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Neuro-Reckoning May Reduce MMOG Time Lag
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Oct 19, 2007 08:45 AM
from the would-probably-help-in-karazahn dept.
from the would-probably-help-in-karazahn dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Time lag can cause some very strange behavior in massively multiplayer online games when players' actions onscreen become slow and jerky. New techniques are on the way to reduce the problem of lag time in MMOGs when a player's computer can't keep up with changes in a shared online world. Games like Quake use a technique called dead reckoning and while traditional dead-reckoning systems that assume that a game character will maintain the velocity and direction that it has at the moment an update is sent to all other participating computers; dead reckoning works best for movement and shooting and less well for erratic actions such as interacting with objects or with other players. Read the abstract of new technique called 'neuro-reckoning' that may improve the predictive process by installing a neural network in each player's computer to predict fast, jerky actions."
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Sounds feasible (Score:4, Funny)
(cue the Eve spam)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I kinda doubt it (Score:3, Interesting)
For starters, let's look at the plain old interpolation. I see it kicking in all the time in MMOs (e.g., WoW), and players seem to run ahead for half a mile until the game gives up and disconnects them. Or spend the next 5 minutes running in place against a fence.
Let's take just that one simple action: running. How do you know where I'm going to interpolate it right past a second or two. If I arrived at, say, Westfall (to give a low level example that anyone who's ever
Not that kind of intelligence (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: prediction (Score:3, Informative)
It won't. (Aside: But if it ever does, then it would mean the server decided you should have done it, and it did it for you without your consent.)
These predictive models are for data compression [wikipedia.org], where the cost of encoding a given bit is based on the log of the probability of that bit occurring. For example, if it's 50:50, then it costs you 1 bit either way. However, if you can g
Re:I kinda doubt it (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Yes and no (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, if you talk about something that actively takes control of my character for me, to do all that stuff, you're talking a bot. Which is against the TOS on any MMO, and can get you banned on the spot. I very much doubt that anyone will implement one right in the client, as some next great feature.
Second, those exist already. See, WoW Glider.
(Note that I'm not actually advertising using it, and if anyone gets banned using it, I'll cheer for the Blizzard employee that banned them. Just us
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"the neural net has figured out that i'm a gold farmer, so all i have to do is unplug my net connection and it continues smacking down elves even while i'm at work!"
They need a neural network for what exactly? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Good. Be sure to fill out a TPS report.
Neural nets (Score:2, Interesting)
But then again, the CPU's are so fast today, that it might not be an issue at all.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Twelve years ago I had a Pentium 60Mhz that could barely play MP3s without skipping. CPU architecture improvement and especially multi-core processing would probably leave plenty of room for short scale neural network movement prediction.
So the logical next step is... (Score:2, Insightful)
They already use it! (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Uh. (Score:3, Informative)
If I had to guess, the real problem is probably that commercial, hugely-trafficked MMO servers don't want to send as much data to each client as some guy's dedicated server in his basement that's only visited by thirty-two clients at a time. This probably results in the player and server updating each other less frequently.
Still, since in the MMO there are usually pretty predictable things the player will be going to next (the item on the ground, the nearby mob, the NPC in his path), maybe this will work well after all.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed; one day soon, Chinese goldfarmers will be freed from the slavish burden of even running their own scripts. Instead, the server will simply predict what speeds hacks they would have run, and award them the gold without the tiresome necessity of actually having to receive packets from them.
Ultimately, our own machines will be able to predict the actions of everyone else, and we will be able to play multiplayer games together completely on our own. The circle will be complete.
Quake's Lag (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Quake's Lag (Score:5, Interesting)
Sidenote: This began the misconception that lag time benefited the lagger, or that laggy players lag the whole server, neither of which is true. The quicker your ping time, the faster your shots or actions will register on the server. If a high ping bastard and low ping bastard shoot each other at the same exact moment, the LPB will have his shot register first, and the HPB will die.
Originally, shots and hits were always done actively at the time it reached the server. So if you had 400ms ping, you'd see your gun shoot 400ms after you fired it. This made lag almost unbearable for most high ping players, because if they shot at you, they'd almost always miss, because by the time their shot registered, you would've moved out of the spot you were standing a split second ago.
As for the article, it's dealing solely with player movement on MMORPGS, which is determined by the rate of updates (how many packets get sent out per second). Player action updates are always triggered at the time of action (such as casting a spell), however, movement is an ongoing process. Basically your client updates the server around a dozen times a second with position and velocity information, because of your movement. However, it always assumes you'll stick to that velocity (moving forward? dead reckoning predicts you move forward some more) in between updates. If you deviate from your predicted movement along a velocity, you need to send an update to the server. This new method will predict what movement you'll take, rather than always assuming a straight line from your current movement.
My student ACM account doesn't have subscription to access the article, so I'm not entirely sure, but this is my take on what it does:
For instance, if you're moving forward, and there's something in front of you, the neural net will attempt to determine that you'll probably move in a different direction, and send that as your predicted velocity. If it turns out you don't move that direction, you'll simply have to send another update. If you do move that direction (which statistically you should), then there will be no need for an update, thereby saving bandwidth. These predictions and updates happen at a rate which makes it seem like your player is moving smoothly, when in reality, there's a bunch of micro deviations and stuttering.
Parent
I tried letting it predict Slashdot... (Score:2, Funny)
So in other words... (Score:2)
Old news (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
If the computer is going to predict my next move, I might as well let the computer play the game. If the algorithm is using a neural network, the computer will become just like me as time passes. The main difference between a good player and a normal one, is the difference from the nominal behaviour. Thus making this method of uterly useless.
Your computer doesn't predict what YOU do because it can see it in real time and has no need at all to know what you're going to do in the future. Your computer, however, has to predict what THE OTHER players do when your server connection is bad and the information about what others do around you is coming too slow or not at all. Thus, not exactly useless.