Bug report - Multiplayer LAG issues

[Johnny_Rico]

Noticed this several times over the last month or more

 

Actually had fraps running when it happend (by luck I guess)

 

Here is a capture of what was happening in an MP session when the

LAG issue happened

 

[Samoht]

Yup, that's pretty much exactly what I see on both of my servers too.

[Johnny_Rico]

How many players do you normally have on average ?

[Samoht]

Per server, on the weekends, it's usually in the 30s, sometimes going into the 40s. During the week, it's in the 10-20s. Since swapping the video card from a 1050 2gb to a 1050 ti 4gb, it doesn't seem to happen as much, but it still does occasionally. I don't know what the root cause is, but nothing I've done to scripts or the mission has changed things as best as I can tell.

 

Edit: this wasn't an issue until 1.5.8 and 2.2.0.

[Johnny_Rico]

Normal week nights is about 15-20 on havoc

 

Busy weekend is 20-30 (max player is set to 30 at the moment)

 

ALso agree this started to be an issue after 1.5.6

[Dutch Baron]

Hello all,

 

We from The Art of Warfare (TAW.net - TAWDCS.org) have been experiencing the EXACT same issues for months now.

Looking at your video, it is exactly what we see when the issues occur in our missions.

We have these issues usually when we have more than 30 players online.

But in the past months we had some occasions, where even a 15 player SATAC mission, with no scripts, triggers caused mass disconnect/lag, but that's been a month ago and I think the disconnect issue is fixed now. Just saying that the number of players does not seem to be directly related, maybe....

 

It seems that when the server/mission is freshly started, everyone jumps in the pit, takes off, flies to the AO and just about when we get to the first engagements, the LAG/WARP starts.

What usually happened the last months, is that at that very moment, mass disconnects start happening.

But yesterday we had almost 40 players online, we got the LAG/WARP, but no disconnects (probably due to the latest DCS update).

Then every time the LAG/WARP happens, it takes 5-10 minutes, if you then rejoin the server, or wait for that time, after that the server is running fine for the next 2 hours.

Yesterday we also had a MLRS in COMBINED ARMS controlled by a member, when he fired 20 missiles, DCS started warping a little bit.

 

I have also seen that on some occasions, when looking at CPU status on the server, that the NUMBER 8 CPU is completely swamped 100% when the issues occur.

All other 7 CPU/Threads are almost idling.

 

** I would like to share a situation in many DCS communities/servers **

 

I need to say that because of these issues, a lot of communities are negatively affected due to members becoming agitated with the problems, that keep on going time after time.

It is VERY hard to manage such a community with many ACTIVE, DCS LOVING members.

We in TAW now have 95 ACTIVE DCS members.

So when there are project teams of DCS enthusiasts, spending COUNTLESS hours of their FREE time in designing, creating, testing missions, then creating briefings, only to find that all the work for this week's community mission almost went to waste, because the DCS server crashes/warps/lags/disconnects.

This is just a slap in the face for all those hard working guys out there.

 

There will be some members who start thinking it's the MISSION DESIGNER who messed up some scripts/triggers in the mission, some think it's the server so we need to find and rent new servers, some blame DCS, some blame specific DCS modules and some blame Windows......

Then it's a total struggle for leaders to try and find the reason in either the server/mission/module/Windows, and in the mean time trying to ease the minds of all involved.

 

****

I am sure that DCS MP Customers would very much appreciate if the MP section of DCS gets some extra LOVE and ATTENTION from you guys of ED..... I know 2.5 is around the corner, but a few words from ED regarding the MP may do a lot of good in DCS communities world wide....

Like the 'LETTER FROM ED' you guys recently did. That great letter cleared a lot of the lingering questionable feelings in the DCS communities. I really wish you could a letter like that for the MULTIPLAYER community specifically, since we seem to be a special breed within DCS.

Like for instance the..... dare I say it out loud...... yes I dare:

DEDICATED SERVER?

****

 

I have been trying to isolate the problem, trying to find the cause with a group of very knowledgeable members, but we still haven't been able to find the cause.

Missions that have been running fine for YEARS, suddenly have issues. These missions are ALWAYS re-saved if a new DCS update has arrived.

 

I really don't know what the reason is for the issues, and I am fatigued by endlessly trying to find it.

I have many TacView files, LOG files, Track files, and recently the new DCS ERROR LOGGING files from our servers.

If someone from EAGLE DYNAMICS is willing to take a look at them and willing to try and help a struggling community of paying DCS customers, I would be REALLY happy to provide you with anything you ask!

For this I will create TIME, MONEY, FILES, move MOUNTAINS, whatever you want ;)

 

Is there any way ED could provide us with a document, where it states what the maximum amount of players (clients), static units, AI ON units, moving units, explosions etc. are in order to maintain a proper running server.

So if ED can tell us: if you have this and this, then we GUARANTEE the proper working of DCS on your server.

TAW SERVERS SPECS:

WINDOWS 2012 R2

CPU: i7-6700k

RAM: 64Gb

SSD Disks

GPU: Onboard INTEL HD Graphics (but 3D Rendering is turned OFF for DCS)

 

Thanks so much for any response!

Edited January 8, 2018 by Dutch Baron

[legitscoper]

legitscoper agrees. DCS randomly crashed yesterday, and also 2 other people reported that crash in exact same time. When there is not much players, it runs just perfect, even on not dedicated machine, like laptop. But when many players join, weird things happen. Like F-15 doing cobra, random wrapping etc.

 

Wysłane z mojego SM-J510FN przy użyciu Tapatalka

[blue_ben]

+1 for the general feeling.

 

MP play is what will keep the people playing. We need more MP players.

 

When newcomers arrive from FPS games where you can easily get 64 players playing on one server, it is something difficult to understand why so much lag is occuring. I take the point that it may not be related to the number of players, but in the end, it is the feeling that the people get.

 

We love DCS. We pay for DCS. We love DCS.

Keep on with the good work ED, I am sure you'll make it !

[Johnny_Rico]

Thanks for the replies guys

It would be good to get ED to do another mass multiplayer test in debug

mode, the kind they HAD to do with the wepaons.dll bug fixing

 

Or alternatively give us better logging so we can send them data

which they can use to make MP better

 

ED .... Help us to help YOU

[AlephRo]

Can confirm all the above.

I mean.. come on.. how can we STILL have lags and unplayable desyncs in multiplayer after such a long time? It's like they don't care at all about their user base. Communities like ours are being damaged by the inability to get events running properly with more than 20 players. It's not like we payed only for the singleplayer part of the game, why do I have the feeling that nobody up there cares about multiplayer quality?

[boedha68]

Dear ED, i am also member from TAW. I experience lags, crashes and even login to server problems all in the multiplayer section. Especialy when we have mandatory with TAW. In version 1.5.6 we had barely No problems. From version 1.5.7 and above it’s getting worse. In 2.2 Mp problems too. I know you aware about these problems. I hope that they get high priority for love for the squadrons who fly 3 times weekly or more with your Sim. Thank you.

[jackmckay]

LAG in MP is reason of all of my frustrations in DCS. I've been here for almost 5 years and I don't count time spent on LOMAC & FC but LAG is still here. In my opinion, ED should cut all other activities and find a solution for this desync problem. Some of my squad mates said that they will not play DCS MP until LAG is fixed and I fully understand them. DCS is losing so much players and money because of this problem as comparing to some other sims that have flawless performance with 100+ players in MP, DCS cant serve 20 without excessive disposition. That's no good.