Dedicated Server CPU issues
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We are considering trying another VPS provider, for the sake of having a comparison point with our current server.
Would you say more than 16Gb RAM is overkill if only BMS is running to host MP ?
Also, in terms of BW, is 400Mbps enough for 16 pilots, or should we look for more ?The provider I am currently looking at has a product with 6 cores (probably too much for just BMS process), 16Gb RAM and 400Mbps.
The offer above is 8cores, 30Gb RAM, 600Mbps. I am not sure it is necessary in our situation ? -
Yes, I understood the point about single CPU core usage vs. averaged load (as displayed in the task manager). I will check again but I am pretty sure that when I did the minimization tests, I specifically checked the impact on the load of a single core. But that was some time ago, let’s check again.
Anyway, we have to test the dll clearly.
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@pyhg after dropping in bmsdedi … next session, keep an eye on TaskMgr memory tab – the overall “commit charge” value will tell you how much RAM the whole system is using.
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Thanks ! Now we have many things to test and look for at the next session
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@pyhg Hi Pyhg.
very interesting thread. Please keep us update on the test results.
Many thanks!
Gundam
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Wait for U1…
We have stuff coming for dedicated servers
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@MaxWaldorf OK MaxW! Great news.
Gundam
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Ok thanks for the hint !
In the meantime we can already :
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experiment with the bmsdedi.dll over some time
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run missions hosted by one of the pilots’ PC. This is not ideal in our mind because it means relying on the availability of one person and the stability of his session (we tend to believe that hosting in a plane that stays on ramp is less prone to crashes than hosting by someone doing a lot of stuff in the air, playing with the TGP, etc…). But at least that can help us identifity whether or not our server is a factor in the weird stuff we see with the missiles. If we do not see this stuff when hosting on one of our PCs, that’s important info we need to gather.
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@pyhg On your server, please run BMS with the
-logfps
flag. After every session, this will save aframerate.csv
file in youruser\logs
directory. You should use this FPS log to guide optimizations. If you can, please post that frame rate log along with further ACMIs from your multiplayer sessions.Ideally, server FPS should be well over 40 fps. If it gets below ~15 FPS, it seems like the AI stops working correctly. If it drops into the single digits, then you start to see aircraft doing backflips, AI-launched missiles no longer can hit their targets, etc.
As others have said, CPU load in Windows is probably not a good metric. The dll should help with FPS no matter what, even with the window as small as possible.
You can also try placing the following line in your .cfg file:
set g_sNonCompatibleChanges “all-PARALLEL_DRAW_OBJLIST-PARALLEL_DRAW_PLATFORM”
(Edit: gave you the wrong setting, correct one below, my apologies!)set g_sCpuPerfOptimizations "all-PARALLEL_DRAW_OBJLIST-PARALLEL_DRAW_PLATFORM"
to see if that makes an FPS improvement.
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I am adding 2 more points for our case.
2 persons in our group have very low upload (less than 1Mbps).
And someone does not have the ports opened.
Do you think it can have an impact on the AIM-120 behavior? -
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@Hebus missiles are linked to each client… SO yes…
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Sounds like a smart way to correlate observed behaviours with ‘hard metrics’. Thanks a lot for this, we will implement this tracing option.
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@gundam I think it might have some benefits, even with the dll, but it might be worth a try to set those flags and see what it does to your server FPS.
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Hi @abelian
I have added the -logfps flag to the shortcut. I can confirm it is taken into account since there is indeed a framerate.csv being dumped in 3d (along with a fr_summary.csv btw, which I guess gives less sample points ?).
Quick question : there is no timestamp on the rows in framerate.csv . How can we correlate with times of strange behaviours in the ACMI ? Maybe by knowing how often a row is appended to the csv file, we can count the delay from the start of the server’s 3d session ?
Thanks for the clarification.
We have not yet flown a MP session since I added the flag, but we will soon.
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@pyhg Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. One thing I’ve done to correlate times is to take the reciprocal of the frame rate values (i.e., convert them to frame times), then compute the cumulative sum of this quantity and use that to determine the total time elapsed.
I can look at improvements to the information generated by this log down the road.
U1 should have some performance improvements, especially the norender mode, have you had a chance to try it?