FPS / Data rates (revisited)

[wheelie]

I see that back in 2006 there was a discussion about kicking players with high FPS/Data rates. As PCs are now getting more powerful I am seeing more and more people with FPS/Data rates up in the 80/90 bracket  and it is tiring to keep monitoring it and asking people to slow things down a bit. I want people to enjoy their time on my servers and I don't really think kicking them off automatically is a good idea (if they refuse to cooperate then I do kick them and put a temporary ban in place with an explanatory notice).

I was wondering whether, as it is possible to set a player's date and time and weather, it would be possible to set their FPS as well.

For example, if FSHost could look at the FPS/Data rate and if it is higher than say 25 then set it to 25 (and send the player a message to say that this has been done). If the FPS/Data rate is lower than 25 then just leave it as is.

[Bob_8712E]

Wow Wheelie!
   That's a great idea. I would love to have that feature but I don't think the man behind the curtain has the power to do that.
My sim runs fine locked as low as 15 but a lot of people claim they are much better off at 25.
Then you get the A-Hole with the "screw you" attitude and you have no choice but to ban them.

[Bob_8712E]

The Frame rate is a very annoying problem. My remote Admins watch the server status page and they often send me a screen shot of a player running high frames. Some have been over 80 and the player is locked at 25. The log shows that they never exceeded 24.
If a player gets dropped and reconnects FSHost may show double their frame rate but I don't know why some show very high frames.
Like I said, this is very annoying as it's very hard to decide if the player really needs to be kicked.

[Pro_Avia]

This sounds like a great idea.

But, as Bob already pointed out, the status page frame rate is sometimes incorrect - on the high side. If it is possible to kick a player with too high a frame rate (I guess the admin could set the threshold frame rate), then I believe the frame rate in the logs would be the one to use.

[wheelie]

I've played around a bit and can't reproduce a condition where the data rate is higher than the FPS.

I will keep monitoring the data rate and the pilot logs and, when there is a discrepancy between the status page and the log, try and shed some light on why there should be a difference between the two - I would have thought that FSHost was only using one input source to get this information.

Nevertheless, I still think it would be neat to remotely lock the FPS to 25 if possible

[Russell Gilbert]

Hi guys,

Your guess was correct, there's unfortunately no way for FSHost to control a player's frame rate.  That's something that's only in the FS itself, and there's no way for FSHost to send a message back to the sim to set it.

As for FS sending data at a rate that's higher than the visual frame rate...  yes, unfortunately that's true too.  See this post from me in an old thread about this subject:

http://www.chocolatesoftware.com/forum/index.php?topic=493.msg2514#msg2514

Russell

[wheelie]

Oh well! Another idea destined for the trash can 

I see you wrote this Russell:

I spent some time this weekend implementing this great feature where users would get warning messages in the chat window when their data rate was above a specified limit.  After a number of warnings, they'd get kicked.

Maybe you could reimplement that feature but with these little differences:
1. The feature be optional in FSHost (the Admins can decide to switch it on or off)
2. The 'data rate' limit to be specified by the Admins
3. Players get a warning message every x minutes about their FPS/Data rates when the rate exceeds the value specified in 2 ('x' being a variable specified by the Admins in FSHost)
4. The warning message reads something like "Private to player: It looks like you have a very high FPS data rate. Please type ?FPS to see what to do"
5. The text for '?FPS' reads something like "Please check that your FPS is locked to 25FPS or less (go to Options->Settings->Display->Hardware Tab and set Target Frame Rate to 25 and click OK. If your Target Frame Rate is already 25 or less then maybe you should exit Flight Simulator, restart it and reconnect to this session".
6. The players don't get kicked (that seems to create more problems than it solves so just set X in point 3 to a value that makes it irritating for the player to get the message every x minutes).

Should I add this to the "wish list" or will it sort of work its way in there on its own  ?

[wheelie]

Should I add this to the "wish list" or will it sort of work its way in there on its own

I thought I was in another forum and now realise that it is in the 'wish list' already. Sometimes I can be soooo stooopiiid 

[Bob_8712E]

Looks like Russel has explained the problem in an old post....
http://www.chocolatesoftware.com/forum/index.php?topic=493.msg2514#msg2514

Simply that FS9 when reconnected will add all the active players to it's list not seeing that they are duplicates of what it already has and they show up twice. FSHost has no way of knowing this and sees them sending data twice to the same player and shows twice the frame rate.

Bummer 

It's not easy to separate the good players that have reconnected and the occasional clown that refuses to lower their frame rate.
It's just something that we will have to deal with.