Project Reality Forums

With the consolidation and ultimate depreciation of PR players across the world, why do server administrators continue to place servers on the US East Coast?

Why are the servers not hosted in Los Angles, USA where the latency times between Europe and Asia are around the same maximizing geographic coverage and server population?

Here is tests I did:

LA TEST:


Free Candy Van


=HOG= Mixed Maps


]CIA[ KOKAN & HOOKERS

CIA moved from the central US to the east coast due to budget constraints and time constraints. We had to find a server that we knew we could afford at the time based on the average amount of donations and funding we received.

There is an L.A. one up, just not at this very second, start conducting your tests tomorrow when it goes public.

-FCV

E. Not many have L.A. servers due to L.A. having high budget requirements. For us we are paying $579/month for all utilities, you have to understand not many admins usually want to spend that type of money.

E:2. Rolling I can see why you made this thread now, don't worry, Sydney will get good ping from it man, I put a lot of thought in for the pacific people.

brenn4n wrote:There is an L.A. one up, just not at this very second, start conducting your tests tomorrow when it goes public.

E:2. Rolling I can see why you made this thread now, don't worry, Sydney will get good ping from it man, I put a lot of thought in for the pacific people.

Test IP or it didnt happen.

FatalWaffles wrote:CIA moved from the central US to the east coast due to budget constraints and time constraints. We had to find a server that we knew we could afford at the time based on the average amount of donations and funding we received.

brenn4n wrote:E. Not many have L.A. servers due to L.A. having high budget requirements. For us we are paying $579/month for all utilities, you have to understand not many admins usually want to spend that type of money.

I was not privy to hosting on West Coast USA costing more than its East Coast USA brethren.
Is this statement correct? Being that USA is center of the internet universe and all?

RollingInTheHurt wrote:I was not privy to hosting on West Coast USA costing more than its East Coast USA brethren.
Is this statement correct? Being that USA is center of the internet universe and all?

Well there's an algorithm, let me explain.

There are people in the Pacific Ocean, U.S., and then Europe that play PR.

If euros play pacific > lag
If pacifics play euro > lag
If U.S. plays euro > 80-180ms
If U.S. plays pacific > 160-230ms
If euro plays U.S. > 110-170ms
If pacifics play U.S. > 110-190ms

Essentially the U.S. is the 'middleman' of the continents.

My logic behind L.A. was that the Pacific people and the European people will have similar ping, and the Americans will sit stable. Looks like that's a compromise. One day we won't have to worry about this. One day.

brenn4n wrote:My logic behind L.A. was that the Pacific people and the European people will have similar ping, and the Americans will sit stable. Looks like that's a compromise. One day we won't have to worry about this. One day.

No complaints here

I know many EU players consider pings above 50ms bad and above 100ms unacceptable. And your solution would really only maybe work for west europe. eastern europe and middle east would be entirely exempt.
I for one never considered playing on an US server (even East coast), simply because the ping would be worse than to any one of the many EU servers.
It's a nice experiment to explore West Coast USA locations to maybe be more attractive to the Pacific region, but I think the server distribution will self-regulate. It's impossible to have a single "world server" in PR, so at the very least two or even server "zones" will be unavoidable. Players will join the servers they have good pings with. Players might join servers with 100ms pings if everybody has the same 100ms ping. Players will probably not join servers where they have 100-200ms pings and others have 10-50ms pings.
Such ping differences do make a vast difference in firefights and will quickly lead to frustration, again causing a self-regulation.
The common server zones known from other games are EU, RU, US, Asia.

Senshi wrote:I know many EU players consider pings above 50ms bad and above 100ms unacceptable. And your solution would really only maybe work for west europe. eastern europe and middle east would be entirely exempt.
I for one never considered playing on an US server (even East coast), simply because the ping would be worse than to any one of the many EU servers.
It's a nice experiment to explore West Coast USA locations to maybe be more attractive to the Pacific region, but I think the server distribution will self-regulate. It's impossible to have a single "world server" in PR, so at the very least two or even server "zones" will be unavoidable. Players will join the servers they have good pings with. Players might join servers with 100ms pings if everybody has the same 100ms ping. Players will probably not join servers where they have 100-200ms pings and others have 10-50ms pings.
Such ping differences do make a vast difference in firefights and will quickly lead to frustration, again causing a self-regulation.
The common server zones known from other games are EU, RU, US, Asia.

Aren't you a funny one. This isn't a source game, BF2 was optimized to run most efficiently AT 100ms latency, so all of your points are but imagination. You start feeling the ping around 140 but everything up to 180 is playable, although with minor drawbacks.

In PR you join servers that offer the best playerbase, not the best latency, otherwise you wouldn't have had so many EUs on TG and so many NAs on PRTA/NEW/Merk.

Senshi wrote:I know many EU players consider pings above 50ms bad and above 100ms unacceptable. And your solution would really only maybe work for west europe. eastern europe and middle east would be entirely exempt.
I for one never considered playing on an US server (even East coast), simply because the ping would be worse than to any one of the many EU servers.
It's a nice experiment to explore West Coast USA locations to maybe be more attractive to the Pacific region, but I think the server distribution will self-regulate. It's impossible to have a single "world server" in PR, so at the very least two or even server "zones" will be unavoidable. Players will join the servers they have good pings with. Players might join servers with 100ms pings if everybody has the same 100ms ping. Players will probably not join servers where they have 100-200ms pings and others have 10-50ms pings.
Such ping differences do make a vast difference in firefights and will quickly lead to frustration, again causing a self-regulation.
The common server zones known from other games are EU, RU, US, Asia.

Well when there's only one PR server full from 22:00 to 12:00 Germany Time excluding China and RRP so let's be real here.

@Brainlaag: I'm well-known as a limitless source of fun and enjoyment.
I would be very interested in a source stating that BF2 is "optimised around 100ms". In my (surely limited) experience, that's a fairly bold statement concerning game network architecture. Based on my knowledge of the BF42 and BF2 engine, I know that hit calculations (alongside many others) are done serverside and redistributed, so ping (forth+back) times do matter a lot (which is why the infamous lagging hitboxes exist in the first place). I'm always eager to learn something new, so I'd honestly appreciate sources for your statements.

After I moved, I had to switch from a 100MBit line (ping <10ms) down to a 3G connection (ping ~100-140ms) and there's a huge difference for me.

It certainly is a matter of perception so you might have made different experiences. It's just that I've played for years and know a lot of players that never visit servers outside their "zone", hence my guess that this was common player behavior.

Most EU servers usually start to grow at UTC evening (1800), peaking between 2000 and 2400 and then declining until 0100. I'd guess this is simply because it coincides with people's free time...and after playing 4-5hours straight you simply are exhausted . I never really had the need to look outside the EU.

Senshi wrote:@Brainlaag: I'm well-known as a limitless source of fun and enjoyment.
I would be very interested in a source stating that BF2 is "optimised around 100ms". In my (surely limited) experience, that's a fairly bold statement concerning game network architecture. Based on my knowledge of the BF42 and BF2 engine, I know that hit calculations (alongside many others) are done serverside and redistributed, so ping (forth+back) times do matter a lot (which is why the infamous lagging hitboxes exist in the first place). I'm always eager to learn something new, so I'd honestly appreciate sources for your statements.

After I moved, I had to switch from a 100MBit line (ping <10ms) down to a 3G connection (ping ~100-140ms) and there's a huge difference for me.

It certainly is a matter of perception so you might have made different experiences. It's just that I've played for years and know a lot of players that never visit servers outside their "zone", hence my guess that this was common player behavior.

Most EU servers usually start to grow at UTC evening (1800), peaking between 2000 and 2400 and then declining until 0100. I'd guess this is simply because it coincides with people's free time...and after playing 4-5hours straight you simply are exhausted . I never really had the need to look outside the EU.

NEW and PRTA are the heads of Europe. During the evening in Europe there's 500 people online usually. During night US and Afternoon Australia, Japan, and NZ it's just Americans and Pacific's.and there's no more of a total of 120 pee ON PR during that time. Europeans don't have the negligence of having a low ping sue to them having the amount of players and servers in their area. Pacific people and West US does.

Senshi wrote:@Brainlaag: I'm well-known as a limitless source of fun and enjoyment.
I would be very interested in a source stating that BF2 is "optimised around 100ms". In my (surely limited) experience, that's a fairly bold statement concerning game network architecture. Based on my knowledge of the BF42 and BF2 engine, I know that hit calculations (alongside many others) are done serverside and redistributed, so ping (forth+back) times do matter a lot (which is why the infamous lagging hitboxes exist in the first place). I'm always eager to learn something new, so I'd honestly appreciate sources for your statements.

After I moved, I had to switch from a 100MBit line (ping <10ms) down to a 3G connection (ping ~100-140ms) and there's a huge difference for me.

It certainly is a matter of perception so you might have made different experiences. It's just that I've played for years and know a lot of players that never visit servers outside their "zone", hence my guess that this was common player behavior.

*Massive facedesk* I meant source, as in source the engine that source-based games like Half-Life 2, Counter Strike SOURCE and other of that kind run on. I mentioned that because it's a well known engine that suffers from an extremely unforgiving netcode. Playing source games on 100+ latency is nearly impossible and not possible at all in the competitive scene, because it all works via client side detection.

A post on the EA forums about BF2's hitdetection states following:

Some people have complained about the hit detection, much like in BF2.

The game, like BF2, does not use client side lag compensation - this has benefits and obvious drawbacks; detection (or the appearance/lack of it) is one of them.

The game instead uses lag compensation cvars to try and predict where a target will be inbetween the ms of time between data being shuffled to and from the server/clients.

This allows the player to hit targets on their screen regardless of where target is in the real game world (i.e. you fire at target and on your side it is registered as a hit and he dies, but on his side he ducked behind a rock and then got hit).

Anyways this may be a *possible* fix/slight benefit for some...for others the exact opposite may occur.

These two cvars, which are not included in the main gamesettings.ini or settings.ini are supposedly still active in the engine (according to a few over at backandslash).

I have tried it, but I cannot confirm whether or not they really do much - though I will say that I had my best round ever by changing the variables to .150 and 150

SettingsManager.floatSet GSDefaultLatencyCompensation 0.100000
SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 100

Add these cvars to you ini files found in you BFBC2 folder in your my documents folder. You want the numbers to represent your average server-list ping (i.e. 120ms would make the cvars 0.120 and 120).

Again I will stress that there is still a chance that they will do nothing...try 'em out if you care.
tl;dr

Regarding your question, the hitboxes in BF2 are not static, as in not always centered on the avatar but made so that they work with a 0.1s delay, they "predict" the movement of the player, hence you will always hit it when you are on 100ms latency, thus compensate for your 100 ping.

This was the original post but the website is down for a few years now.

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/batt ... ation.html

Brainlag, I'm not sure if you read my post. Or the post you quoted. Anyway, no need to demolish your poor desk.

I am fully aware that you were referring to Source engine games. Their netcode differs, obviously, but it certainly is not "unforgiving".

The post you quote is not about BF2, but a method that might work in BFBC2 to alter the way lag compensation works. I'm not even sure BF2 does employ a really sophisticated lag compensation, but irregardless my point about ping importance is still valid. Lag compensation can only try to interpolate between player position reports and extrapolate a "look-ahead" from your ping average of the last 1-2sec. The higher your ping, the worse this prediction will be: If the player is just rendered in advance of his actual position, it might be that he already has changed course or stopped while he actually still is running for you. This would lead either to warping players or positional "morphing" of them. Such a lag compensation would also suffer severely for players experiencing fluctuating pings. I'm still not sure on if and which method is used in BF2, but it's not really of important. It is as it is, and pings influence the firefight prowess in BF2 just the same as in every other shooter game.

I'll leave the discussion here, because I think it's gotten off topic and I don't really see the point in arguing network architecture logic here. The basic concepts are not really rocket science and are easy to read up on.

EDIT: Just by chance I found a forum discussion some years later that refer to the quote you made: They state that while the variables are there, they are proven to do nothing in BFBC2. They are just a bunch of dead variables, just like there's dozens of them in every BF game.

A nice read on game networking and lag compensation can be found here:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wik ... Networking
Applies for Source, but the principles are the same for most games.

I understand everyone wants to be play on a low ping server, but the reality is PR in its current form of player count this can no longer happen.
So a compromise has to be made to allow players from Asia and Europe to play together to keep the game viable to everyone.
In my view, Los Angles USA is the key as it allows Asia and Euro players to play as one with usable in game ping.
If change does not happen soon, you are going to have rolling empty servers based on peek usage. No one wants empty servers, especially in PR where its designed for maximum player count.

RollingInTheHurt wrote:I understand everyone wants to be play on a low ping server, but the reality is PR in its current form of player count this can no longer happen.
So a compromise has to be made to allow players from Asia and Europe to play together to keep the game viable to everyone.
In my view, Los Angles USA is the key as it allows Asia and Euro players to play as one with usable in game ping.
If change does not happen soon, you are going to have rolling empty servers based on peek usage. No one wants empty servers, especially in PR where its designed for maximum player count.

What we can do is have there be all servers inside the core of the Earth and then hook some fiber optic to every country = same distance, same ping, one host.

I feel silly.

brenn4n wrote:One day we won't have to worry about this. One day.

Sadly the speed of light and refractive indices have other ideas.
The minimum possible ping from Dublin to New York is on the order of 50ms just based on the geodesic distance, speed of light, and a refractive index of ~1.6. Taking account of everthing it tends to be ~70ms at best.

Being in Dublin currently makes me a pretty lucky player in that I get good(<50ms) pings on every Euro server, and <90s pings in East US servers(HOG, CIA). But mother of god, the extra trek to Kansas makes FCV really tough to play for me. The connection is extremely unreliable for me, continually dropping, and the extra ping(~140ms) just ruins my CQB experience(assuming the players on the other end are competent).

As you've stated above, Europe hosts a very significant number of players, and any non-East coast server is alienating them. I hate playing FCV from Dublin, I can't imagine it from Serbia.

Realistically, I think it just has to be slightly segregated. If a good LA server pops up, there will probably be the people to sustain it... But you won't find many Europeans playing on it, just as you don't find many Ausies in the European servers.

LiamBai wrote:Sadly the speed of light and refractive indices have other ideas.
The minimum possible ping from Dublin to New York is on the order of 50ms just based on the geodesic distance, speed of light, and a refractive index of ~1.6. Taking account of everthing it tends to be ~70ms at best.

Being in Dublin currently makes me a pretty lucky player in that I get good(<50ms) pings on every Euro server, and <90s pings in East US servers(HOG, CIA). But mother of god, the extra trek to Kansas makes FCV really tough to play for me. The connection is extremely unreliable for me, continually dropping, and the extra ping(~140ms) just ruins my CQB experience(assuming the players on the other end are competent).

As you've stated above, Europe hosts a very significant number of players, and any non-East coast server is alienating them. I hate playing FCV from Dublin, I can't imagine it from Serbia.

Realistically, I think it just has to be slightly segregated. If a good LA server pops up, there will probably be the people to sustain it... But you won't find many Europeans playing on it, just as you don't find many Ausies in the European servers.

Well, Euro's do have enough eervers, eh? I see what you're talking about.

Everywhere has enough servers. There're like 10 servers I've ever seen with people on.
The ping problem is a huge shame, but mostly because there aren't enough players in the world, really.

LiamBai wrote:Everywhere has enough servers. There're like 10 servers I've ever seen with people on.
The ping problem is a huge shame, but mostly because there aren't enough players in the world, really.

Seeding is another missing element in 85% of the servers. But yeah.