This is why i shall never, ever pledge allegiance to a company

It's debateable whether PC is ultimately cheaper. I'm running xbox 360 still (from 2005 or 2006 or something), and a PC that is around 5 years old. PC cost more money, and I'm looking to upgrade it just as I am console. I used both the whole time, but the 360 never had serious issues with running any game. PC? Yes, and that was true even BEFORE I switched to Linux instead of windows (surprisingly, Linux was only a minor crimp in gaming for me once I got used to it; and only because PC games insist on using DirectX).

Even running windows 7 my machine with better RAM, better GPU, more GPU ram, ~CPU speed couldn't really outperform the same/similar games on xbox 360. Some of that is market/design discipline (companies like Firaxis aka Failaxis don't give half a **** about optimizing game performance, and borderline lied about minimum specifications on release, because people could in theory get better computers), but some of it is just the knowledge that you have a player base on one system with one known set of constraints.

One thing that greatly irks me about PC gaming is that designers very much go for visuals over performance, and performance suffers even on "recommended" specifications.

Of course, many PC games and most console games alike (including our beloved Dark Souls) have absolute jokes for net coding. In "smoothing" lag and then going with client side hit detection with variable delays added extra to help "smooth" the visuals, we get bullcrap like shooting someone with 6 bullets and having only 1 count in CoD or front-stabs in Dark souls. Back in the 1990's, this "advanced" code didn't exist, and there was no such thing as client side detection. Games with high ping were close to unplayable.

But it was still better. Why? Because you could SEARCH for hosts by ping, and with 75ms or less, soundly trounce the experience we get in Dark Souls or any modern CoD title that doesn't use servers. You didn't have another 150ms delay added (randomly) to make it more "fair" to some laggy player who then wins because he pays less for internet service...and you knew going in about how much delay you had. You could compensate for it, unlike now where it gets "smoothed" but is nevertheless variable.

In a game like Dark Souls, picking hosts from a drop down menu wouldn't be as viable, but you probably should still have been able to restrict PvP and Coop based on ping. Some of the 250ms to 500ms+ connections you get (especially on Ps3, which isn't as region restricted), just turn into a trashy waste of time where neither side can do anything meaningful because what is happening differs so vastly from what they see.

TheMeInTeam wrote:
Of course, many PC games and most console games alike (including our beloved Dark Souls) have absolute jokes for net coding.  In "smoothing" lag and then going with client side hit detection with variable delays added extra to help "smooth" the visuals, we get bullcrap like shooting someone with 6 bullets and having only 1 count in CoD or front-stabs in Dark souls.  Back in the 1990's, this "advanced" code didn't exist, and there was no such thing as client side detection.  Games with high ping were close to unplayable.

But it was still better.  Why?  Because you could SEARCH for hosts by ping, and with 75ms or less, soundly trounce the experience we get in Dark Souls or any modern CoD title that doesn't use servers.  You didn't have another 150ms delay added (randomly) to make it more "fair" to some laggy player who then wins because he pays less for internet service...and you knew going in about how much delay you had.  You could compensate for it, unlike now where it gets "smoothed" but is nevertheless variable.

In a game like Dark Souls, picking hosts from a drop down menu wouldn't be as viable, but you probably should still have been able to restrict PvP and Coop based on ping.  Some of the 250ms to 500ms+ connections you get (especially on Ps3, which isn't as region restricted), just turn into a trashy waste of time where neither side can do anything meaningful because what is happening differs so vastly from what they see.

Interesting read. Do you know how low ping can drop to with people at a reasonable distance away from each other (like east to west of America or east America to UK)?

PlasticandRage wrote:

reim0027 wrote:I don't play music or videos on my PS3.  So, doesn't really matter to me either.  About the only "non-console" activity I do is Netflix.  Well, I use the PS3's YouTube and have it paired with my computer.  It allows my to control YT with my computer, but the videos show up on my TV and surround sound.

Is there a benefit to doing it that way, as opposed to just using an HD out to your television? Because that's generally what I do.

I have a nice TV and nice speakers. It allows me to see the videos in a large screen HD TV and surround sound with a 10" subwoofer. Much better than using it on my computer. And, the YT program on the PS3 sucks big time.

The only thing missing for me personally on the PS3 is a visualizer at the standard of Milkdrop for Winamp.  That visualizer has been melting my brain since 2001.

They're adding these features in a firmware update, apparently.

steveswede wrote:The only thing missing for me personally on the PS3 is a visualizer at the standard of Milkdrop for Winamp.  That visualizer has been melting my brain since 2001.

Can't you download stuff like that for the PS3? I know one of my old roommates used to listen to all his music on his PS3, and he had some wacky stuff.

Interesting read.  Do you know how low ping can drop to with people at a reasonable distance away from each other (like east to west of America or east America to UK)?

AFAIK the USEast --> UK connection isn't very good, though I don't recall exact pings.

I have had 75 ms to California from Florida before, though ~100ms is more common on cable internet to a server (aka connecting to DOTA 2 USWest or LoL or something).

Allowing players to restrict max ping they can search would allow for some self-selection based on what one finds tolerable, however.

However, 100ms isn't a lot. 1/10 of a second is faster than most human beings can react, although of course seeing something 100ms sooner is an advantage. However, from what I've seen smoothing attempts can cause much worse effects than that.

Take an example of two people, one with a 75ms ping to host and the other 100ms. Without tampering and with host-side detection, these guys are around 25 ms apart (but would have to "lead" their attacks/shots/whatever just slightly to land them). This is as old school as it gets.

Now, take a CoD type system; both of these guys could see 150+ ms of effective delay (easily more) added to their visual experience, variably throughout a match and without many tells.

The "benefit" of the latter is that it makes the experience more fair for people with inferior connections; those with a bad connection to the host could literally find it impossible to land hits without compensation. With client-side detection and compensation, a hit will eventually register...unless you die before it counts :p. The problem is that it effectively punishes, and sometimes massively, people with good connections, and that few if any games have a good algorithm for smoothing a large number of players in a dynamic environment. Servers do a much better job of this.

However, that's why with a good connection I'd much prefer a simple system that just gives the host an advantage, with joining players choosing how much of one they tolerate. That's even more magnified in shooters, where the host is only 1/10 or 1/12 of the players in the game anyway, but even in dark souls if you hit a 50-100 ms ping (from you) host the connection would be quite good.

PlasticandRage wrote:

steveswede wrote:The only thing missing for me personally on the PS3 is a visualizer at the standard of Milkdrop for Winamp.  That visualizer has been melting my brain since 2001.

Can't you download stuff like that for the PS3? I know one of my old roommates used to listen to all his music on his PS3, and he had some wacky stuff.

The only one I know of is Pixeljunk Visualizer which is a trimmed down version of Pixeljunk 4am.  There's a game called Child of Eden that has fantastic visuals but I have absolutely no idea if just run it just as a visualizer.

@TheMeInTeam

Thanks that was another great read.

TheMeInTeam wrote:However, 100ms isn't a lot.  1/10 of a second is faster than most human beings can react

I decided to look into this and found out that the brain takes about 100ms to command muscles to respond, though this is only half the story as this is different to noticing latency.  I can start to notice audio latency after 12ms (45ms is just unbearable for me when making melodies) so I try to keep things as low as 4 ms.

While looking around I came across this post at this site regarding noticing visual delay and also brings home the point why 60hz and above is so important with games.

Luis Miguel Serrano wrote:Considering the "press key" event and the letter appearing on the screen as two separate frames, means that, if the user presses a key while looking at the screen, he will want to see it exactly afterwards. This "exactly afterwards" means it should have a 60 Hz response time or higher.  For this reason, a 8-16 ms value should indeed be aimed for, since it will result in the same effect one sees in movies. In other words, the user will have no perception of delay for such values.  However, you must keep in mind that the keyboard has a polling time of its own, and that additional delays not necessarily connected with the script itself may interfere in its time. For those reasons aiming for values higher than 60 Hz will give you a bigger safety margin against those other possible influences that may add a minor delay.  Also of notice is the fact that in some applications, a delay of 100 ms might seem unnoticeable, but it is in fact noticeable since it corresponds to 10 Hz, and if you would play a movie at that refresh rate, you would most likely realize the gaps between each of the movie's frames. For this reason, this value should not really be considered in a generic enough context.  The human eye's sensitivity is different for different conditions and portions of an image, so you should be careful and consider higher refresh rates as necessary, to accommodate this. This link has further information about how the screen characteristics and their changes are perceived by the human eye, and may give you an idea of which refresh rates you should aim for in a given context, based on the visual impact of your script

It also makes me wonder if noticeable lag can be eliminated completely if all areas have been perfected because you still have latency converting analog to digital which I've heard can't go any faster than 5ms each time it goes through that conversion.  This means the lowest you can get is 15ms between 2 players and considering the magic number for noticing visual lag is around 8ms to 16ms, does this mean it's impossible to eliminate?  I'm highly speculating here and that number is incredibly low to the point that most people will be able to deal with perfectly fine so it could be a none issue when we get to that point.

It is impossible to eliminate lag. Light/electricity only moves so fast, no matter what your connection speed is. Unless one can circumvent the speed of light delay (theoreticly possible, but not happening any time soon) then there will be lag

Forum Pirate wrote:It is impossible to eliminate lag. Light/electricity only moves so fast, no matter what your connection speed is. Unless one can circumvent the speed of light delay (theoreticly possible, but not happening any time soon) then there will be lag

I'm only on about noticeable lag. If at some point in the future we can make speeds go from you to the other player and then back to you in 4ms anywhere in the world, I would say at that point we've hit the nail in the coffin. I know it's impossible to eliminate lag altogether, we would have to become massless for that to happen.

I was going for more practical values in discussing it; something you can reasonably see today. You can definitely "notice" a streamed difference of 100ms. However, the speed at which most people can see a dot appear on a screen and click on it is is over 200ms (people do get under 200ms, but most can't do it consistently). So while lag might be "noticeable", the important point is to what extent it alters the game experience. When you use smoothing effects, it takes more latency to become "noticeable", but the program also seems to add additional "fake" latency as a sort of buffer to what is visually seen. IMO that causes more problems than a "noticeable" difference of sub-100ms ping, unless the connection is already excellent.

TheMeInTeam wrote:I was going for more practical values in discussing it; something you can reasonably see today.

I know you were, you did a good job explaining what's doable and practical, I was just adding theoretical thoughts into the mix.

TheMeInTeam wrote:I was going for more practical values in discussing it; something you can reasonably see today. You can definitely "notice" a streamed difference of 100ms. However, the speed at which most people can see a dot appear on a screen and click on it is is over 200ms (people do get under 200ms, but most can't do it consistently). So while lag might be "noticeable", the important point is to what extent it alters the game experience. When you use smoothing effects, it takes more latency to become "noticeable", but the program also seems to add additional "fake" latency as a sort of buffer to what is visually seen. IMO that causes more problems than a "noticeable" difference of sub-100ms ping, unless the connection is already excellent.

That also involves very little information processing. For more complex actions, 400 ms isn't particularly slow as a response time iirc. While that difference would be easy to see, it still might not affect complex responses. Obviously thats more lag than I want, but that's not the point. 2/10ths of a second is perfectly acceptable (for me) 99.8% of the time. It doesn't bother me until 3/10ths+, and even then it can be tolerable depending on the game. (which games is fairly arbitrary to be honest. It depends on how much I care)

Yeah, but that small info processing is similar to what one might need to pull the trigger in call of duty or react to a whiff in dark souls. If you're not going to do some wonky client-side detection then you can't afford too much latency.

Well, with a lot of latency that kind of thing leads to frontstabs, though. Lag sucks no matter how you slice it, which is why we really need a ping restriction option.