When hosting a MP server...
- Thread starter Slammr
- Start date
opjose
Well-known member
Heh, a loaded question.
All come into play.
The ability of your machine to send out and answer packets is affected by CPU, RAM, GFX card, drivers, bus mastering, HDD latency, PCI-E latency, etc.
Assuming you have a computer that is more than capable of keeping up with everything the next biggest problem is bandwidth and latency sending and receiving packets from the remote machines.
Since there is a constant stream of communications going on between all of the connected machines in MP, one errant or high latency machine can cause problems for everyone connected via a speedy pipeline.
Sometimes you'll notice that if a particular user disconnects, everything seems to speed up as a result.
Also the airports, planes, smoke used, all determine how much data is sent back and forth between the systems.
e.g. if you turn on smoke all of the remote machines have to turn on particle emitters at the point your virtual plane is. While the smoke generation is done locally ( yes each computer actually sees something different ) the parameters that affect it, such as location, etc. have to be broadcast.
And it goes on and on.
For a real test run a MP session locally on several computers.
Then take those computers to different locations and try the same over the Internet.
Most of the changes to the speed of MP you see will be the result of inter-machine communication latencies.
Remember that ALL of the computers are sending packets to ALL of the others.
Realflight is not really "server based" in the traditional sense, rather one machine acts as a sort of virtual conductor for the others that are doing their own calculations, etc.
In a server based MP FPS system all of the machines can be said to be types of "visual clients" to what is going on primarily in the server itself. All of the communication is only between the client and the server. Not so with Realflight.
All come into play.
The ability of your machine to send out and answer packets is affected by CPU, RAM, GFX card, drivers, bus mastering, HDD latency, PCI-E latency, etc.
Assuming you have a computer that is more than capable of keeping up with everything the next biggest problem is bandwidth and latency sending and receiving packets from the remote machines.
Since there is a constant stream of communications going on between all of the connected machines in MP, one errant or high latency machine can cause problems for everyone connected via a speedy pipeline.
Sometimes you'll notice that if a particular user disconnects, everything seems to speed up as a result.
Also the airports, planes, smoke used, all determine how much data is sent back and forth between the systems.
e.g. if you turn on smoke all of the remote machines have to turn on particle emitters at the point your virtual plane is. While the smoke generation is done locally ( yes each computer actually sees something different ) the parameters that affect it, such as location, etc. have to be broadcast.
And it goes on and on.
For a real test run a MP session locally on several computers.
Then take those computers to different locations and try the same over the Internet.
Most of the changes to the speed of MP you see will be the result of inter-machine communication latencies.
Remember that ALL of the computers are sending packets to ALL of the others.
Realflight is not really "server based" in the traditional sense, rather one machine acts as a sort of virtual conductor for the others that are doing their own calculations, etc.
In a server based MP FPS system all of the machines can be said to be types of "visual clients" to what is going on primarily in the server itself. All of the communication is only between the client and the server. Not so with Realflight.
