Why bother flying on VATSIM?

[Tom Knudsen]

Wight the new VATSIM frame rate restriction for X-Plane, why should those lagging users be allowed to fly on VATSIM. Why should we not just allow users which arguable have the same connection/simulation speed, same airports etc.

If VATSIM clients then continue to disconnect all users based if their frame rates dip below 20 or not, then why should these users be allowed to be on VATSIM at all. Why not just create a network of high end PC's that eliminate all others, why do we need those users that cannot afford these huge upgrades races?

 

Well immersion you say? Let me ask you all this, what is more realistic of simulation speed for ATC when sequencing or planes dropping out of the scope like they crashed in real life. How annoying will it be to have 5 airplanes on final approach where 3 of them suddenly disappear due to being disconnected. Where lay the limit of realism, were lay the immersion and most important why where lay the unity. Is it more important to have ATC than pilots, are they not a perfect marriage?

 

One can say game immersion is now crumbled by technology, why do we need VATSIM at all then? Well I can only speak for myself when I say that immersion is realism and realism is immersion. I want as many other users to interact with other people regardless of hardware. If I then cannot log on and complete a flight from A to B without being disconnected, why then bother using that network at all? Is it a conflict of interest or conflict of technology. Is it the ATC software or the pilots clients that is the source of the issue, why can't we fix them both without disconnecting users.

 

There are most likely a solution to the problem!

 

We should look inwards and figure out what is truly wrong. If there is a particular group of users that causes this issue, we shouldn't just remove them temporary or even completely, one is not better than the other.

 

I truly hope an healthy discussion can grow, flourish and prosper into something beautiful that fits all users of this excellent network. A pure network for all users that do not single out users depending on wealth, availability or even personal stupidity when it comes to their "MUST HAVE" technolust or their love for aviation game immersion.

 

Let's connect, not disconnect!

[Anastasios Mpithas]

Why not just create a network of high end PC's that eliminate all others, why do we need those users that cannot afford these huge upgrades races?

I have seen this bit over and over again and it is getting VERY tiring.

X-Plane Minimum Hardware Requirements:

 

CPU: Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 CPU with 2 or more cores, or AMD equivalent. (Dual-core CPUs slower than 3 GHz should try the demo before purchasing.)

Memory: 8 GB RAM

Video Card: a DirectX 11-capable video card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel with at least 1 GB VRAM

 

If your system is borderline, we encourage you to try the demo first.(!!!!!!) The full version of the simulator will perform exactly the same as the demo—neither better nor worse.

Recommended Hardware Requirements:

 

CPU: Intel Core i5 6600K at 3.5 ghz or faster

Memory: 16-24 GB RAM or more

Video Card: a DirectX 12-capable video card from NVIDIA, AMD or Intel with at least 4 GB VRAM (GeForce GTX 1070 or better or similar from AMD)

If your setup doesn't meet the requirements, don't come here and say aaah VATSIM just wants those with high end PCs.

It is not our(= VATSIM community's) problem that your setup can't handle the requirements of X-Plane.

Get FSX. It is almost 3 times cheaper than X-Plane and it doesn't have the problem that makes ATC lives harder.

On a steam sale, it costs as much as 3 coffees.

[Andreas Fuchs]

Hi Tom,

 

we have been discussing this without end. Maybe you missed this? Please have a look around. Kicking out members just because they have low-end systems is not in the spirit of VATSIM. It never has been and it never will be. The new codec is trying to get people realize that they need to tweak their settings further to achieve 20fps or more, otherwise they will be obstacles in the flow of traffic and degrade the enjoyment of the network for others.

As the FPS-codec is quite new, the developers of our pilot clients are still in the process of fine-tuning them to avoid unjustified disconnects, but they will only act based on facts, not on people claiming that their "FPS are okay".

[Tom Knudsen]

If your setup doesn't meet the requirements, don't come here and say aaah VATSIM just wants those with high end PCs.

It is not our(= VATSIM community's) problem that your setup can't handle the requirements of X-Plane.

Get FSX. It is almost 3 times cheaper than X-Plane and it doesn't have the problem that makes ATC lives harder.

On a steam sale, it costs as much as 3 coffees.

 

If your setup doesn't meet the requirements, don't come here and say aaah VATSIM just wants those with high end PCs.

It is not our(= VATSIM community's) problem that your setup can't handle the requirements of X-Plane.

Get FSX.

 

I wouldn't use that horrible simulator if my life depended on it.

 

PS

I have no issues with frame rate

Spec:

Intel i9-9900K @5.0, Asus Maximus XI Formula, Asus RTX2080TI OC Strix, 64GB Gkill Trident Z

Samsung EVO 970 m2

Samsung EVO 970 m2

Samsung EVO 970 SSD

 

But I see many do and try several fixes just to get a few more FPS.. I am fond of FPS for immersion, at least 50 should be the standard if I got to choose. But sadly we cannot all afford a 5700+ dollar computer setup.

So for many 30 is max, and why should VATSIM then punish them?

 

Think that is the essence in the discussion. As an C1 ATC I also see the other side of the problem, I see the ATC side. But I also understand there is a prolonged timeperiod for making the clients work as it is intended. That may be why there is incidents where people get disconnected. Just check FlightDeck2Sim's latest streams using XPilot. So perhaps when the tech is good enough, we should be ok. Untill then we should set the FPS limit to 25 at least.

 

 

we have been discussing this without end. Maybe you missed this? Please have a look around. Kicking out members just because they have low-end systems is not in the spirit of VATSIM. It never has been and it never will be.

 

Not seen this, thank you for pointing it out and I will do a thorough search, thank you for information.

[Kirk Christie]

Unless you have never ever been on another multiplayer gaming network in the last 20 + years, then getting booted out of a network because of low computer performance should not be new to any one.

 

Vatsim Members: VATSIM needs to upgrade its network to get with the times.

VATSIM: makes changes too network which boots off slow performing connections.

VATSIM Members:

[Tom Knudsen]

Never had that happen to me on any network but VATSIM..

[Brad Littlejohn]

Never had that happen to me on any network but VATSIM..

 

Roger Wilco required an upgrade, especially to get away from the spyware that was being planted in it.

Squawkbox was dropped due to no support, with vPilot being available, which required an upgrade.

Moving from ProController to ASRC to VRC, Euroscope, vSTARS, and others required a hardware upgrade each time, especially with those programs dropping 32-bit support.

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but is VATSIM no longer accepting any connections from FS2002 or older? Oh wait; don't they require FSUPIC as well as Squawkbox to connect? Or does vPilot support FS2K2 back to FS98? If not, then each one of those required an update, and that is regardless of platform or network being used.

 

You haven't seen this on most other networks because those networks are modern enough to require hardware that is available today. VATSIM is, this year, going to be a 20 year old network. Are you suggesting that a network that has been around this long continue to support legacy software based on legacy hardware, in which neither is barely supported by their own vendors anymore?

 

BL.

[Alexander Cohrs]

The question is what we want to achieve. Of course we can tell users with insufficient computer performance that it's their own fault and that they should finally buy reasonable hardware.

 

Now the question is what is more likely:

 

a) they think it's great, go straight to the nearest hardware shop and fly happily on VATSIM

b) they turn their backs on online flying and we lose members.

 

Personally, I regard b) as more likely, and therefore I think it's shortsighted to use tough words here to tell X Plane users to shut up and simply upgrade their system.

 

(Brad, this was explicitly not referring to your post, but to the discussion in general).

[Dhruv Kalra]

Have any of the complainants in this thread tried xPilot 1.2.0.0 or newer? Justin rewrote the frame rate detection and disconnect logic to be far more forgiving of momentary drops in frame rate.

[Kirk Christie]

Never had that happen to me on any network but VATSIM..

 

Really, so no steam games like Counterstrike, or team fortress, game lags you get booted.

 

Euro truck multiplayer, same deal.

 

DCS, you guess it, get booted from that too.

 

Or are you only considering MSFS networks?

[Deon Mathews]

The question is what we want to achieve. Of course we can tell users with insufficient computer performance that it's their own fault and that they should finally buy reasonable hardware.

 

Now the question is what is more likely:

 

a) they think it's great, go straight to the nearest hardware shop and fly happily on VATSIM

b) they turn their backs on online flying and we lose members.

 

Personally, I regard b) as more likely, and therefore I think it's shortsighted to use tough words here to tell X Plane users to shut up and simply upgrade their system.

 

(Brad, this was explicitly not referring to your post, but to the discussion in general).

 

As Alexander mentioned option b is likely to be the one members (who formally had no issues) choose if this doesn't come to a speedy conclusion. What is the solution?? Members tweaking all the life out of their simulators or upgrading hardware at significant cost is most likely not it!?

[Robert Shearman Jr]

we can tell users with insufficient computer performance that it's their own fault and that they should finally buy reasonable hardware.

 

Now the question is what is more likely:

 

a) they think it's great, go straight to the nearest hardware shop and fly happily on VATSIM

b) they turn their backs on online flying and we lose members.

 

Personally, I regard b) as more likely, and therefore I think it's shortsighted to use tough words here to tell X Plane users to shut up and simply upgrade their system.

As Alexander mentioned option b is likely to be the one members (who formally had no issues) choose if this doesn't come to a speedy conclusion. What is the solution?? Members tweaking all the life out of their simulators or upgrading hardware at significant cost is most likely not it!?

Then what are YOU suggesting...? © we go on as-is, with an ever-growing population of X-Plane users on the network, and a significant portion of them flying at less than 100% sim rate and ruining every sequence a controller tries to put together, so we continue to see m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive amounts of controller attrition across the board? And we continue to see aircraft in non-ATC situations run each other over because one of them is moving at 50-75% sim rate?

 

I am absolutely, completely in support of tools within the X-Plane pilot clients which enforce 100% sim rate -- as long as they work properly. With the latest update of xPilot, I believe we are starting to achieve that. (I cannot speak for xSquawkBox and I don't believe Swift has implemented it yet.) If users wish to fly on VATSIM with outdated hardware, THEY ABSOLUTELY MAY. Why and how, you ask? Because NO ONE IS FORCING THEM TO USE X-PLANE, and X-Plane is the only one of the VATSIM-compatible sims which has this issue. It's really that simple.

[Sean Harrison]

I certainly hope that MF2020 doesn’t fall into the issues that X-plane is experiencing.

 

I guess we all have free choice on what we buy and use, but minimum standards of performance are not new on a lot of networks.

[Andre Almeida]

I'll be honest, I don't understand all the complaints.

 

If someone wants to be part of a group he should, at the very least, not hinder it.

 

X-Plane slows the simulation down to maintain a high experience for the pilot. That is great, perfect for single player use, as the pilot continues having a smooth experience and no one gets harmed. In multiplayer however someone does get harmed. Either other pilots are delayed, or a controller stops having fun, whilst trying to vector 5 aircraft around a Cessna speed 747.

 

If someones computer cannot run X-Plane at acceptable frame-rates then he either has to lower the settings (and if that doesn't work, move to a platform that does not reduce sim-rate), or upgrade their system.

 

If I show up with a 20 year old Opel Corsa to a Formula 1 race I will not be allowed to participate. The FIA wouldn't be the bad guys, it'd be my fault (and therefore my problem), for not having the appropriate equipment.

 

VATSIM is for people to have fun, and that includes everyone, controllers as well. If X-Plane pilots reduce the fun (and from personal experience I can tell you that yes, a slow X-Plane pilot mixed in with 4 or 5 other aircraft does reduce the fun), then said X-Plane pilot needs to be removed from the network. It's less worse to have 1 user annoyed, then 5. Especially if the fault of the issue lies, solely, with the 1 guy.

[Don Desfosse]

Thank you, Andre, for a well reasoned response.

[Alexander Cohrs]

But you DO notice how VATSIM has changed in it's tone here, don't you? Instead of helping affected members, we are mainly telling them to stop complaining (or to "cry" as some people here chose to call it) and why they are quite rightly removed from the network. After years of lament about not enough members/traffic, this is a quite new approach. I wonder if there is any relation to the membership increase we saw after the voice codec update. Maybe some people think that we are not anymore in such a need of active pilots as we have been before, so we can be much stricter and don't have to try so hard anymore to keep them active.

 

Again: I think it's more likely that we'll lose members with this "comply or quit" attitude. And I don't think we should afford it.

 

and a significant portion of them flying at less than 100% sim rate and ruining every sequence a controller tries to put together, so we continue to see m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive amounts of controller attrition across the board? And we continue to see aircraft in non-ATC situations run each other over because one of them is moving at 50-75% sim rate?

 

Robert, I very much appreciate how you fought against the unjustified disconnects and am happy to see that Jason has changed the xPilot code. But don't you think that statement is grossly exaggerated? "Significant portion", "m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive amounts of controller attrition", "running each other over in non-ATC situations?" On what basis are these statements made?

 

I remember we already have been at this point of discussion when some people asked for numbers about how big that problem truly is. You said that there aren't any numbers but certain discussions in closed Facebook groups and so on. After asking if that means that the forced disconnects only have been introduced due to a "feeling", I was told that of course it was based on data.

 

If there are any data showing how big this problem is, may I kindly asked that it is shared with us? Or else, if there aren't any, how can we talk about "significant portions" and "m[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ive amounts"?

 

I certainly hope that MF2020 doesn’t fall into the issues that X-plane is experiencing.

I had the same concern when I read that Microsoft plans to keep 60 FPS at all times - that sounded a bit like X-Plane. However, several users who are better informed about MSFS2020 than me have told me that this is not supposed to be the case.

 

Also, the announcement of the forced disconnects was explicitly aimed at X-Plane. Even if another simulator would behave similarly, this would not automatically mean that their users would immediately be treated the same way. In this respect, as someone who is looking forward to the MSFS2020, I wouldn't worry too much yet - it's just not clear yet how the simulator would behave in such cases and how VATSIM would handle it. I also think that you can't ask for an "what if" statement, it's much too early for that.

[Robert Shearman Jr]

if another simulator would behave similarly, this would not automatically mean that their users would immediately be treated the same way.

Jeeze. And you say MY post was filled with unsubstantiated speculation...

 

At the end of the day, you're still insinuating that it's okay for some users on a multiplayer network to proceed at substantially less than 100% sim rate.

 

The hard data you're looking for very likely does not exist. I know of no requirement for inactive members to maintain current contact information nor to complete an exit poll as to why they left.

[Alexander Cohrs]

Jeeze. And you say MY post was filled with unsubstantiated speculation...

 

No, that was indeed intended to calm down the fear that MSFS2020 users might also have to fear disconnects - if you read the full paragraph, you see that my message was: Don't worry about it, it's much too early to say (and even if there was a problem, it would have to be investigated first).

[Tobias Dammers]

Just to clarify one thing:

 

This whole FPS thing is not about punishing those who can't afford top-notch hardware. It's about making sure that everyone's simulators produce realistic enough results.

 

I don't care if you're looking at a slideshow on your computer; VATSIM position updates are way slower than visible frame rates anyway (I believe something like one position update every 5 seconds or so?). If your simulator says you're flying at a ground speed of 240 kts, and then one minute later, you have moved significantly less (or more) than 4 nautical miles, then your simulator is not producing correct results, and this can affect everyone's experience.

 

And between the simulators flown on vatsim, I believe X-Plane is the only one that solves the "hardware can't keep up" problem by adjusting simulation rate; the more common solution is to apply the traditional method of "frame skipping", where you increase the number of logic updates per rendered frame to keep them in sync.

 

Anyway, given that X-Plane exists and is popular on VATSIM, and that the X-Plane developers do not acknowledge this behavior as problematic, there is no way to win here:

 

- Banning X-Plane entirely is too harsh, because if your computer is up to it, you can, in practice, fly just fine without disturbing anyone

- Disconnecting users whose simulation rate drops significantly is disruptive for both those users and for the people around them

- Doing nothing is also disruptive, because now those whose simulation rate is below 100% will show incorrect behavior

 

One way or another, someone loses.

[Ross Carlson]

- Banning X-Plane entirely is too harsh, because if your computer is up to it, you can, in practice, fly just fine without disturbing anyone

- Disconnecting users whose simulation rate drops significantly is disruptive for both those users and for the people around them

- Doing nothing is also disruptive, because now those whose simulation rate is below 100% will show incorrect behavior

 

One way or another, someone loses.

 

It's a matter of picking the option with the least amount of disruption, and that's clearly the second option.

[Robert Shearman Jr]

- Banning X-Plane entirely is too harsh, because if your computer is up to it, you can, in practice, fly just fine without disturbing anyone

- Disconnecting users whose simulation rate drops significantly is disruptive for both those users and for the people around them

- Doing nothing is also disruptive, because now those whose simulation rate is below 100% will show incorrect behavior

 

One way or another, someone loses.

It's a matter of picking the option with the least amount of disruption, and that's clearly the second option.

That's also the option most likely to result in the affected individuals taking corrective behavior.

[Tobias Dammers]

Yes. I do agree that option 2 is the best. It's still disruptive, but it seems the least unfair, and the most productive.

 

It's a shame that X-Plane works the way it does, but I don't think it should be up to Vatsim to deal with it.

[Ben Stevenson]

Instead of helping affected members, we are mainly telling them to stop complaining (or to "cry" as some people here chose to call it) and why they are quite rightly removed from the network.

 

How exactly would you like VATSIM to help affected members? This is not a one size fits all problem, they can't just go "or just do this and this and all is fixed". This is a user end problem and up to each individual user to put some effort into find a solution that works for them. VATSIM can't upgrade the users hardware or tweak their settings for them. If they choose not to, to be able to maintain at least 20 fps, then there are consequences for that. Otherwise it ruins the experience for everyone else.

 

As a controller on VATSIM i've seen Cessna's going faster across my scope than a 747. I've seen pilots on a 10 mile final take 10 minutes to make it to touchdown. That ruins the experience for everyone else around, controllers and pilots alike.

[Tom Knudsen]

Guess the issue still resides, not impressed at all.

 

Noticed the frame rate top right corner 55fps steady...

https://imgshare.io/image/KHOHt

 

Notice the bandwith on my fiber sub line symmetric 300/300

 

https://imgshare.io/image/KHRZS

Edited February 8, 2020 at 09:05 PM by Guest

[Norman Blackburn]

Hi Tom,

 

Something caused a glitch for a split second. As to what it was who knows except xplane responded to it and slowed down. Have you submitted your being less than impressed at it's authors?

 

Meanwhile, xPilot merely reported the issue to you and a second later was on it's merry way.