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#2223649 - 05/30/07 09:24 AM First AAR.  
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Sepp Offline
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I got the game back from Panther's yesterday (thanks Dave, it was a very generous gift \:\) ) and installed it without a hitch.

The first thing I did was work my way through the Leo A5 tutorials. Aye carumba! \:D After forgetting most of the controls I managed to retain enough to get a tank moving and fire it's gun with reasonable accuracy (gunner rating of 77), though "gawd help me when the systems go down" I was thinking.

I then worked out how to fire up a scenario and picked one at random. Shortly followed by getting into it and wondering why my FPS had dropped to an average of around 14FPS. I later discovered there were scores of vehicles in this battle. But it was no show-stopper, on account of SB handling choppy frames rather smoothly, if that makes any sense?

So, I found myself to the far south-east with a battle-group, looking north-west as an enemy assault made it's way north-east towards a vital bridge. Orders were to help prevent an enemy break-through via our lines which were south-west of the bridge.

I immediately gave my unit (me and three other Leopards) the order to move out towards the enemy's right flank and off we went. At this point I hadn't given any consideration to use of roads, and after a while of travelling through truly beautiful bush & scrub we encountered a forest. The tanks moved in and we got seriously delayed, navigating between countless trees. My tank sustained minor damage (suspension and a wheel) but we made it through eventually. Then a road came up and I ordered a halt whilst I cuffed my navigator around the head and told him to make use of it.

We moved off again and I ordered column formation, making good speed at last. We were getting frequent radio reports during the move, losses of friendly tanks mostly. Then we began encountering burned-out vehicles...clearly the enemy had been this way and we were catching them up from behind.

The road (more of a muddy track) meandered through trees, but suddenly it opened out onto a snowy plain. Then the gunner started reporting possible targets, so I ordered line formation and we moved onto the open ground. Seconds later I heard the hissing sound of rounds passing over us, and saw the muzzle-flash and tracers coming from the tree-line on the other side of the plain. Soviet BMPs, what looked to be the scattered remnants of a unit that had already been in combat, were taking us on. I ordered return fire and after a few minutes of controlled bedlam all the enemy units were knocked out or had retreated.

Moving forward again, we finally noticed the incredible number of burning and knocked out armor surrounding us for kilometers ahead. We could see our positions, friendly units knocked out in them and the enemy in front and amongst them who had succumbed while breaking through.
We entered the treeline ahead via the road and proceeded in column again, occasionally taking MG fire from small pockets of isolated enemy infantry hiding deep in the woods.

We then recieved a warning over the radio that a certain village was under heavy assault by enemy tanks in platoon strength. I checked the map but couldn't work out where the village was. Happens it was a couple of kilometers ahead on the very road we were travelling, and I led the column right up next to it. The first I knew of it was when my tank recieved a direct hit from the left. Spinning to the left in my hatch I was confronted by a dire sight...a church, surrounded by what looked like half the Soviet mechanized corp. BMPs, PCs, and worst of all a mass of T80s. We had nowhere to go...forward or back gave the enemy a duck-shoot, and to either side of the road we were hemmed by trees. All we could do was face the enemy and return fire.

My tank was knocked out before we could return a single shot, and we bailed into a ditch on the opposite side of the road. The other three Leos did somewhat better, and managed to get a few kills before being knocked out in return. We completely failed in our task however, which was to help prevent the breakthrough of this very force.

Never mind, I'm going back to the classroom to learn how to make use of scouts.

I played five hours straight yesterday afternoon and evening and I'm gagging to play some more. The breadth and scope of the environment, the smoothness of play even when the CPU is being hammered down as low as 9FPS, the AI, the scenery, the sounds, the excitement, they all combined to give me a rush I've seldom experienced in years. And this whilst not having a clue what I was doing.

Today I shall be mostly ensuring I don't pick a scenario with hundreds of vehicles. \:D

This game is the dog's nads. The most important feature, in my opinion, is the huge size of the maps, followed by them being populated by faithfully rendered objects in incredibly beautiful terrain, controlled by superb AI. What a package. \:\) \:\) \:\)

Inline advert (2nd and 3rd post)

#2223685 - 05/30/07 10:28 AM Re: First AAR. [Re: Sepp]  
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Originally Posted By: Sepp
I then ... fire up a scenario and picked one at random. Shortly followed by getting into it and wondering why my FPS had dropped to an average of around 14FPS.

Hit Alt+D to adjust the details settings on the fly which may help to mitigate the problem. Of course, with a high density of combatants the LOS calculations may eventually drive the CPU into saturation so a detail reduction may not help too much. Hit Alt+F12 to display the frame rate.


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#2223689 - 05/30/07 10:38 AM Re: First AAR. [Re: Ssnake]  
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Alt+W will switch to windowed mode where you could adjust the window size for better frame rates as well - though this may be a bit of an emergency measure. Notice that the general settings of your graphics card are relevant for SB; it doesn't have an option to set the FSAA and anisotropic filtering in application-specific mode. (We don't have time for comfort...)


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#2223777 - 05/30/07 12:37 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: Ssnake]  
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Sounds very, very, cool.

For some reason my CC details are being rejected so i'll have to wait until she who must be disobeyed returns before i can order this sim.

You're going to have a week or so getting the drop on me.

From the sounds of your above you'll be needing it.


Conroe E6600* 150GB WD Raptor* BFG nForce 680i SLI PCI MoBo* 2 x BFG 8800GTX in SLI* 4GB OCZ Nvidia SLI 1066 DDR2* Audigy X-FI Fatal1ty Edition* 1000kw BFG PSU* Logitec Z-680 5.1 THX Cert* Dell 3007WFP-HC 30"* Windows XP Professional SP2
#2223778 - 05/30/07 12:37 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: Ssnake]  
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Double post.

Last edited by Krull; 05/30/07 12:38 PM.

Conroe E6600* 150GB WD Raptor* BFG nForce 680i SLI PCI MoBo* 2 x BFG 8800GTX in SLI* 4GB OCZ Nvidia SLI 1066 DDR2* Audigy X-FI Fatal1ty Edition* 1000kw BFG PSU* Logitec Z-680 5.1 THX Cert* Dell 3007WFP-HC 30"* Windows XP Professional SP2
#2223788 - 05/30/07 12:51 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: Krull]  
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Nice write up Sepp.

Strange, what I can't make out is how your FRPS dropped to the degree you mention, as you saw on my rig (which as you know is below your spec) the speed was very smooth with over 60+ vehicles (the map with the convoys)

May need looking into?

EDIT: Just rechecked those maps, the one with the convoy had 100 vehicles, the other map you saw had 60+ But as you say if the map you chose has hundreds of vehicles I suppose the cpu would take a hit.

It will be interesting to see how it runs on Krulls uber rig

Last edited by Panther; 05/30/07 01:30 PM.

Panther.
#2223855 - 05/30/07 02:11 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: -Panther-]  
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Krull Offline
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Aye, i'm thinking she will fly!

It's going to be another couple of days before i can order it & i'm chomping at the bit.


Conroe E6600* 150GB WD Raptor* BFG nForce 680i SLI PCI MoBo* 2 x BFG 8800GTX in SLI* 4GB OCZ Nvidia SLI 1066 DDR2* Audigy X-FI Fatal1ty Edition* 1000kw BFG PSU* Logitec Z-680 5.1 THX Cert* Dell 3007WFP-HC 30"* Windows XP Professional SP2
#2223897 - 05/30/07 03:00 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: -Panther-]  
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Originally Posted By: Panther
Nice write up Sepp.

Strange, what I can't make out is how your FRPS dropped to the degree you mention, as you saw on my rig (which as you know is below your spec) the speed was very smooth with over 60+ vehicles (the map with the convoys)

May need looking into?

EDIT: Just rechecked those maps, the one with the convoy had 100 vehicles, the other map you saw had 60+ But as you say if the map you chose has hundreds of vehicles I suppose the cpu would take a hit.

It will be interesting to see how it runs on Krulls uber rig


Just a couple of thoughts...

There are certain gound cover foliage with respect to themes applied on maps which will cause frame rate hits. I forget which ones exactly but they are not all that numerous. Buildings, specifically large cities on a map will bring the frame rates down. Probably the biggest killer I've personally seen in scenarios I've played. Smoke from artillery fire is another cause for some frame rate hits depending on how much is coming down and where in the LOS it takes place with respect to your current direction of view.

Visibility distance will have an impact on frame rates as well.

So, depending on the mission makers scenario and how he/she puts all this together, you can get different results with frame rates. When I'm making a mission, for example my current one I'm working on, I tend to carefully watch what I'm putting in the mission and the effects I want the player to experience. For example, my current work is an "advance to contact" scenario where I have 3 companies of blue force armor running into a battalion of red force armor and PCs. I want the player to be able to see all this armor running around, I want the awe of massive number of vehicles in combat as seen through the players binoculars and GPS extension sight. So, I make the mission on the plains, no heavy cities or villages, set visibility to only about 2500 meters. This keeps frame rates up even when the **** hits the fan.

To make a long story short, I don't know what map Sepp used, what the visibility was, any big cities in the map he was using? You get my drift. Oh..and nice write up Sepp.


Last edited by enigma6584; 05/30/07 03:01 PM.
#2223959 - 05/30/07 04:08 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: enigma6584]  
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Sepp Offline
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Panther, the vehicles in your scenarios weren't doing much more than driving down the road (with minor combat at points). The scenario I played had scores of vehicles in combat simultaneously. I did play with the detail sliders, but it made very little difference, so it was the CPU being flogged by multiple complex combat calculations. It still ran in such a way as to remain playable, which was quite a pleasant suprise. Kind of flowing jumps instead of a jerky mess.

As Enigma says, home-made scenarios will allow me to configure appropriately. I've been playing with both editors and they are a breeze so far. I made a little eden, then put opposing choppers overhead and got the Hind to shoot down the other one. \:D

Thanks for the advice Snake. \:\)

#2224212 - 05/30/07 08:46 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: Sepp]  
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Originally Posted By: Sepp
Panther, the vehicles in your scenarios weren't doing much more than driving down the road (with minor combat at points). The scenario I played had scores of vehicles in combat simultaneously. I did play with the detail sliders, but it made very little difference, so it was the CPU being flogged by multiple complex combat calculations. It still ran in such a way as to remain playable, which was quite a pleasant suprise. Kind of flowing jumps instead of a jerky mess.

As Enigma says, home-made scenarios will allow me to configure appropriately. I've been playing with both editors and they are a breeze so far. I made a little eden, then put opposing choppers overhead and got the Hind to shoot down the other one. \:D

Thanks for the advice Snake. \:\)


Yes, I'm with you on that. Glad that you're enjoying it though. We'll have to leave the 200 + War machine to Krull. \:D


Panther.
#2224216 - 05/30/07 08:48 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: Krull]  
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Originally Posted By: Krull
Aye, i'm thinking she will fly!

It's going to be another couple of days before i can order it & i'm chomping at the bit.


On your rig mate, it'll blow you away !. \:D


Panther.
#2224263 - 05/30/07 09:46 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: -Panther-]  
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It's not so much the sheer volume of vehicles, but their proximity to each other. This requires a superexponential growth in line of sight calculations (actually it's Sum over n of (n-1), then proportinally scaled by the complexity of the geometry of the scenery; notice that squads count as six observers while normal combat vehicles count as two). Ballistics and all that isn't such a big killer, LOS calculations are -- and they cannot be avoided by means other than limiting the number of combatants in contact.

This however already indicates a possible way how to deal with it - by careful timing and placing of spawning units. Instead of having 30 blue and red tanks fight each other, start with 20 and add another platoon whenever three or four tanks are killed. That way even seemingly small reductions result in noticeable performance improvements:
30 tanks each = 120 observers = 7140 LOS calculations.
20 tanks each = 80 observers = 3160 LOS calculations.

In other words: A reduction of the number of combatants by 33% in this example leads to a reduction in CPU usage by more than 55%. With more infantry involved and generally even higher numbers of combatants the problem will become even a lot more prominent, and there is no analytically correct solution to it other than sacrificing the fidelity of the simulation - either implicitly by limiting LOS calculations and direct fire action to the platoon leader vehicles on either side in areas of high combat intensity (thus cutting the number of calculations down to a third or even just a quarter) - or by delaying the addition of forces until a sufficient degree of attrition has been reached.

This is of course problematic if there isn't a proportional reduction of forces on both sides to maintain the force ratios. Otherwise you get a "300" situation where few defenders can easily defeat a huge force pitted piecemeal against them.

Steel Beasts allows the mission designer to create a total of 16 companies of 16 platoons of four vehicles which may contain eight dismounts (in the case of the BTR) = 2560 observers per side = 5120 observers in total. That would bring the number of LOS calculations to a total of more than 13 millions if they were all on a flat plain within visibility range. Even the reduction of a single observer in such a situation would reduce the number of calculations by exactly 5119.


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#2224343 - 05/31/07 12:06 AM Re: First AAR. [Re: Ssnake]  
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I'll be posting any questions i have your way then Ssnake.

I really can't wait to give my rig the work out it deserves & get this baby ordered, installed & fired up. tanksalot

All i got at present is a £4000 browser for all the use that's made of it............. 99bottles


Conroe E6600* 150GB WD Raptor* BFG nForce 680i SLI PCI MoBo* 2 x BFG 8800GTX in SLI* 4GB OCZ Nvidia SLI 1066 DDR2* Audigy X-FI Fatal1ty Edition* 1000kw BFG PSU* Logitec Z-680 5.1 THX Cert* Dell 3007WFP-HC 30"* Windows XP Professional SP2
#2224572 - 05/31/07 09:02 AM Re: First AAR. [Re: Ssnake]  
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Sepp Offline
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Originally Posted By: Ssnake
It's not so much the sheer volume of vehicles, but their proximity to each other. This requires a superexponential growth in line of sight calculations (actually it's Sum over n of (n-1), then proportinally scaled by the complexity of the geometry of the scenery; notice that squads count as six observers while normal combat vehicles count as two). Ballistics and all that isn't such a big killer, LOS calculations are -- and they cannot be avoided by means other than limiting the number of combatants in contact.

This however already indicates a possible way how to deal with it - by careful timing and placing of spawning units. Instead of having 30 blue and red tanks fight each other, start with 20 and add another platoon whenever three or four tanks are killed. That way even seemingly small reductions result in noticeable performance improvements:
30 tanks each = 120 observers = 7140 LOS calculations.
20 tanks each = 80 observers = 3160 LOS calculations.

In other words: A reduction of the number of combatants by 33% in this example leads to a reduction in CPU usage by more than 55%. With more infantry involved and generally even higher numbers of combatants the problem will become even a lot more prominent, and there is no analytically correct solution to it other than sacrificing the fidelity of the simulation - either implicitly by limiting LOS calculations and direct fire action to the platoon leader vehicles on either side in areas of high combat intensity (thus cutting the number of calculations down to a third or even just a quarter) - or by delaying the addition of forces until a sufficient degree of attrition has been reached.

This is of course problematic if there isn't a proportional reduction of forces on both sides to maintain the force ratios. Otherwise you get a "300" situation where few defenders can easily defeat a huge force pitted piecemeal against them.

Steel Beasts allows the mission designer to create a total of 16 companies of 16 platoons of four vehicles which may contain eight dismounts (in the case of the BTR) = 2560 observers per side = 5120 observers in total. That would bring the number of LOS calculations to a total of more than 13 millions if they were all on a flat plain within visibility range. Even the reduction of a single observer in such a situation would reduce the number of calculations by exactly 5119.


That's a hell of an answer Snake ( \:\) ), and perfectly tailored to fully understanding the issue and exactly what's needed to get around it: A mahoosive CPU upgrade or carefully created scenarios.

I suspect that a massive CPU upgrade would not actually put much of a dent in the issue. Last night I was getting spells of 5FPS (yes, I chose what looked like a limited scenario, but there were shed-loads of tanks again \:D ). If I upped my CPU power by a factor of three I'd get 15FPS at the same points (simplistic mechanical supposition)?

I'm assuming that these LOS calculations are a constant per-second deal? But only from opposing units that can see each other? Please excuse my questions, this is an educational moment for me. \:\)

Not only am I having a ball fighting the battles, regardless of the low FPS moments, I'm finding the map and mission editors to be a lot of fun as well (because they are both powerful and very easy to use). I'm going to experiment with unit numbers next, using your info, and find my PC's sweet spot. \:\)

#2224750 - 05/31/07 02:23 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: Sepp]  
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CPU upgrades are a costly way of dealing with the issue (especially since for single-threaded applications like SB Pro the growth of computing power has slowed down over the past years (where's the 6 GHz CPU successor to the 3 GHz CPUs from two years ago?).

It's better to work intelligently with the tools that the software offers (in this case, the Options | Spawn, if... function) since that just requires the investment of (free) biological processing power. Grey matter rulez.


Last but not least: Steel Beasts was designed for company team level action. The fact that its engine has reserves to handle brigade sized formations doesn't change this. For company scale battles current and yesterdays' CPUs are perfectly fine. Besides, the more vehicles are in such a scenario, the more "postmodernistic" will your experience be, that is, only a fragmentary impression of the whole situation and probably not even a full understanding of what happened once that you're done with the AAR. I think that a single player, if he's really talented, can at best hope to control a company team in SB Pro without significant degradations of his team's combat efficiency once that the going gets tough. Typically information overflow and the resulting leadership paralysis will result in excessive loss rates.
Yes, it's possible to stage huge battles, but what's the point if you can't efficiently direct them?


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#2224936 - 05/31/07 06:49 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: Ssnake]  
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Nils,
any chances to make SBPPE multi-threaded, multi-CPU/core aware?


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#2225095 - 05/31/07 10:36 PM Re: First AAR. [Re: TheHammer]  
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It's not mine to make such a decision, and we got our hands full without these complications. Writing multithreaded code isn't difficult. Writing efficient and stable code for multi-core environments is a different matter.


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