[TWEAKED B1009.27.5] Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (Full Version)

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Zanthra -> [TWEAKED B1009.27.5] Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (3/24/2019 3:40:23 PM)

The weapons release authorization window has substantial performance issues. Despite being very useful in order to use SAMs and AAMs automatically only in no escape zones, and better managing AGM or SSM ammo useage, I always dread opening and working with it.

Not only does the window take a long time to list the available weapons for configuration, and take a long time to open the selected weapon, but whenever a inherited configuration is changed, it executes a long running function on the event thread. This hangs the UI for several seconds in many cases, and leaves the program in an unresponsive state.

While when playing the game, WRA can be left at default, and weapons release controlled manually, this is not an option for the non player sides, and can lead to forgotten units heading home with heavy strike packages if you don't keep a close eye on them. I think it would be of great benefit to the game if the performance of this window was investigated.



Dimitris -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (3/24/2019 3:43:42 PM)

Hi,

Can you post a save of a situation where this is especially evident? We are continuously tuning both the sim-core and the UI performance (the new v1.15 update contains a huge update on the "Weapons" and "Magazines" windows specifically for this), so extraneous hang-ups tend to be case-specific. Thanks.



Zanthra -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (3/24/2019 3:53:26 PM)

The issue shows up in initial scenarios such as for the scenario "Politics are Local" bonus scenario in Chains of War. If you load up the scenario then hit Ctrl Shift F9 to open Doctrine, then select the WRA tab, then 203mm/55 Triple, then in the Ship - Unspecified row and Weapons per Salvo column set it to 4 rounds. After that going through and configuring each of the 127mm/25 ammo types to only fire 4 all in preparation to set the ships to Engage Opportunities. There are many long pauses during this process.

If it helps you track the bug I can load up a scenario and save it off. This happens when working with the Weapons Release Authorisation in any scenario and in the editor.



Dimitris -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (3/25/2019 6:48:25 AM)

Thanks, I see clearly what you mean. This one's a toughie.

Added some tweaks in B1009.27.5. The actual speed improvement is not substantial, but you get feedback on your action a lot faster so the perceived speed should be improved. Please give it a go and let us know.



Zanthra -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (3/26/2019 10:16:02 PM)

Thanks, I'll let you know once that patch gets to Steam how the feedback works.



Dimitris -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (3/31/2019 5:42:00 PM)

We'd appreciate feedback before this hits Steam, to be frank.

The update can be downloaded manually from here: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4612898



Zanthra -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (3/31/2019 8:39:11 PM)

Unfortunately it does not seem much improved, at least when there are a lot of weapons in the list. The UI stall is still pretty bad while inherited options are adjusted, regularly getting to the point where windows claims it’s not responding.

Could you do something like throw up a modal dialog saying something like “Updating WRA. Please Wait...” to hold UI input and keep things synchronized, run the work in another thread to keep the UI thread clear, then dispose of the dialog when the update is done? I don't know the specifics of the code or whether that would work exactly, but as long as it's going to be taking more than a second or so, getting it off of the UI thread I feel is important.

Ideally of course the performance could be improved, but often things are not that easy.



Dimitris -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/1/2019 12:55:10 PM)

Actually we offload to a worker thread already, the hard part is synchronizing the UI changes (both WinForms and WPF really really hate it if you do updates outside of the main UI thread, so you basically have to invoke calls on their thread about half a million times).

We'll keep at it. Sorry!



Zanthra -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/1/2019 11:45:23 PM)

Thanks for looking into it.

I think this is a great game, but sometimes I feel like I am using a Hard Drive again after having used a Solid State Disk for years. The game just takes a few moments for a window to open, or a button to be pressed, or setting to be changed, and I don't really think about it at the time because I am thinking of what I am doing in the game at that moment. It's when I get the ten or so second pauses in the WRA that it interrupts the flow of what I am doing in game and I start thinking about it. Since everything related to the UI (possibly excluding the tactical map) goes through the one Queue, even a small improvement in the speed of some of the half a million delegates and the render calls they may initiate affects everything else after it in the queue as well. Counting and timing executions could be important along with profiling. I think that the UI responsiveness is something that is at least as important as sim speed.

Don't read that too harshly, this is a great game, and in general the UI is not too bad (as long as the game is paused), but the WRA window is borderline unusable in many scenarios.



serjames -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/2/2019 6:52:55 PM)

I can confirm that whatever was changed has made this much worse - it's gone from 4-5 secs to now around 28-30 seconds. big delay as the scroll bar is re-drawn.


Playing "First night" from the desert storm pack- specifically changing the Phoenix missiles to "2 firing units". Takes literally 30 secs.

Version is 1.15 build 1009.27.6



Dimitris -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/2/2019 7:46:56 PM)

Let's have a show of more hands.



AndrewJ -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/2/2019 10:25:46 PM)

I tried this with 1009.27.6, and the scenario Mediterranean Fury #4, with an AU Count 4965.

Change WRA for One Unit

Opening the WRA window for a specific unit is effectively instantaneous.
Expanding the line for a specific weapon takes ~ 1.0 to 1.5 seconds.
Changing the value for a specific known target type (e.g. Ship - Auxiliary, 0-500 tons) is effectively instantaneous.
Changing the value for an unknown target category (e.g. "Surface Contact - Unknown Type") takes about 1.5 to 2.5 seconds.


Change WRA for the Side

Opening the WRA window for the entire side takes ~ 11 seconds.
Expanding the line for a specific weapon takes ~ 1.9 to 2.6 seconds.
Changing the value for a specific known target type is effectively instantaneous.
Changing the value for an unknown target type takes about 17 to 19 seconds.


I can certainly see how it would get frustrating to make WRA changes to the 'unknown' or 'unspecifed' categories. When you add in the time to scroll, select, and click, you might get two changes per minute. If you wanted to set the WRA for range for all SAMs and AAMs on the player side in this scenario it would take over 15 minutes. If you wanted to set weapons per salvo as well, then you're talking about half an hour.

(Edit: not being a scenario designer, and usually firing all shots manually, I've not needed to use the WRA window much. Has it always acted this way? Could this be a contributing factor in why many scenario designers tend not to set specific WRAs?)




serjames -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/2/2019 11:03:10 PM)

It has always been very very slow. I try to set all WRA's from master side doctrine, otherwise you end up making double work later down the line, and yep, if you're changing weapon salvos too e.g. rockets.. or Bombs, it can take an age :-)



Zanthra -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/4/2019 12:26:44 AM)

Auto Resiszing rows seems to be taking the bulk of the CPU time when updating the WRA window. Shrinking the WRA window to only show a few rows while changing an inherited value does make it faster in a linear relationship, so I gather that the window is set to resize only visible rows. If there are only 10 visible rows it loads things about twice as fast as if there are 20 visible rows. On the other hand it's also linearly related to the total number of rows being added to the window (opening the category for an air to air missile, 20 rows, takes about half as long as to open the category for a Harpoon, 40 rows). Changing an inherited setting causes the entire window to be repopulated, meaning it takes time according to the number of rows that can fit in the window times the total number of rows in the list (including any open categories). I think what is happening is that it's not calculating the auto sizing for each row added if it's visible, but rather calculating the size of every visible row each time a row is added!



serjames -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/4/2019 7:52:16 PM)

Well I play in 4K... lots of rows... so this might be the cause !

YEP ! Thanks so much, that's made a HUGE difference. It's window size. :-) The little things eh



Dimitris -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/6/2019 4:21:26 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zanthra
Auto Resiszing rows seems to be taking the bulk of the CPU time when updating the WRA window. Shrinking the WRA window to only show a few rows while changing an inherited value does make it faster in a linear relationship, so I gather that the window is set to resize only visible rows. If there are only 10 visible rows it loads things about twice as fast as if there are 20 visible rows. On the other hand it's also linearly related to the total number of rows being added to the window (opening the category for an air to air missile, 20 rows, takes about half as long as to open the category for a Harpoon, 40 rows). Changing an inherited setting causes the entire window to be repopulated, meaning it takes time according to the number of rows that can fit in the window times the total number of rows in the list (including any open categories). I think what is happening is that it's not calculating the auto sizing for each row added if it's visible, but rather calculating the size of every visible row each time a row is added!


Thank you. That comment turned out to be extremely useful for troubleshooting this issue.

If there was a way I could sticky this post as a bright example of players helping the dev team discover the root problem instead of pointlessly antagonizing them, I would.

Thanks again.



Dimitris -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/6/2019 4:54:38 PM)

Drastically improved for the next update release, thanks to Zanthra's, serjames's & AndrewJ's feedback.



AlphaSierra -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/6/2019 6:05:46 PM)

My scenarios are still not working, tomahawks and other ASM hang in the air, looks like weapon launch points for airstrikes have all been altered.

It's unplayable period

Please provide a way to uninstall these updates ASAP

And please wait to release "updates" to the public until they have been thoroughly tested going forward.



BDukes -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/6/2019 6:15:45 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: AlphaSierra

My scenarios are still not working, tomahawks and other ASM hang in the air, looks like weapon launch points for airstrikes have all been altered.

It's unplayable period

Please provide a way to uninstall these updates ASAP

And please wait to release "updates" to the public until they have been thoroughly tested going forward.


Post saves of these behaves in bug section. It will make easy for developer to find fix so not have to dig through the unrelated forum. This best way.



Zanthra -> RE: Performance issue with Weapons Release Authorisation window. (4/20/2019 3:28:04 AM)

It looks like the latest update has fixed this entirely. It is orders of magnitude faster now. Also loading the Aircraft Ops window on groups with multiple carriers is much better. Thank you! :)

A side effect mentioned here, and which I have observed also: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4620961 where users can resize the rows is likely due to the fact that the forms control has manual resize allowed by default, but was previously implicitly disabled when auto resizing was enabled.

Thanks again for the fix!



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