BETA PATCH v1.06.17582 - May 05, 2012

[adonys]

Originally Posted by Lurker_71

That is exactly what my experience is with CoD online. Everthing's smooth as silk (FPS ~40-50) until a few human players come into vicinity, then FPS drops badly (Single digits). Strange enough, this is not the case offline. I have tested with more than a hundred AI ac in the air, and there was barely a slowdown.

Perhaps this is due to AI's being subject to extremely simplified physics (if any) and FM/DM compared to human players, which means a whole lot more data must be transmitted back and forth (bandwith) and processed client-side (CPU) when flying online against human players.

Each player's FM routines are computed on his own computer, and only the flight path data is transmitted to the server, which then broadcasts it to the other connected players.

What you experience is most probably because of the flight path interpolation routines, combined with the networking ones. I haven't tested the alpha/beta/gamma patch yet, but if this is the case, it is very bad. it means the renderer is waiting for the all the networking info of a game tick to arrive first, and only then renders the current frame, and that there are no flight interpolation/prediction routines to provide the renderer with predicted positions of player objects, in order to allow the rendering of an "approximate" frame without having to wait for the other nearby player's network updates.

To check if this is really the case, the FPS must vary with your network latency, and also with other nearby-player's network latency too (the worst one of the rendered players would establish the pace).

Also, it can be caused by nearby player-only rendered effects (for example, the engine exhausts, as it was the case in the months after the release).

To check if this is the case, drop down your effects settings in the game, and watch the online with nearby-players FPS.

[Lurker_71]

Originally Posted by adonys

Each player's FM routines are computed on his own computer, and only the flight path data is transmitted to the server, which then broadcasts it to the other connected players.

What you experience is most probably because of the flight path interpolation routines, combined with the networking ones. I haven't tested the alpha/beta/gamma patch yet, but if this is the case, it is very bad. it means the renderer is waiting for the all the networking info of a game tick to arrive first, and only then renders the current frame, and that there are no flight interpolation/prediction routines to provide the renderer with predicted positions of player objects, in order to allot the render an "approximate" frame without having to wait for the other nearby player's network updates.

To check if this is really the case, the FPS must vary with your network latency, and also with other nearby-player's network latency too (the worst one of the rendered players would establish the pace).

Also, it can be caused by nearby player-only rendered effects (for example, the engine exhausts, as it was the case in the months after the release).

To check if this is the case, drop down your effects settings in the game, and watch the online with nearby-players FPS.

Thank you for the input and clarifications.

One question: How are AI controlled ac handled online? Does the server transmit their flight paths to clients, just like human players, or are all AI computations handled client-side? I'm asking this because I do not have the slow-down issue with AI aircraft online, say like when attacking AI bomber formations. I have the slow-down issue only with human players, which leads me to think player-only effects may be the true culprit. I'll test and see.

Regards

[adonys]

Originally Posted by Lurker_71

One question: How are AI controlled ac handled online? Does the server transmit their flight paths to clients, just like human players, or are all AI computations handled client-side? I'm asking this because I do not have the slow-down issue with AI aircraft online, say like when attacking AI bomber formations. I have the slow-down issue only with human players, which leads me to think player-only effects may be the true culprit. I'll test and see.

I don't know, it depends on the architecture they've decided to use. But it's either the server doing all the computations for the AI, and then broadcasting AI flights path data to the connected machines, either a distributed computing, in which each connected machine is receives a few AI's to take care of, does the computations for them, then sends their flight path data to the server, which in turn boardcasts them again for all the machines to receive.

Most probably, they haven't bothered with a distributed computing approach, as iti is more complicated, and not really necessary (unless you want a server to can handle hundreds or even thousands of AIs).