Hi Folks, I've added the metrics page for exploring performance data. If you leave 'Permit collection and sharing of anonymized performance metrics' checked when scheduling a mission, the data will be made publicly available. DCS performance can vary depending depending on various factors, including but not limited to mission design, number of players, and instance size. I'm hoping that by making…

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Hi Folks, A few months ago I introduced a convenience function for installing mods. I've improved this service by making it compatible with cloud storage services such as dropbox, google drive and sync.com. I've done this by reworking the download logic to take advantage of headless browsers. What's the problem? The problem presented by many cloud storage options is that the share link to the…

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Hi Folks, I still get surprised reactions when I explain how ready-room.net works or where those 10min of startup is spent, so I thought I'd take a moment to revisit it. I think the automation is great as it makes on demand DCS hosting easy, but I'd also like to point out it can actually cost less than rolling your own as well, which I think is pretty neat. I'll explain it, but the long and short…

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Hi Folks, I discovered after updating to 2.8.2.35759@openbeta that instances wouldn't start and I wasn't able to properly address for a couple of days. Apologies for any frustration and thanks for bearing with me. This blog post is a bit of a post mortem. The Problem It was a bit confusing. I noticed there was an issue when testing the update in Sydney and the mission took longer than usual to…

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Hi Folks, I've added a convinient way to install mods into rr instances. Mods in the Schedule form The schedule form now accepts a JSON list of zip file URLs along with the path the file needs to be unzipped to relative to the DCS saved games dir. e.g. It has been possible to use mods since the introduction of RDP access - albiet with a tedious process of logging in via RDP, manually downloading…

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Updated 26/04/23 - Added security groups details and server.cfg Hi Folks, SRS is a fantasic piece of software that can be used alongside DCS for voice communication that is also an immersive radio simulation. I was recently asked if I could do standalone hosting for it. The main beneifts I can see from hosting SRS in AWS is that it will have it's own internet connectivity - which can help since…

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Hi Folks, Remote Desktop access is now available for Windows instances. This provides a way to upload alternate missions, mods, scripts etc. RDP is accesible on the instance ip on the standard RDP port (3389) as the Administrator user with the mission id as the password. A convenient connection file can be downloaded from the mission page. This is possible because of the temporary nature of…

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Hi Folks, I've been testing running DCS on Linux and have updated to support SRS, LotATC and mission archives. I've had some positive results, but also some issues as well. So for the time being I'll continue to leave this service labelled as experimental. The issues I've run into are tankers teleporting around whilst refuelling, and the Server Dashboard disconnecting after a few seconds. The…

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Hi Folks, Thanks for the encouragement and feedback to date, and giving my service a go. This has been a side project since the beginning of 2020 which has been satisfying to do technically, as well as to deliver a service that folks find value in. I've registered Ready Web Services Pty Ltd to properly account for tax, but also to be able to integrate with 3rd party services that require a…

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Hi Folks, I've been working on automating DCS Dedicated Server on Linux. This is because without the Windows licence, EC2 is about 30% less expensive. I've had some success, but have yet to get much experience on how it performs or get the additional services such as SRS working. I've made the Linux service available for the moment as 'Experimental'. I plan to see how I go with it over the next…

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Hi Folks, Something I've been keen to do for a while is to find a convinient way to record SRS such that it can be used with Tacview's synchronised playback feature for better debriefs. Well I've come up with a work in progress opt-in solution integrated into ready-room. When enabled ready-room will act as an SRS client. It will try to automatically track the frequencies pilots are transmitting on…

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Hi Folks, I've made some improvements to how Tacview data is collected, and am now also making track and log files available as well. These files can be accessed after the instance has terminated from the mission page. Tacview Tacview is the popular 3rd party application and mod for reviewing flights. Recording the tacview data on the server has a couple of advantages: There is no lag or…

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Hi Folks, I've recently migrated rr to use DynamoDB. I thought I'd share the why and how for technical folks that might be interested. The Tradeoff The original tradeoff was - save $5 per month in exchange for potentially not being able to charge for some instances run. When I originally threw this service together I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth my time, or if other people would find…

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Hi Folks, I thought I'd share some considerations on choosing an AWS EC2 instance size for DCS. The Cheap Whilst an SSD is only recommended the alternative in the cloud is some sort of network mapped storage which is just too slow. The cheapest EC2 instance that I could find with a physically attached SSD large enough to accommodate DCS is the i3.large. The Fast As I understand it, the way DCS…

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Hi Folks, I'm considering shutting the service down due to lack of interest, but before then I'll try putting it forward once more since I still do think some folks would find value in it. Let me start with that I've hosted missions with the Flying Kiwis squadron for over a year now, about 3 times a week each for about 3 hrs a session averaging around 15 pilots. The average bill I get each month…

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I've been practicing navigation with a time reference and found peeking at my watch whilst using VR to be pretty awkward. So I've popped togeather a stopwatch overlay based on the SRS overlay. F5 with Stopwatch DCS_Stopwatch.zip

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Update - 22/03/06: I've produced a youtube version of this blog post I originally looked into AWS when I noticed the pings in my group were skewed and figured it might be a cheap way to geographically centralise the DCS server to get smoother play for epic formation flying. Since we'd only be online for a few hours at a time, a way that avoided the expense of an always-on service was appealing…

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I've decided to consolidate service for now to Sydney and N. Virginia, due to a lack of interest. If you would like the service supported in your region, please let me know via discord https://discord.gg/hURRqGP. There are overheads when offering the service in a region. I need to maintain assets in the local aws data center. This includes the operating system image for running DCS, as well as DCS…

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Migrating from Amazon's EBS network storage to local SSDs has been working really well. However during a busy mission I still observed a spike in disk / drop in network and associated pause, but it was kind of expected as it was right as a whole bunch of units were getting loaded in. A ramdisk is a configuration where ram is presented to the operating system as though it we're a disk. An…

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It was a bit a surprise to me, but after actually having monitored the performance of a few sessions now with a decent (~15) number of pilots I've found that disks are the performance bottleneck rather than CPU or memory. In the sim we experienced some pauses / desyncing, but the corresponding observed performance was a sudden increase in disk activity with a corresponding dip in network activity…

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I've spent my time this month testing the hosting service, using it in earnest with my local squadron. There is lots of room for improvement, but hosting is functional so I think its time to see if there is any demand for it. On AWS there is a small overhead in storage and data transfer between regions, so I've decided to just start with US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), Asia Pacific…

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