Ping meter

[Beerbeer]

Is there one?

If not, will they add one?

[Electrofreak]

I'd almost rather they didn't. It'd just be another thing for people to complain about that they have little control over.

I spend far too much time at my job explaining to enterprise IT managers why their ping times have nothing to do with the problems they're seeing, (or the problems they're worried exist, and actually don't). And while high ping times and loss can certainly negatively impact gaming (jitter and loss moreso than sub-200ms ping times), the source of these problems can come from virtually anywhere along the data path. Unfortunately, most people don't get this, and the provider (ISP typically, but in this case SOE as the owners of the servers) tend to get blamed, typically without cause.

[cooonips]

with my unstable internet, along with the high bandwidth requirements of this game, a ping thingy would come in quite handy. i would like to be able to judge if the games playable before running into combat and seeing people teleporting everywere

other info like up and downstream, jitter, choke ect would also be helpfull

the option could just be disabled by default, that would help keep the peasants from whining over nothing. they have a fps meter in the game allready, i dont see why there cant be ping

[Dudster]

Originally Posted by Electrofreak

I'd almost rather they didn't. It'd just be another thing for people to complain about that they have little control over.

I spend far too much time at my job explaining to enterprise IT managers why their ping times have nothing to do with the problems they're seeing, (or the problems they're worried exist, and actually don't). And while high ping times and loss can certainly negatively impact gaming (jitter and loss moreso than sub-200ms ping times), the source of these problems can come from virtually anywhere along the data path. Unfortunately, most people don't get this, and the provider (ISP typically, but in this case SOE as the owners of the servers) tend to get blamed, typically without cause.

Did you play Planetside 1? Ping was kind of a big deal.

[Hamma]

It isn't as big of a deal as it once was. Games have learned to deal with this sort of thing much better.

[MonthOLDpickle]

I want to see the difference if I choose an AU or US West server. I live in Taiwan.

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by Dudster

Did you play Planetside 1? Ping was kind of a big deal.

Yes, I did, and are you aware just how terrible the netcode was in the original PlanetSide compared to PlanetSide 2 and other modern FPS games?

Modern games have pretty sophisticated algorithms used for lag compensation. It's not a difficult concept to understand fundamentally; the game calculates where something *was* so many milliseconds ago between the two clients, so it can determine for example if a shot successfully struck the target despite the ping delays the two clients are experiencing.

This is pretty reliable when ping times are under 200 ms or so, which is average human reaction time (surprising, isn't it?). Above that, the heuristics used tend to have an exponentially harder time correctly determining the appropriate position and bearing at the time an event occurred.

Back in the day, (PS1 days) the way this was done was a lot less sophisticated (or so I'm told). These days lag compensation is much more accurate.

That said, no amount of lag compensation can make up for packet loss, and sufficient jitter (which usually accompanies high ping times) will throw off the accuracy of the heuristics. It'll never be perfect, but it's a lot better than it was before.