bagsta69 Posted December 10, 2015 Share Posted December 10, 2015 OK guys n gals, I am old and am having a difficult time understanding this whole lag compensation thing. At the risk of bringing a world of shit on my own head I will attempt to explain it as I see it and can I please be corrected in a polite manner. Not to be to technical lag compensation works with the latency (ping) of each player connected to the host. It does this to try and balance out the discrepancies between the different pings from all the players in the lobby. As far as I am aware (and this is where I get a shower of shit thrown at me) it has nothing to do with your bandwidth. As long as you have enough to play an online game (1 down and around 300k up) bandwidth (your up and down speeds) makes no difference to the lag compensation protocols. Now if the people who have just launched all the shit would just pass me a Kleenex I would like to add that there are soooooooo many people that claim it does help them by lowering their bandwidth that there may be something in it.Personally over several years of quite extensive gaming sessions I have seen fuck all difference but I have realised that if somebody in the lobby has high ping the game can go to shit in a bread basket.Some games play fine then somebody rage quits and a high ping player joins the lobby and the game play turns awful, they leave and it gets better again. So I guess after all the shit I am asking if lag compensation works off latency how does lowering your bandwidth help?And yes this is a serious question not posted to inflame or enrage anybody. I would like an honest informed view of how lowering your bandwidth helps combat lag compensation or is there something more complicated at work here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex49H Posted December 10, 2015 Share Posted December 10, 2015 The Rev has spoken! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zennon Posted December 10, 2015 Share Posted December 10, 2015 The rest of your bandwidth is idle only the gaming packets are sent and received,so very little bandwidth is used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bagsta69 Posted December 10, 2015 Author Share Posted December 10, 2015 LOL, it's not about my views it really is a genuine question. There has to be some techy type out there who can explain it or at least explain in a polite manner why I am wrong Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A7Legit Posted December 10, 2015 Share Posted December 10, 2015 In simple terms, every COD after MW2 implemented a lag compensation Netcode, the intent originally was that because a majority of gamers do not have the greatest Internet for MP gaming, they might as well cater for them. Make no mistake, ping and jitter will always matter but if your ISP provided down and up speed fall between particular ranges, the game will either favor you or make your life difficult. I know since AW (inc BO3), they have yet again changed their ranges and their checks of your speeds. The reality is and has always been that the Duma can control BO3, much like it has with AW, MW3 and BO2. I can post you 60 games in BO2 where I go stupid ham (TDM) with the R1, 60 games straight! I've had people tell me how wrong I am and how this doesn't comply with how developers implement Netcode, however in my own defense, take a look at the BS deaths and how people suffer from wanted pro (shot around corners) or 5 hit markers and still die... This franchise does not follow 'text book' Netcode protocol(s). Play around, keep an eye on your Duma pings and P2P isn't always a bad thing. You wanted a different view, I gave you one Peace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JConnor Posted December 10, 2015 Share Posted December 10, 2015 My theory on why Activision's lag compensation algorithm MAY benefit high ping players is two fold: 1) A lot of those so-called "high ping" players may not in fact be the farthest away from the server compared to everybody else. They more than likely have low quality connections (Wi-Fi; DSL) with tons of jitter (packet loss) the game interprets as low bandwidth (in terms of quality, not distance)? So, the algorithm might add latency to the lower ping players who are the same distance away as the ones with low quality connections to even out the data interpolation for everybody in the game? Now, why would they choose to add latency instead of subtract it? Physics. There is no way to give somebody with a poor quality connection more packets... What jitter is; the loss of packets. You can't add something (more intact packets) to a poor quality connection that doesn't exist, but you can "degrade" a good quality connection just enough so it helps the game interpret the data being sent by both types of players in order to more accurately match up their actions on the sever. Remember, a server has to receive the data, process it and then send it back to all of the clients in "real time" (ms), but there will always be an inherent latency (lag) due to physical distances and physical constraints such as ISP routing, node quality, traffic, congestion, buffer bloat, jitter, etc. 1B) The players who are actually playing large distances from the server e.g. across an ocean, or from another continent not only have the benefit of the lag compensation, but also possibly jitter as well. I have come to this conclusion because time and time again there will be players with foreign names and clan tags with yellow ping bars, BUT they will also be warping around the screen as well. The warping is a clear sign of jitter somewhere along the connection. There is nothing we can do about these idiots because it's up to Activision to enforce regional restrictions (which they don't). There is no reason somebody from Mexico playing on a Mid-West server (closer to Canada) should dominate the match, but this is often what ends up happening. 2) The second reason why they would add latency has more to do with economics than physics: Activision doesn't want to alienate anybody who is a potential customer even if that person should not be playing online with others due to low quality connections in the first place. It's all about making money and not providing the best possible online gaming experience because that is not what Activision's main business is. It's a publisher, and their main job is to sell games. What happens AFTER you buy the game... Like playing online... Is "totally out of their control", or so they will claim. It may be true for the most part, but they could improve it immensely by doing some of the things the community has been asking for years e.g. use a more modern engine for CoD; Upgrade server centers and hardware as well as raise server tick to 60, etc. The main technical point I want you to take away from this is Activision and the CoD devs are doing their best to even the playing field as far as the game itself goes on the server end. The problem is how they are doing it because it obviously favors those with bad quality connections, or those who may be physically far away from the server. Normal netcode functions the exact opposite as another poster stated. If you are closer to a server and have a high quality connection, you should dominate, more or less. This does not happen in CoD, and I believe it is because of what I theorized above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevo Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 from what i understand about lag comp it takes everybody ping in the lobby and rounds all the pings off so everybody would have about the same ping in game. after black ops the lag comp changed because players with bad connections always got smacked in lobby. players like that get disappointed and leave the franchise so with the new lag comp system it gives a player who doesnt have the best connection or the greatest reaction a chance to win a gunfight even tho he shouldnt of won it at all im going to make a video on this soon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bagsta69 Posted December 11, 2015 Author Share Posted December 11, 2015 So in effect we should be placing our geo filters in other countries to get high ping lobbies instead of trying to get the lowest ping lobbies with the best quality connection we can manage? It's all very counter intuitive to me and having tried this on numerous occasions I have found it to make very little if any difference. Maybe it's my own personal connection but I fail to see why we have all bought an R1 to minimise our ping to hosts when we in effect when playing call of duty want to do the exact opposite it would seem. I'm sure my aging brain is missing the point here so I do apologise it just makes no sense to me. With an ever improving Internet infastructure worldwide you would think that the Devs would have adjusted the coding accordingly. I have for the most part made my connection as best as it could be and this really improved my experience on Advanced Warfare with the R1. I have not been back to ghosts yet to try that but that game played awful for me. Blops 2 was really bad at launch but I went back to it for a few games with Dillinger just before blops 3 launched (with my R1) and we spanked every lobby we played. I guess I'm rambling now so I'll leave it for now but for now I guess I'll keep up the best quality and most bandwidth I can giving in a little to allow for buffer bloat. Cheers all though it has certainly given me food for thought Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JConnor Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 from what i understand about lag comp it takes everybody ping in the lobby and rounds all the pings off so everybody would have about the same ping in game. after black ops the lag comp changed because players with bad connections always got smacked in lobby. players like that get disappointed and leave the franchise so with the new lag comp system it gives a player who doesnt have the best connection or the greatest reaction a chance to win a gunfight even tho he shouldnt of won it at all im going to make a video on this soon As I stated on another thread, lag compensation itself... When done properly... Is the only way we can play games in "real time" currently. Period. If games did not use any form of lag comp, we would have to lead, or follow our targets in the hopes of getting a kill versus being able to aim directly at our targets like we do, now. So, it's a necessity, but it's just not being done correctly by Activision devs, IMO. The core reason it's not being done properly (I believe) is because of the old Quake III engine CoD is still using that was designed for dial-up connections. In those days, everybody had "bad connections", 56kbps, so adding latency wasn't as big a deal since having high speed broadband internet wasn't the norm like it is, now. Also, the original Quake and other games weren't nearly as complex as they are today, either. So, a lot less info. had to be sent per packet as well. Jump forward almost 17 years later and internet speeds have increased 100 fold, but the netcode has not, perhaps? This also correlates with everybody having fond memories of how well MW, MW2 and WAW played on the consoles. There were (still) not as many people with fast internet speeds just eight years ago compared to today. Less people = less congestion and less latency as ISP routing wasn't getting saturated at peak hours as well. Then, of course, there is the noted firing (or maybe he quit?) of CoD (Infinity Wards) main netcode programmer prior to the release of MW3. So, this also may be a key factor in how and why the netcode hasn't been adjusted to modern day demands of both the games and gamers? So in effect we should be placing our geo filters in other countries to get high ping lobbies instead of trying to get the lowest ping lobbies with the best quality connection we can manage? It's all very counter intuitive to me and having tried this on numerous occasions I have found it to make very little if any difference. Maybe it's my own personal connection but I fail to see why we have all bought an R1 to minimise our ping to hosts when we in effect when playing call of duty want to do the exact opposite it would seem. I'm sure my aging brain is missing the point here so I do apologise it just makes no sense to me. With an ever improving Internet infastructure worldwide you would think that the Devs would have adjusted the coding accordingly. I have for the most part made my connection as best as it could be and this really improved my experience on Advanced Warfare with the R1. I have not been back to ghosts yet to try that but that game played awful for me. Blops 2 was really bad at launch but I went back to it for a few games with Dillinger just before blops 3 launched (with my R1) and we spanked every lobby we played. I guess I'm rambling now so I'll leave it for now but for now I guess I'll keep up the best quality and most bandwidth I can giving in a little to allow for buffer bloat. Cheers all though it has certainly given me food for thought The ironic thing about the netcode for recent CoDs is if you bi-pass the MM and host, or participate in a private match with friends around the globe, the experience is close to playing on a LAN. I can vouch for this when I hosted a friend from Russia, and he said there was minimal lag. He said it was 60ms... Which is amazing considering he is playing across the Atlantic Ocean, not to mention all of Western Europe, too. These good results have been verified by others who also have friends spread around the globe and when they play together they are amazed at the LACK of latency you would expect given the great distances. So, it might be a combination of netcode + server hardware that may be messing everybody up, too? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ltr7 Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 I personally think it has more to do with the game server end and how it's connected to all of the different isp companies. For example a LOT of people had horrible connection issues with AW including myself, once the R1 came into play I played mostly p2p and the game felt like LAN connection almost every game so that tells me the engine is running just fine but the fuel filter-game servers are plugged up with ten years worth of sh!t and someone should DO SOMETHING about it! But what do I know I've only been beating on controllers since the first Atari... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bagsta69 Posted December 11, 2015 Author Share Posted December 11, 2015 et and swamp thing,m the first star wars attack against the walkers man dont get me started. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex49H Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Well I can atest to play in a lobby in Saudi Arabia once and even though it had a 200ms ping it played well and made people rage quit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A7Legit Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 I'm sure my aging brain is missing the point here so I do apologise it just makes no sense to me. Remember how I said ping and jitter matter, that's because it does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrators Netduma Fraser Posted December 11, 2015 Administrators Share Posted December 11, 2015 We'll be creating some lag comp videos very soon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toby jugs Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 the way i understand it you have to have lag comp for the game to function properly it does it's best to match the 'actual' hitbox to the position of where you see the enemy on your screen, so in theory there should be no advantage to anyone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JConnor Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 the way i understand it you have to have lag comp for the game to function properly it does it's best to match the 'actual' hitbox to the position of where you see the enemy on your screen, so in theory there should be no advantage to anyone This is true, for the most part. Problems arise mostly because of the fact there are 12 players in a typical MP match all doing different things at once. So, the game has to receive, process and update this data as fast as it can... Except even the speed of light has its limits. This is why I always say, until we master Quantum Physics (faster than speed of light), there is no way we are going to play games across great distances in real time. Everything is going to be delayed and while we may not perceive game play as "already happened" since it is at the speed of light, that's essentially what we and programmers have to deal with. We are not playing games in true 1:1 real time unless we are on a LAN and even that has a minor latency (delay) as well. It's not as large as on LAN, of course, but it's still there because of the whole speed of light limitation. So, this is where lag compensation comes in to help even out the interpolation of data the game is having to constantly process and update for all players in the game. The latency is compounded while playing over the internet for the numerous reasons we've discussed on this thread and around the Netduma forums. Ping (distance to the server and back) and Jitter (loss of packets) are major components that can effect the quality of a game for the client and the server. This is why I said, when there are three, yellow-bar players in a lobby it can screw everybody else up who has solid four-bar pings. This isn't just because of distance (ping), but mostly because of jitter and the server has to either make a best guess interpolation e.g. who shot who first?, or it has to allocate more computing cycles (ms) to try and get a more accurate picture of what the player with packet loss is doing to make it "fair" to everybody else in the game. Buffer Bloat really isn't that big a problem and it's mostly a client side issue, too, depending on line quality and hardware. Jitter, however, is the one thing that can make or break the gaming experience for everybody online because if a player isn't sending intact packets to the server, the server has to do one of the two things mentioned above and this is where a lot of the WTF? moments and "I saw him first, shot him first, but died" moments come from in my experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzy clam Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Host side,client side,ping,jitter,latency,and the game predicts where it thinks you will be when things are out of sync.That's why sometimes you can shoot ahead of a person and get a kill when you shouldn't.What your seeing on the game isn't really what is happening,it's already happened to keep everything in sync as possible with all the variables in online gaming. IMO it's like chasing the mythical unicorn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckeye Purple Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Well i gotta ask, in future can netduma founders create an algorithm that counters the harshness of the lag compensation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A7Legit Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Well i gotta ask, in future can netduma founders create an algorithm that counters the harshness of the lag compensation. Considering the devs can't control it fully themselves, that's one tough ask. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckeye Purple Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Considering the devs can't control it fully themselves, that's one tough ask. Ok, thanks for the response. The reason i ask was mainly because i think we are going to be stuck with this antiquated engine for some considerable time yet, and from previous responses i gather this is the issue. Hence, a need just now to alleviate lag comp issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zennon Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 Yep there is defiantly a sweet spot and anything above it or below it suffers with degrees of intensity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JConnor Posted December 11, 2015 Share Posted December 11, 2015 The only way to avoid lag compensation... The way we are defining it as being negative impact on gaming the way its coded in CoD... Is to play on a closed LAN. Period. This is why all championship MP games, no matter the platform, are played on LANs. Not only does this negate cheating (hacks) since officials can physically see and examine players equipment, settings, but it's mainly because there is little to no (5-10ms max) latency on a LAN versus the wide open internet. FYI, the reason why Ghosts seemed to have good netcode was because the TTK was shorter. That's all. If the TTK was the same as BO3, you would have heard a lot more complaints than you already had with Ghosts. In fact, many smaller YT personalities were criticizing and illustrating how bad the netcode (still) was. It was just because the game itself received a lot of bad press from players and the community overlooked it was the same old stuff, but different year, ironically. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A7Legit Posted December 12, 2015 Share Posted December 12, 2015 Ok, thanks for the response. The reason i ask was mainly because i think we are going to be stuck with this antiquated engine for some considerable time yet, and from previous responses i gather this is the issue. Hence, a need just now to alleviate lag comp issues. I'm testing with the 1.03.5m fw and getting good results, connections vary but the Duma is capable of making this game favor you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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