The pain of sniping over the internet

[Ish 11]

Hi,

Am I the only one who finds it impossible to snipe moving targets in MP?

If they are moving towards/away from you, it's not really that big of a deal.

But when they're moving sideways from your perspective it's damn near impossible to determine "where they really are" with the lag.

It's not about desync or high ping or anything. It seems pretty standard.

The enemy (well ai at least) seems to rubberband really badly when they are moving laterally from your position.

I feel this makes the sniper rifle sort of inferior, now that we have the M240 with M145 sights.. Sure you might miss the first 10 or 15 rounds :rolleyes: BUT you'll get him eventually! :)

Call it a complaint if you must, but it can be really annoying when you just know that you normally could take the shot (in editor for example). :(

[Beagle 684]

Players with high ping can and could and will always use this to their advantage, because this "picard maneuver" will work at close range too...you aim, shoot and hey just warp a meter away *g*

Edited February 16, 2010 by Beagle

[Ish 11]

This is actually a problem for me with the ai. Say on a domination map.

It's especially odd because the ai don't seem to rubberband when moving away/towards you, but only when moving laterally.. A lag conundrum if I ever saw one..

I've always had a fascination with long range shooting :)

Here's me pre-ACE2:

[-=seany=- 5]

This AI MP lag is a strange thing and something that doesn't seem to get demanded to be fixed very often. Initially, with Arma1 no one really complained that much, I guess because JIP was new and we just put up with it.

With Arma2 its just the same. It looks really bad, any engagement of AI in the distance(200m+) with a scope(RCO ACOG etc) online is a warpfest, no matter how good your ping. If your sniping you have to wait for the target to stop moving or just waste magazines. Some times the warping is worse with a higher ping but it's always there. Vehicle warping is another serious issue ruining immersion online. It looks retarded.

I don't how I/we put up with it. I mean considering how realistic Arma2 is meant to be compared to other shooters, it is a serious ruining of immersion and realism. Imagine showing this to some one who you wanted to get into playing Arma? You wouldn't, because they would just laugh.

ME-"Hey mate, check out this great realistic game that puts those BF, Cod shooters you play to shame, the team work is second to none and it doesn't get any more real than this."

MATE-"Cool, but uhhh why are those tanks teleporting back and forth like that? And how come you have to wait for every enemy infantry to stop moving before you shoot him?"

ME-"mmm oh yeah, don't mind that, just put up with it...this is the most realistic military sim there is....yeah.."

Can it even be fixed? This really is a serious issue imo.

[Pulverizer 1]

The sad thing is that it has only gotten progressively worse since OFP. I'm all for making the netcode more efficient if the fidelity stayed the same but it hasn't. Right now it just seems to make everything beyond a certain distance update their position at a slower pace, instead of only skipping updates on non-visible units.

[Ish 11]

I'm going to post this in the 1.06 suggestions thread..

[andersson 285]

The server admin kan tweak values for this. I did it for my arma1 server. You can make the distance they warp shorter, but if you make it too short it will look to "stuttery". Back then I found a relatively good balance between warp and stutter. Long enough for them to walk without stutter and short enough for them to just warp a short bit so you could snipe them.

I dont have the values on me right now but its possible. Up to the server admin.

[Ish 11]

It really shouldn't be up too server settings imo.

[andersson 285]

So what should it be up to instead?

[Pulverizer 1]

The client-side prediction should work better. A unit that moves straight with a constant velocity shouldn't ever warp, no matter what the server settings are. It's very simple math to extrapolate the correct path based on velocity. A warp should only occur when the object changes speed or direction, and even that could be smoothed out to not look like a warp.

[An Fiach 10]

So what should it be up to instead?

The issue shouldn't exist at all. Lag or desync is one this but rubberbanding AI is unacceptable and it is not a lag issue.

[Ish 11]

The issue shouldn't exist at all. Lag or desync is one this but rubberbanding AI is unacceptable and it is not a lag issue.

This.

[stk2008 14]

dang glad i aint the only one i have had this AI WARPING since arma 1 and yes im allways sniper and yes it bloody bugs me.

im hoping they fix it but i dont think they can.

the problem is normaly units at long distance when you use the scope they seem to warp from one place to another every so often.

any ways hope its fixed or at least improved.

[Game__On 10]

Hi,

Am I the only one who finds it impossible to snipe moving targets in MP?

If they are moving towards/away from you, it's not really that big of a deal.

But when they're moving sideways from your perspective it's damn near impossible to determine "where they really are" with the lag.

It's not about desync or high ping or anything. It seems pretty standard.

The enemy (well ai at least) seems to rubberband really badly when they are moving laterally from your position.

I feel this makes the sniper rifle sort of inferior, now that we have the M240 with M145 sights.. Sure you might miss the first 10 or 15 rounds :rolleyes: BUT you'll get him eventually! :)

Call it a complaint if you must, but it can be really annoying when you just know that you normally could take the shot (in editor for example). :(

Sniping is noob anyways :p . Get that xm8 auto machinegun, lie down and perforate them fools by hurling 50 rounds at them . yes.

[Cowboy Pilot 10]

Try this in your basic.cfg or whatever config is used for your bandwidth settings.

/*

Minimal error to send updates across network.

Using a smaller value can make units observed by binoculars or sniper rifle to move smoother.

Default: 0.01

*/

MinErrorToSend = 0.0025;

[blazer01 0]

the picard maneuver lol thats one way of putin it

[whisper 0]

To me it's completely on par with the needed scale for the game.

There's no other game that can achieve so much scale with so many units visible at such distance.

It comes with limitation, that's inevitable.

I don't think the engine can possibly send the same amount of updates per second for every unit on the map to every client connected. Because of scale, number of units and number of players (combination of which is unrivaled by other games), at some point, for some unit to certain players the engine will reduce the number of update per second. And to determine this, the logical parameter to use is distance between player and unit. The farther the unit from the player, the less update per second the player will receive.

If BI didn't do this, they'd have 2 choices :

* Accept that their server have subpar performance as soon as mission makers puts many units in a mission, with many players connected, on a server setting high view distance (or any combination of these parameters)

* limit the maximum number of player, units, and max visible range to avoid this. I know a game that ended like that, it's called OFP-DR

So it's quite logical that distant unit gets less updates and it can end up with visible warps, depending on server config (and that's exactly the usage of the minErrorToSend parameter).

If you don't accept this kind of warp on distant unit on scopes, imho you shouldn't expect the scale and number of units as seen on ArmA2

That said, if there's improvement possible to make it less visible, BI should definitely get a look on it.

[MrXToTheN 10]

The client-side prediction should work better. A unit that moves straight with a constant velocity shouldn't ever warp, no matter what the server settings are. It's very simple math to extrapolate the correct path based on velocity. A warp should only occur when the object changes speed or direction, and even that could be smoothed out to not look like a warp.

I agree with that one

[galzohar 31]

I really wonder if that setting can actually help without totally killing your server's bandwidth. I hadn't seen much discussion/experimentation of its effects and/or recommended values (as default value is obviously too high), and I bet most server admins just leave it at default :(

I suppose this is not the thread for server configuration but then again the appropriate thread isn't much help either when it comes to this issue.

[An Fiach 10]

To me it's completely on par with the needed scale for the game.

There's no other game that can achieve so much scale with so many units visible at such distance.

It comes with limitation, that's inevitable.

I don't think the engine can possibly send the same amount of updates per second for every unit on the map to every client connected. Because of scale, number of units and number of players (combination of which is unrivaled by other games), at some point, for some unit to certain players the engine will reduce the number of update per second. And to determine this, the logical parameter to use is distance between player and unit. The farther the unit from the player, the less update per second the player will receive.

If BI didn't do this, they'd have 2 choices :

* Accept that their server have subpar performance as soon as mission makers puts many units in a mission, with many players connected, on a server setting high view distance (or any combination of these parameters)

* limit the maximum number of player, units, and max visible range to avoid this. I know a game that ended like that, it's called OFP-DR

So it's quite logical that distant unit gets less updates and it can end up with visible warps, depending on server config (and that's exactly the usage of the minErrorToSend parameter).

If you don't accept this kind of warp on distant unit on scopes, imho you shouldn't expect the scale and number of units as seen on ArmA2

That said, if there's improvement possible to make it less visible, BI should definitely get a look on it.

You don't get updates on every unit on the map, just the ones that you can see (occlusion) and the scale is not the issue. ArmA 2 is big, but not the biggest game out there. Also, the complaint is about AI and not human players, meaning if human players don't see it the way the AI does, it is an AI issue.

[whisper 0]

Give me one other game where you can put 300 visible ennemy units on map, with a view distance of 3km in MP, with 32+ players connected. That's the kind of potential scale the engine has to take into account.

"the scale is not the issue" is a bit fast a rebuttal if you ask me. Warping occuring on distant units only indicates it's exactly that, a scale issue (+ most of the time, bad parameters on server, or server underpowered for the mission played)

[An Fiach 10]

Battleground Europe. (which makes this game look tiny in comparison)

[whisper 0]

Which is a MMO, with the server infrastructure that goes along this kind of game :) (if you have any idea of the server specs running WWIIOL, I'd gladly know it)

Funny you should take WWIIOL as example, as in fact I think this scale issues have made BI stumble on some of the optimisations MMO games have faced because of scale.

Anyway, there are quite a few differences, like lack of AI, max view distance (never seen in WWIIOL vids anything near what is possible in A2), and servers.