I don’t understand what you guys think you get from that video.
They are just explaining to the plebes: how your client, the servers and the opponent’s client relate in their shooter game in particular and what they gonna implement in their upcoming patches to solve the fact that they are quite FORCED to use a low tickrate on their servers (mostly consoles faults).
They didn’t invented the wheel. Aka: how to ultimately compensate for the real issue here: latency.
In fact they say: “in order to give you no lag experience we try to merge in the same instance people that have similar ping (and skill)”.
They specifically talks about the fact that with a ping higher than 200 they can only mitigate the effects of lag.
Why? Let’s be plain and simple:
There is no “netcode” or “client/server” solution on earth that can solve situations where 200+ ping is involved. You can let the client do the “maths” or give server less “authority” on acquiring movements and shots made by the 2 clients connected… oc you can. But in the end those “maths” need to be sent from a client to another. And the “lag” between those will always screw up somehow the controls feelings or the shots or/and the “hey I was behind a wall! How that guy can hit me!” situation. ALWAYS.
Indeed they will use higher tickrate (they speak about 60) on custom games (for tournaments or more competitive environments) instead of the ultra low tick they will keep using for normal matches (20). But they also say every time that for those kind of matches you need a “pretty solid connection” (and I will add: a pretty solid pc). Because the higher the tickrate, the most you need a good connection. aka low ping. Otherwise “extrapolations, buffer, interpolation”, whatever technique you use in a game to mitigate latency, will introduce some problems gameplay wise.
In Star conflict the shots acquiring technique is pretty solid (even if It’s a bit too much permissive “shooter client” side), the issue here is about controls when you have more than 150 ping.
That can’t be solved.
Not 'cause you think that star conflict’s developers are incompetent and instead those two guys have discovered the holy grail of multiplayer games.
You won’t fix wobbling by doing this:
…
The suggestion seems to be this: There is a client-side ship that is controlled by the user. The server keeps a simulation of each ship and constantly checks if any exploits have been done (checking health, position, orientation, effects, and whatever else). If the two don’t match up, the server-side simulation takes precedence.
The answer is already there: If the two don’t match up, the server-side simulation takes precedence.
If the “server-side takes precedence”, in case of high latency all that you will get will be the: “teleporting effect” on everything you see moving on your screen.
You want that? You’re serious?
How could that be an improvement instead of wobbling that can be mitigated by having less rotation on your ships? HOW?
You miss the point that somewhere, by “connecting” two guys from different places on earth: latency will hit hard. Doesn’t matter who do the “maths”: clients or servers. Different issues will jump in when you move calculations from one to another. And it’s way easy to recognize that the teleporting effect is WAY more gameplay breaking than the wobbling, that, once again: can be mitigated with proper builds (which are less effective? Oh yeah that can happen easily, but nothing can be done about it) .
Now… let’s talk about what a “solid connection” means.
Speedtest, if you select a server that is <50 mi from your location, will only show your download/upload rate and if you have ping problems between your home and your isp if the ping is above a certain value in such a small range of Km. If you really want to use speedtest to show us how good is your connection, you should select a server which is near the star conflict servers.
But, even then, there are way better tools to understand how “good” is your internet connection. 'Cause speedtest is more a way to check the download/upload rate your line have. Not the lag.
It send only few “ping” command to the selected server and grant that for good. Instead measurement like those should be done for way more time than the instant ping command it gives in return.
Download/upload rate are not related at any level to latency. That depends on the technology you use to connect (the new “so called fiber” have higher ping/latency than the old dsl, even if it have way more down/up rate), how much your home/isp connection is crowded and how good are your “net equipment”.
If you want a better tool for that: google and download winmtr, choose an host or a given ip address to test and let it do his job for a while. It will shows you where the main issues lies. But even then, you will need at least some basic knowledge to get the proper info from data it gives. Most probably the best way to solve 90% of problems is changing your isp for one that gives “gaming friendly” options. Like fasthpath for “old” dsl.
I’ve changed my ISP a couple of times, searching for the best compromise between low lag and decent down/up rate. Without the necessity to sell a kidney in the process. the result?
This is for me US ping
160 stable ping to US starconflict servers (the one in Dallas, for people asking: I live in Italy)
35/45 on EU servers
75/100 on RU servers.
No wobbling at all on US servers, sure the commands and the feeling is “laggy” compared to EU or RU servers but, again: no wobbling at all even on high rotation ceptors.
My down/up rate? Only 10/1, still, for playing: is better this way.
And just to put an end to the biggest mistake you are committing here: If you don’t have latency issues on others multiplayer games is 'cause you are playing on a server which is nearest to your location than Star conflict’s ones. 'Cause the population in those games: is enough big to merge people from same regions. Something we don’t have here where majority of players are russians. So 90% of the time you get game on Ru/Eu regions even if you select your specific preferred region in game option (anyway, after 2 minutes in que, this option will no longer be applyed and you will be leaded to “any region” que)
As I said, the only solution is to get more servers in the US or South Asia regions: this way ping/latency between players from those regions will be way less since there will be less physical distance between them (which apart “not solid internet connection” is the ONLY reason for lag).
But that can’t happen if there is a low population that will not spend enough to justify the expense from the publisher. This is a “free2play” game, market strategy are different from normal “pay once and play” games. You can’t easily invest in regions which already failed to acquire enough population.
About the “anticheat”, do you really believe that is so easy implementing a server side “anti-cheat” code that at the same time don’t impact on overall performance/costs and works 100% of the times? You can’t be that naive.
Gaming company invests tons of money in that and still sometimes you will heard about people caught using any sort of cheat even in “pro gamers” events.
If there is “something” that the servers can’t verify on the fly from the data it gets by the clients: you can be 100% sure that someone is already thinking how to cheat it.
An easy example (not related to the reality): in case rotation speed would be delivered only by clients there would be no way for the server to verify if a given maneuver made by the ship is legit or not. NO WAY AT ALL.
In such environment, If I “tweak” my ship by giving it a faster way to turn backwards by pressing a button: there is no “algorithm” that can verify that ON THE FLY, server side. To fix that you should maintain client side data integrity with a proper software AND allow the server to verify every time if by going from A to B i did it in a proper way… Apart the fact that it’s quite impossible. But it would mean doubling the work and in the end: a complicated way to handle something that can be easily solved by letting do “the maths” on movements directly (or in an hybrid way) by the server.
