=VG= SemlerPDX

Today was a problem - the server master save file had become corrupt, and so when it crashed, it had to be fixed and restarted to Day 1. It's been up since this afternoon, but the first couple days are the time when it's most prone to crash, due to the amount of action going on between so many tens of thousands of units in those first days. Will keep an eye on it, and please feel free to report any issues! *BTW, I assume you have the players listed on the screen on purpose, that's not forced by the server, is it? Was concerned because I just recently turned that on in the server config, was hoping it only showed up on the server's screen...

*If there is already a "PR server down" thread from earlier or around the same day, please just post up a reply there instead of making a new thread. Thanks! (threads merged)

*if I knew more, I'd create a way to charge that second battery outside the headset - but I'm too concerned with getting it wrong, so it's just not something I'm gonna mess with for now. My next project will likely be a pinball game controller (for use with VR, or just a widescreen monitor in portrait orientation) with haptic feedback and actual pinball parts, etc. It will be wired USB, but gonna delve into wireless very soon.

I am uncertain of what would work with any given headset - to provide more than 12 hours of use with my wireless Logitech G933 headset, I just purchased an additional official replacement battery from Logitech, and I keep it charged, sitting in a pouch and ready to swap out extremely easily. I considered tapping into that power source for the TrackIR, but in the end, preferred a detachable device and an official power source for additional time with my wireless headset. The headset has an internal charging and boosting circuit that manages the battery, if it just has a USB cord for power/recharging like most do. This means it's not just a two wire connection from the battery to the board in the headset, but a three wire with one being a signal wire going to a small circuit inside the battery pack. Now, this is gonna be different for all the headsets, but slightly similar in concept. The board is expecting what the firmware was designed for to know when to stop charging the battery, and when to stop discharging the battery. I am unsure if adding in a higher capacity battery would necessarily get completely charged and take advantage of the additional capacity by the firmware on the headset circuitry. That is way beyond where I've traveled so far in hobbyist electronics. Mess with these sorts of batteries, and you get fire and even small explosions sending fire or caustic material onto the surroundings. Best to really do your research and know what you're doing... it's past my knowledge at this time. Like I said, I just went for what I knew would work, and $25 for an extra battery was no skin off my back for the convenience of an additional 12 hours wireless use.

↑ there are few true scenarios where fast ropes would be the smart choice, such as a roof covered with too many structures to land safely, etc. -- but PR heli's are a bit more forgiving than, say, Arma 3 heli's, and could expect that fastropes will be used for no reason other that the noted useless "cool factor" way too much, and I bet dollars to donuts that will cause some needless death and mayhem. Fun fun! We'll see in time, I guess. Fast rope in Arma 2 ACE mod was neat, and I think we used it once in training and once as a useful way to get somewhere the chopper did not want to land. Other than that, 99.99% of the time, standard heli drop-off always most efficient, safe, and speedy (which equals even more safety)

don't feel too bad - I blame myself for not getting the Event on the home page (which is where it will display in YOUR local time to avoid confusion) - I was balls deep in the Ryzen Beast build, head in the clouds

I want to be a cameraman, so put me in any fireteam slot as a grenadier or such, maybe LAT - but let those who wanna pick go first, slot me in where needed after that.

1.6 is about to drop, I'm sure that will bring in some new blood. We'll run it as long as the PR Master Servers are online.

That was tons of fun! We'll have to do this regularly! I sucked a bit less than I expected, very nice controls in this game.

Case wiring complete - I settled for nothing less than professional, took a bit of time, but then I was taking my time. I modified one of the triple-head SATA power cables to make one single neat cable for that 4-port USB 3.0 expansion card below the RTX 2070S Love the colored Cable Labels that came with the Crosshair VIII Hero - marked each SATA cable on both ends so I can tell from front or behind which individual plug I'm dealing with at any time down the road. (not pictured is my custom airflow block between hard drive cage, cable-side panel and front airflow channel) Pro cable management means not having to push on the back panel cover when you slide it into place to cover everything. This board has a ton of wires for a single GPU setup, with that AIO there's a 3 wire dongle plus a USB cord for a 2.0 header, the 4 PWM fans and 2 CPU Power at cables at the top left (from front) - your bog standard massive ATX power, and a dual VGA power for the GFX, and 4 SATA drives at 8 total cables to run there (power + SATA) - all in all, it turned out great and everything is easy to access and service. Front view again with back panel in place -- not using the NZXT "Smart" device... The hole left open a spot for one of those nice vinyl ROG stickers for at least +25FPS in most games, and put another one on the right panel there (covering a small scratch that was nagging my OCD) Not a fan of RGB, but I love the tempered glass and the infinity mirror on the NZXT Kraken cooler. Time to get all the games installed and start having some fun! ... (3 week later:)... (j/k) Finally up and running! Got everything installed and configured, very few things left to do. The new G.SKILL RAM runs perfectly under many clock settings, unlike the Patriot's and so I'll RMA those asap. Spent a bit of time getting the voltages right and maximizing my 3600MHz DRAM overclock on this Crosshair VIII Hero for a 1:1 speed ratio with the Ryzen Infinity Fabric, and plan to spend more time down the road fine tuning it even more. Added a few hundred points to the TimeSpy Extreme initial benchmark scores I saved for this PC, and if you know how hard it is to gain an extra few points in a 3D Mark test, you'll appreciate that difference. In a real world test, this translated to a speed increase of over 45 seconds on a compressed video library .zip file I brought over from my old PC (about 300GB of videos varying size 1GB-8GB each). Working with compressed storage files on this Ryzen Beast is like using a freaking super computer!!! Also, ran a render in Adobe that took 20 minutes on my old computer, was done in less than 5 minutes. I was so shocked, I broke out laughing out loud like a freak. I've achieved positive case pressure up to 60C (CPU or GPU diode temps, whichever is higher) with a bunch of custom fan curves including on the RTX 2070S. Pretty cool to see a few of them shut off during normal use, and automatically ramp up as high as 2000RPM under full load. That's half the rating for the RTX 2070S fans, and only 60% of the Noctua case fans (including the two on the Kraken X63 AIO liquid CPU cooler). Temps are very stable and remain at or under 60C even during extended full load stress tests far beyond what any game or benchmark suite I throw at it, with overhead for another 30-50% case/fan cooling if needed for the hot summer months. Each of those 4 Noctua iPPC-3000 PWM fans were $30 (listed as 'down' from $45) but totally worth it for this level of control. Dust was a constant issue with my last system due to the layout of my computer area along a main trafficway, near an outside door, and on carpet near a hard concrete floor... in front of the main filtered air intake for the grow room behind it. Basically, just about the worst scenario for keeping dust out of a PC, and there's really no better place to put it so I'm stuck (by choice, but still). Worth the time spent testing and setting up, positive fan pressure is making sure the intake always comes through my slightly modified filtered intake(s) on the NZXT H510i, and only allows air to rush in through the rear empty PCI card slot grills when something inside gets over 68C (again, CPU or GPU, whichever is higher). I've only got it to do this with stress tests, even benchmarking suites remain in a positive case pressure setup except for a few bursts during loading phases. Back when I was trying to learn a bit about 2D game programming in Java, I made a little test game, unoptimized but working alpha so I could add elements as I went -- it took up a solid and flat 50% CPU usage on my last 4 core i5 4690K with it's 4.3GHz overclock. If I opened a second one, the PC would become so unresponsive, it was unlikely to register a click on the Close button of either of the Java games running. (*edit: here's a copy of that game if anyone wanted to see what an unoptimized java game runs at on their own PC ... https://www.dropbox.com/s/7zt3e6shbe1ej7o/SemJavaGameTEST.rar?dl=0 ) I just opened 9 of them at the same time on the Ryzen Beast, then hit it with an Aida64 Extreme stress test on the CPU/GPU/System Memory and it didn't break a sweat. Let it run for like 9 minutes, and nabbed the screenshot below. I had mouse hovering over the "Stop" button in the stress test, and thought it was over the screenshot button, so that's the tiny dip seen in GPU-Z - I immediately started it back up, took this screenshot awhile later:

Just heard about this test at MIT where a special spray paint (in layers) was used as a touch user interface and it just blew my mind - very cool concept - can't find the original video now, but this one shows off the concept: VoiceAttack_AsAdmin_NoUAC_Method.zip

In OBS, the higher you crank the resolution, the more power it requires. If you can't do your native resolution without visible performance drop in the game, or in the video, you can downscale the output until that happy middle ground is found. The other thing you control is the encoding itself. It gets deep, but on the top layer of the concept is the encoder type (and the settings for that encoder), the bitrate, and the desired FPS and resolution of the recording. The one most everyone uses is the x264 encoder. It has a couple preset settings, and these impact PC system resource usage. Basic general setup is a 1080p video at 30FPS *(or 60FPS if your PC can handle that) with a Constant Bit Rate of 2000-3500 (CBR) and using the x264 Encoder with the "Fast" preset. This is only if you don't have a Turing based nVidia GFX card ... if you have access to the NVENC encoder, that is the preferred method and is far less resource intensive allowing for much higher bitrate and resolution/FPS without taking up exponentially more PC system resources. TLDNR; Use the NVENC Encoder if you have a Turing GPU (nVidia 1050-2080) Without an encoder, a video capture would be a raw output, resulting in very, very large file size with no compromises on quality as it's essentially a frame-for-frame capture at whatever frame rate you chose to record at. This is what FRAPS does, and why it's file sizes can approach 4GB for video clips as low as 30-60 seconds in length, even at 1080p.

(so, not trying to say I'm a dork or anything, but I've watched it three times already and love it - shared it with my Pops to show him the way we all play games, that coop thang. Seriously, keep making videos!!!)

Cool man! That's one good reason to get an RTX / 2000 series nVidia card right there -- the NVENC encoder is so low impact I can't even barely tell I started recording by the performance hit (as opposed to an X264 Fast encoding setting in OBS) and also the quality is at least 20% better, too, especially during high movement. Keep making videos, keep toying & tinkering with things! Those programs have options menus that will melt the brain, but in time, getting the best settings in the GFX card, the recording software, and the game for a video will become easier.

Yeah..... um.... yeah.. So, I really should have trusted my instincts. Ryzen 9 is very, very picky with DRAM Frequency and Timings... After over 12 hours of working with a well respected Ryzen DRAM Calculator, I just can't get this damn Patriot Steel 4000MHz RAM to run at anything other than default DDR4 (2133MHz). Was just shooting for a simple 3600MHz but it just can't do it - also, fun fact - this MoBo thinks that 1.478V is just peachy for this AMD 3900X, and the AIO Pump Header is disabled by default even if something is plugged into it - so ya gotta watch these 45C temps on your CPU while IN THE DAMN BIOS doing basically nothing. Fixed it to 1.3V and everything is just great! NewEgg to the rescue - G.SKILL 3600MHz CL16 DDR4 (8GBx4) is speeding it's way to me now, and I'll even get to keep using this Patriot (at 2133MHz) while I get the rest of my programs installed and OS setup. Just gotta put off any tweaking, testing, and overclocking until then. (G.Skills costs less, too - but that's cuz the Patriots were rated at 4000MHz) My goal with the 3000RPM PWM Noctua fans is to create a custom fan curve profile for the case that can (hopefully) achieve positive case pressure in a well-known negative pressure NZXT case. The H510 has a minimalist interior and exterior, and excellent filtering yet terrible air flow - but for some reason, large openings in the front next to the filtered intake are directly open to the back panel and back of the motherboard tray, and the large vertical cutout designed for cable runs, which could literally form an intake/output loop where no new air comes in through the filters, if the path of least resistance is from the output of the fans themselves. MORONS! I've added some case modifications with some paperboard and soft foam filtering to block this air path, forcing front intake through the two filters only and not from any other part of the case. When temps get very high during gaming, it will allow for a negative pressure system where air will rush in from anywhere, including the rear I/O unused PCIe slot covers, and this is just fine... but normal operation will have positive pressure and prevent dust from gathering like a magnet as in my NZXT S340 case (pretty much same case). (All the wiring done - pics below were taken on this day, took my time during the week to install and configure everything)

Looks like it's all back to normal now. Thank you for the report @ranger_12

Glad you got it sorted! Windows updates can often be the culprit for many things. It's best to have a backup schedule that is timed for the end of the month, as new Windows Updates roll out near the beginning of each month, with major overhaul updates on a more annual basis, like the 1909 Fall Update (which messed up a few files for some folks until it got sorted). General rule is to constantly have file backups, and to update your system image and restore point items if you use them at the end of every month, so you're prepared for a start-of-the-month update issue. YOU WILL need to get those updates eventually, you can't stay rolled back like this forever, but with any luck the issue will get patched and sorted (cuz when these things happen to us, it's likely that many with similar equipment/programs will get it too). Might want to google more on this issue in a few days or a week to see if any progress has been made or if others have found solutions or whatever. Also note this tool for later - fixed issues for me more than one when I was facing a full Windows Reinstall to recover from issues: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026529/windows-10-using-system-file-checker

Too much fun - some glam shots for posterity -- bench test successful, CPU, MoBo, and RAM all check out, time to ditch the Wraith Prism and release the Kraken:

Given Start/Stop/Restart access to Skitalez - and SOP / info. When this happens, the thing to do is first make sure it's not just you -- then, click STOP (not restart) and wait about 30 seconds or so, then click START. The server will come back in less than a minute. It can be joined via IP address much sooner than it will appear on the servers list.

Read the full post(s)... yes, it was a joke -- but no, the content and features info was not... those are planned features in 1.6, whether every one pans out and makes it to the full 1.6 day 1 release is up to testing and continued development as it's not released yet. ↑

That case mod will look good on my new NZXT H400i box:

↑ re. that thing what I wrote before... Using a 3rd party website for server tracking and info, seems like a decent place, lots of registered servers. Got us set up and tossed a banner under the Game Servers page and also a Vote button above the current poll - please help us get that number up over time, if you like what we're doing and you like the server, give us a vote. No thumbs down if you don't like it, so the standard flaming bag of dog poo on the doorstep would be understandable. New "Leaderboard" style wide banner looks like this: Full list of these banners is here: https://squad-servers.com/server/12381/banners/

How about the new VG SQUAD Server? Password is: vgsquad Find it listed under the CUSTOM BROWSER - filter for "show empty servers" -- we're not there yet, but we will build it up. I'd love to try any Arma 3 PR thing, or anything like it. We played the Arma 2 PR Mod back in the day, it didn't work too well, and we were already used to better systems for base building, etc. at the time.... Looks like it's worth trying out.

Please refer to the 'How to Connect' guide here: https://veterans-gaming.com/index.php?/forums/topic/6656-falcon-bms-434-how-to-connect-online-campaign-with-ivc-enabled/ bottom of the first post has ports listed *Server is located in Kansas USA, not Germany like our PR Server, etc. -- may have issues connecting from the Middle East. But try ports and follow the guide, first