GENERAL ZONE INFO

JOINING A GAME

First look at the top tool bar.  You will see below the top line these choices...Quick host...quick join...table view...list view.  Quick host will place you as host of the first open game room which is ok, if you want to host.

Quick join does the same thing except it puts you in the first available game as a player, the problem with quick join is that there is an option a host can use to block quick joiners, so you may not be able to really get into any game that way, since most hosts use the block.

Table view and list view just change the way you see the games.  List view makes it easier to see the games.  In either one there is a small clickable box called info. When hosting a game you may enter text by clicking on settings.

The more interesting and descriptive that info is, the more players it will attract.  Making repeated advertisements of your game in the general chat area unnecessary.  In fact flooding usually produces the opposite of what you wanted.

People who might have otherwise joined your game will avoid it completely.  Repeated flooding may also influence people to avoid your games in the future, and to boot you from games they host.  Not a very promising outlook for someone who wants to fly with other pilots.

The common misconception is that IP games are somehow different than zone games.  IP is the abbreviation of Internet protocol, it is the addressing system the Internet uses to connect two or more computers together.  Everyone who is connected to the Internet has an address referred to as an IP number. To find yours, go to the start bar then click, run and enter this, winipcfg then click ok. 

All Fs2000 games over the Internet uses this protocol tcp/ip.  The only difference is whether the zone makes the connections for the players or the players make those connections themselves.  If the zone makes the connections, it does so anonymously meaning that the players addresses are not made public.

This may or may not be important to you, depending on your preferences of security.  To do this, you and all the players who are in that game must have Fs2000 completely closed, not minimized.  When you hit the launch button, the zone will launch each players sim and connect them to the host, at which time the zone withdraws.  As long as the host stays in the game the zone maintains the host's address so it can connect late joiners.  Otherwise, the zone does not effect game play.

Connecting to a game manually is simple.  Start your sim, click on flights, select multiplayer from drop down menu, select connect, then from the pop up screen, choose tcp/ip in right corner.  Enter the game IP number in the search field box, then hit search.  When a game name appears in left box highlight it and click join.

OTHER ZONE FEATURES

Right clicking on a players name in the list to the right, allows you to choose to make that player a friend, which will move his name to your friends list, and to a list for zone messages.  It also provides a means of ignoring that individual, unfortunately every time they leave and come back you have to renew the ignore feature.

Right clicking on the chat screen produces a self-explanatory pop up menu.  A suggestion: take the time to click on everything that looks clickable and explore, nothing will explode and you won't lose anything but a few minutes time and you can make your visits to the zone more fun.

Explore the zone friends screen as well, there are several ways you can prevent people from annoying you, or interrupting your game there.

LATENCY (those little colored sticks)

Latency refers to the time it takes to send information from one computer to another.  The zone shows this two ways, with the colored bars, red being not good, yellow better, green good.  Left clicking on the players name in the right side list will display the actual time in milliseconds, the lower the number, the better the connection.

Since the zone withdraws after a game connection is made, your latency to the zone is not critical.  So it shows the latency from your computer to the computer of the person whose name you are looking at, if a connection were to be made at that moment. That way you can tell what your latency is just by looking at various players and decide whether a connection to that player would work well or not.

The zone does not display your latency nor anyone else's in relation to the zone, just in relation to other players.  To simplify what was said: if you see player "X" with 3 green bars, player "X" will see your name as having 3 green bars.  Player "Y" may see player "X" with one red bar and your name with two yellow bars, you will see player "Y" with two yellow bars.  So if you ask what your latency is it will depend on who answers you and is really quite unnecessary because you can see what it is in respect to every player listed.