module means that we should expect a quality product.

And show me the dedicated server for DCS. All my searches tell me there is no dedicated server, just people who keep the game permanently running on a dedicated machine. Same thing as the 'community hack' for the current Arma 3 alpha. But the sad thing is that even though Arma 3 is only in the Alpha phase, it still works better than DCS in terms of multiplayer.

^he means static ip address, not dynamic, btw.

Arma 3's dedicated server is coming and will still be released in the alpha phase. You're right that they haven't got it just yet though. The point, however, is that modern games handle all the connectivity issues for the player, rather than forcing the player to mess with them. I host games and run Arma 3 in server mode with no problem at all, and never had to touch my router or cable modem settings. I never had to manually make an exception for the game in Windows Firewall. The point is that it just worked, and it just works for countless other modern games. For DCS it does NOT just work. And that is inexcusable. I go on multiplayer and can connect to any one of the 30 or so servers I see. 30 servers. That tells me that so many people experience trouble hosting a game that they, like us, give up in frustration. I KNOW the community is bigger than 30 servers worth, but that's all there are. I am confident that if we spend enough time troubleshooting this that we can get it working properly. That's not the point. The point is that we shouldn't HAVE to do any damned troubleshooting in the first place. The game should have been crafted well enough to just work properly. The fact that it wasn't is unacceptable.

and we've both set up exceptions in our firewalls.

btw I love your signature, ENO. XD

many many many many times. BUT you shouldn't have to deal with that crap. No other modern game makes you dink with your router, cable modem or firewall settings. This is inexcusable, and the fact that some people can get it to work in no way lessens the fact that the process is onerous, overly complicated, and unreliable.

My friend and I have tried for 4 hours to get a multiplayer game going. We tried having me start the game and him connect, we've tried him starting the game and me connecting, and nothing works. We've tried port forwarding, connect by ip, etc. and no joy. Multiplayer servers need a massive reworking. Modern games like Arma 3 have simple, reliable game hosting and even dedicated server programs. There is zero excuse for having such a completely crap system like DCS Has. Insert epic expletive laden rant here. The single player game is great, but multiplayer fails so hard it makes me sick. I for one am not buying any more modules until this crap gets fixed, and I'm going to advise anyone who asks of the nonfunctional multiplayer system.

Ok, so when I was a radio operator in the army, we had very specifically prescribed words and phrases that we used for communicating. From the standard pronunciation of 9 as "niner" to using "affirmative" instead of "yes", "negative" instead of "no" and "say again" instead of "I'm sorry old chap, I missed that, could you please repeat?". In watching youtube tutorials and general gameplay videos, I've noticed that DCS fliers tend to obey radio conventions as well, such as saying "splash" when a bomb hits, "rifle" when firing a missile, etc. The question is, where can I find a reference for this? A glossary, or air force standard, or whatever? Does a compiled slang reference even exist? Thanks, Trax

Second on not mixing ati and nvidia. Long history of unpredictable behavior when doing so. Personally, I prefer nvidia because of the physx, and the fact that I can write programs that use the cards for general parallel computing using nvidia's CUDA. Trax

Yep, I did mean molex. Hmm, my understanding is that it isn't just the efi. Mac versions of video cards have extra rom built in to handle the OS X boot stuff. PC Cards don't have this. Some creative googling ought to provide the specifics of why and how, but bottom line is that you don't see the Mac boot screen on a pc video card (as of my mp and gtx570, anyway). I am very glad to hear that pcs are going to efi though. The more standardization between macs and standard pcs, the better. :) On the topic of the MP's power supply though, I had to take out two of my drives to make sure the card gets enough juice. I had pretty much all my bays filled though. Currently I have three hd and one optical drive installed. Trax

This is an exciting project. It's been a while since I read through the whole thread, so I hope you'll all forgive this possibly already answered question, but y2kiah, for button and switch panels, do you have a specific place that you've gone to to get them made? Have you thought about coordinating with someone who makes panels to create a "Y2KIAH Pit Approved Official Awesome Compatible" set of panels? I'm very likely to start a pit build of my own, in the near future, and it would be great to have the two most complicated chunks of work basically already done and available off the shelf. Trax

Oh, we're around. We just learned long ago from the Steam forums to be cautious in disclosing our Macness. :) I'd second keeping macs mixed in with windows machines. The two communities have been divided for so many years, it's nice to be able to start merging them into one happy family. Might be nice to have a Sticky thread for mac specific tips, but a whole sub forum... meh. Trax

<UNSOLICITED_ADVICE> You're in luck, and out of luck in what you'd like to do. You can get a very nice machine for DCS out of a Mac Pro, but there are some pitfalls. I'm running on a late 2009 with a bazillion GB of ram and stuff, and it works quite well, with a couple exeptions. First off, the CPU will have no trouble at all, I think. As long as you have at least 8GB ram, you should be good. I'm running on 16 (I think) and I've never noticed any cpu related slowdowns. The really critical item is the video card, and that's what is going to cause the most trouble. We're fortunate in that most modern PC video cards are working out of the box now with OS X. This is a change from several years ago when there were no drivers available. But recently, (I think it was with Snow Leopard) we got modern drivers built into the os. What this means is that you no longer have to rely on special Macerized versions of video cards that are already 3 years old. In my box I have an nVidia GTX 570 made by evga. But there's a catch. The power supply inside your Mac Pro is generally not a beast of a power supply. They are designed to provide enough power to run 4 hard drives, two optical drives, and 4 PCI express cards, as long as those cards have moderate power consumption. High end video cards require more power than the power supply is designed to handle. Further, the ps generally does not come with extra connectors for video cards. In my case, I had to use two 6 pin connectors on my motherboard. That meant that I had to make sure I bought a card that only needed two 6 pin connectors, rather than a 6 and an 8, or two 8 pin connectors. That's the critical thing, to find a card that your motherboard and powersupply will support. There's an ugly alternative though. You can buy a computer power supply (thermaltake is a good brand), and just set it on top of your mac pro, with the appropriate wires snaking in through a PCI slot cover to power the card. You'd have to figure out how to fool the power supply into thinking it's attached to a motherboard, but there are tutorials around to help you do that. There's one last alternative. Someone on the web (I forget who, so you'll have to do some expert googling here) sells a cable that converts several 4 pin drive connectors into a 6 or 8 pin video connector. This can be used if, for example, your mobo only has one 6 pin connector, or you need a 6 and an 8 pin connector. The catch is that these 4 pin connectors are not intended to provide large amounts of power, and they are generally all on the same internal circuits as your other drives (they are intended in the Mac Pro for optical drives). As a result, you may have to cut down how many hard drives you have installed. Even if you go off of two 6 pin connectors on your motherboard, as I did, you may still have to reduce the number of drives to prevent artifacting and video card crashes. So bottom line, figure out how you're going to connect a new video card before you choose the card itself. Next, something you need to consider when selecting the card is how many monitors you will want to drive. I found out too late that my evga GTX570 will only support two simultaneous displays. This is a problem because I had wanted to drive three monitors. I ended up connecting two to the 570, and one to the original GT120 card that came with my Mac. But the original video card is just horrible, so any time any part of the video gets displayed on the monitor connected to the original card, everything slows down to about a quarter frame per second. I imagine there may be a work around for this, but I haven't found it yet. Lastly, you will have to keep your original card installed, as cards intended for windows still can't generally handle the fact that the Mac Pro doesn't use a BIOS, but uses EFI firmware instead. As a result, you'll never be able to see the boot screen on a windows card, so if you have to hold down option to select a startup drive, you'll be SOL. I just keep my original card installed. Now, because the Mac Pro has been found in the past to support SLI, there is the possibility that you could get two SLI capable nvidia cards and run them in the top two slots, with your original video card in the third or fourth slot. This would require that you use an external power supply, but I think it could be done. BUT...... That brings up my last point. If you start really getting into DCS, to the point that you're plunking down hundreds of dollars on controllers and accessories, and are feeling the drive to build a cockpit, you'll really be better off considering a whole new PC dedicated to gaming. The advantages are legion, chief among them being the ability to select your desired hardware with relative freedom, and the fact that you'll never need to reboot into Mac OS, because your mac will already be right there on another monitor for you to use. If you can afford to invest the money, and either have the necessary experience to build it yourself, or know someone who has such knowledge and is willing to help, I really really recommend a dedicated machine. Mac Pros can do a lot, but they do have limitations, and if flying and blowing up tanks is something you find you adore, it'll be worth the effort and expense to do it right. Oh, final final note here: Load times generally suck with 7200rpm drives. I'd really recommend take a look at an SSD as others are recommending. </UNSOLICITED_ADVICE> Trax

Does anyone have any photos of the throttle mount pieces that they could post? I'm having a hard time figuring out how the cuts are supposed to be, just based on the dxf and Images in post 295. My spatial reasoning seems to have failed me. Thanks much, Trax

Hmm, I think that may need some adjustment to fit the seat I have in mind. It's 57.2 wide at the base, according to the catalog. Thanks, Trax