Hollo Pointe (DCS Server)

Thank you @Franze! The new channels work great!

Now that we can be in a mission editor group together, we can use the intraflight DL functions as well :smiley:

Unfortunately we did notice some instability, even after @Wes restarted the server for us :frowning: I had multiple sim crashes and @whareagle had a server time-out. If that is caused by some of the updates I requested, maybe weā€™ll have to let them go again. We noticed that we got some new symbology after setting up our Link-16, and wondered if that would still work if we arenā€™t in a mission editor group together. We put it to the test andā€¦

it does work! You can see on the far right thereā€™s a bandit spiked by Colt 2-1 despite him not being in my editor group, so thatā€™s great!

Thanks again for the work you guys put into the mission and the server, Wes and Franze!

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We have activated EDā€™s built in VOIP and sometimes it does not play well with certain clients. Doesnā€™t seem to harm the server though.

Go into the DCS options and disable voip - and then re-enable it if so desired and it should work. @AndyE was having an issue along those lines.

It can also happen on non-voip servers it seems too, almost as if it gets a connection refused/failed it just crashes. Hopefully the upcoming beta has some fixes for that.

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Hollo Pointe North: News Bulletin - December 14th, 2019

Service Interruption

For the past few weeknights, my ISP has been having issues handling traffic during peak hours which leads to our connection being so poor it essentially isn't connected. Off peak hours, we are working as normal. When the connection is lost, it seems the DCS server will hang - I guess because it fails to ping ED's servers.Today I seem to have above normal performance and we're heading in to peak hours so we'll see how it goes!

SRS Update: Feels like Christmas!

Ciribob & Team brought out a major updates to SRS, now version 1.7.1.3. The new features include:
  • Server definable testing frequencies - tune to these to test your audio:
    VHF 120.3 AM
    UHF 247.2 AM
    Other frequencies can be included by server operators, but for now we are keeping with SRSā€™ defaults as they will likely be the most used.

  • You can remove the ā€œrun as adminā€ requirement from SRS, but the catch is that you will lose the ability for SRS to accept keyboard input in the background. This does not affect joystick/gamepad assignments. See settings page for this option.

  • You can assign ā€œdefault audio deviceā€ now in SRS. There is a known bug where changing the Windowsā€™ default Mic while using Default Mic device in SRS, that SRS will hang.

  • Volume correction for JF-17.

  • Aircraft specific control profiles are finally here! Name your control profiles in SRS accordingly and it should auto-select the correct one for you! Ex. for A-10C name it ā€œA10Cā€ or for the F/A-18C use ā€œFA18ā€.

New Mission Testing

@Franze released a initial testing version of the new PG mission Divine Falcon.
There is alot of adjustments to be made as it pushes the limits of the current DCS AI for various aircraft and mission types, and the limit of what can be controlled / automated by AI in Combined Arms.
I think with a CA player and a couple pilots on each team we could have some very interesting battles go down.

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Divine Falcon Update

We dealt with a nuisance bug over the weekend, and thanks to @Sryan for both initially setting it off and myself and @Franze into a bit of confused debugging, but sticking around to help re-trigger it and lead to a break through.

Culprit? Player slot change event handler takes a number, but using a F-14 RIO or other backseat/copilot seat sends a slot id with ā€œ_2ā€ tacked on the end.

So @Franze coded a catch to get around that and weā€™re back in business.

ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”ā€”

Currently only the first phase is running, but feel free to hop in and try it out. Just note that the HQ-7 SAM does not appear on RWR - so you will have no launch or track warnings!

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Hollo Pointe North: Christmas Update


Flying off the coast of Gali in Offensive Posture, after releasing 3 JDAMā€™s and waiting for some air threats to give me a warm reception.

Hardware Improvements

Figure I would post a little update regarding the hardware of HPN. Networking is one aspect of computing I have come to take a large interest in and so I have decided to continue building my knowledge and learn-by-doing approach by adding some commercial grade equipment to my setup. Enter two pieces of network hardware, a Cisco SG350-10 managed switch and a Intel I350-T2V2 dual-port gigabit network card.

Here is the switch, sitting above an existing TP-Link 24 port unmanaged switch I have used for quite a while. The half dozen lines plugged in go to various ethernet jacks around the basement for all the various electronics. This is before moving HPNā€™s link to the Cisco.


Just as a sample, this is the wall plate behind the smart TV for the rec room. When my parents had the basement finished, we got the contractors to run CAT5e in the wall and leave space for AV cables, which I then finished with these modular jack wall-plates.



This is the Intel NIC, it uses PCIe 2.0 x4 lanes.


Here is a peak inside HPN, excuse the edge of my finger trying to make a cameoā€¦and the dust!

The PCIE slot with the missing cover plate is where the NIC got installed.
HPNā€™s other purposes include hosting a Centos7 virtual machine for me to tinker with (two Kingston SSDā€™s at the top of the drive bays - RAID1), and being a family archive/backup machine for all the computers (the two HDDs at the bottom, both 4TB WD Purpleā€™s in RAID1). The SSD in the middle is the OS, and the WD Blue that I didnā€™t have a spare tray for is DCS - the drive was retired from my gaming rig when I got NVMe.

The processor is an i3-4160 and the GPU there is a GTX 670 I got back from MSI on warranty when one of my old GTX 660Tiā€™s died.

The new Intel NIC allows me to employ Link-Aggregation - basically using two gigabit ports in parallel, so two devices can get full gigabit speeds instead of one. More practically, one PC here can do a backup at full speed and everyone connected to DCS wonā€™t start rubber banding! It also takes the load of the virtual machineā€™s virtual Ethernet off the CPU giving this hardware a bit more time before my planned upgrade.

Divine Falcon Testing

Testing continues while we have some fun with the quirks of DCS and oddities introduced with the new patch.

I fly to Al Ain, having spawned in with the carrier group having been eliminated by AI anti-shipping efforts. Low on fuel, I managed to hit a tanker so I could make the trip. @Franze will be adding more fuel to the Hornets to improve landing conditions (too light and floaty being under 30,000lbs on spawn) and potentially allow a run to Al Ain without tanking for those not ready for AAR. In the background a pair of Israeli F-15Cā€™s meet up with another tanker.


@Franze deals with some infantry in a very Halo 3 worthy fashion. Awards: Vehicular Manslaughter x6+

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Anyone online tonight? Iā€™ll be on in a few hours if anyone fancies watching me die over and over again

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GMT-6 here so I might be able to get around in 3-4 hours depending.

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Sweet! Thatā€™s about perfect for me. Iā€™ll give you a shout on discord later.

Is simple radio still working on hollo pointe

Hollo Pointe North has SRS and DCS voice chat, but Hollo Pointe standard is still Discord at the moment.

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Sir, thatā€™s MY job :slight_smile:

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We canā€™t watch when you donā€™t show up. :rofl:

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I popped in for 5 mins last night but the performance for me was really bad. My machine really doesnā€™t seem to like the combination of Persian gulf. Tomcat and multiplayer. Proper shame I was looking forward to seeing your new mission

I tried to drop by as well but was kicked after about 30 seconds. I seem to only have real luck connecting if there are no players in the server.

Whatā€™s your hardware specs?
A shader cleaning if you havenā€™t recently may help too because of all the updates - just zoom around the maps in the free cam in SP first to generate new shaders before MP. Is your ping to the server okay?

Same hardware / shader / ping concept here as above for Victor to start. Does it run okay if you join solo?

The reason I ask is while the PG map is itself definitely more taxing on a system - Divine Falcon as a mission is presently less demanding to the server than Offensive Posture(Caucasus) as it has less simultaneous ongoing action (but more overall).

Have either of you guys been able to join ok for some of @WreckingCrewā€™s PG missions such as:

  • Jumeirah Keyhole
  • Red Sky
  • NAVEX PG
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Hmmm. Thatā€™s interesting as I dont normally have any problem with OP. plus keyhole etc runs fine.

I have 16gb ram radeon r295x2 and an i7 and I Iā€™m borderline desperate for a graphics card update but its clinging in thereā€¦

That shouldnā€™t be necessary, the shaders are compiled during the loading screen.

Are they? I thought they were a compile-as-needed situation.

I just like to have to whole map pre-loaded, a fly around gets textures into RAM nevertheless. Then going SP to MP itā€™s already cached.

Not particularly familiar with the Red teamā€™s GPUs.
How much VRAM on that card?
I7 - what gen/model? Overclocked or stock?

While 16GB ram can easily change to 32gb, I am thinking maybe asset counts could be pushing the GPU and/or CPU up to limits combined with PG being more taxing.

Server itself doesnā€™t have to render anything, so itā€™s only taxed by tracking all the AI units and the map doesnā€™t affect it too much.

I7 4790k 4.4ghz not overclocked

R295X2 8gb (everyone compares it to a 1080ti but Iā€™ve used one and itā€™s far superior)

One interesting thing i have 32gb of ram but everytime I fit it the system crashes. If I swap the ram sticks around it makes no difference it only seems to like 16gb of those combinations. I might buy 2x 16gb sticks and see if that changes things but I assume one of the sticks or ports is bad.