Lag coming out of Warp and Super-cruise?

Arken

A
I've been playing only since early Oct '14, so my experience is very limited, but it seems to take far too long to jump out of SC or warp. B3 is much better than when I first joined but it still takes 8-10 seconds after I drop out of high-speed.

I have 50 Mbit downstream / 3 Mbit upstream internet, but I also live in central USA. Is this affecting anyone else, or is it intentional? I understand the need to change instances but it feels choppy.

Thoughts?
 

Sandmann

Sandmann
Arken said:
I've been playing only since early Oct '14, so my experience is very limited, but it seems to take far too long to jump out of SC or warp. B3 is much better than when I first joined but it still takes 8-10 seconds after I drop out of high-speed.

I have 50 Mbit downstream / 3 Mbit upstream internet, but I also live in central USA. Is this affecting anyone else, or is it intentional? I understand the need to change instances but it feels choppy.

Thoughts?
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It's not lag between you and the server per se.. the game runs "instancing" with "islands" of players, and rather than running every player to the server it runs a peer to peer (ie: player to player) system to reduce server load. The delay when coming out of SC/HS is when the server synchronises your game with the games of every other player in your "instance", tries to match you together for the best player to player speed, sets up all the npc's in your area and so on. A down side to this system is that if someone else in your "island" has a slow connection you can experience their lag.
 

Sandmann

Sandmann
JeffRyan said:
I get this too. In a private group. When exploring and there are no other players. Not sure it's the p2p.
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Yeah it still has to set up a new instance for you every time you come out, check if there's any players joined that you need to talk to, create npc's, load galnet news, events, bounties and anything else that carries over from the previous instance etc. I'm sure it could be better than it is, but even if you're the only player in the instance there's still a LOT going on in your island.
 

JeffRyan

JeffRyan
Sandmann said:
Yeah it still has to set up a new instance for you every time you come out, check if there's any players joined that you need to talk to, create npc's, load galnet news, events, bounties and anything else that carries over from the previous instance etc. I'm sure it could be better than it is, but even if you're the only player in the instance there's still a LOT going on in your island.
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Shouldn't it be doing this during the hyperspace trip, not during that half-second as I warp towards the sun?
 

Arken

A
Might I suggest a transitional animation that reflects the downshift from SC to normal speed? My sound in the cockpit reflects the engines revving down but outside looks like time has simply stopped. Just something that bridges the two instances more fluidly.
 

Sandmann

Sandmann
JeffRyan said:
Shouldn't it be doing this during the hyperspace trip, not during that half-second as I warp towards the sun?
Click to expand...

I imagine that it is... but sometimes takes longer than the few seconds we spend in hyperspace.

You realise I've now moved into the realm of conjecture? I'm relying on my (extremely) limited programming experience and educated guesswork at this point. Like you I'd like to see the delay gone... these are the only half decent reasons I can think of for it existing at all. I'm sure the devs could tell us why it happens... and I'm equally sure they won't.
 

akaliel

A
Sandmann said:
I imagine that it is... but sometimes takes longer than the few seconds we spend in hyperspace.

You realise I've now moved into the realm of conjecture? I'm relying on my (extremely) limited programming experience and educated guesswork at this point. Like you I'd like to see the delay gone... these are the only half decent reasons I can think of for it existing at all. I'm sure the devs could tell us why it happens... and I'm equally sure they won't.
Click to expand...

Well, they really could be loading all that stuff when you're in hyperspace to a new system or supercruising around in it. They don't need to wait until you're entering a station's perimeter to do it all then, cause yeah, there's a very unimmersive delay that happens at that point. I've been a programmer for nearly 3 decades now, so I'm not just making uneducated guesses here. And I imagine they're still working on optimizations in this space. That said, changing where the station data gets loaded isn't just typing a few lines of code, you have to watch your memory management, make sure you're not overloading low end systems. It's not overly simple stuff. And systems that have multiple stations would all need to be loaded then too. Plus you've added complexity, cause if you preload all of that before hand, when you actually enter the station space you have to load any changes that have taken place since. Like craft that have since entered the area, any news or pricing data that's different. The better bet might be additional "come out of supercruise" animations that give us pretty pretty lights instead of the awkward time stop we have now. That seems the direction of least resistance from my 30,000 foot seat here.
 
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matt1974

M
I've also been wondering about this lag when exiting hyperspace/FS. I'm not sure why this loading/synchronisation isn't performed during the hyperspace animation so the drop is seamless.. I'm assuming it is on their to-do list.

If there isn't enough time during the hyperspace animation, then it would be better just to extend the animation to cover it. It would be quite plausible for hyperspace to have a varying duration travelling to different stars.

By the way, whilst we're on the subject of hyperspace and frame-shift, I quite like the idea of a star-gate type hyperspace animation where it isn't a fixed path but curls around obstacles in a psychedelic roller-coaster style en-route.
 
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