About server meshing...

[Nightlane]

Stop meshing around!

Spectrum - v7.7.2

RSI’s Spectrum is our integrated community and player interaction service, including chat, forums, game integration, and Player Organization facilities. Player Organizations (“Org”...

robertsspaceindustries.com

 

[Vavrik]

Good info and answers by CIG there.

Problem is the best user accessible explanation for the new model of server meshing is a video by the developers of another game that's still also in development. Video was done about 3 years ago by someone who had spent 7 years inventing the process. Now anyone who says "Oh hey look at this!" can come off sounding like a hasbeen.

But this is the thing, you don't need to know what 10,000 users are doing. What you need to know for game play is what is happening to your ship, and your target. For realism, maybe you want updates for your nearest neighbours, say no more than 100 meters. Any further, and you would not be concerned about every shot they fired, just if your target is reacting.

 

[Printimus]

Nice

 

[sovapid]

But this is the thing, you don't need to know what 10,000 users are doing. What you need to know for game play is what is happening to your ship, and your target. For realism, maybe you want updates for your nearest neighbours, say no more than 100 meters. Any further, and you would not be concerned about every shot they fired, just if your target is reacting.

When your near and far neighbors are moving at 1000 meters per second, those inside 100 meters and those outside 100 meters can change pretty quick.

Will be interesting to see how it ends up working.

 

[Bambooza]

Typically you use LOD filtering to scale the network traffic sent from the server to the clients. It will be interesting to see how this aspect of the game engine code comes along.

 

[Vavrik]

Typically you use LOD filtering to scale the network traffic sent from the server to the clients. It will be interesting to see how this aspect of the game engine code comes along.

LOD is a difficult topic to take much further. Check out this crap down here if you're interested.

Spoiler: Warning: Contains Crap Vav Thinks About

There is a uh, user friendly description on Wikipedia. See their description of Level of Detail, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail It has a pretty good explanation of the use of LOD in video games, and a mention of a visual artifact that we sometimes still see in a lot of games like SC. eg, you're approaching an area where a rock is located, and suddenly the rock either changes geometry, or "pops" into existence. That's the result of the Level of Detail algorithm, but it is also something that using the GPU should help with.

All the game needs to know to model a ship is, what ship model, including texture map, I only need that info once, then I can leave that alone unless the ship crashes, blows up, or moves out of view. SC keeps a cache in the files it loads into your system for that. Then, every so often (According to the LOD implementation) the game needs to update the object location relative to my view, it's change in orientation, and what is it's current velocity. that's 18 bytes per frame, and I don't need to know that every frame. Just whenever the LOD says so, or every so often to check that the prediction for frames my PC doesn't want (due to LOD again) hasn't gotten behind or ahead.

You can lower the Level of Detail, or raise it, based on how much bandwidth you want the game to use, up to the limit of your connection. Make it too slow, and you'll start seeing more correction cycles at some point. That's also known as "rubber banding", because it looks like the object springs forward, or snaps back to where it was a few seconds ago. If you want to improve that, get a better internet connection. It's not the software.

 

[Bambooza]

Not a bad write up.

 

[Nightlane]

Interesting, yeah. The point about not seeing everything is nice, and there is as well that onboard avionics have their limits as well.

 

[Nightlane]

LOD is a difficult topic to take much further. Check out this crap down here if you're interested.

Spoiler: Warning: Contains Crap Vav Thinks About

There is a uh, user friendly description on Wikipedia. See their description of Level of Detail, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail It has a pretty good explanation of the use of LOD in video games, and a mention of a visual artifact that we sometimes still see in a lot of games like SC. eg, you're approaching an area where a rock is located, and suddenly the rock either changes geometry, or "pops" into existence. That's the result of the Level of Detail algorithm, but it is also something that using the GPU should help with.

All the game needs to know to model a ship is, what ship model, including texture map, I only need that info once, then I can leave that alone unless the ship crashes, blows up, or moves out of view. SC keeps a cache in the files it loads into your system for that. Then, every so often (According to the LOD implementation) the game needs to update the object location relative to my view, it's change in orientation, and what is it's current velocity. that's 18 bytes per frame, and I don't need to know that every frame. Just whenever the LOD says so, or every so often to check that the prediction for frames my PC doesn't want (due to LOD again) hasn't gotten behind or ahead.

You can lower the Level of Detail, or raise it, based on how much bandwidth you want the game to use, up to the limit of your connection. Make it too slow, and you'll start seeing more correction cycles at some point. That's also known as "rubber banding", because it looks like the object springs forward, or snaps back to where it was a few seconds ago. If you want to improve that, get a better internet connection. It's not the software.

You have reminded me again that I am going to publish an algorithm system I hope would help with all this. In some days I hope. (Years developing the ideas, several months since I started writing, painting... etc)

 

[Vavrik]

Not a bad write up.

Thanks @Bambooza, I'm trying. I have no idea how to describe it and not come off like a complete geek... As if I ever said anything a technoweenie would say. Cough. Cough. Excuse me, I'm choking on something.