Is it worth staying?

Re: Is it worth staying?

Lol, I'd been thinking the same thing myself then I'm like who the hell is this. Then I realise it's the op. Abandoned thread is hijacked, apologies.

Re: Is it worth staying?

Two points, both wholly irrelevant.

Just like most of this thread. You want to talk about hit boxes? by all means do so but start your own thread on it.

This thread is about the question I put forward at the start.

If you don't have an answer for that please refrain from taking over this thread (whether its being answered or not).

Thank you

[The Laughing Man]

Re: Is it worth staying?

Please, 20 years ago Elite was a 64k vector graphics space simulator for the Commodore 64.

How much BF2 dedicated server experience have you got?

Two points, both wholly irrelevant.

[iQue]

Re: Is it worth staying?

Guys, just a clarification here.

BF2's hitbox system isn't much worse than CSS (as an example) but, if we compare the two games:

In an average server in BF2, how many people have a higher ping than 50? Close to everyone.

In an average server in CSS, how many people have a higher ping than 50? Only a few.

You can improve the hit detection in both games by changing a few settings but it will never be "perfect"

[imported_kiwi]

Re: Is it worth staying?

Yes, OK but there should only be one value for every ping then. If GSDefaultLatencyCompensation is your average ping then there should be only one best config but who knows it? Who can show how to calculate all those values depending on your ping?


Nevertheless usersetting.con improve things, not perfect but at least something. So far I have found that "jerunk" config works best for IO (64 player) and 20 ping. Unfortunately it doesnt work well for TV missiles since they go through AH1Z regularly. However, the 2nd config I posted with GSInterpolationTime 400 works better with TV missiles and that is what I use



As for other games in short I can say that my aim is great on LAN ping and almost noobish/nonexistent on 60+ servers. How do you even call Interent gaming fair when only on LAN you see a real difference

Re: Is it worth staying?

A knowledge of networking has little to do with usersettings.con because I don't know the precise meaning of each variable and how it is related to ping

Hmm, really? These settings tell the game how to manage the networking communication (what the packet loss compensation window is, how long to wait for server data, what to do if no server data comes, default lag compensation time) etc. I guess we have different interpretations of networking then. The precise meaning of every variable in usersettings.con is handy to know. Many of these variables are common to EVERY fps since Quake3 and the invention (at that time) of the asynchronous network game server model. Every online fps since Quake3 uses this model. Well, I'm not sure if it's every, but every one I look into uses the model, including the UT series, the Half Life / CS series, the BF2 series and the Doom 3, Quake 4 etc series. Here's how similar they are, BF2's GSInterpolationTime = CS's cl_interp, and so on through the whole netcode.

SettingsManager.boolSet GSExtrapolateFrame 0
SettingsManager.U32Set GSExtrapolationTime 444
SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 36


These 3 are important variables but I have not found out how they relate to your ping. In this example GSExtrapolationTime / GSInterpolationTime = 12 or so which is close to 1200/100 = 12 (default value)

The first two of those variables could not be any less important. In fact they should be completely ignored, and have nothing to do with ping at all. They refer to entity extrapolation, which is what your client does when it is receiving no game data. If you are not receiving any game data then you're screwed anyway.

SettingsManager.boolSet GSExtrapolateFrame 0 =
boolSet = boolean value (2 possible states, on or off) 0 = off, 1 = on, GSExtrapolateFrame = perform entity extrapolation routine as player is not receiving any game data from the server.

SettingsManager.U32Set GSExtrapolationTime 444 =
After not receiving any game data for 444 msecs begin entity extrapolation. Enitity extrapolation is what happens at the end of the round if the "Connection problem" message is onscreen, it makes the vehicles drift around as your client is estimating their path and speed (because it's not getting ANY game data).

SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 36 =
keep a time slice of 36 msecs in memory from which to smooth the onscreen game, and compensate for lost packets inside a 36 msec window.

Look, I'd love for there to be a solution to BF2's hitreg. But every time I test something it leads back to packet loss, varying ping, and server overload. Which is why I asked you those questions earlier, it's actually possible to tell (if you have a sharp eye) when you miss (but shouldn't have) what caused it, which is why I asked someone about dust puffs earlier etc. Sometimes a miss of this type (that should have hit) has a dust puff and sometimes it doesn't, each of these types of miss has a different cause.

And the answer to...

In a perfectly tuned BF2 config SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime would be set in multiples of ...

... is "server frame rate" (tick rate in CS).

[imported_kiwi]

Re: Is it worth staying?

A knowledge of networking has little to do with usersettings.con because I don't know the precise meaning of each variable and how it is related to ping

Take this example (this works pretty good for 20 ping)

rem
rem Settingsfile automatically saved by bf2
rem
SettingsManager.boolSet GSClPunkBuster 1
SettingsManager.floatSet GSDefaultLatencyCompensation 0.020000
SettingsManager.boolSet GSExtrapolateFrame 0
SettingsManager.U32Set GSExtrapolationTime 444
SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 36
SettingsManager.U32Set GSPerfLogAtPlayerCount 64
SettingsManager.stringSet GSPlayerName "jerunk"
SettingsManager.boolSet GSShowNetGraph 0
SettingsManager.boolSet GSUseObjectCache 1

SettingsManager.boolSet GSExtrapolateFrame 0
SettingsManager.U32Set GSExtrapolationTime 444
SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 36


These 3 are important variables but I have not found out how they relate to your ping. In this example GSExtrapolationTime / GSInterpolationTime = 12 or so which is close to 1200/100 = 12 (default value)

Anyway here is a rough guide (please note that this is only 1 possibility, there are other configs too) for everybody that has a high end PC. For weaker PC that runs BF2 below 100 fps there are other settings.


For 64 player servers:

SettingsManager.floatSet GSDefaultLatencyCompensation 0.0xx000 ( your ping or +1-2)
SettingsManager.boolSet GSExtrapolateFrame 1
SettingsManager.U32Set GSExtrapolationTime 100
SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime xxx ( ping or 10-15 over ping )
SettingsManager.U32Set GSPerfLogAtPlayerCount 100



SettingsManager.floatSet GSDefaultLatencyCompensation 0.0xx000 ( ping or 10-15 over ping )
SettingsManager.boolSet GSExtrapolateFrame 1
SettingsManager.U32Set GSExtrapolationTime 100
SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 400 ( 400 this is what you have seen on youtube )
SettingsManager.U32Set GSPerfLogAtPlayerCount 64


p.s I am not a member of that forum and sure I can post a screenshot (the bad thing is that Gotland servers refuse ping echo request with pingplotter/winmtr too and there will be a host before it. I will see if I can get another 64 player server)

Re: Is it worth staying?

Ok, post me a high res 1 hour pingplotter chart including 8 (ish) hops to a full BF2 64/64 server (address included please). Oh, and better make it between the hours of 7 and 10 p.m.

p.s. Do you participate on ICONZ forums? This discussion has been done there too.

The thing is that there are only a few known presets for pings 20 and 50 that work pretty good and as they say are used by Pros.

If you don't believe me that I have 0% packet loss then sorry you have absolutely no idea how networking works and further discussion is pointless.

It's ironic that you would include these two statements in the same post. A knowledge of networking would give you the perfect presets for any connection, so how can there only be a few known presets for a given ping?

Ok, if you know more than me then finish this question. In a perfectly tuned BF2 config SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime would be set in multiples of ...

Oh, and another thing, it's actually possible to tell if a missed shot (that should have hit) was due to server vs. client hitbox separation, or a missed shot (that should have hit) was due to a packet sent to the server was lost. Do you know how to tell?

[imported_kiwi]

Re: Is it worth staying?

I have messed with Usersettings.con quite some time. It does help a lot if you have correct values but it's still not perfect. The 1st time I tried it I was like WTF, I was hitting like never before The thing is that there are only a few known presets for pings 20 and 50 that work pretty good and as they say are used by Pros

The inbuilt deviation was the reference to RL weapons, not lag / hit detection. Please read posts before replying to them.

I simply don't believe you have zero packet loss, nobody does. You may have an ace rig, but it's not the server is it.

Nobody has, are you suggesting they have?

Please elaborate, do you mean the hit detection sux vs. other fps?

By RL weapons you mean real life weapons? I am stating how it should be instead of what it is now.

If you don't believe me that I have 0% packet loss then sorry you have absolutely no idea how networking works and further discussion is pointless

What is there to elaborate? Go and play other FPS shooters and you will see that hit detection is way better than in BF2. I have enough BF2 and UT hours to say that (btw UT has tanks and flying objects too and it almost always registers a hit when I actually hit it in my screen)

Re: Is it worth staying?

SettingsManager.floatSet GSDefaultLatencyCompensation 0.100000

floatSet = dynamic variable that WILL be changed regardless of whatever you set it to.

Default = a starting value of 100ms will be used, until the game has sampled your true ping, ignoring whatever you might have set the default value to anyway.

I've verified this by using extreme values, e.g. 0ms, 9999ms, and my value was overwritten so quickly it didn't make a single bit of difference, not even during the first minutes of gameplay.

SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 100

What your post completely misses mentioning is that this is also a packet loss compensation mechanism. With a setting of 100ms the game is being told to keep a time slice of game history of 100ms from which to draw the game state on screen. If you have this set to say 50 and are losing packets then the game entities are more likely to lag around the screen than if it's set to 100. There is also subjective evidence that a high setting of 400ms fixes chopper hit boxes (hit detection).

This...
"it also means that when firing upon a fast-moving object you may miss where they actually are as you're effectively facing an additional 100ms delay."
...is false. There is no additional delay, all online games show a game state on screen that has already passed as above. I have played with the game in it's raw state (i.e. 0ms interpolation) and it is very very strange, it's like everything has got epilepsy, very hard to hit things that are shaking around.

Re: Is it worth staying?

One thing to keep in mind guys is that if hitbox detection gets fixed....it's fixed for everyone. So if you die alot now.....be prepared to die alot in the future.


If you want better hitbox detection:

1. Try enabling Vsync on your graphics card. Don't argue, just try it

2. Follow these steps here:

Usersettings.con

This file is found under your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\Settings directory. There are two particular settings of interest here which are reported to help reduce the inaccurate feel /hit detection of weapons fire in BF2:

SettingsManager.floatSet GSDefaultLatencyCompensation 0.100000

This setting controls latency (or 'lag') compensation, which involves the game attempting to offset the delay between information being sent from your machine to the server and back again (as measured in milliseconds by your Ping). In games without client-side latency compensation, you have to lead your target by a certain amount, since whenever you fire a weapon your bullets will actually register in the game world with a delay equal to your Ping. In BF2, whenever you fire a weapon, whatever appears in your crosshairs at that particular moment is registered as being hit, regardless of where they actually are at that point in time. This removes the need to predict where your target will be based on ping delay, and makes the game feel more responsive. However it can also introduce quirks like ducking behind a wall and still being hit.

In any case, this setting controls the default latency compensation applied, and the normal value is 0.100000 = 100ms. Some people claim that by adjusting this value to match your average ping in the servers you play, it can improve hit detection. For example, if you typically have a 50ms Ping, setting this to 0.050000 should improve the feeling of accuracy in the game. To be honest having experimented with this setting in isolation I didn't notice much difference either way. I believe the latency compensation is actually dynamic, only starting at the default value given in this setting, and adjusting to match your average ping over time. However even if it isn't, in general you can try to match your Ping with this setting to see the results. Note that lowering this setting well below or above your average Ping will only add to lag and may decrease your accuracy at best, so stick with keeping it equal to the Ping you get on most servers.

SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime 100

Interpolation is a technique used to increase the smoothness of an online game. Basically interpolation is the prediction of where a particular moving object or character is currently located in the game world, based on data received on where they were and where they are. For example if an enemy soldier is running across the screen, interpolation allows their movement to appear fluid, calculating their predicted movement across the screen even though your computer is receiving only periodic updates of where they actually are. So instead of seeing a person jerkily warping from point to point, you see smooth animated motion all the way along. This especially helps to keep things smooth if/when packets are momentarily lost between the server and you; the game knows where the player currently is, where they were a moment ago, and calculates and displays the movements in between.

By default, Battlefield 2 appears to have a 100 millisecond buffer for interpolation. The problem with this is that while making things appear smoother, it also means that when firing upon a fast-moving object you may miss where they actually are as you're effectively facing an additional 100ms delay. At least that's the theory, and in general in my experimentation I found slightly improved hit detection results (and no noticeable increase in jerkiness) by using a lower value of 50 or even 30 for this setting. Note however that this variable should not be set too low (and certainly not a value of 0) as it will result in increased warping/jerky movements, and if you generally have a ping higher than 100 you shouldn't lower this setting. For those who do try this, also remember that the improvement from lowering this setting is not dramatic, since we're talking a difference of say 50ms (1/20th of a second). However particularly in situations where your opponent(s) are moving fast and/or erratically your accuracy should be noticeably improved.

It is important to understand that the generally inaccurate feel of most weapons in BF2 is intentional, as realism has been sacrificed for the sake of gameplay. Techniques to steady your aim such as going prone and using short bursts can help improve hit rates. Furthermore it appears that much of the time the lack of hit registration is due to lost packets. I've noticed the Battlefield series suffers quite a bit from packet loss, often manifesting as serious warping or jerkiness, getting caught against walls or other barriers, and incidents where you can appear to be firing at an unmoving target at point blank range and still somehow miss with most bullets; information is being lost to/from the server.

The key thing to note about both settings above is that unfortunately neither I nor anyone else knows for sure what the real story is - only EA/DICE know the truth about how their netcode works, and they've stated nothing to clarify these settings. What I've written above is based on my own experimentation, understanding and research about these settings. For the most part I haven't found any problems with PunkBuster by using the recommended settings above, though some servers may be very strict and not allow these values to be changed. If altering these values seems to make things worse for you, or you experience more jerkiness, lag or disconnections, reset them to the defaults shown above and leave them be.

Re: Is it worth staying?

I can agree with you on the CS and CoD4 hitboxes, but what about ArmA? It pushes everything even harder than Bf2, and still you have good hitboxes, without the "missile passing though chopters" BS we have in Bf2

With an average of about 8 players per server the comparison just doesn't make it.

Do you aim behind a moving target with RL weapons? :laugh:

The inbuilt deviation was the reference to RL weapons, not lag / hit detection. Please read posts before replying to them.

I have a decent net, ping 20 with 0 packet loss and and I have a high end PC that can run 200+ FPS (highest settings) any 64 player map.

I simply don't believe you have zero packet loss, nobody does. You may have an ace rig, but it's not the server is it.

Don't get me wrong, I will get BF3 as well but don't argue that BF2 hitbox is good.

Nobody has, are you suggesting they have?

BF2 hitbox sux hard and it is probably one of the worst of all FPS

Please elaborate, do you mean the hit detection sux vs. other fps?

[QUOTE=The Laughing Man;2145924]

My PC is more than capable of running BF2 twice if not three times over, my internet connection is fine at 8meg and has one of the lowest contention ratio of those available in the UK. The server I played on is based in the same country as me so as a result I usually have a ping of 19 and the player I shot in the head had been lying prone sniping long enough for me to actually walk up to him have a 2 second think about weather to snipe, pistol whip or knife him and when I shot him in the head it missed.

So did you get a dust puff on the player model?

Please six years ago I used to play a game called Tachyon The Fringe online using a PC powered by Pentium 3 with no dedicated graphics hardware on a 56K dial up. This was an FPS space shooter that incorporated some shockingly complex physics in the flight dynamics. This thing had missiles, guns, lasers, rockets and up wards of 32 players on the server and THAT had better hit detection than BF2 has. I am sorry but trying to say BF2 pushes the limits of anything is a get out of jail free excuse. BF2 doesn't push anything to any where near it's limits. Perhaps, just maybe back when it first launched it may have but PC tech has moved on a long way. Certainly far enough to render hit detection errors such as the one I described as totally unacceptable.

Please, 20 years ago Elite was a 64k vector graphics space simulator for the Commodore 64. It had shockingly complex physics and in flight dynamics. It had missiles, guns, lasers, rockets, and had better hit detection than Tachyon ever had. They are apples and oranges.

How much BF2 dedicated server experience have you got?

[stilla-killa]

Re: Is it worth staying?

I am still having fun with this game and probably will until BF3 comes out.

[The Laughing Man]

Re: Is it worth staying?

[quote]Lol. When are people going to realise that the hit detection problems are because of 2 things.

2. The server, your computer, and your internet connection (together) get pushed harder by BF2 than any other online game. This causes errors in the regions of msecs to become magnified, decreasing accuracy (by separating the hitbox and game entity models). This is best demonstrated at it's most extreme, where the games fastest moving player (the TV missile) attempts to strike another fast moving objects hitbox (the enemy chopper).

My PC is more than capable of running BF2 twice if not three times over, my internet connection is fine at 8meg and has one of the lowest contention ratio of those available in the UK. The server I played on is based in the same country as me so as a result I usually have a ping of 19 and the player I shot in the head had been lying prone sniping long enough for me to actually walk up to him have a 2 second think about weather to snipe, pistol whip or knife him and when I shot him in the head it missed.

Don't care what you say that's not acceptable and I don;t care how you slice it that's a core failure of the game engine that cannot be explained away by milli second errors.

An E6600 will run at 70% usage on COD4, but 100% on BF2.

So? CPU load stats mean jack, they are dynamically adjusted by your OS just because the little monitor provided with windows says 70% doesn't mean BF2 is using 70%. I can load my OC'd E6600 using TAT to over 60% before it starts to affect BF2. A game I played called Tibia (a 2D free mmorpg) uses 100% of whatever processor you run it on.

BF2 simply pushes everything harder than anything else, and unfortunately sometimes it shows.

Please six years ago I used to play a game called Tachyon The Fringe online using a PC powered by Pentium 3 with no dedicated graphics hardware on a 56K dial up. This was an FPS space shooter that incorporated some shockingly complex physics in the flight dynamics. This thing had missiles, guns, lasers, rockets and up wards of 32 players on the server and THAT had better hit detection than BF2 has. I am sorry but trying to say BF2 pushes the limits of anything is a get out of jail free excuse. BF2 doesn't push anything to any where near it's limits. Perhaps, just maybe back when it first launched it may have but PC tech has moved on a long way. Certainly far enough to render hit detection errors such as the one I described as totally unacceptable.

[Rugerdog]

Re: Is it worth staying?

Personally I'd rather have a harder to hit hitbox like in BF2 than one that is as large as those in COD4.