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Thread: Explaining lag ramming and why YOU ALWAYS lose!

  1. #21
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    Ping is a measurement of the time it takes to for you to communicate with the server. It's often measured in milliseconds. Common pings are in the 100's but the lowest ping is always the better one.

    Here's an official definition:
    "In multiplayer online video games, ping refers to the network latency between a player's computer (client), and either the game server or another client (i.e. peer). This could be reported quantitatively as an average time in milliseconds, or qualitatively as low ping or high ping. The latter usage is common among players of first-person shooter and real-time strategy games. Having a low ping is always desirable because lower latency provides smoother gameplay by allowing faster updates of game data.

    Ping is often conflated with lag. One may "lag out" due to unacceptably high ping. Servers will often disconnect a client if the ping is too high and it poses a detriment to others' gameplay. Similarly, client software will often mandate disconnection if the ping is too high. A high ping does not cause lag; rather, a high ping value is the result of lag."

    I remember playing a game on my PC quite awhile ago and I got ping measurements from 14-486ms. Obviously you would go for the 14 as that would be the lag-free fastest connection.
    Last edited by Whizawk; 2nd September 2010 at 07:58 PM.

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Task View Post
    Very close, but not quite.
    It's not 'where they were a moment ago', it's 'where they were last time I knew' modified by 'their velocity (speed and direction) last time I knew'. These two factors are used to predict the location of all other players on the track. Two things make this innacurrate: Player inputs and time delays. If the player did something just after the last data set was sent, then the prediction is going to be off by whatever their action was.
    I was actually aware of that, but i didn't want to go into to much detail. As I tried to explain it in a kind of "lag issues for dummies". Anyway, you explain it much better, and I find it hard to formulate some sentences in English as well. So thanks.

    Anyways, back on topic.

    But yes, online games seems to be based on predicting where players is, and then refreshing that as often as possible. Not a steady stream of information.

    If a players connection is particularly laggy, their racing lines won't be as smooth. If the person with the laggy connection sends the last information just before a sharp turn, the game will predict that he or she will continue on in a straight line. If the connection is poor enough, the ship will actually disappear through the wall before their position/speed/trajectory is again refreshed and they appear back on the track. This is of course only visible to the other players.

    This is more of a problem in the higher speed classes, as things are happening really fast, and the prediction gets harder.

  3. #23
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    This is exactly why I think ships like AG-systems, Harimau and FEISAR always seem to be worse ships to come up against compared to the heavier ships. People have mentioned numerous times that they seem to lose out and take more damage against these light, fast turning ships, even in ships with high shield. It is presumably because they can change direction faster, so it's harder to keep track of their position and therefore there's a lot more ramming.

    I'm sure the following has been discussed all over this forum plenty, as has this whole topic, but now that we have a pretty good, definitive thread title and some good discussion, one question I still don't think has been answered is this:
    Even with the lag, if I appear to be knocked a bit once or twice in a lap due to lag related ramming, how is it that I can lose over 60% shield? This happened to me the other day. A few light knocks against AI would reduce my shield a bit, but on the first lap of a race I did a barrel roll or two, only to find I was down to critical shield, even though I didn't think I'd been too badly battered, and hadn't been hit with weapons. Any ideas?

  4. #24
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    None, but I would dearly like to know. It happened to me as well last Sunday. Lap 2 on Chengou fwd, in the tight left hander. I was at 50-60% energy going in - the last thing I saw was JJPAPs Icaras flying through my burning wreck. I'm pretty sure that he, from his POW, never even touched me, let alone speared me to the wall

    Also, it seems to me to have gotten a lot worse the last month or so. Are the servers slowly packing up or is it my PS that's getting old?

  5. #25
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    @Mic-dk

    As Haiku explained to me, WOHD is running peer-2-peer in Multiplayer. This means every PS3 involved in a race is dealing with your ship and the remaining ones. We only go to SCEE servers for leaderboard updates, for instance, and only for anything not related to actual racing.

  6. #26
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    Mic, if I didn´t hit you it was clearly my mistake. Be sure, I wouldn´t miss such an opportunity

    Don´t know if it has anything to do w/ the topic, but I´ve had all sorts of micro-freezes lately. Nothing too serious, but like it was about a year ago, when a lot of zoners were complaining about this specific annoyance.
    What worries me even more is that these freezes happen off-line as well.
    Maybe the black beauty soon needs a younger and slimmer sibling

    Also: Watching Tarquins vids from our cup-race, I can´t help noticing, that it seems like my ship is moving rather un-predictable. (Sort of like when watching an online race, waiting in the lobby). Must have been (maybe) disturbing for Tarquin - Some kind of: "Now you see me - Now you don´t!" ... Don´t know if it could cause ghost-ramming.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by SaturnReturn View Post
    Even with the lag, if I appear to be knocked a bit once or twice in a lap due to lag related ramming, how is it that I can lose over 60% shield?
    Yeah, I've got a pretty good idea as to why that would be.
    When you take a hit (as in a wallbang or a ram, non-weapon solid objects only), that hit is detected as an overlap in polygonal regions. Your craft can be considered to be a single polygon larger than it actually appears (the thing you see when the shields glow). If you've got two craft racing near each other, these two large polygons will intersect quite easily. The amount of collision going on can be determined by how much overlap is going on between these two polygons. Very little, and there's no collision at all, you're just racing side-by-side. A whole lot and you've got a serious "we're trying to share the same space" collision going on. The amount of damage each ship takes can be completely related to the seriousness of the collision.
    So now we've got some online racing going on, and you and your opponent are neck-and-neck into the corner. Unfortunately, you're on the outside. When you start making your hard turn, the game thinks that you're ramming your opponent in a full-on T-bone because it's working on old data about the location and velocity of your opponent. It gives you a serious collision effect. Your opponent was never actually there, took the corner fast and tight, and gets to continue on their merry way.
    The reason you're taking so much damage from what looks like a minor incident of paint-trading is because the game thinks you're having a serious collision with a solid ghost.

    Very related to everything else being discussed here.

  8. #28
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    I see what you're saying Jay, but something still seems off to me. I'm talking about when major shield loss occurs with what appears to be a minor impact. Surely the location of the ship on my screen and the strength of the impact will all be based on the same delayed positional data from my opponent? So shouldn't the shield loss of a strong collision also always show up in the visuals as a strong collision?

  9. #29
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    Not if the game is made so that ships can't intersect.

    Clarification:

    Both collision models are intersecting quite heavily, yours and the opponent's due to lag.
    However because ships cannot intersect, the opponent's ship will show near your ship, but will not correspond to the collision model's position.
    So you get a serious collision effect without it actually showing.

    Also, this can be why sometimes ship seem to jump on top of you when a lot of collision is going on. The ship model tries to remain as close as possible to it's collision model, which is basically somewhere inside yours.

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