What sorts of challenges has optimizing netcode for combat in true 3D space with 6DoF presented? Are the issues presented by packed loss and high latency roughly comparable to a first-person shoorter, or are you expecting this game to be more latency dependent?asked by PKirkner
TL;DRRoberts says heavy ship data could make packet loss and latency an issue to test, but ships turn rather than move randomly, so their positions are easier to predict than on-foot players.
Packet loss, high latency. I mean high latency obviously effects any stuff, and packet loss, we definitely will be going back and forth with a lot of data because the ships are pretty heavy data-wise, they have lots of moving parts. So that potentially could be an issue, but that's sort of the stuff we want to be working on and testing out. That's the whole part of the Dogfighting Module and also why we want to have the final MMO back-end, at least a rudimentary version of it, working for the dogfighting. There are advantages to the space sim part of Star Citizen or Squadron 42 in terms of multiplayer net-code compared to an on-foot first person shooter. Now of course we do have an on-foot first person section, so that will have the same problems that you have in Call of Duty or something. But basically when you fly a ship, you can't--the problem with a first person shooter is I can be here and then I can step here then step here. So basically the movements of your avatar can be fairly random and not very easy to predict. Whereas in a ship you can't do that, you've got to turn. So essentially in the spaceship scenario you can actually do a much better job of predicting where the player's ship is going to be. Ok, hopefully that answers that question.