Lag Compensation - Whats your and BI take on that?

[Ceceli 1]

For those who don't know what Lag Compensation is, I'll tell you. It's basically a series of calculations that level your game with others people's game based on both conections, which it changes the trajectory of the bullets.

They implemented that on Battlefield 3 it is a bummer for a hell of a lot players! This can continuous put you in bad situations like:

- Missing a clean shot.

- Getting cover but still dying from bullets 'that make a curve'.

- And probably some other stuff related to lag.

Will you want something like that on a simulator such as ArmA III when you can just rent a server or play on others from your own country knowning that this game is gonna be huge and you don't need to play with people from the other corner of the world?

Thanks for the attention.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Ceceli

[max power 21]

ArmA 2 already employs some prediction systems that try to reduce the amount of warping and other lag effects.

[rohan11221 1]

ARMA 2 has literally no lag for me even on 300 ms so i'd be fine if they just put whatever they are doing into arma 3

[NeuroFunker 11]

if u wanna see arma lag, play with 1.59 patch, and then back to 1.62 ;)

[Deadfast 43]

All multiplayer games employ movement prediction. There is a major difference between how Arma and Battlefield handle multiplayer itself though. Where BF (and 99.5% of other online games) is server-centric, Arma is a bit of a hybrid.

To elaborate, in BF, the server is always right and what the player sees is pretty much irrelevant to the evaluation of the game logic. Once you shoot, the server is told about the fact and takes over from there. It is the server that calculates the trajectory and decides what you hit. You still get your client-side effect of the weapon firing and maybe even the projectile in flight but that's pure eye candy and not reliably representative of what's going on on the server. The trajectory calculation obviously uses the same equation and the input values are the same, but your target may no longer be on the server where you see him on your client (because it's the server that tells you where it is and there is a delay - your ping - before this information can be received by you). From my own experience, BF2 tended to overcompensate for lag. It fixed the lag prediction at values set to compensate for 100ms so playing on a server with lesser ping meant you had to aim before the person. Either that or input the 3 ridiculously long commands to tune the prediction to the actual value (or use a script to do that for you).

Arma, to allow for a larger number of players, especially AI, has a distributed model. Server actually doesn't have a role much different from a client. Hit detection is always handled locally on the computer fired, so what you shoot is what you hit. If you can see an impact effect, you have hurt the opponent. That sadly comes at a cost of being much more prone to hacking.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Deadfast

[dmarkwick 261]

BI has its own solution to lag, as implemented with the latest patches. It involves a small amount of predictive positioning for units, not implemented for rounds as far as I've heard. I don't know that discussion of another game's shortcoming has much use :)

[Ceceli 1]

Nice comments, guys. I saw on wiki that lag compensation also opens doors for hacking. Though, huh?

[maturin 12]

AFAIK, your position in ArmA is entirely local to your computer, unless there is a major desync. So you will never be shot from around a corner. Lag can only make you miss a shot because of an inaccurate target predicted position.

[Deadfast 43]

AFAIK, your position in ArmA is entirely local to your computer, unless there is a major desync. So you will never be shot from around a corner. Lag can only make you miss a shot because of an inaccurate target predicted position.

No, you can be. As I said, damage calculation is done on the client that has fired the weapon. So if he can see you, he can shoot you.

[maturin 12]

That's damage, not hitbox detection.

[maddogx 13]

That's damage, not hitbox detection.

He said "damage", but he really did mean hit detection.

Hit detection in Arma2 is determined on the client who fired the weapon, no matter which computer the target is local to.

[Nicholas 5]

I think the current system in ArmA works great. It's rare for me to actually get any warping in ArmA after the patch that fixed it.

I also usually play on servers with low ping as well. But I can connect to a server with a 150-200 ping and still play without much warping.

Edited September 24, 2012 by Nicholas

[PsychoPigeon 10]

I was playing on the TAW server and there was still warping... I thought this was fixed.. why is this the only game to do this? If MMOs can handle thousands of players, why does Arma give servers a hard time with just 40 players?

For the simple minded: I don't get lag, I have a 60ms ping, it's the server that struggles.

[Tonci87 163]

I was playing on the TAW server and there was still warping... I thought this was fixed.. why is this the only game to do this? If MMOs can handle thousands of players, why does Arma give servers a hard time with just 40 players?

For the simple minded: I don't get lag, I have a 60ms ping, it's the server that struggles.

Bad server setup/configuration; bad Missiondesign/configuration; addons. The reason for the warping is one of those three.

[Nicholas 5]

For the simple minded: I don't get lag, I have a 60ms ping, it's the server that struggles.

In my post, I meant warping rather than lag. Fixed. :icon_rolleyes:

[dmarkwick 261]

I was playing on the TAW server and there was still warping... I thought this was fixed.. why is this the only game to do this? If MMOs can handle thousands of players, why does Arma give servers a hard time with just 40 players?

For the simple minded: I don't get lag, I have a 60ms ping, it's the server that struggles.

Thousands of players? And for some reason you're making the assumption that they're all synced with each other? I don't know how MMOs work, but I'm going to assume it's not magic :)

[NeuroFunker 11]

Thousands of players? And for some reason you're making the assumption that they're all synced with each other? I don't know how MMOs work, but I'm going to assume it's not magic :)

lol im just wondering, what actually has mmo to do with arma? His post was quite random.

[Steakslim 1]

never mind that mmo's often run multiple servers if I recall to handle the workload.

[millerhighlife 1]

never mind that mmo's often run multiple servers if I recall to handle the workload.

If Arma could do this with AI, Effects, and so on to one server and the island and textures to another. Would help with server performance I'm sure.

[Deadfast 43]

If Arma could do this with AI, Effects, and so on to one server and the island and textures to another. Would help with server performance I'm sure.

Servers don't render anything, hence there is no point in delegating effects or textures.

[rye1 21]

I can play on servers @ 150-300ms with no negative gameplay effects for me.

[metalcraze 290]

That sadly comes at a cost of being much more prone to hacking.

Except I didn't notice such hacking happen ever.

You can't change hardcoded stuff with a mere script so script kiddies gotta relax here.

[Leon86 13]

Nice comments, guys. I saw on wiki that lag compensation also opens doors for hacking. Though, huh?

nah, that's clientside hit detection.

[Deadfast 43]

Except I didn't notice such hacking happen ever.

You can't change hardcoded stuff with a mere script so script kiddies gotta relax here.

Yes, because why bother increasing the damage of your shots when you can just land a GBU on your target instead.