rec.autos.simulators

by **Brian Oste** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 05:17:29

I played N2002 online last night. Sometimes cars would disappear from
the track for several seconds and then re-appear which is what I
expected from the discusions that I have read. But I also encountered
a large number of cars that seemed to kind of just jump around in
front of me when going through the turns or changing lanes on the
straights. I have a DSL connection and good ping times to the server
so I don't think it is my connection. It made it very hard to pass
people when their car is jerking around, even if it is not moving that
far to the left or right it is still annoying. Is this normal?
Anything I can do to fix it?

Brian Oster

by **Rob Adam** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 05:27:07

Yup.

Nope.

No matter how good YOUR connection is, the game can't display the other cars
accurately unless THEIR connection is good too. Otherwise it just estimates
the position of the other car, updating it as it gets more information.
That's what makes the car jump around.

When this happens to me I just hang back and wait for the other car to crash
or make a mistake big enough for me to get by. Then I do EVERYTHING I can to
get away from that car - it's a menace!

I would *love* to play on a LAN sometime. It must be amazing to be able to
get right up behind the other car without fear of a warp crash.

by **David G Fishe** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 06:00:57

I do that all the time with N2002 and I swear I can't remember more than a
few crashes caused by warping cars. Occasionally I see a car bouncing around
but it's actually pretty rare. I also have raced other games on line for the
past five years and to be honest, warp crashes rarely have happened to me.
If they are happening to you often, it may be your connection that is
actually the problem.

David G Fisher

by **David G Fishe** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 06:05:19

I don't see warping or cars bouncing around too often with my cable modem.
If it happened in more than one race or on more than one server then the
problem is probably on your end.

If you hit cntrl-c, a bar graph will display on the bottom left of your
screen and tell you how good your connection is. One is latency, one is
quality, and I'm not sure what the "s" stands for.

David G Fisher

by **John Pancoas** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 06:20:04

David is correct; if the field is doing things, most of the time, it's on
your end, not theirs.

-John

> > I played N2002 online last night. Sometimes cars would disappear from
> > the track for several seconds and then re-appear which is what I
> > expected from the discusions that I have read. But I also encountered
> > a large number of cars that seemed to kind of just jump around in
> > front of me when going through the turns or changing lanes on the
> > straights. I have a DSL connection and good ping times to the server
> > so I don't think it is my connection. It made it very hard to pass
> > people when their car is jerking around, even if it is not moving that
> > far to the left or right it is still annoying. Is this normal?
> > Anything I can do to fix it?

> > Brian Oster

> I don't see warping or cars bouncing around too often with my cable modem.
> If it happened in more than one race or on more than one server then the
> problem is probably on your end.

> If you hit cntrl-c, a bar graph will display on the bottom left of your
> screen and tell you how good your connection is. One is latency, one is
> quality, and I'm not sure what the "s" stands for.

> David G Fisher

by **Brian Oste** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 06:31:41

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002 21:00:57 GMT, "David G Fisher"

>> I would *love* to play on a LAN sometime. It must be amazing to be able to
>> get right up behind the other car without fear of a warp crash.

>I do that all the time with N2002 and I swear I can't remember more than a
>few crashes caused by warping cars. Occasionally I see a car bouncing around
>but it's actually pretty rare. I also have raced other games on line for the
>past five years and to be honest, warp crashes rarely have happened to me.
>If they are happening to you often, it may be your connection that is
>actually the problem.

>David G Fisher

Its not so much that they are bouncing around from lane to lane. They
just kind of vibrate back and forth and their motion is real jerky. I
can usually get by them cleanly but I do have to give them an extra
margin for error and it is very distracting. I am used to the AI
where I pull right up on the bumper, swing around and go by them door
to door and I really don't feal comfortable doing that on-line with
the cars vibrating back and forth. It also seems like a very high
number of them were doing this, not just 1 or 2. My ping times with
dsl have been 85-120 to the server. I don't really have any
performance issues off-line. I also play Half-Life on-line and do not
have any kinds of connection related problems. It might be my
connection, but I never had anyone complain to me, I was not booted
off the server for latency and like I said I play Half-Life without
any problems...

Brian Oster

by **Biz** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 06:45:43

the "s" stands for skew...

One tell-tale sign is if all the cars are disappearing at same time- its you, if there are several
cars in front of you, and one is disappearing, its probably not you at that instant.
Even the best connections will experience a little warp at times(but they may not see it), anyone
tells you they've never warped while playing on-line is lying. The cars moving around jittering is
due to sporadic positional data, so depending on whether they have a bad conn to the server or you
do, the server has to interpolate the positions based on its sporadic data, the jitters is the
corrections being made between interpolated and actual data. Don't get me wrong, the papy games are
the best at internet play, but due to the current nature of the internet, it will never be perfect.
--
Biz

"Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand
alloys and compositions and,......things with molecular structures,....and
the....." - Ash

> > I played N2002 online last night. Sometimes cars would disappear from
> > the track for several seconds and then re-appear which is what I
> > expected from the discusions that I have read. But I also encountered
> > a large number of cars that seemed to kind of just jump around in
> > front of me when going through the turns or changing lanes on the
> > straights. I have a DSL connection and good ping times to the server
> > so I don't think it is my connection. It made it very hard to pass
> > people when their car is jerking around, even if it is not moving that
> > far to the left or right it is still annoying. Is this normal?
> > Anything I can do to fix it?

> > Brian Oster

> I don't see warping or cars bouncing around too often with my cable modem.
> If it happened in more than one race or on more than one server then the
> problem is probably on your end.

> If you hit cntrl-c, a bar graph will display on the bottom left of your
> screen and tell you how good your connection is. One is latency, one is
> quality, and I'm not sure what the "s" stands for.

> David G Fisher

by **David G Fishe** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 09:20:39

> On Thu, 18 Apr 2002 21:00:57 GMT, "David G Fisher"

> Its not so much that they are bouncing around from lane to lane. They
> just kind of vibrate back and forth and their motion is real jerky. I
> can usually get by them cleanly but I do have to give them an extra
> margin for error and it is very distracting. I am used to the AI
> where I pull right up on the bumper, swing around and go by them door
> to door and I really don't feal comfortable doing that on-line with
> the cars vibrating back and forth. It also seems like a very high
> number of them were doing this, not just 1 or 2.

If it was just one or two then I'd understand, but if it's a high number in
most of your races then that's definitely not what I experience.

David G Fisher

by **Tim** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 06:54:28

Join only races that limit the latency and avoid races that people create
using cable or dsl (as compared to more bandwidth)

--
Tim White
INTRAC Motorsports
www.birds-i-view.com/intrac

by **Tim** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 07:00:01

Half-Life, Quake like games online are a completely different animal
A half second latency, or warp, will still give you the realistic feel of
being shot, blownup, whatever

Racing, or flying simulators require a much lower latancy because a half
second is a lifetime when your running 200mph door to door

Pinging 85-120 on Nascar servers is just fine

--
Tim White
INTRAC Motorsports
www.birds-i-view.com/intrac

by **Big Mac** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 08:59:31

The Tell Tell sign that it is someone else that is warping is if you
have a line of cars in front of you and only one or two of them are
jumping around, you can figure it's their connection. If all the cars
were doing the jig then its your connection

Macc
High Flyin Racin Team

http://www.racesimcentral.net/
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by **Brian Oste** » Sat, 20 Apr 2002 22:32:16

Well I played again last night and some races were much better (or
else I am getting used to the *jittering*). I am pretty sure it was
the other connections though, since I never saw the whole field
disapear or have the problems. The other night if I had 5 cars in
front of me 2 or 3 would be jittering. I have been playing off-line
since N4/N2002 first came out so I guess I am just used to the cars
driving in a fluid motion and the jittering was distracting.

Oh I keep the ctrl-c meter up all the time and my ping bar only once
or twice went orange, I did not have anything in my quality bar (is
this good or bad?) and the "s" bar would sometimes appear in the top
half (what ever that means).

Brian Oster

by **Admi** » Sun, 21 Apr 2002 00:26:15

S is for Skew, indicates the severity and direction of packet loss which is
why it is in the middle (and no green line) when good. Above or below the
line indicates the direction of packet loss (upstream or downstream).

by **Randy Cassid** » Sun, 21 Apr 2002 06:43:14

> ... I did not have anything in my quality bar (is
> this good or bad?) and the "s" bar would sometimes appear in the top
> half (what ever that means).

The smaller the bar in each of the three graphs, the better. An empty
frame, as you describe for your quality bar, rocks.

Under normal circumstances the S bar won't be any more than a few pixels
big, and it ends up being a good indicator of how variable the latency is
between you and the server. If you find that the S bar grows and grows
until all the other cars disappear, and the bar continues to grow until it
fills its frame, and then your screen flashes, and then the bar resets and
you see the cars again, then that's, well, bad. This is generally an
indication that
(a) your net connection is quite bad (you have DSL, so that's not likely),
or
(b) your computer is too slow to run the game effectively (if your frame
rate is in the ***s or less, that could well be the problem), or
(c) the server computer is too slow to run the game effectively (not likely,
but ya just never know), or
(d) the server's net connection is overloaded. If it's on a cable modem and
has more than about 12 or 13 people connected to it, that's probably the
problem.

The communication meters are described in reasonably***detail in the
readme.txt.

Randy

by **Willard VanderPloe** » Mon, 22 Apr 2002 21:31:58

Hi Brian;

FWIW, I have seen what you describe exactly.

A group of friends and I managed to get some time on a UK server to run
some N4 on Friday nights about a year ago. Pings and quality of connection
were good, but the cars were wiggling like you describe. We tried a few
races on it - but couldn't run close.

We found another server - similar pings and quality - and ran with no
problems.

I'd be interested in what's going on as well.

Regards,

Willard VanderPloeg
Ontario Canada

>>the "s" stands for skew...

>>One tell-tale sign is if all the cars are disappearing at same time-
>>its you, if there are several cars in front of you, and one is
>>disappearing, its probably not you at that instant. Even the best
>>connections will experience a little warp at times(but they may not
>>see it), anyone tells you they've never warped while playing on-line
>>is lying. The cars moving around jittering is due to sporadic
>>positional data, so depending on whether they have a bad conn to the
>>server or you do, the server has to interpolate the positions based on
>>its sporadic data, the jitters is the corrections being made between
>>interpolated and actual data. Don't get me wrong, the papy games are
>>the best at internet play, but due to the current nature of the
>>internet, it will never be perfect.

> Well I played again last night and some races were much better (or
> else I am getting used to the *jittering*). I am pretty sure it was
> the other connections though, since I never saw the whole field
> disapear or have the problems. The other night if I had 5 cars in
> front of me 2 or 3 would be jittering. I have been playing off-line
> since N4/N2002 first came out so I guess I am just used to the cars
> driving in a fluid motion and the jittering was distracting.

> Oh I keep the ctrl-c meter up all the time and my ping bar only once
> or twice went orange, I did not have anything in my quality bar (is
> this good or bad?) and the "s" bar would sometimes appear in the top
> half (what ever that means).

> Brian Oster

rec.autos.simulators

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question

N2002: Playing online and warping question