Over the next several weeks we will be releasing updates to the simulation client to support a lot of cool upcoming features. We will do this in stages so that we have an opportunity to test out each stage and work out any issues that people might encounter.
General Features
These new general features are available as of this post, a few that have been there and a few you may not have noticed:
- The client auto-updates now. Once you download it and start it, you can theoretically let it run forever.
- There is a new “Clear Queue” option in the menu on the client program. Use this to cancel all running and pending simulations. Useful if you accidentally started a long-running simulation with the wrong settings, for example.
- As of 2/6, the client uses a different mode that can more fully utilize most CPUs, but uses a bit more memory. Should be faster for most people.
Stage 1: Multiple Clients
Released 2/6! You can now connect more than one simulation client at once, and distribute long-running simulations over multiple computers. This is definitely a power-user feature, so don’t worry about it if you only have one computer or don’t do long simulations.
For those interested in pumping out big custom batches or speeding up gearing strategy runs: you will first need a premium account to run multiple clients concurrently. (This is the same premium account that gives you access to all the other optimizer features like Best-in-Bags and the Upgrade Finder, so most power users are already covered.)
Here are a few tips for getting the most out of the simulation client:
- Running a single client on more than 12 threads usually won’t speed things up that much. The only scenario where this tends to be a gain is if each of your cores is slow (an old processor), or you are running really low margin of error simulations (0.1% or less). HINT! Running simulations under 0.25% margin of error is almost always a waste. There are almost no statistically sound reasons to ever go down to 0.1% or less. We have the option in case you come up with an edge case though.
- You can turn an extra client on even while a long batch is already running — it will immediately start helping out.
- You can turn off a client while it is running as well — the work it is doing will be picked up by another client. Don’t overuse this feature though… there is a limit on how many times it will retry work that gets cancelled (three tries right now). We also don’t recommend stopping clients during gearing strategies right now… they are a bit more complex and may not be as fault tolerant. A future update will improve on this.
- If you have a big CPU (8+ physical cores, usually hyperthreaded to 16 logical cores these days), you can sometimes get better performance by running two or more clients on the same machine. To do this, you need to copy the client to multiple folders on your machine and start each separately. (Trying to launch the same executable multiple times will give an error.) For example, try running two 8-thread clients on an 8-core hyperthreaded machine, or three 8-thread clients on a 12-core machine.
- You can only connect 25 clients at once. This restriction may be lifted once we test out the system some more.
Stage 2: AMR Global Network
Coming soon! Our goal is to build a global network that uses your idle CPU time to tackle all these hard theorycraft and gear ranking questions! More details forthcoming as we get closer to releasing it. And it will of course be an opt-in feature, never turned on by default.
Stage 3: Automated Gearing Strategies
Once the multi-client features and global network are solid, we want to build features that allow you to automate creating gearing strategies for your characters. Still kicking around ideas, but the idea is to give you an almost zero-maintenance way to keep your gearing strategies up to date when your character changes significantly, and suggest customized simulator settings to make the most of our powerful gear ranking features.