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The lag effect: PSN and XBOX LIVE analysed


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Whatever happened to the low-ping bastard? The scourge of the early days of online gaming, the LPB would dominate Quake deathmatches by simple virtue of the fact that their connection to the server was often orders of magnitude faster than anyone else's, resulting in complete and utter domination. It was easy to identify the LPB: a quick look at the roster of game players placed their "ping" times alongside their names, making it easy to spot those with obvious latency advantages.

Fast-forward to the present day and services like Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network dominate online gaming. Even though fast broadband is now the norm - eliminating the sub-par latencies associated with the days of dial-up online gaming - the lag hasn't completely gone away. Instead, game developers are using a wide variety of technology to hide latencies from the player, leading us to wonder: is online gaming fair? If you're playing at a disadvantage, to what extent do you actually know?

While it's undoubtedly true that Xbox Live and PSN have made the process of gaming over IP far more accessible, it's also true that the latest online technologies are far from transparent and it's rare that any game will actually let the player know how good the connection is until you start playing. And even then, with client-side prediction technology now the norm, you still may be blissfully unaware that you are operating with a sub-par latency at all. And even if you are presented with a "quality of connection" ranked at one to five bars, what does that actually mean any way?

Think about it this way: have you ever watched a Call of Duty Killcam replay and thought to yourself that the sequence of events playing back to you is somewhat at odds with the reality you personally experienced before you were gunned down like a stinking pig?

 

Read full:here

 

I urge you to read it fellas,really informative as to how online gaming works.

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