- 2,980
- The Ramapo Mountains
- jjaisli
I couldn't find a thread specifically on this subject and felt it deserved it's own. My thoughts on this are rather long and drawn out so please indulge me here or feel free to move along. 
Last weekend, I took part in the Penthatlon Event. For those who haven't heard of it, it was a racing marathon with 5 parts: Suzuka 10 laps 700PP in GT5P, 2 laps of the Nurburgring in NFS:Shift, 7 laps of Spa-Francorchamps in Supercar Challenge, 10 laps of Portimao in V8 Superstars Next Challenge and 15 laps of Interlagos in F1:CE. The event was designed to pit your skills against players across a number of games with different physics and play systems. It was quite a challenge to be competitive in all of them. Especially back to back.
The event was a lot of fun but not without it's problems and it had the unintended benefit of allowing us to pit these games against one another and compare them back to back. I had a video camera rolling during the event and recorded all sessions, save the F1:CE event in which I did not participate. In reviewing the video one common element that all of these games have, in varying degrees, is a serious and compromising issue with lag. I began a discussion in the Penthatalon thread about it, but I feel perhaps it's better served here in regards to how it will, or rather won't, relate to GT5.
Ferrari Challenge and Prologue were the first racing games I played on-line. From my initial experience, I thought Prologue handled lag issues much better. And this was correct, although at the time, I didn't quite understand the reasons why.
Generally speaking Ferrari Challenge handled lag very poorly. Between players with a poor connection, cars would bounce up and down like balls, leaving a trail of car parts in their wake--it was quite comical to watch but very disturbing for the uninitiated. Cars would also blink on and off and suddenly disappear and then reappear as if they were teleporting to various spots on the track. The cars in Prologue always seemed solid, even though they had movements which appeared a bit awkward and abrupt. My initial thought after my first few races was it was just the way GT players drove--like a swarm of bees. In lower tier events, that probably holds true.
Either way, Prologue races always seemed chaotic as a result.
But as I came to realize, with Prologue's player matching system, the game automatically puts players who are best matched by their connections in the same lobby together. And unless you race in International Events, you're segregated into regions where you're more likely to be in a lobby with other players who are located much closer geographically. And that's a key point.
As I've also learned, the over all bandwith and throughput of one's connection matters much less than the ping speed and how fast those packets of data travel back and forth, although they do go hand in hand. So while Prologue initially seemed better, the more likely result was it had more to do with the fact that I was regularly playing Ferrari Challenge with players from Australia, South Africa, South America & Europe. And in Prologue I was playing almost strictly with players from North America.
As I've learned more about what elements are important for a successful online session, I routinely do a ping speed check before playing with various servers in areas where people I'm playing with are located, to gauge current conditions. Sometimes it's better than others and I'm very lucky to have a very good service provider with good bandwidth and excellent DNS throughput and resolution. But it also depends on the person at the other end. And there is no way, somebody in, say, Montreal and somebody in Melbourne will ever be able to have a ping speed of <25~30 ms. This was never more evident in NFS:Shift, where the game actually shows the ping speed below the name tags. (a great feature by-the-way). I can routinely achieve a seek time of 175ms or less to people in Europe. But that number varies. And while game manufacturers are constantly improving on prediction code to circumvent the effects of latency (there was a huge improvement from Ferrari Challenge to Supercar Challenge) it has not been eliminated and never will be. In my opinion, anything above 50ms is just unacceptable for the fast pace and lightning quick reactions of on-line racing. And in reality, that's not going to happen under the current internet framework. Whether you have a dedicated server or not, there are just some bottlenecks, distance being one of them, that we'll never overcome.
A little over a year ago, another GTPlanet forum member was in my area on business and stopped by my house, with his PS3 and G25 in tow. We were able to set up a mini network and had a few races in Ferrari Challenge using the LAN play option. The result was surreal. There was no lag at all. None. Nothing. It was possible to race side by side and the movements of the cars seemed perfectly natural, even under heavy braking. What a difference! There seemed little difference than when you raced AI cars. Now games like V8SS and NFS:Shift and even SCC itself have improved the visual tracking of the cars through more advanced prediction code and I expect GT5 will as well. But, especially under quick transient manoeuvers and under heavy braking, it's very, VERY easy to hit somebody in all of these games and quite unintentionally because where the car appears on screen is not necessarily where it REALLY is. There were several times during the event that close, side by side racing lead to a lot of unexpected contact. And in some cases it resulted in cars leaving the track. But this helps to illustrate my point. While at times there may appear to be little lag, there actually is an element of unpredictability underneath it all. And unless players can exchange packet data between each other in 25ms or less, there always will be.
I fear, no matter how much games improve or whether GT5 meets everybody's expectations, that this will always be a bit of a fly in the ointment when racing online. I now understand why PD may have decided to region lock most of the events.
It's clear that that on-line gaming is where things are going. And the market for LAN play is much smaller than the market for online play and it will continue to decline. Perhaps even disappear all together. I've used the LAN option for racing games a total of 3 times. But I'm very appreciative of the fact that Ferrari Challenge and Supercar Challenge still support it. No other PS3 racing game released in the last year does. And according to the alleged feature list, LAN play was not planned for GT5 either. Even though few people will probably ever take advantage of it, it's exclusion is someting I find rather lamentable. Because from my experience racing on-line and racing over a LAN, it's a very, very different experience. And it probably wouldn't be that hard or that much work to include it.
I would love the thought of being able to get half a dozen people together, set up a mini network and have a GT5 event, completely free of lag. But I'm afraid we're not going to have that option. Has anybody else played a racing game over a LAN environment? Will anybody else miss this feature in GT5?
Last weekend, I took part in the Penthatlon Event. For those who haven't heard of it, it was a racing marathon with 5 parts: Suzuka 10 laps 700PP in GT5P, 2 laps of the Nurburgring in NFS:Shift, 7 laps of Spa-Francorchamps in Supercar Challenge, 10 laps of Portimao in V8 Superstars Next Challenge and 15 laps of Interlagos in F1:CE. The event was designed to pit your skills against players across a number of games with different physics and play systems. It was quite a challenge to be competitive in all of them. Especially back to back.
The event was a lot of fun but not without it's problems and it had the unintended benefit of allowing us to pit these games against one another and compare them back to back. I had a video camera rolling during the event and recorded all sessions, save the F1:CE event in which I did not participate. In reviewing the video one common element that all of these games have, in varying degrees, is a serious and compromising issue with lag. I began a discussion in the Penthatalon thread about it, but I feel perhaps it's better served here in regards to how it will, or rather won't, relate to GT5.
Ferrari Challenge and Prologue were the first racing games I played on-line. From my initial experience, I thought Prologue handled lag issues much better. And this was correct, although at the time, I didn't quite understand the reasons why.
Generally speaking Ferrari Challenge handled lag very poorly. Between players with a poor connection, cars would bounce up and down like balls, leaving a trail of car parts in their wake--it was quite comical to watch but very disturbing for the uninitiated. Cars would also blink on and off and suddenly disappear and then reappear as if they were teleporting to various spots on the track. The cars in Prologue always seemed solid, even though they had movements which appeared a bit awkward and abrupt. My initial thought after my first few races was it was just the way GT players drove--like a swarm of bees. In lower tier events, that probably holds true.
Either way, Prologue races always seemed chaotic as a result.But as I came to realize, with Prologue's player matching system, the game automatically puts players who are best matched by their connections in the same lobby together. And unless you race in International Events, you're segregated into regions where you're more likely to be in a lobby with other players who are located much closer geographically. And that's a key point.
As I've also learned, the over all bandwith and throughput of one's connection matters much less than the ping speed and how fast those packets of data travel back and forth, although they do go hand in hand. So while Prologue initially seemed better, the more likely result was it had more to do with the fact that I was regularly playing Ferrari Challenge with players from Australia, South Africa, South America & Europe. And in Prologue I was playing almost strictly with players from North America.
As I've learned more about what elements are important for a successful online session, I routinely do a ping speed check before playing with various servers in areas where people I'm playing with are located, to gauge current conditions. Sometimes it's better than others and I'm very lucky to have a very good service provider with good bandwidth and excellent DNS throughput and resolution. But it also depends on the person at the other end. And there is no way, somebody in, say, Montreal and somebody in Melbourne will ever be able to have a ping speed of <25~30 ms. This was never more evident in NFS:Shift, where the game actually shows the ping speed below the name tags. (a great feature by-the-way). I can routinely achieve a seek time of 175ms or less to people in Europe. But that number varies. And while game manufacturers are constantly improving on prediction code to circumvent the effects of latency (there was a huge improvement from Ferrari Challenge to Supercar Challenge) it has not been eliminated and never will be. In my opinion, anything above 50ms is just unacceptable for the fast pace and lightning quick reactions of on-line racing. And in reality, that's not going to happen under the current internet framework. Whether you have a dedicated server or not, there are just some bottlenecks, distance being one of them, that we'll never overcome.
A little over a year ago, another GTPlanet forum member was in my area on business and stopped by my house, with his PS3 and G25 in tow. We were able to set up a mini network and had a few races in Ferrari Challenge using the LAN play option. The result was surreal. There was no lag at all. None. Nothing. It was possible to race side by side and the movements of the cars seemed perfectly natural, even under heavy braking. What a difference! There seemed little difference than when you raced AI cars. Now games like V8SS and NFS:Shift and even SCC itself have improved the visual tracking of the cars through more advanced prediction code and I expect GT5 will as well. But, especially under quick transient manoeuvers and under heavy braking, it's very, VERY easy to hit somebody in all of these games and quite unintentionally because where the car appears on screen is not necessarily where it REALLY is. There were several times during the event that close, side by side racing lead to a lot of unexpected contact. And in some cases it resulted in cars leaving the track. But this helps to illustrate my point. While at times there may appear to be little lag, there actually is an element of unpredictability underneath it all. And unless players can exchange packet data between each other in 25ms or less, there always will be.
I fear, no matter how much games improve or whether GT5 meets everybody's expectations, that this will always be a bit of a fly in the ointment when racing online. I now understand why PD may have decided to region lock most of the events.
It's clear that that on-line gaming is where things are going. And the market for LAN play is much smaller than the market for online play and it will continue to decline. Perhaps even disappear all together. I've used the LAN option for racing games a total of 3 times. But I'm very appreciative of the fact that Ferrari Challenge and Supercar Challenge still support it. No other PS3 racing game released in the last year does. And according to the alleged feature list, LAN play was not planned for GT5 either. Even though few people will probably ever take advantage of it, it's exclusion is someting I find rather lamentable. Because from my experience racing on-line and racing over a LAN, it's a very, very different experience. And it probably wouldn't be that hard or that much work to include it.
I would love the thought of being able to get half a dozen people together, set up a mini network and have a GT5 event, completely free of lag. But I'm afraid we're not going to have that option. Has anybody else played a racing game over a LAN environment? Will anybody else miss this feature in GT5?
Who knows, maybe PD will surprise us and actually include this feature. Goodness knows they've had enough time. 
Hmmmm. Can you prove those stats? Don't make me drag the AUP into this now. 
