Ping times Jan 28 onwards

[uxbod]

It does make it fun, especially if you have the lower ping 

[davej99]

You can check your reaction time here.

[Steve]

Reactions poor,I blame the ping times

[Sebby]

[Simon]

Careful, Steve, or Simon will be along to give you a slap! 

[davej99]

I know poor golfers that blame their Pings too.

[Simon_idnet]

I've banned myself from taking *anything* personally ever again!

[dons flame proof suit]

S

[Sebby]

[Simon]

I've banned myself from taking *anything* personally ever again!

[dons flame proof suit]

S

We were going to change your user name to 'Basher'. 

[Rik]

I've banned myself from taking *anything* personally ever again!

[talos]

I've banned myself from taking *anything* personally ever again!

[dons flame proof suit]

[DarkStar]

I'm of the opinion that gamers only blame their pings when they loose. Got to blame something  

Ian

[Glenn]

I blame my total lack of talent for the game

[Rik]

An honest man. 

[Simon_idnet]

My problem is that I care. We all at IDNet care deeply about the service we try to provide and we get upset when we fall short of the mark. We are working hard to prevent the problems tat we've had recently and so, we will get there.
Simon

[Rik]

I wouldn't describe the service as tat, Simon.

[Simon]

I think you should have fired yourself, Simon, then you'd have been out for a Ducky. 

[Rik]

[Simon]

[esh]

I have always wondered why gamers call for such low latency. Here are some rough numbers and I may be wrong.

A ping of say 40ms is equivalent to two video frames at 50Hz.  A blink is 300-400ms

When I used to play division 2 Q3 tournaments I ran my monitor at 120Hz, it is significantly smoother and would say it helped my game. Game frame rates were between 150 and 350 fps. And yes, I can tell the difference between 30 and 60 and 120fps quite easily in action games. I'm not sure if this just comes from playing it a lot or the strange way the doctors tell me my brain interprets images (I have non-binocular vision).

The problem with ping in games is thus; it is that you react slower than you realise. If I have 200ms ping, I have to aim where the opponent will be in 200ms, not where they are now and just have the result delayed slightly. Obviously once you get past 350ms, predicting that far ahead gets nigh on impossible. The *larger* problem is if your ping varies significantly, and then you cannot predict ahead with any consistency. Pings matter little in strategy games, but action games is a real killer.

Packet loss is an even greater issue. Whereas on your screen you see the opponent moving smoothly, as one would expect, most games run on a snapshot methodology. All opponents and items appear in fixed positions (this is huffman compressed delta encoding) and then the game smoothly interpolates between. The crunch is, if you aim at an opponent *between* snapshots, the server will not register a hit. Hence, losing packets means losing snapshots, and you are in big trouble. Q3 tend to run between 20 and 30 snapshots per second. This is not as much as it sounds in high-level clan games.

All I am saying is, even if my ping is 200 but my reactions is also 200, that does not nullify one another (they are additive, not unison). I have to react in 200ms and then compensate a further 200ms. If my opponent is slower reactions with 300ms, but a ping of 20ms, then they are often better by the matter of reflex alone. One player has to think ahead. The other can just panic and mash the button in the direction of the big bad enemy, not that I use this tactic of course

I did once beat someone on my 56k modem with 350ms ping against their 12ms T-1 line. That was satisfying.

[psp83]

I did once beat someone on my 56k modem with 350ms ping against their 12ms T-1 line. That was satisfying.

I played games on 56k for years, Got called a HPB loads of times in the game Tribes, I loved sniping with a high ping and was good at it

But now, i've been used to a 19ms ping in all games for years and last night i played with a 250ms ping and couldn't hit anything

[Rik]

Of course, the 13 cans of Carlsberg didn't help any either.

[davej99]

..... All I am saying is, even if my ping is 200 but my reactions is also 200, that does not nullify one another (they are additive, not unison). I have to react in 200ms and then compensate a further 200ms. ...

Thanks to the gamers for their insight into the effect of long ping times. You have your personal delay and you have the system delay. This is not unlike shooting pheasants; so long to aim; so long for the shot to get to the bird. As Esh points out these add up and skillful gamers, like skillful shooters aim well ahead of the bird. If everyone has the same gun and is the same distance from the bird, or put another way has the same ping, then the game is fair. With different pings it must be hell.

But the question is what ping really makes a difference between skilled gamers. How about a 100ms? On the ruler drop test you would miss it all the time. May be 50ms?

You see I was thinking if you wanted to be the gamers ISP of choice, what kind of ping should you be assuring. If you figure a large bandwith is not generally needed, but low latency is, could there not be a gamers login using thin fast pipes? Having everyone on the same service might not be the best idea.

Who knows the answer? I know I don't. But a special gamers service seems like a good product idea; a magic bullet. Any takers?

[Glenn]

I'm a gamer, but not a FPS type, I race a driving game, rfactor, ping times don't affect as much as the shooters. The main thing that may happen is a car will 'warp', that is instead of the car carrying on in front of you, it jumps about the track as the server has to predict where the car should be. It can result in collisions and even take people out of the race, but that will only happen rarely.

[psp83]

pings have been fine most of the night but as off 5mins ago, they are now high again.

Tracing route to www.idnet.net [212.69.36.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2   132 ms   129 ms   171 ms  telehouse-gw2-lo2.idnet.net [212.69.63.55]
  3   138 ms   150 ms   144 ms  telehouse-gw3-g0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]
  4   148 ms   156 ms   160 ms  redbus-gw2-g0-1-331.idnet.net [212.69.63.5]
  5   114 ms    92 ms    79 ms  redbus-gw1-fa2-0-300.idnet.net [212.69.63.225]
  6   130 ms   136 ms   141 ms  www.idnet.net [212.69.36.10]

Trace complete.