Forums

Help › Forums

Server loads and the meter

rated by 0 users
Fri, Oct 22 2010 11:01 AM (48 replies)
  • jayjonbeach
    689 Posts
    Thu, Feb 25 2010 8:13 PM

    wizbang360:
    I really dont understand how most of the talk is about the meter, I have had very little issues with the meter in the last few months, But the Loading is getting too slow to even want to join a group, no one has the patience to wait for the whole grope to load. I have done every thing on my end I can do, defrag, disk cleanup, latest flash download, and I have 4 gig ram I dont get the slow load thing! I am having wait times for loading hole 1 of 2-3 min, and 30 sec to 1 min inbetween holes on st andrews.

    Well consider yourself bluddy well lucky mate. 

    Rest assured also that the loading times you're noticing, which many people are, is also not your own system and has to do with either the connection or the servers themselves.  Your right, these are annoying also but at least they dont screw up a good round. 

    For the meter, 95% of the people on the site have issues and just about nothing is more frustrating than lining up a birdie and having the meter jump or stutter right before clicking.   And I'm talking users with high end systems, you must have the right winning combination of the right browser, play at the right times, etc etc. 

    I also wanted to pipe back in here because the Ready-go tourneyments are infamous for having more meter issues than other tourney's or single player mode etc (many past threads on this).  This again goes towards the arguement that all the blame in no way shape or form rests with the users. 

  • PRIESTESS
    10,721 Posts
    Thu, Feb 25 2010 9:39 PM

    I second everything jayjonbeach said,

  • iwb1
    110 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 9:18 AM

     

    Link to check quality of internet connection

    http://www.pingtest.net

    Test local and distant

    Packet loss is the important one. Should be zero 

     

  • WojciechMigda
    158 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 2:09 PM

    jayjonbeach:
    Well consider yourself bluddy well lucky mate.

    Count me as another one Jay ;)

     

    But let's get to the facts, and for that tcpdump is your best friend.

    I launched it as following:  tcpdump tcp port http or tcp port https -XX -s 32768 | tee log

    This is what I observed:

    1. Gameclient main menu in idle: over 50 seconds there were 7 outgoing requests (total of 10089 bytes), 5 GetEvents requests (1405 bytes each) and two GetBuddyList requests (1532 bytes each). I received 7 responses (total of 4149 bytes), 5 responses to GetEvents (339 bytes each) and two responses to GettBuddyList (one 2408 bytes, the other 385 bytes). Also there were 10 incoming acnowledgements and 8 outgoing ackowledgments. In total there were 14238 bytes of payload exchanged between my computer and wgtg05 server,

    2. Gameclient singleplayer ranked game in idle, after tee shot: over 73 seconds there were 7 outgoing GetEvents requests, and two GetBuddyList requests (payload as in #1). I received 7 responses to GetEvents and 2 responses to GetBuddyList. In general no differences to #1.

    3. Gameclient singleplayer ranked game two practice iron swings: over 7 seconds there were two outgoing GetEvents requests and one response to first of them, all before or after these 2 practice swings.

    4. Gameclient singleplayer ranked game two practice putts (grid animated): over 6 seconds it was identical to #3.

    5. Moving marker on the green: captured only single GetEvents request.

    6. Started backswing and adjusting shot strength for several seconds then hit the ball: nothing captured while adjusting the meter. Eventualy after making the stroke HitBallEvent was sent to wgt.

    7. As 6, but making putt and shot just as during regular play: exactly as 6, the first payload sent to wgt was the HitBallEvent.

     

    SUMMARY:

    a) During game in idle there is data exchange between player's computer and the wgt server at the very small rate (see #1 and #2).

    b) When making the stroke transmission is stopped. Only after making the stroke it is continued.

     

    Happy golfing,

    -Wojtek

  • YankeeJim
    25,827 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 2:47 PM

    That is interesting, Wo. Nice piece of info. Thanks to iwb1's ping test (you have to copy and paste-it won't go from this forum) I was rather startled to learn this:

    When this test was first posted this morning I tried and and got what I fully expected-zero problems with an A rating. After reading your post I tried it again and was astounded to see this. Notice what it says under the grade!!   Sure enough, I've got a few little stutters once in a while right now, something I consider typical. Earlier, with the A grade I was able to card a 30 at BPB because there were zero stutters in that match. 

    There's a moral here and I think it's pretty obvious. Looks like meter woes are more connection and machine than elsewhere. JMO


  • WojciechMigda
    158 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 3:01 PM

    Fortunately I am not affected, since on my computer wgt gameclient doesn't transmit data to/from wgt servers while using the meter.

    But for everyone's curiosity this is my pingtest results when my meter works perfectly fine, as usual:

    --------------------

    EDIT: wgtg05 server is located in New Jersey so now I did pingtest to the closest location in Philadephia:

    ------------------

    NEXT EDIT: now its different:

  • jayjonbeach
    689 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 3:09 PM

    Those are good observations Wo and that was an interesting exercise to be sure, but unfortunately it proves nothing to dispute the main point of this article, close, but no cigar as they say.  I did wonder about packet transfers/communication during the swing but mostly assumed there was none, though someone with the meter problem should try it while the meter is actually acting up, that would be more telling. 

    As a side note I would simply be amazed if there was really anyone that truly did not experience any meter stutter, ever.  It could be possible but very very unlikely, if a person always played at the same time of day (off peak hours) AND had a good system, I could see it.  Also having the right setup, XP + Chrome + certain high speed modem, etc,  there might actually be an ultimate winning combination that only a few lucky people have stumbled onto.

    For the rest of us, 95% of users, we have the meter issues and they are there much more prevailant at certain times of day AND in Ready-go tournaments, not a coincidence I’m afraid and no everyone’s Antivirus is not trying to update for 2 hours at the same time while the problems are occuring. 

    Having no communication during the swing (if even true over prolonged periods of time WHILE there IS a problem, ie no problem with stutter there is bound to be no packet transfers) , unplugging the internet while swinging are interesting experiments, however they sure dont explain why people with high-end computers with under 20% CPU usage at all times have problems. 

    If there are people that really dont have meter troubles, maybe they can pipe in and tell us their specs such as Operating System, browser, CPU, RAM, time of day played mostly, etc.   Wo if you dont have problems, tell us more as maybe this will help. 

    -------------------------------------------------------------------

    Jim I’m glad you posted that and posted that the link has to be pasted.  What you posted supports my argument perfectly.   When you did that test, you were “pinging” a certain server, that is how your connection was measured, and at certain times of the day and depending on which server your communicating with, you will get different results.

    So heres the clincher, if you could ping the WGT servers during the peak times, I’d pretty much guarantee that you would have a B or less rating, and some stutter, just like 95% of us do.  

    Try this yourself, in that test you can pick several servers to ping (what I just did), you’ll see that you get different results with each one.   

    Hence, WGT servers are greatly important to the performance of the game and the meter, really that could never be disputed anyway.   A persons system is also greatly important and your overall connection to the internet is as well, everything is important and I know when my problems are only at the really busy times, that it is NOT my computer doing something in the background for 3 hours and is most likely very busy servers giving a less than optimal connection.   Its obvious too because I see other game issues like graphics pausing, loading times longer than usual etc all at the same time as the meter stutter. 

  • WojciechMigda
    158 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 3:19 PM

    jayjonbeach:
    If there are people that really dont have meter troubles, maybe they can pipe in and tell us there specs such as Operating System, browser, time of day played mostly, etc.

    OS/CPU: Linux gentoo.local 2.6.31-gentoo-r6 #10 SMP Mon Dec 28 20:35:40 CET 2009 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

    Memory: 2x256MB PC3200 dual channel DIMM, CAS 3.0

    Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091231 Gentoo Firefox/3.5.6

    Window Manager: fluxbox-1.1.1-r1

    Time of play: about 7-11 pm CET weekdays (that would be 1-5 pm ET)

    Connection: landline 1024 Mb

     

    Maybe the wining combination is no MS Windows ? Linux can be tested without installing anything on the harddrive by the means of live cd or live usb stick.

    ------------------

    EDIT:

    Graphics card: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage Pro 215GP rev 92, 4MB of RAM, you have no idea how old this graphics card is. Anyway, its linux driver is rather old and not gaining much of a support, and the Flash plugin uses no hardware acceleration for it. Yet, I am able to play WGT with it, quite successfuly I think.

     

  • WojciechMigda
    158 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 3:35 PM

    Jay, could you please run WinDump (windows port of tcpdump I used) when you are experiencing the mentioned game problems ? I would like to see what amount of traffic is exchanged by your computer with wgt and non-wgt servers whe you are making a stroke which is affected by stuttering. Thank you in advance. Maybe we can find something together.

  • Infinito3010
    3,689 Posts
    Fri, Feb 26 2010 8:34 PM

    If the controls are local (say my computer) and my computer uses minimal resources and I get a lag on a meter during putting.  At that time my computer is utilizing only 38% total CPU load.  The putting green has the biggest load due to the flash component when you are reading the green.  There has to be other factors that are causing meter stutter.

    The communication between server and client should be halted during a swing.  Information gathered and sent to the server and the results sent back. If this is the case that communication between server and client are halted (ie no info being transmitted or recieved) then there should be no meter issues.   Now, if there is a lag between the server and client at the beginning of a swing, the lag is mimimal since we are dealing in milli-seconds. 

    Thus, for you computer guru types, we need a list of variables that correspond to meter's control on the clients computer. 

    List of Variables:

    1. Number of background tasks and type
    2. current version of video driver
    3. Current version of flash
    4. Amount of Ram
    5. Video card type and amount of RAM
    6. CPU speed
    7. Internet connection type
    8. The type of Meter control  (ie custom control derived from an ancestor)
    9. Meter integration to browser and CPU's internal clock

    I'm sure there are allot more variables associated with the meter speed and its performance.

    All I am saying, something doesn't sit right with me. I think the solution is simple, we just need to narrow it down.

RSS