Category: Projects

Daisy Powerline 880 Accuracy Testing with BBs

Posted on by yetieater in Projects

I took my Daisy Powerline 880 (Amazon.com) outside with some BBs to sight in my Daisy 4×15 scope (Amazon.com), simultaneously testing out my new pellet trap. I set the target approximately 15 feet from my position, and got to work

After five shots at Target 1, I felt the scope was fairly well dialed in, and moved on to my remaining targets

Targets, labeled in the order that I shot them

I observed some fliers: I suspected this may be because I exerted some pressure on the barrel shroud, but I won’t draw any conclusions at this time

I also observed some play in the pump lever that caused the forearm to lift slightly from the receiver

Target 2
Target 3
Target 4
Target 5

Fliers aside, my copy is shooting to spec: accuracy of one inch for five shot group of BBs from 15 feet, six pumps each shot (page 19 of old service manual)

I’ll revisit the accuracy of my Daisy Powerline 880 after I receive the pellets I ordered, Crosman’s Pointed, Premium Grade Lead Airgun Pellets (I got them on Amazon.com for $3.30 for a 250-count tin)

Laying the Groundwork

Posted on by yetieater in Projects

I’ve been streaming my workouts, and decided on November 20th to transition my battlestation out of my bedroom.

in yetieater v1, I streamed out of my bedroom through my workstation. My workstation was my only streaming rig, and the bulk of my gaming was done on my Xbox One.

After upgrading my father’s workstation, I held onto his old parts, and threw them into a new case: the Thermaltake Core P3 (Amazon.com). I considered migrating my workstation’s internals into the new case when it arrived on August 23rd, but decided against it because my Cooler Master XAF HB was already deeply entrenched within my setup.

The “new” machine lived inside of my home gym as a dedicated streaming machine. I ran it headless, driving it through my mid-2011 MacBook Air using AnyDesk.

I upgraded to dual 1080p webcams for my workout stream on November 4th, and the rig wasn’t keeping up with the workload, so I began running my workstation GPU (ZOTAC GTX 750 Zone Edition, Amazon.com) between the two setups. The GTX 750, using NVENC, made quick work of the dual 1080p webcam feeds, allowing me to maintain a stable 1080p30 out to stream.

The air has been growing drier here, and I was getting tired of running the GPU between the rigs. I made a couple of posts through social media letting folks know that I was looking to acquire a new GPU, and to keep me in mind as they were shopping online this holiday season, but I knew that I couldn’t depend on affiliate revenues. I recalled advice given to me by an old friend, “Do the best you can with what you’ve got!” With that, I committed to moving my best hardware to my home gym.

I swapped the internals between the two cases yesterday morning, a task that took me just under two and a half hours.

The metal arms on the Thermaltake Core P3 hold a plexiglass pane, but I can safely run the case without them, so I pulled them for a cleaner look.

Similarly, I pulled the sticker from the PNY SSD.

That’s what I call aging gracefully!

I’ve got to add a few switches and hubs to the setup so that I don’t have to fiddle around in the limited space behind the desk, but I should be ready to rock and roll, soon!

Trials of Osiris Statistics (Y3: Rise of Iron – Present)

Posted on by yetieater in Projects

The Destiny Trials Report team (@TrialsReport) DMed me a dataset giving Trials of Osiris K/D for players who have played 50 or more Trials of Osiris matches. The data covers Trials of Osiris from the launch of Destiny: Rise of Iron to the end of Trials of Osiris on Black Shield this past weekend.

A total 726,830 accounts (308,982 on Xbox, 417,848 on PlayStation) met the filtering criterion for 50 or more Trials of Osiris matches played.

The following tables depict player counts and K/Ds for each percentile.

Table 1: Trials of Osiris K/Ds, Percentiles, and Number of Players Below Each K/D (Xbox)

Percentile Players Below K/D
99 305,893 1.96
97 299,713 1.67
95 293,533 1.54
90 278,084 1.36
75 231,737 1.12
62.591 193,395 1
50 154,491 0.88

Table 2: Trials of Osiris K/Ds, Percentiles, and Number of Players Below Each K/D (PlayStation)

Percentile Players Below K/D
99 413,670 1.96
97 405,313 1.67
95 396,956 1.54
90 376,064 1.35
75 313,386 1.1
64.411 269,139 1
50 208,924 0.86

I was a little surprised to learn that the average Trials of Osiris player has a K/D below 1.0. I have some ideas why this might be the case.

Here’s the same data, represented in a scatter plot:

Chart 1: Number of Players vs. Trials of Osiris K/D

Background

I was chatting with iwz delta on the afternoon of Wednesday (February 22, 2017), and I brought up statistics, specifically how players like us are a rarity in the Destiny population. Both of us are anti-meta players who have achieved some degree of success.

During the conversation, I talked with him about the bell curve, and I posited that Destiny’s player population was probably distributed as such.

The conversation still lingering in my mind, I reached out to the Destiny Trials Report team on Twitter:

Soon afterwards, I received a response, linking me to a tweet by SilverAndSlaver:

SilverAndSlayer didn’t have plans to revisit the analysis for a month, so I took it upon myself to begin poring over whatever data I could obtain. I briefly considered enlisting outside help to programmatically scrape Trials of Osiris K/Ds, and was elated when the Destiny Trials Report team reached out with data.

A big thank you to Destiny Trials Report for improving the quality of life for all us Destiny Trials of Osiris players, and for providing me with this dataset!

More
We have the data, now what?

Theoretical distribution of player K/Ds – does it hold true?

TombstoneTV’s “Siege Engine” Build

Posted on by yetieater in Projects

TombstoneTV wanted to build a gaming rig primarily for Rainbow Six Siege. This was TombstoneTV’s first build: he received significant input from Rainbow Six Siege gamers on the /r/Rainbow6 Discord server.

He initially approached me with a build list totaling $921.21, inclusive of a Logitech G303 Daedalus Apex (Amazon.com)

I offered my feedback for his consideration, details of which accompany the final parts list provided below:

Final Parts List

CPU: Intel Core i5-7600

Intel’s Core i5-7600 (Amazon.com) is a Kaby Lake processor built on the 14nm manufacturing process. This part was retained from initial parts list to final build.

Motherboard: MSI B250 PC MATE

The MSI B250 PC MATE (Amazon.com) made it from initial parts selection to final build. I considered cutting it for a cheaper board if needed. Note that the Intel B250 chipset is designed for Kaby Lake processors

RAM: 8GB Kingston HyperX Fury Black DDR4-2133

Initially, TombstoneTV’s build was specced for 16GB (2*8GB) Team Dark DDR4-2400 with timings of 14-16-16-31 (TDGED416G2400HC14DC01, Newegg.com).

I advised TombstoneTV to right-size his build. I suggested 8GB (2*4GB) of DDR4-2133 with tight timings, and found a suitable kit from Kingston (HX421C14FBK2/8, Amazon.com, Datasheet).

He ultimately selected a single 8GB module (HX421C14FB/8, Amazon.com), losing the benefits of running dual-channel 🙁 Live and learn, I suppose…

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM HDD

TombstoneTV’s build sheet initially featured a PNY CS1311 120GB SSD (Amazon.com) in addition to a Seagate FireCuda 1TB 7200RPM Hybrid HDD (ST1000DX002, Amazon.com). I knew that he would be better-served by a higher-capacity SSD. The only question was finding the room to upgrade the SSD given budgetary constraints, and I eyed the Seagate FireCuda for the chopping block. I asked whether the FireCuda could go, given that TombstoneTV wasn’t intending to use the rig for media storage (he streams most of his content).

Fortunately, TombstoneTV told me that he already had a 2TB external drive hooked up to his Xbox One, and that he could pull the drive for use in his build. He was certain that his external drive was an SSD (I thought it highly implausible).

His rig is running on spinning disks only at this point, but so be it. An SSD and a clean OS installation can always come later.

Video Card: PNY GeForce GTX 1060 6GB

Not much to say on this one – the PNY GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (VCGGTX10606PB, Amazon.com) came recommended to TombstoneTV, and I left it alone. If I were selecting a graphics card for personal use, I’d research more deeply into which GTX 1060 6GB were best – at this time, I don’t know how PNY’s GTX 1060 6GB compares against the field.

Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case

TombstoneTV picked out the Deepcool TESSERACT BF (Amazon.com) in his initial parts listing. I’ve never used Deepcool in the past, but it looked alright from the pictures, so I didn’t push him towards any of the established players. I personally feel that a solid computer case is worth investing in, because it can always be recycled for a future build.

PSU: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular

The SeaSonic G 550W (SSR-550RM, Amazon.com) power supply made it to the final parts list. Given that the build is going into a mid-tower case, I didn’t push for a fully-modular PSU.

Post-Build

TombstoneTV reported, “I’m genuinely happy. This runs Siege in 100fps on high”

The machine is outputting to an ASUS VG248QE 24″ 1080p 144Hz monitor (Amazon.com).

I asked that TombstoneTV run 3DMark – he came back with 3DMark Time Spy results:

3DMark Time Spy Results

Graphics Test 1: 33.45 FPS
Graphics Test 2: 30.43 FPS
Graphics Score: 4027

CPU Test: 22.10 FPS
CPU Score: 3951