COD Ghosts: Driftor - New Multiplayer Footage

There is lag comp of some sort in the game no doubt about it.

So, the entire CoD game is being played in a delay so to speak with the engine trying to equalize as much as possible and whatnot.

I keep hearing about netflix and whatnot but that it outside a gamers control. If your neighbor kicks on his internet and you are on cable then your connection just got worse. If the hosts neighbors do it and he has banned all other internet then he has done what he could.

The internet itself is not stable enough to do what CoD is trying to do without seeing what you see in game. Bending bullets is lag comp in action.

The difference lies in the dedicated servers being on the internet backbone and being configured to be "servers" that have very stable, constant connections (due to being built on the network backbone partially). Since there is no "host" then there is no need to have lag comp for the "host" so you aren't playing the entire game in some sort of computer delayed world.

Computer delayed world = I watched the kill cam where I died and it didn't even register my firing one bullet, hell it didn't show me pulling up my gun........because the game went back and "Fixed" what really happened. What really did happen though? Who the fuck knows? The game has to decide somebody won the gunfight and this will be based on a connection test done to start the match when your ping to the host was determined. It is now 45 seconds later and the entire path down the network your packets are taking to the host are traveling a different path......other got cluttered with internet traffic from India or wherever.......this path is shorter so you are winning all the gun battles.......in 30 seconds your ping could change again but the "server/host" has already set your ping for the match.

Doamne01 wrote:

gun fer hire wrote:

It's funny that this guy states that Halo's time to kill all but eliminates WTF moments and then his video (at 9:25-9:31) shows his buddy hitting someone with a 1 hit kill shotgun and still dying. I guess that having a longer time to kill makes it slightly less likely that two people are one shot from dying and they both shoot the final bullet at one another within a short time from one another.

Any P2P game is going to have these issues, whether the time to kill is an hour or a second, as the final bullet that kills is the one that ultimately counts, but a longer time to kill at least lets the players react.

Yup... Longer time to kill let's players react... but, more importantly, allows the consoles to communicate with each other at a speed that doesn't sacrifice active happenings. COD didn't always has such uber quick TTK.

We need to define the term LAG COMPENSATION for future discussions about this. We need to define host advantage/disadvantage,

What do you think it is?

Everyone NEEDS to watch the Drift0r video because he explains it with pictures better than I can. And if you don't understand how you are being shot around corners after watching the Drift0r vid then I don't know what to say...you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

^^^Yes, lag is different than lag-compensation.  Most still don't know the difference.

I still personally believe the video i posted explained lag comp in a easy way that most can understand... it summed up the need for lag compensation and hinted at the complexity of the formulas... why some games are more affected by it etc. etc.


Lag compensation

You may be looking for Yahn Bernier's 2001 paper on game engine networking.

  C ommand      Current      Packet             Client
    Execution  =  Server   -  Round-Trip  -     View
      Time            Time         Time         Interpolation

Historic client hitboxes (red) versus rewound server hitboxes (blue).
Lag compensation is the notion of the server using a player's latency to rewind time when processing a usercmd, in order to see what the player saw when the command was sent. In combination with prediction, lag compensation can help to combat network latency to the point of almost eliminating it from the perspective of an attacker. For a more detailed explanation see the Source Multiplayer Networking article.
By default only players are rewound, and one second of location/animation history is kept.

All source code for lag compensation and view interpolation is available in the Source SDK. See Lag compensation for implementation details.
Let's say a player shoots at a target at client time 10.5. The firing information is packed into a user command and sent to the server. While the packet is on its way through the network, the server continues to simulate the world, and the target might have moved to a different position. The user command arrives at server time 10.6 and the server wouldn't detect the hit, even though the player has aimed exactly at the target. This error is corrected by the server-side lag compensation.
The lag compensation system keeps a history of all recent player positions for one second. If a user command is executed, the server estimates at what time the command was created as follows:
Command Execution Time = Current Server Time - Packet Latency - Client View Interpolation
Then the server moves all other players - only players - back to where they were at the command execution time. The user command is executed and the hit is detected correctly. After the user command has been processed, the players revert to their original positions.
Note: Since entity interpolation is included in the equation, failing to have it on can cause undesired results.
On a listen server you can enable sv_showimpacts 1 to see the different server and client hitboxes:

Visualisation of lag compensation: server and client hitboxes
This screenshot was taken on a listen server with 200 milliseconds of lag (using net_fakelag), right after the server confirmed the hit. The red hitbox shows the target position on the client where it was 100ms + interp period ago. Since then, the target continued to move to the left while the user command was travelling to the server. After the user command arrived, the server restored the target position (blue hitbox) based on the estimated command execution time. The server traces the shot and confirms the hit (the client sees blood effects).
Client and server hitboxes don't exactly match because of small precision errors in time measurement. Even a small difference of a few milliseconds can cause an error of several inches for fast-moving objects. Multiplayer hit detection is not pixel perfect and has known precision limitations based on the tickrate and the speed of moving objects.
The question arises, why is hit detection so complicated on the server? Doing the back tracking of player positions and dealing with precision errors while hit detection could be done client-side way easier and with pixel precision. The client would just tell the server with a "hit" message what player has been hit and where. We can't allow that simply because a game server can't trust the clients on such important decisions. Even if the client is "clean" and protected by Valve Anti-Cheat, the packets could be still modified on a 3rd machine while routed to the game server. These "cheat proxies" could inject "hit" messages into the network packet without being detected by VAC (a "man-in-the-middle" attack).
Network latencies and lag compensation can create paradoxes that seem illogical compared to the real world. For example, you can be hit by an attacker you can't even see anymore because you already took cover. What happened is that the server moved your player hitboxes back in time, where you were still exposed to your attacker. This inconsistency problem can't be solved in general because of the relatively slow packet speeds. In the real world, you don't notice this problem because light (the packets) travels so fast and you and everybody around you sees the same world as it is right now.

Gun, you and I are in agreement with what lag compensation is,  without it you wouldn't be able to hit anybody that wasn't a stationary target.

And if you get hit after you've run around a corner or cover you have to realize that on the other players screen(due to delays in communication...lag) you were still in the open.  So as long as he hits the shots on his screen he gets credit for them.

Which is why in final killcams a sniper appears to miss the shot sometimes, but on his screen he nailed it...killcams are where the character models were on the host console, not the party that got killed, or the killer.  So they aren't what EITHER player saw on their screen.

Which is also why many times it a killscreen with show you firing only a few rounds, or none at all.  Your data had not yet got to the host machine, you were laggy and the other guy wasn't.


Edit: One VERY critical part of your post Gun, was this:

lag compensation can help to combat network latency to the point of almost eliminating it from the perspective of an attacker.

That means that you weren't behind cover or the corner on his screen.

TL; DR.  I just want to play video games.  lol

I've watched numerous videos including driftors.

Bottom line.....

Without dedicated servers you end up with a laggy game.

Activision likes to direct the issue to "internet" problems instead of just fess up and say.....

We want money. You wan't fast ttk, fast moving soldiers. Cool beans. We'll give you a game with fast TTK and fast moving soldiers but we like money so you'll have to deal with the lag.

Instead it is some dude you don't know's fault who is in this lobby because the asshat lets his kids watch netflix or he wants to get laid so his wife is allowed to surf the net even when he is gaming. Reality is that the game will suffer major connection issues until dedicated servers are offered. The other alternative is to increase time to kill (make MSMC a 8 shot kill for instance/870 shotgun two or three shot kill even up close and kill the sprint option and slow the soldiers down.

Sound fun? Nope.

This is why there is lag and nobody can fix it but activision.

Do you really want us to get into the tech talk? I try to keep it so average joe gets the jist.

walldoggy wrote:

TL; DR.  I just want to play video games.  lol

haha yes... i apologize... back to Ghosts talk.

Anybody catch the new grenade animations? They look pretty neat.

FightingOkra75 wrote:

The other alternative is to increase time to kill (make MSMC a 8 shot kill for instance/870 shotgun two or three shot kill even up close and kill the sprint option and slow the soldiers down.

Sound fun?  Nope.

Sounds like BF....

bluehound000 wrote:

Everyone NEEDS to watch the Drift0r video because he explains it with pictures better than I can.  And if you don't understand how you are being shot around corners after watching the Drift0r vid then I don't know what to say...you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

I don't know to whom this is directed, but my comment about getting killed around a corner was concerning a corner that I never went around. What I have seen recently (the last several months) is that I will be heading to a corner and I will pull up short and I will get killed past the corner that I never reached.

This leads me to believe that they may have added predictive code that sees my avatar heading to a corner in a full sprint and continues that sprint on the host machine, pushing that to the opponents screen, and making seem as though I continued when I stopped. This isn't a case of my taking cover and getting killed before I get there (which happens to us all and is explained well in Drift0r's video) but of my being in cover and not breaking cover and getting shot in an opening I never entered.

It's possible that they added the predictive code to combat the advantage that a person has who is running around the corner and can shoot before the opponent's screen shows them there; as is shown in Drift0r's lag comp video. It doesn't happen often and I have ways around it, but I have seen it firsthand.

For the record I have a <20 (usually 10-15) ping, 50+Mbps down, 10+Mbps up, and I am the first house off of the Comcast box so neighbors using the internet has minimal impact on me.

No that wasn't direct at you and that particular experience. That particular rant was in response to this statement:
Bending bullets is lag comp in action. I'm getting a little weary of people who still rage about the "wanted perk" when Drift0r clearly explained.  If it wasn't for lag compensation you wouldn't be able to hit anybody but a stationary target.

I suspect that they are using predictive code or its a quirk of the game engine and camera angles.  I've run up to a corner to peek it quickly and got shot after I ducked back behind the wall, on my screen I barely peeked for a split second, but on the killcam the other player saw me standing out in the open away from the corner and had an easy shot.  I don't know if that is that kind of predictive code, or something weird with camera angles.  Kind of like head glitching when they can see you, but you can't see them.

For some reason I remember watching a vid about BO2 using coding like that to predict player movement to combat exactly what you stated.  But I don't remember where or when. They eliminated one problem, and caused another...its like whack-a-mole.

Wow.... STILL beating Secretariat till he's glue.

YellowGeeHawd wrote:

Wow.... STILL beating Secretariat till he's glue.

Maybe, but it's the glue that binds us all together



I almost made it Wood Glue, but I wanted to keep it "no homo."

bluehound000 wrote:

Kind of like head glitching when they can see you, but you can't see them.

Reverse head-glitching?  

YellowGeeHawd wrote:

Wow.... STILL beating Secretariat till he's glue.

We have to sniff something. Makes a good snack in a pinch as well during those marathon gaming sessions.

I can't remember where it was posted but did I hear that theater mode is being eliminated? If that's true, that would probably improve info transmit ion rates and help everything run smoother. I know the best option would be dedicated but if they don't go that route, it should improve just based in the amount being transferred peer to peer and the burden placed on processors to run the game and theater mode simultaneously.

^^^Heard that as well... been no mention of theater and there is no need anymore with both next gen consoles having all their video sharing compatibility. I think the developers see that.. hopefully in CODs case... because removing it can only help!

Spartan Runnerr wrote:

I can't remember where it was posted but did I hear that theater mode is being eliminated?  If that's true, that would probably improve info transmit ion rates and help everything run smoother.

I have to think eliminating theater should eliminate some additional background processing time and processor loading - i.e. less delay/lag in theory. You figure every player's detail, every bullet, explosion, etc. and entire game physics are constantly logged on the console hard drive.

I'm a bit sad though, the player/gun/blood graphics are great in COD games and going back in theater mode to recapture a great play in 3D and slow mo was awesome.

Although the console HW will now capture and upload game clips, I doubt it will give you the option to go back and see it from a 3rd person angle, or another players view.

SwollenCamel wrote:

It may just be one of my stoopid ideas again but if owned a dedicated server on any game like BF or COD could i just sell advertising like on some of the maps "Express comes to mind" it has moving billboards and a soundtrack.

I sure as hell wouldn't mind a coke advertisement on the wall as i splatter some dude blood and guts all over it, hell you could charge out the ass if your ads appear all over Youtube.

Is it even possible?
Sign in to your fav server and the new commercials will run wherever they are on the map?

Killcam brought to you by Depends adult underwear "for that death you didn't see coming and now you have shit in your pants"......next time i'll be wearing my depends!

Ok ok i know, Damn Swollen,what are you on? but is it possible?

While it would be cool to see real world ads instead of fake gameplay ads, I fear it will be here before we know it.. once the marketing departments of major corporations realize the view potential and how much time is spent waiting for screens to load or how many 'views' a billboard on Express gets they'll start embedding themselves.

You don't know how many times I think of Rhianna on Express here:


I think the potential for advertising is there, but it will be a big fat messy pandorra's box once adverts are enter in games.. ugh.

What comes to mind when I think of COD community and private servers are the potential for a lot of hacked and modded lobbies.

LOL, nice image gun. As bad as it sound it gives the scene a bit more realism.... but I still don't want to look at advertisements.

Now if they made maps of major city centers or landmarks (destroyed or not), that we're familiar with, then add authentic advertisements.. and authentic cars.. that would make a good environment!

TripleAce Andy wrote:

What comes to mind when I think of COD community and private servers are the potential for a lot of hacked and modded lobbies.

You mean like MW2, MW3 & Black Ops 2?  

Hell... i'm all for real advertising in-game as long as it's not distracting... i'mean developers would pretty much have to use dedicated servers then to constantly update the ads... and they'd be more than paid for by just the ad revenue. I mean what company wouldn't want to advertise in COD multiplayer matches... the amount of 18-50s that play... that's a key demographic.

C'mon corporations... i'll ignore your adds if you buy our servers.

NukeLaCoog wrote:

TripleAce Andy wrote:

What comes to mind when I think of COD community and private servers are the potential for a lot of hacked and modded lobbies.

You mean like MW2, MW3 & Black Ops 2?   

Hacked lobbies require a modified xbox either Jtag/RGH/Dev and require a server emulator which most good ones are paid and cost around $80 a day to use. On older games there was less security and mods could be done with game saves or modified ISO disc images. If you bring the modified console online you are guaranteed a ban on that console. Not to mention you risk any retail console a ban that is on your IP also. I rarely see hacked lobbies and aimbots are almost a farce on consoles. There are a couple but they require all of the above and the programs cost $70 to 150. Poor kids wasting their money or their parents money to cheat online and get banned within a few games. Most of what people think are hacks are really horrible connections or lag switches.

gun fer hire wrote:

C'mon corporations... i'll ignore your adds if you buy our servers.

I 2nd that ^^^^ ha ;o)