Brutal lags and poor perfomance for my players

[Karpaccio]

Hey! I bought ultimate version of Fantasy Grounds few days ago. When I am working on a new campaign or working trough my campaign, it works well for me. But my players have really horrible lags to the point that the app is almost not usable... Any advice? Becouse if I cant solve it, i have to make reclamation of my purchase... Sadly... I wont, but if its not working, dont know why to pay for it so much money...
Thanks for suggestions!

[Nylanfs]

Look at what you are sharing, only share the items that you know they will need PHB, some of the summoned monsters and animal companions. Check your shared token folder, don't share too many. Check your image sizes that are shared. Keep under 2000x2000, or 2mb.

[Valyar]

Maybe you can share what you have loaded and what exactly you mean by "lag" from player perspective?

As Nylanfs suggested, going ballistic with the image size might cause delay in loading and rendering if the network bandwidth between you and the players is not sufficient.

[LordEntrails]

The performance you describe is a bandwidth issue. Try this;
- If you are on wireless, can you use a wired connection?
- What is your upload speed with you run an internet speed test?
- Are you also streaming music, vidoe or other apps when you play?
- Keep images below 1MB in file size and 2048 x2048 pixels
- Pre-share all your images
- Get your players log in 30 minutes early to download everything and load the required shared modules

Now how is performance?

[Karpaccio]

Aha, so the modules arent downloading when they have the "download" screen, but also when they are already in my campaign? I have UPC, 20MB/s upload, wireless. But man, 20MBs! that should be sufficient, right?

[Karpaccio]

Also, what means preshare all your images? Share them before we start playing, so they download it and then we can play? Did I get that right?

[Nylanfs]

Yes, mark your images as shared and when the players log in the client will check it's database against the GM's, and download anything marked as shared that it doesn't have in it's database.

[LordEntrails]

Correct, even if they have the modules, I believe they are still downloaded (because what if you've got a module of the same name but have made changes to it?). But, it's only downloaded once. (Unless the players clear their cache.)

Right click on the image and their is a pre-share image option. This way when they log in (early) it will download the image so it doesn't have to be downloaded when you play. Do note that you want to mask it (when appropriate) before you pre-share it so they players can't look at it until you unmask it during the game.

20MB/s should be sufficient upload speeds. Is that what you are actually getting though? You might be paying for 20 from your modem, but if you have a dozen devices in use when you are playing... so, make sure you actually test under play conditions.
Also, FG does have poor network architecture (currently being redesigned with FGU, no estimated date), meaning if you share a 1MB image to 2 players, it takes 2MB of bandwidth, if you have 10 players it takes 10MB of bandwidth. And FG freezes while the download is happening :(

So, pre-share, get your players to log in early, manage what you share. Be aware :) Let us know.

[Karpaccio]

Ah, ok, thanks a lot, that would be the issue... I will tell you after our next session. Fingers crossed... :-D

[LordEntrails]

Ah, ok, thanks a lot, that would be the issue... I will tell you after our next session. Fingers crossed... :-D
Have them log in early, and at different times, if at all possible.

[Valyar]

Also, FG does have poor network architecture (currently being redesigned with FGU, no estimated date), meaning if you share a 1MB image to 2 players, it takes 2MB of bandwidth, if you have 10 players it takes 10MB of bandwidth. And FG freezes while the download is happening :(
Out of curiousity, why you say it is poorly architected?

I don’t know what are those freezes and lags really, I have FG freeze for 1 or 2 sec when player connects and then it continues just fine, player downloading in the background. I use maps and images of more than the recommended size (went with 5-6 MB, no problems) and none of the players experienced any issue, except the physical time to download, which I avoid by prestaging.

PS: 30 min before game? What internet connection do you have?

[Claybor]

I had a similar issue due to having way too many tokens and images in the base file. I had to remove most of them and just add them as needed.

[LordEntrails]

Out of curiousity, why you say it is poorly architected?

I don’t know what are those freezes and lags really, I have FG freeze for 1 or 2 sec when player connects and then it continues just fine, player downloading in the background. I use maps and images of more than the recommended size (went with 5-6 MB, no problems) and none of the players experienced any issue, except the physical time to download, which I avoid by prestaging.

PS: 30 min before game? What internet connection do you have?
Because the devs have set the networking architecture is poorly done by today's standards. Because the entire application is single threaded meaning that when FG is doing one thing (uploading to a player) the host/server is non-responsive. Sure, that's not a big deal when it happens for one or two seconds, but when it takes 20-30 seconds that is annoying. Because their is no allowing uploads to be cached on an intermediary server like a WAN accelerator does (which mean that uploading a 1MB image to ten players would require 1MB of host bandwidth rather than the ~10MB it requires today).

Yes, pre-sharing, or prestaging as you call it, is the recommendation, and why I recommended it.

And sure, 30 minutes is usually excessive. But I've played with GMs that have 0.4MB/s upload. It's better to be safe (allowing more time than needed) than to not allow enough time.

[Valyar]

I never had such issues... I guess where I go I am lucky with internet connections we have in Europe that never allowed FG's network stack to show its dirty things.

At home I have 100Mbit and so far the hotels always delivered from 15 to 30 Mbit and upload sufficient to stream voice/music and FG maps of 3-4MB without this freeze.

[DMReckless]

I had these issues for ages until I switched ISPs, and now I have beautiful and quick connections with almost perfect hosting. Used to take 1/2 hour to 11/2 hours for the "first download" connection to any of my campaigns. Images would share for some and not for others, always took a good 5-10 minutes even for those who did load it. Now it's under a minute to load in and images pop right up for my clients. My upload speeds usually clock at 8-10 mbps whereas my old isp clocked at around 1 or less. Use internet testers and see if you're getting what you pay for.

[Skillkoil]

LordEntrails made a great point. I try to have my server up 30 minutes to an Hour before game start. That way people can log on and get any "connection lag" out of the way from modules, images, etc..

If you follow the steps everyone gave you, I think you will see a massive difference in your players performance.

One final note. I have been running my campaigns from a laptop lately.(not a very powerful one either) If I keep just FG and Discord running and do a restart of the computer prior to starting up the server for them. I can run a game 4 to 5 hours with little to no lagging for my players or myself.

Happy Gaming!

[Karpaccio]

Thanks a lot, the problem was that the game doesn't show anywhere, that is downloading (or uploading in my case) something... So you have only visible lags, players are complaining and you think about giving up with this game. Now its great, noone has any problems and overall the app is really amazing, but to be honest user UI is one of the stupidest and really counterintuitive I have ever seen. Thanks for this forum, so i google a lot (how to easilly turn tokens by mouse, how to move big maps with scroller and than draging etc)... :-D
But we finished our first game few minutes ago, it was a bit mess, but we were happy... .-D

[LordEntrails]

The UI is a bit unusual, but I think you will find after using it for a while you will see how powerful it is. But, always expect to learn something new as their are so many functions hidden here and there. There's a good sticky thread to check out, read one or two new things a week from it; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?45418-Useful-shortcuts-and-tips-to-use-in-Fantasy-Grounds

[lostsanityreturned]

Thanks a lot, the problem was that the game doesn't show anywhere, that is downloading (or uploading in my case) something... So you have only visible lags, players are complaining and you think about giving up with this game. Now its great, noone has any problems and overall the app is really amazing, but to be honest user UI is one of the stupidest and really counterintuitive I have ever seen. Thanks for this forum, so i google a lot (how to easilly turn tokens by mouse, how to move big maps with scroller and than draging etc)... :-D
But we finished our first game few minutes ago, it was a bit mess, but we were happy... .-D

Yeah, it is something that will change in the future. But not quite yet.

Also the UI isn't too bad once you get used to it. Not great but not as bad as it first seems and quite flexible :)

Make sure to read all the "best advice" threads and such and you will have a much smoother time. It works so well I use it for in person games too -laughs-