Window-Skins not shared?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by JJStrack, Feb 26, 2013.

  1. JJStrack

    JJStrack Registered

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    So i just watched a replay from an online race i did...someone else recorded it.
    My custom Clio skin was shown as it should, but the custom window-skin was not shown, the default one was shown.
    Has anyone else experienced this? Do your wheel-skins get shared correct on the servers? I did not customize those.
     
  2. Luc Van Camp

    Luc Van Camp Track Team Staff Member

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    Right now I think only the main skins are being transferred. The reason for this is that if there are 20 new clients connected to the server, each with their own personal skin, those 20 5MB skins would need to be uploaded to the server and then sent to each client.
    That's 100MB that gets uploaded to the server, which then needs to be downloaded 19 times, without taking up enough upload resources to cause random lag :) .

    I don't know if any kind of compression is being applied to the transfer. I do know that applying a compression algo usually does wonders to DDS, so if that isn't being done right now, I hope it will be in the future, at the cost of taking up CPU cycles to pack/unpack. That would probably free enough bandwidth for an extra texture (such as _WINDOW).
     
  3. UnitedRacingDesign

    UnitedRacingDesign Registered

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    Wouldnt be better to add option for completly new veh files and everything around it?
    I mean a usser could do his own mas file with veh and textures? that would actually be far smaller than single skin allready plus people could add there own team names, drivers to the cars?
     
  4. F1Fan07

    F1Fan07 Member

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    One would hope so. DDS files are highly compressible (a simple ZIP compression is less 25% of the original file size). Some sort of simple compression/decompression shouldn't be a significant load on a PC capable of running rF2, especially if cached compressed DDSs for the custom skin elements are stored on the client PC.
     
  5. Max

    Max Registered

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    I duno know man about that excuse... I can grab 100 meg file, under 30 seconds, so yeah
     
  6. Luc Van Camp

    Luc Van Camp Track Team Staff Member

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    Unfortunately this isn't a case of maximum throughput numbers. On a QoS level, skin transfers would be less important than guaranteeing a lag-free experience for everyone, especially if you consider that RealRoad also takes up quite a bit of bandwidth.
     
  7. Max

    Max Registered

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    still not buying what you're saying man, not in this day n age. You can certainly limit if needed, the bandwidth to "guarantee" a lag free race. I don't want to argue points here as I am a little upset at the state this sim is in and all the excuses as to why. It's a skin transfer man, not 10 gigs of data. It's laughable. Meh. Did you really say on a Qos level? Cmon man, cmon.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 26, 2013
  8. Diablo

    Diablo Registered

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    I wouldn´t want any CPU cycles wasted on the dedicated server for transport (de)compression or whatever kind you want. I´d rather have the DDS files stored in a compressed format on the client side. I don´t know if DDS allows for compression. Even if not, I´d like to see them compressed on the client side. Take ZIP as an example. Rather than looking for and loading DDS files in the skins folders, the rFactor 2 client could be changed to look for zipped DDS files, unzip them and then load them.
    I don´t know about copyright and licensing, so it might not be possible to use ZIP, but there has got to be a compressed file format that can be implemented on the client.
    The server doesn´t need to do anything more than downloading and serving those files then. The clients would have to decompress the data one way or the other anyway, be it transport or file decompression.

    Best regards,
    Marcus
     
  9. Diablo

    Diablo Registered

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    I had a close eye on bandwidth consumed by our rFactor 2 dedicated server and the individual client connections the last few days. It can get as high as almost 1024 Kbits/s per client, depending on the clients´ configured network data rates in Multiplayer.ini and number of clients connected to the server. I have seen bandwidth peaks of somewhere aroung 15-20 MBits/s and the server wasn´t even populated to the 30 client maximum, 25 tops. If everybody had their data rates set correctly and the internet connection to go with it, I reckon bandwidth could be in the 30s of MBits/s easily, just for the netcode.
    Then think of 3-5 people joining virtually simultaneously who want to download the skins of the other drivers, and their skins would have to be sent to all the others as well. That would be a burst that could cause some serious lags, provided I have other servers running that also want to have their share of bandwidth, be that other rFactor 2 dedicated server instances or whatever. And that is only the worst case for a 100 MBits/s root server, think about people not having access that kind of hardware.

    Limiting the bandwidth for skin transfers in a traffic shaping way, would just leave bandwidth unused in time, when there is not skin transfer happening. There should be some proper queuing of prioritized packet, skins having the least possible priority, of course. And, exaggerating, that could mean, by the time everybody has downloaded all skins, the race is over.

    Best regards,
    Marcus
     
  10. corsa

    corsa Registered

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    Multiply that times 35 drivers (typical for the rF1 league I'm in) joining the server, sometimes several joining in a short period of time, and having 34 custom skins needing to be transferred to 35 different drivers... sounds like a bandwidth nightmare for our game server.

    Of course, that doesn't have to happen every race unless people modify their skins during the season, but could be problematic durinf the first few races of the season.

    I have a feeling our league will still be creating and distributing a skin pack from our file server instead of having skins dynamically downloaded from our game server.
     
  11. Hedlund_90

    Hedlund_90 Registered

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    Oh no and I just finished my clio's windows and now nobody will see it? :( People will think I'm named EVENISSE lol.
     
  12. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    I think that the best way for skins without robbing bandwidth is to do like Simbin did with their Race game. Everyone just distribute the skins via a forum and put them in your custom skins folder, 0 bandwidth needed for skin transfer and everyone has the skins before you even get on the server.
     
  13. F1Fan07

    F1Fan07 Member

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    That's the way it should be done. Then the auto-downloader handles updated skins and new drivers.
     
  14. Diablo

    Diablo Registered

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    Doesn´t work on public servers. There will always be people, that don´t have it and see the template car. I like the skin download functionality. I don´t want to be bothered with hunting down skins and putting them into the right places. Skin packs tend to include all the skins for the given community, so everytime someone makes the tiniest update to their skin it is pack it up and up/download the whole lot again. It gets old quickly. That and a whole lot of other issues, I don´t want to type right now.
     
  15. DurgeDriven

    DurgeDriven Banned

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    Like I said 6 months back a add ons torrent, for setups , realroad, HDR and skins

    That puts all skins ( with permission ) in their rightful locations one click.

    No server lag, no cost, rather it will save money ie: sites bandwidth.

    It can be updated once a week by dedicated fellow.

    Really simple.
     
  16. Diablo

    Diablo Registered

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    Really nice idea, but I think in the long run with a growing community it will become more and more impractical. First the new members would have to know about this, which is unlikely to be true for all of them. Then there would need to be a new torrent for each new/updated skin, I feel for that dedicated fellow already. ;) That´s an awful lot of work for some human(s), while it is nothing more than business for a machine, which was invented and built for such purposes. That´s what they are better at doing than humans, so let them do it. All ISI need to do, is teach them how.

    I don´t see this custom skin thing working for all rFactor 2 users, unless it is implemented in the software itself. What I described earlier in this thread was some worst case scenario, and the only bad thing with a properly implemented queueing mechanism would be, that one would not see custom skins, if those transfers get starved to death on a very busy server.

    Anyone not having the bandwidth or traffic to spare could still use skin packs and distribute them by whatever means they fancy.

    Cheers,
    Marcus
     
  17. Hedlund_90

    Hedlund_90 Registered

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    But when I enter a server the game download others skins, so I have them in my own game... So if they don't change skin often as one change underwear, then it's not a big problem? Because then I already have it downloaded, or? Often same people visit same server next day so... :)
     
  18. Axly

    Axly Registered

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    We had issues with skin propagation in our series (port-issue or something on the server), so we checked the unique user id in each plr-file, did a one-time-job to add the proper prefix to all skins, and then put it on all clients and server. No bandwidth, and simple download... however, the automated system is sooooo much easier.

    (Not sure about the clios though, it would be interesting to check if that works..)
     

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