Priority effect in Waypoints (FPS performance)

[IckyATLAS]

The setup

I have a B25 Bomber box that is made of 36 B25. These are staged in a  bomber box 200 mt vertical,  2km long and 1km wide. The bombers are stacked in three layers and made of a total of 12 groups of three bombers flying V formation (command formation) each. Each layer is made of 4 groups organized in diamond shape and the layers are arranged so that bombs from upper layers cannot hit planes in lower layers. With careful setting of Waypoints (one per three plane group)  I can have such a Bomber box fly in formation for 100 km at 300 km/hr keeping perfectly the box 3d structure. 

The first set of waypoints related to the bombers is at 70km of the bombers themselves.

I have three P51 flying escort above the box and three FW 190 A8 attacking the box. The F190 are independent and not connected, so no leader here, lone wolfs only.

The FW 190 attack is set with the MCU Attack command (one per FW 190) that targets a 3 plane flight inside the Bomber box. Each FW 190 has a different flight as target. In this way each FW 190 will fly into the Box from various angles.

 

At mission start the full bomber box falls into place in less than 30 seconds.

 

The waypoint priority set to High

When the waypoints for the bombers are set with High priority, the the B25s fly without moving an inch when the FW190 dive into the box for the kill. 

This behavior is normal, but what I find strange is that they do not fire at all to the FW190. They keep perfectly silent, no defense fire. This behavior is not normal. 

That they do not move from their flight path with priority set to High is normal (could be a bombing run) but they should fire the hell to avoid being shot down. 

 

The three P51s escort do chase them and do their best to get them and they disrupt a little the FW190 attack, but the B25s remain totally passive, and even when they are fired upon from a FW190 they do not return fire. For me this is a bug, and if it was designed to be so then what was the purpose. Without escort plane the bombers are simply shot down one by one by the FW190.

 

The waypoint priority set to Medium

In this case the B25s return strong fire and basically the FW190 do not last long through the box.

Plane still keep their path but may slightly deviate when attacked and come back if they can and are not too much damaged.

Globally the bomber box holds very well the formation.

 

The waypoint priority set to Low

No difference in behavior with the Medium priority. 

Same behavior.

 

Are these behaviors the ones expected and if yes where is the difference between medium and low?

Edited October 17, 2019 by IckyATLAS

[BlackSix]

These behaviors are normal, Low is intended for the fighters, they will attack any air target on their way.

 

And our current limit is 30 planes in the same time in the mission. If you want to use more planes you can't expect normal performance, especially using Rheinland map. 

[IckyATLAS]

3 hours ago, BlackSix said:

These behaviors are normal, Low is intended for the fighters, they will attack any air target on their way.

 

 

And our current limit is 30 planes in the same time in the mission. If you want to use more planes you can't expect normal performance, especially using Rheinland map. 

 

Thanks for the info. At the moment my small test mission has 36 B25 bomber box and six fighters so a total of 42 planes, flying around 3000 mt altitude.

The bombers have various mixed loads of 1000 and 500 pounders. They do a carpet bombing on a medium size city.

With clear or scattered cloudy skies  there is nearly no impact on FPS  (clouds quality is set to medium). We will test the future cloud ultra setting. The high setting does impact the FPS.

The FPS depends on how many planes are visible at the same time and how active they are like firing against attackers.

I am running in 4K 3841x2160 with a RTX 2080 Ti

All settings, graphics, distances,  are all at the ultra/max except for the clouds set to medium.

The in game VSync is OFF and FPS limiter is OFF.

The long range visibility is active.

VSync is set in the Nvidia parameter settings to the RAPID mode. Image is fluid no stutters and no tearing.

All other Nvidia parameters are default or to the game setting.

 

The FPS values below I have recorded are during the running mission:

 

If only the map is visible on screen  with the large cities, I have a consistent 120 FPS all over the map.

If I look to the empty blue sky I go up to 170 but a consistent 130+.

If I have a view with one or two bombers and the map below then I am around 100

If I have the full box in view then I am around 80

If I have in view the full box firing like hell to the attacking fighters and the attacking plus escort fighters in the middle of the box and tracers all over and the map visible too I get 65.

If I am in the city looking at the sky and seeing all the planes above with the fighting between escort and attacking fighters I get depending on how far they are I get between 115 and 90

If I am near the city and see the city and all the planes above bombing the city some planes going down in fire, and all the bombs exploding in the city with the smoke mushrooms I get at the lowest 60 but a consistent 75-80.

If I am nearer to the smoke clouds from the bombs I go down to 55 but for just one second.

 

In this mission there is no AAA in the city firing againts the bombers. This will be an additional element that I will add to this test to see the FPS impact.

 

My conclusion here is that my system can very well handle my 42 planes in full action and with the Rheineland map, and probably even more with excellent FPS if they are not all grouped together at the same time.

 

 

[BlackSix]

25 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

Thanks for the info. At the moment my small test mission has 36 B25 bomber box and six fighters so a total of 42 planes, flying around 3000 mt altitude.

The bombers have various mixed loads of 1000 and 500 pounders. They do a carpet bombing on a medium size city.

With clear or scattered cloudy skies  there is nearly no impact on FPS  (clouds quality is set to medium).

When you set all buildings, airfields, transport columns, ground battles in some places what you need in the mission and some planes who have thier own tasks to imitate real airwar, the situation with FPS will change. And you should not forget that if you create missions not only for yourself but also for other players and they will have completely different PCs and these missions will work differently and worse.

[IckyATLAS]

4 hours ago, BlackSix said:

When you set all buildings, airfields, transport columns, ground battles in some places what you need in the mission and some planes who have thier own tasks to imitate real airwar, the situation with FPS will change. And you should not forget that if you create missions not only for yourself but also for other players and they will have completely different PCs and these missions will work differently and worse.

 

I agree and your comment is perfectly right.

 

Here I wanted to check in a relative way (my system is still the same and has not changed) if there was an important impact of the Rheinland with many large cities but less mountains compared to the Kuban one.

 

I  made some time ago on the Kuban map a test with a very large number of planes (about 60 of which 45 bombers) in which you had everything, trucks, trains, ships, AAA artillery, plane taking off to counter the bombers, alert systems, different levels of AAA artillery, the bombers attacking at the same time, the port an airfield and the city fuel tanks, planes taxiing and taking off etc.

 

When I compare I would say that the B25 is very performant in terms of resources and the Rheinland map is also excellent in terms of FPS impact. 

The various updates since then have also probably improved the code.

 

On last comment about explosions. On my older Kuban Map test, when I was very near the explosions the frame rate would drop down to 2 FPS for a few seconds.

Not here on the Rheinland map. There are a huge number of explosions all around the city and the FPS remains nearly always around 60-65 even with mutiple smoke clouds all around.

If I set the view in the middle of the explosions, with the dense smoke cloud  being a combination of multiple explosions, then I get for a second 45 FPS. This is really a huge improvement compared with what I had before.

 

I added AAA defense something like 20 Flak 37 units in the city and coordinated for full fire on the incoming box. 

They create a very nice flak barrage against the bombers. The impact on the FPS is not noticeable.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 17, 2019 by IckyATLAS

[Gambit21]

10 hours ago, BlackSix said:

When you set all buildings, airfields, transport columns, ground battles in some places what you need in the mission and some planes who have thier own tasks to imitate real airwar, the situation with FPS will change. And you should not forget that if you create missions not only for yourself but also for other players and they will have completely different PCs and these missions will work differently and worse.

 

I find that having a 4K monitor helps with managing this.If I can maintain 60 FPS at 4K, then likely anyone else will have acceptable FPS.

...and probably a good amount of buffer/margin of error as well.

[IckyATLAS]

I forgot to say that my system is based on quad CPU board with four AMD EPYC 7742.

 

Just dreaming ....... ?