Player limit on console mulitplayer - why is it 16?

[fernandito]

If you are talking about Pcars 2 than yes but if you are talking gaming in general than NO. Some games(not many) run dedicated servers, I believe Gran Turismo always ran dedicated servers perks of being owned by Sony

Only for Sport mode. Even then, well.., PSNetwork infrastructure lol. In other words lower than mediocre, even to this day after beginning charging for the service five years ago.

The smoothness you're observing on sport mode and on even crap p2p lobbies is because of the client-side prediction code. It was mandatory that this game opted for that technique given its full focus on the online. Otherwise this game would have been scam, and more when it comes to this series that always take a damn while to release a tittle. The could not take any risk on the "netcode" performance, so they inevitably chose csp tech.

 

[micmansour]

Forgive me I don't have all the terminology on the top of my mind, but I believe the reason it is 16 players as opposed to 15 or 17 is due to computer hardware being of base 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. You see this repeatedly in computers, for example Ram sizes and processor/mobo bit sizes. So it is 16 in particular because it maximizes hardware resources.

Star Wars Battlefront on PS4, has multiplayer up to 40 players (including 20 player games and 12 player games)

 

[The_American]

The number can be any integer, doesn have to be even. Like the other games mentioned project cars uses prediction netcode. WMD even helped to fine tune the prediction netcode with help of WMD community but that was only on the pc side. P2P "meshes" or racing groups tend to become difficult to maintain above 16 players, at least in this game on xbox and ps networks

 

[fernandito]

Star Wars Battlefront on PS4, has multiplayer up to 40 players (including 20 player games and 12 player games)

Battlefront2 doesn't have to deal with tyre physics; weather synch for everybody, etc. In other words battlefront2 doesn't have to deal with a very complicated physics engine to be synchronized among clients.

 

[Harry Freq]

The number can be any integer, doesn have to be even. Like the other games mentioned project cars uses prediction netcode. WMD even helped to fine tune the prediction netcode with help of WMD community but that was only on the pc side. P2P "meshes" or racing groups tend to become difficult to maintain above 16 players, at least in this game on xbox and ps networks

Why do yous choose dedicated servers on PC and P2P for consoles?

 

[Daz555]

PC has dedicated servers but you can also host your own games I believe - up to 32 players?

Looks like we are no closer to understanding this bizarre obsession with 16/32/64 player counts......hmm...

 

[Mr Tree]

PC has dedicated servers but you can also host your own games I believe - up to 32 players?

Looks like we are no closer to understanding this bizarre obsession with 16/32/64 player counts......hmm...

It's not bizarre tbh, and I think the answer is hidden in this thread.
It needs to be an integer (because duh )
When we mortal souls need to set arbitrary numbers we like to use numberd ending on a 5 or a 0. This is a logical mindset that follows out of our habit of calculating in a decimal number system.

As programmers deal with the binary system a lot it only makes sense to stay within something that at least is easy to calculate with beeing the numbers 1-2-4-8-16-32-64-...

I think they choose those numbers often as they are 'rounded' numbers in the binary system and rounded numbers work easy.

Can anyone back this up or expose me if I'm wrong?

 

[Daz555]

I guess what this comes down to is that on PS4 we have a 16 player limit and PC has 32. The two numbers are so so far apart. Would the PS4 experience burst into flames if were allowed to have say 18 drivers?

I'm asking because for those who run leagues, and have to leave guys out every night when they don't qualify, every slot we could squeeze out of this game would be appreciated!

 

[Daz555]

@IanBell - I'd be interested to read about what would "go wrong" on PS4 if we had say an 18 or 20 player limit for online games?