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Tankbuster

True or false: A client FPS can never exceed that of the server?

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Apologies for being here for 8 years and not knowing the most elementary of facts about this game and it's engine, but rather rashly, in clan teamspeak the other evening I said that 'client FPS can never exceed that of the server they are connected to' and someone asked if I was sure, and now I'm not actually sure that I was right.

Should I order my humble pie?

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I'm pretty sure you can. I mean, using "#monitor" command you can get server FPS info in chat, it's usually much lower than my framerate. Oh and, in case you try it out, it's "#monitor off" to turn it off. :p

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Hey TB,

As far as I know Arma 2 server FPS is max 50, and you can definitely exceed that as a connected client.

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In this topic;

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?154908-Aiming-unsteadiness-(server-side-lag)

I'm new to the ARMA world but understanding that OP question is basically the same is ARMA 3's features (aiming, soldier movements etc.) all fully controlled by server-side client ?, as I don't see an installation for alpha I might presume the full release may be different ?

Älení na nejjednodušší jazyka

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Looks that way. :)

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I guess in a sense it's true. While you're getting a decent video frame rate, if the server is slammed, the server side simulation is jacked... this means all the crazy things you see when your sp game is running at low frames: ai walking through walls, vehicles crashing and flipping, weird physics, etc.

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I guess in a sense it's true. While you're getting a decent video frame rate, if the server is slammed, the server side simulation is jacked... this means all the crazy things you see when your sp game is running at low frames: ai walking through walls, vehicles crashing and flipping, weird physics, etc.

I think the most noteable thing is the super slow reaction time of the ai. I run my test server on a pretty old machine so it can't quite keep up the way it should most of the time and other than aircraft seeming to have inconsistent speeds and the occasional oddity (ai walking through walls as you mentioned), the most obvious sign that the server is overloaded is the oblivious ai. Sometimes it's so bad you can literally walk right up to them and look in their eyes before you leisurely pull the trigger and blow them away.

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Is AI walking through walls really a framerate issue, though? I see it all of the time and my dedi almost never drops below 50fps.

Pathfinding, prediction, and other problems happen more often at low frame rates.

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It is a well know fact that low server fps basically cuts client fps in half...and lag menu. The main reason is remote A.I. exeding what the server can bear...happens around 200 active remote A.I. for quite powerfull servers. Warfare missions are plagued by this for years.

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I think (read hope) Max has sort of saved my blushes. In an MP environment, where the clients are dependent on the server for 'seeing' much of the action, by which I mean AI activity, the client FPS is irrelevent. The AI are bound by the server FPS, not the client FPS.

In short, no matter how uber your FPS are, the server controlled AI will only operate at the server FPS. This doesn't mean that as I said earlier client FPS< server FPS, but it might give that impression where the client is seeing nothing but server entities.

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It's OK TB ... we still love you :) (in the most manly sense of the word!)

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It's OK TB ... we still love you :) (in the most manly sense of the word!)

Bless you! :)

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A smarter person than I told me "A client's VM can not run faster than the server, but they can have higher FPS"

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Maybe I'm not getting accurate returns from the #monitor command. Is there better/more accurate way to measure server framerate?

What makes you think #monitor isn't reliable?

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FALSE !!! I DO HAVE DEDICATED SERVER RUNNING NOW OF 14FPS (heavily modified xeno domination), As client my fps is 40-70fps.

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Harzach, what kind of server are you using? We tried different root servers with A3 and even with our test root server with 6 core on 3,2ghz, 32 gb ram and 100 Mbit on a 20 max player cap, it drops down to like 3 fps on invade&annex.

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As I mentioned, my server rarely drops below a reported 50fps, yet AI walking through walls/objects is not an uncommon sight. In fact, my server often exceeds the stated maximum framerate of 50fps, which further leads me to doubt the veracity of the results I am getting from #monitor.

Maybe it's something to do with my server config or the mission I'm running or ... who knows what. I'm not doing anything beyond the norm, though.

I do have experience with dedicated server - domination mission more than 3 years and what I've noticed AI behaviours better (human alike) and do not see some glitches - walking through doors, etc if server runs abnout 15 fps instead 50fps, maybe it is domination mission related but I doubt it...

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Pathfinding, prediction, and other problems happen more often at low frame rates.

If the objects are local to the server and the server has a low framerate, this is to be expected.

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As I mentioned, my server rarely drops below a reported 50fps, yet AI walking through walls/objects is not an uncommon sight. In fact, my server often exceeds the stated maximum framerate of 50fps, which further leads me to doubt the veracity of the results I am getting from #monitor.

Maybe it's something to do with my server config or the mission I'm running or ... who knows what. I'm not doing anything beyond the norm, though.

... it is of course very mission dependent and depends of the number of players.

Scheduled code execution, like spawned script code, code executed by execVM, condition evaluation in (AI) FSMs has nearly no impact to the server FPS, while non scheduled code execution like eventhandler processing, actions in AI FSM e.t.c. has high server FPS impact.

A high number of players will normally cause frequently triggered eventhandlers, AI actions e.t.c., so it impacts server FPS a lot.

That AI is walking through walls, indicates that the scheduler is heavy (over)loaded, which causes the delayed condition evaluatiions in AI FSMs, even if you see high server FPS values.

See here for details about scheduled/non scheduled code execution: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Code_Optimisation

I think, it is time for an extended version of the #monitor/diag_fps() command, to allow server admins and developers to monitor the current scheduler load too!!!

But to the thread topic question: Client FPS schould normally be independent from server FPS (except lags caused by synchronisation delays, still a problem in the current state of the game)

Edited by Fred41

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Optimization of the code........ Fred41 said it best...... FPS matters most clients side since the server has no visual cortex.

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What fred pointed out is a big problem that nobody seems to pay attention to.

A majority of people saying "the game" runs like crap are probably playing missions that aren't coded using best practices.

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I did some stress testing with lots of AI that lowered the server to 7 FPS while I (the player) was sitting on an island staring at the sky having 60 FPS. I think that pretty much answers the question here.

Of course, low server FPS can cause all kinds of issues, but low client FPS isn't one of them.

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It is a well know fact that low server fps basically cuts client fps in half...and lag menu. The main reason is remote A.I. exeding what the server can bear...happens around 200 active remote A.I. for quite powerfull servers. Warfare missions are plagued by this for years.

This is more in reference to the Headless client which big missions require to balance AI, the issue is that groups that figure out the HC are very rare to release any information to the general public. so we only have what we can scrap together.

---------- Post added at 12:49 ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 ----------

What fred pointed out is a big problem that nobody seems to pay attention to.

A majority of people saying "the game" runs like crap are probably playing missions that aren't coded using best practices.

Bad code and crap hardware, little bobby doesn't understand that his uber alien ware pc can't support being a server on his 50Mbps dn /5MBps up connection, the other end are people running servers with only 4gb of ram.

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hi i have

technology:

Ivy Bridge

CPU:

Intel Xeon E3 1245v2 (4 cores / 8 threads)

frequency:

3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost)

RAM:

32 GB DDR3

Hard Drive:

2x 120GB SSD

Bandwidth:

guaranteed 200Mbps

licences

Windows server 2012

maximum 48 fps, all time and just 5 player connected low to 37 ... ( Warfare BE edited )

*********************************************************

MinBandwidth = 131072;

MaxBandwidth = 10000000000;

MaxMsgSend = 128;

MaxSizeGuaranteed = 512;

MaxSizeNonguaranteed = 256;

MinErrorToSend = 0.001;

MinErrorToSendNear = 0.01;

MaxCustomFileSize = 0;

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