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Gamers in Hawaii Can't Compete... Because of Latency (theoutline.com)
Sometimes it's very important to know that the servers of the web services you're using are situated somewhere in your neighbourhood. And it's not just because of privacy concerns. The Outline has a story this week in which it talks about gamers in Hawaii who're increasingly finding it difficult to compete in global tournaments because the games' servers are almost every time placed overseas. From the article: [...] The game's server is in Chicago. That means if you live in the Midwest, your computer can communicate with it almost instantaneously. If you're in L.A., it can take roughly 60 milliseconds. But if you're in Hawaii, it can take 120 milliseconds, with some players reporting as long as 200 milliseconds. And at the highest echelons of competitive video gaming, milliseconds matter. [...] In League and other eSports games, playing on a high ping is a big disadvantage. The goal of the game is to set up defenses to protect your base while pushing forward to capture the enemy's base, and there are typically lightning bolts and fireballs and slime-spitting dragons shooting across the screen. Playing on a high ping means players may not see all of the action that happens in a game. Latency can really screw things up for a young eSports scene, said Zack Johnson, who runs gg Circuit, a global tournament provider for gaming centers like PC Gamerz. Players on the mainland sometimes say they don't want to compete against Hawaii players, he said, because the high ping throws things off.
What's the news here? It's well known that physical constraints make communication over larger distances take longer. If these gamers were serious about avoiding these delays, they'd move to Chicago (or wherever the servers they're communicating with are). Why is this even on Slashdot?!
The game's server is in Chicago. That means if you live in the Midwest, your computer can communicate with it almost instantaneously. If you're in L.A., it can take roughly 60 milliseconds. But if you're in Hawaii, it can take 120 milliseconds
On the plus side, they don't live in Chicago.
I would take latency, sandy beaches, perfect weather and bikini clad women over snow and death by homicide.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
In other sports, runners who live at sea-level are disadvantaged in competition against runners who live high up in the mountains.
The life of athletes is full of unfairness.
Holy fuck.
Someone is in Hawaii and they elect to stay inside playing games???
I tell you what...you come here and stay in my suburban home in the states with a high speed connection that will allow you to pwn everyone in the game, and I'll stay in your home in Hawaii, surf, scuba, hike, and lay out on the beach.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Any decent game will have lag compensation, so the server allows the player's reaction to (approximately) what they saw on their screen at the time they saw it to apply.
For example, let's say two players shoot a killing shot at each other at exactly the same time. With a typical game the 200 ping player's action would be delayed enough for a low-ping player to kill before the server receives the "shoot" action from the high ping player. The high ping player fires at the other guy who takes no damage and the game eventually receives the "you died" message (in reality, the high ping player never fired since he died first). With lag compensation, the server can see the player with high ping fired when he was still alive, according to his lag, and can do damage to the low-ping player, resulting in both players killing eac other. In some cases such systems can favor high-ping players, as low-ping players will see side effects such as bullets seeming to bend around corners to hit them (as the high-ping player hit them before they rounded the corner, from their point of view), while low-ping players will see less benefits from lag compensation themselves. But overall things are more fair than without lag compensation I think ,and really weird lag compensation side effects are thankfully rare.
If you're looking for a break down of what pings look like globally, we've got the data: http://wondernetwork.com/pings
Or for Honolulu specifically: https://wondernetwork.com/ping... (101ms to Chicago)
paul reinheimer
True, although Hawaii may fare better than most islands and coastal areas. Most of Hawaii is well above even the scariest of sea level rises.
Just about the entire state of Florida would be under water before 10% of Hawaii is underwater.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
But you're still in Hawaii and he's still in Detroit.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think as you go east in Montana like Bozeman the speeds are worse with Charter, and they throttle, something Hawaii Telecom (Fiber) does not. Soo overall I have lived in Waikiki and Kailua and the speeds are way higher than I have received living in Montana. Maybe not missoula but in Bozeman the internet really sucks.
Ahhh, the return of the LPB -- the Low Ping Bastard from Quake days.
There's a solution to this, 1-and-1 home and away contests, which people regularly did for intercontinental matches.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> If I'm living in Hawaii the absolute last thing I'm doing is playing video games. I'd be more concerned about rising ocean levels thanks to global climate change
You must be a delight on vacations :/
Answer: Play games in Hawaii that don't require twitch reflexes and latency requirements.
I'm amazed that a gamer sitting on an island in the Pacific could unilaterally block a tournament.
Gets worst pings than 120 ms. And it has more to do with the ISP than the speed of light.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
What about gamers who live in Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, Africa and have to contact US based servers? They also have latency.
No.
I tend to rant.
Allow me to 'Summarize Proust' for you: A half-smart very serious young man wastes a bunch of time contemplating unanswerable questions before realizing that life was for living and goes out to get drunk and laid.
Not bad, considering all I've ever read is other summaries. Not being completely insane, I'm not reading THAT.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Democrat run cities seem to be the worst, you can check the stats on that one.
Let's see...San Francisco, median household income: $78,378. Los Angeles, $55,909. Chicago? $63,153. Detroit? $26,095. New York City (Home of the President, Donald Trump), $50,711. Looks like your examples are mostly doing well. The only one that's significantly below average is what, Detroit?
So you've got one. Except Detroit is in Michigan. A state run by Republicans for years. Why haven't they fixed any of that city's problems? Why haven't they done what they did for Flint...oh wait, that wasn't a good thing.
Besides, you want to know what's done about the Homeless? Bus tickets. Out of sight, out of mind.
Of course, this has been a problem for decades problem for decades, but you're too busy blaming Democrats, as usual for yourself, but then...why can you offer no solutions, no miracles in your partisan bastions of prosperity?
Oh wait, you think because you can rail about a few high-profile cities, you think nobody has driven through rural Mississippi and seen the abject poverty there.
And you know what? A lot of those homeless are veterans. Maybe you're just not patriotic enough?