Transatlantic Gigabit Gaming.. err, Research

YourHero writes: "Science Technology And Research Light-Illuminated Gigabit High-Performance Transit. All hail acronyms. U Illinois at Chicago has hooked up to SURFnet (Netherlands) at 2.5Gbps, with plans to go to 10Gbps and hook up Canada, Asia and other parts of Europe. StarLight as its called makes a monster gaming ... err. I mean 'real-time, multi-site virtual reality.' Looks like they've been racking up killer ping times for a few weeks now.

Comments

Of course you know...

[Dixie_Flatline]

That no matter how big the pipe is, you can't reduce ping times past a certain limit, right? You've got the whole 'speed of light' thing tripping you up. There is a certain latency that can't be defeated, no matter how many gigabits your pipe is.

ping times?

[alienmole]

Looks like they've been racking up killer ping times for a few weeks now.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but ping times on high speed links (with no particularly slow routers or switches in the way) are primarily limited by the speed of light and the distance travelled.

So no matter how fast the bandwidth of this connection, if it's between the US and Europe, the ping times aren't going to be a whole heck of a lot better than they were before - the distance is the main limiting factor, and it's a pretty "hard" limit too, according to my old pal, Einstein.

Re:ping times?

[cnkeller]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but ping times on high speed links (with no particularly slow routers or switches in the way) are primarily limited by the speed of light and the distance travelled.

You're basically right on. This is my favorite essay about latency.

Depends on the game

[Ted V]

It honestly depends on the game. I can't notice any difference between 0ms and 25ms of ping, but you can feel a little bit between 50ms and 0ms in an online game. I did work with the Unlagged Q3 mod as part of unlagging my own mod, Art of War. It turns out that 50ms of time is about half of a player bounding box in Q3. So lets say a player is moving from left to right and you have a 50ms ping. If you are aimed just a little bit to the left of center, but still lined up with their bounding box, you will miss with 50ms ping and hit with 0ms ping. That's pretty important. With unlagging, I notice a huge improvement in all my hitscan weapons, even in the sub 100 ping range.

That said, Packet Loss is far worse than a high ping, and high pings don't mean as much in slower paced games like RTS games.

-Ted

Re:Depends on the game

[Anonymous Coward]

The same is noticable in Half-life since they released their new netcode (probably about a year or so ago now), with the lag compensation enabled hitscan weapons do far better, even at low pings. Before they added that, I noticed that my chances of using hitscan weapons against other players dropped significantly once my ping rose above 50ms.

Of course, the problem with lag compensation is that it causes weird side-effects, like people hitting others around corners and without facing the proper direction, and it only gets worse as the two players involved have higher pings.

Even worse, still, is when a router hiccoughs and your ping spikes to 80 from 20, or when your cable modem service provider decides they can squeeze three more people onto your node, and one of those people decides they need to run Napster 24/7.

Re:Depends on the game

[grammar fascist]

I'm the author of Unlagged Quake 3, so naturally I'm biased. For those of you who don't know, it's a server-side hit-scan lag compensation mod, which means there's no extra cheating and nothing to download to play. It works by remembering every player's position - and when instant-hit weapon hit tests need to be done, it tests with the players in the positions they were in at the time of attack as opposed to the time the command was actually received.

Of course, the problem with lag compensation is that it causes weird side-effects, like people hitting others around corners and without facing the proper direction, and it only gets worse as the two players involved have higher pings.

You're right, but those side-effects are much less noticeable than people like to make them out to be. The reason these "problems" sometimes seem so big is that people generally sit around and theorize about the idea rather than test it. Another issue is that there are always, always, always inconsistencies when you try to make anything real-time with latency involved. The game designer has to choose which inconsistencies he thinks he and his audience can deal with.

So let's take a look at lag compensation vs. no lag compensation in the inconsistency category to see how they stack up. First, lag compensation:

• You sometimes, but rarely, notice that you get shot when you think you're hidden
  
• You sometimes, but even more rarely, notice that the person who shot you isn't currently aiming at you (this also happens with no lag compensation, but to a lesser extent)
  
• HPB's sometimes, and still rarely, seem to make impossible shots - like they seem to rail you right after you hit a bouncepad
  

And now, without lag compensation:

• HPB's can line up a rail shot perfectly and miss
  
• Game balance is skewed by the fact that four of the weapons are nearly useless to anyone pinging over 100
  

I stand by my assertion that the inconsistencies in hit-scan lag compensation are very rare. I've been testing it for weeks now, and I've only noticed them a few times - like three. Just about everyone else who's tried it and given feedback has said about the same thing - and usually, they love it.

The only people who really hate it seem to be those who consider their broadband edge to be more important than fairer play. ("Fairer" because the low-ping player will always have the advantage.) They'll avoid it like the plague.

Even worse, still, is when a router hiccoughs and your ping spikes to 80 from 20...

Hit-scan lag compensation takes care of that, too, so it isn't just for HPB's.

My point is that people should try it out before they let the supposed problems dissuade them from it. I've just finished a server listing page that updates every five minutes. Check it out. Just remember not to aim ahead of your target with the railgun.

Bandwidth and ping time

[Anonymous Coward]

High Bandwidth != low ping time

It can be a pipeline with 100Gbps and yet have a very high latency.