Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Telemetry 1.1e Released!

Even though it's been only a couple weeks since our last release we wanted to get another big one out before the holidays. We've made a lot of little enhancements, added support for a new platform, and, best of all, have implemented a very handy feature -- off-line performance capture!

As long time Telemetry users know, Telemetry's architecture is based on streaming data over the network to a server which acquires, processes, stores, and eventually serves up the data. Unfortunately this isn't practical in certain situations. For example, a testing lab may not have network access for security reasons; some consoles have notoriously poor networking performance (even while wired); or a test machine may not have access to a Telemetry server.

To address these concerns we've implemented off-line data capture. The only change you have to make is a parameter to tmOpen -- specify TMCT_FILE instead of TMCT_TCP. Now instead of writing to the network Telemetry will write to disk. When done you take the "tmdata" files and then import them into the Visualizer (or play them back to the server). It's that simple, and in some cases can make a dramatic (5-10x) performance difference.

Run-Time
  • Enhancement: Performance improvements for 360 and PS3
  • Enhancement: Added TMPI_START_TIME parameter to tmGetPlatformInformation
  • Enhancement: Win32: Changed context switch trace management code in an effort to be more robust across a wider range of systems
  • Enhancement: Duration of TCP send now has a plot automatically generated
  • Enhancement: Added more send buffers to increase performance and prevent stalls while writing to the network
  • Enhancement: TMCT_FILE for local mirror of network traffic (i.e. disconnected captures are now possible!)
  • Enhancement: BETA support for new platform
  • Change: PS3: Telemetry thread now defaults to hwthread 1
  • Change: 360: Telemetry thread now defaults to hwthread 5

Server

  • Enhancement: Greatly enhanced performance under certain conditions with lots of frames
  • Bugfix: Occasional server crashes when open zones spanned a very large number of frames
  • Change: removed TM_APP_STRING and TM_APP_TICK console spam

Visualizer

  • Enhancement: "Import Data Files" feature added (related to TMCT_FILE support)

Other

  • Bugfix: Some documentation was using tmDynamicString improperly
  • Enhancement: Cleaned up example files
  • Enhancement: Added 'tmimport' command to playback raw net files captured with TMCT_FILE sessions

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