NPC and Player Micro-warping and rubber banding since September update

[Loophole]

This seems to have started happening since the September update, at least for me and a few others I have spoken with, yet I cannot find any mention of it on this forum, and it is not noted as a "known issue" with the September update.

What I am taking about is observing severe "rubber banding" or "warping" of NPC ships and other players, when nearby in normal space. Typically while they are within 3km or so, but it is erratic; doesn't always happen, and when happening it seems to stop when the ships get further away or very close. The effect is that the ships appear to fly in a zig-zag, and you can see it reflected in their engine trails.

I would have put it down to network issues if it only happened to other players, but it happens to NPC ships just as often.

The only mention of the issue I found was this Issue Tracker entry:

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/4925

If, like me, you are seeing this effect and would like it addressed, please go up-vote that issue, and add your own examples and evidence to it!

 

[Loophole]

At the moment I am suspecting it might be related to the presence of other Commanders in the instance, which points the finger at the motion-smoothing algorithm for vessels that are under control of another Commander's PC, and/or the network communication of their positions.

I'm watching for examples of the effect occurring when there is definitely no other commander present, and so far have not been able to see it reproduced under those circumstances.

I know that in supercruise there has long been a similar micro-warping effect observable on other commanders, which seems to only kick in at a certain distances. Possibly that same problem has found its way into the normal-space simulation code.

 

[Aashenfox]

Yep, definitely a thing.

 

[Florenus]

Thanks for the link to Issue Tracker- voted.
I just hate searching that thing - it shouldn't be my job to do it.

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

rumor has it the introduction of small seismic charges will fix this issue.

unfortunately its not my favorite bug at the minute, its in the top ten yes, but just not my top 4 of all bugs.... Sorry

 

[VR tazbert]

Is this similar to what Old Duck was complaining about?

Stuttering and hitching after updates

Am I the only one noticing stuttering and hitching after these updates? Before the September update, I could lock my FPS at 60 or even 72 (vsynced with my refresh rates), and the game was buttery smooth regardless of where I was or what I was doing. After the update I'm seeing stuttering and...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Wolf Starslayer]

Also seeing this, had to swap to solo to dock out at Jaques as the rubber-banding npc made it impossible to tell if slot clear and tons of them were 'stalled' inside, was a mess.

 

[Old Duck]

Is this similar to what Old Duck was complaining about?

Nope, different problem. Here I thought networking on PC was rubbish compared to PS4, but I guess this is not the norm. I get terrible rubber-banding and Zorro NPCs around stations, even with just a couple of ships in the instance, typical rubber-banding in supercruise, yet it's pretty rare that I see it in the middle of the fairly big PvP deep space battles I've been in. Maybe it's the sharing of NPC data that's causing this problem?

My Whiplash Max Headroom (WMH) bug occurs in all modes regardless of who is around, and it doesn't coincide the networking bug (I often see NPCs signing the sky with Zs in perfect framerate fidelity).

 

[sollisb]

This seems to have started happening since the September update, at least for me and a few others I have spoken with, yet I cannot find any mention of it on this forum, and it is not noted as a "known issue" with the September update.

What I am taking about is observing severe "rubber banding" or "warping" of NPC ships and other players, when nearby in normal space. Typically while they are within 3km or so, but it is erratic; doesn't always happen, and when happening it seems to stop when the ships get further away or very close. The effect is that the ships appear to fly in a zig-zag, and you can see it reflected in their engine trails.

I would have put it down to network issues if it only happened to other players, but it happens to NPC ships just as often.

The only mention of the issue I found was this Issue Tracker entry:

https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/4925

If, like me, you are seeing this effect and would like it addressed, please go up-vote that issue, and add your own examples and evidence to it!

Been there for months for some of us.

 

[Old Duck]

I'm going to try to update ED on PS4 sometime today (I haven't played on that for months) and see if this is a problem there as well. I never experienced anything like this on PS4 back when I regularly played. Ironic, because we used to say that PS4 had rubbish net code (due to long mission load times), but maybe it's actually superior to PC!

 

[Heater]

It's because your routers are dirty!

 

[Old Duck]

Frontier's routers are dirty, as are the glasses of whoever signs for these buggy updates.

 

[Rubbernuke]

I'm certain I've seen this in one of FDs own official videos recently where an NPC Eagle (I think) warped to one side. At the time I was like 'huh' but now it kind of makes sense.

 

[DragonIV]

Voted on the issue tracker--have seen this myself a lot in the past week or so before I started circumnavigating Enceladus for kicks.