The pain of sniping over the internet

[Ish]

Hi,

Am I the only one who finds it impossible to snipe moving targets in MP?
If they are moving towards/away from you, it's not really that big of a deal.

But when they're moving sideways from your perspective it's damn near impossible to determine "where they really are" with the lag.

It's not about desync or high ping or anything. It seems pretty standard.
The enemy (well ai at least) seems to rubberband really badly when they are moving laterally from your position.

I feel this makes the sniper rifle sort of inferior, now that we have the M240 with M145 sights.. Sure you might miss the first 10 or 15 rounds BUT you'll get him eventually!

Call it a complaint if you must, but it can be really annoying when you just know that you normally could take the shot (in editor for example).

[Beagle]

Players with high ping can and could and will always use this to their advantage, because this "picard maneuver" will work at close range too...you aim, shoot and hey just warp a meter away *g*

[Ish]

This is actually a problem for me with the ai. Say on a domination map.
It's especially odd because the ai don't seem to rubberband when moving away/towards you, but only when moving laterally.. A lag conundrum if I ever saw one..

I've always had a fascination with long range shooting
Here's me pre-ACE2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTI4m5SZavM

[-=seany=-]

This AI MP lag is a strange thing and something that doesn't seem to get demanded to be fixed very often. Initially, with Arma1 no one really complained that much, I guess because JIP was new and we just put up with it.

With Arma2 its just the same. It looks really bad, any engagement of AI in the distance(200m+) with a scope(RCO ACOG etc) online is a warpfest, no matter how good your ping. If your sniping you have to wait for the target to stop moving or just waste magazines. Some times the warping is worse with a higher ping but it's always there. Vehicle warping is another serious issue ruining immersion online. It looks retarded.

I don't how I/we put up with it. I mean considering how realistic Arma2 is meant to be compared to other shooters, it is a serious ruining of immersion and realism. Imagine showing this to some one who you wanted to get into playing Arma? You wouldn't, because they would just laugh.

ME-"Hey mate, check out this great realistic game that puts those BF, Cod shooters you play to shame, the team work is second to none and it doesn't get any more real than this."

MATE-"Cool, but uhhh why are those tanks teleporting back and forth like that? And how come you have to wait for every enemy infantry to stop moving before you shoot him?"

ME-"mmm oh yeah, don't mind that, just put up with it...this is the most realistic military sim there is....yeah.."

Can it even be fixed? This really is a serious issue imo.

[Pulverizer]

The sad thing is that it has only gotten progressively worse since OFP. I'm all for making the netcode more efficient if the fidelity stayed the same but it hasn't. Right now it just seems to make everything beyond a certain distance update their position at a slower pace, instead of only skipping updates on non-visible units.

[Ish]

I'm going to post this in the 1.06 suggestions thread..

[andersson]

The server admin kan tweak values for this. I did it for my arma1 server. You can make the distance they warp shorter, but if you make it too short it will look to "stuttery". Back then I found a relatively good balance between warp and stutter. Long enough for them to walk without stutter and short enough for them to just warp a short bit so you could snipe them.

I dont have the values on me right now but its possible. Up to the server admin.

[Ish]

It really shouldn't be up too server settings imo.

[andersson]

So what should it be up to instead?

[Pulverizer]

The client-side prediction should work better. A unit that moves straight with a constant velocity shouldn't ever warp, no matter what the server settings are. It's very simple math to extrapolate the correct path based on velocity. A warp should only occur when the object changes speed or direction, and even that could be smoothed out to not look like a warp.