BF2S Forums Anyone else ever have "hiccups" when playing online?

h4r13quin wrote:

Scorpion0x17 wrote:

The thing I don't get is this - I've had hideous, unplayable, lag - yet my ping (confirmed by another player) remained <20.

Do not trust the ping function in the game to give you an accurate reading.  Every player reads a different number for those ping numbers, and they can be a difference of hundreds.

Of course. However the point I was making is that if whatever is causing the lag is either at the server or the client end of the network code then it would show up in pings - you still get a lot of variation, obviously, but network lag should increase average ping, by definition - but it doesn't, in fact, from looking at pings, it's clear that the 'lag' most definately isn't network lag - there's absolutely no correlation between lag and ping.

h4r13quin wrote:

I too experience these "lag" issues.  It seems there are too many potential problems to accurately discern where the failure occurs, but I run a wireless and thats generally a bad idea for games as demanding bf2 cause I like the big games. Even servers running CSS with 64 players lag once and a while and thats a much simpler game.  Taking in account the size of the maps and the ammount of action going on its expected to have some lag.

Totaly agree. However, from what I've seen, it appears that the actual problem is that the lag is not being caused by any one single component, rather it seems to be something more akin with a synchronisation issue - each component - video, memory, network, cpu - are all working perfectly and can all handle their individual work load, but the game loses synchronisation and everything gets held up, with the game sitting there kinda waving its arms about going "OK, OK, I know you all want something from me, and you all want it like yesterday, but you're also all telling me stuff that I need to deal with first!"...

h4r13quin wrote:

My most common encounters with lag however is when I'm in a firefight in the middle of it all, my least ammount of lag is when everybody is spread out (outside my field of view).

Yes, this seems to be the one key piece of information - the only place there's any correlation - the lag never hits when everybody's spread out - it really only hits when you get into close firefights - and then, interestingly, there seems to be a threshold - I've had countless occasions where I've been in the middle of a firefight - no lag - then an enemy heli flies overhead - unplayable lag hits. Or sometimes it's a tank.

The other situation that seems to be a prime cause is when you and you squad are taking an out-of-the-way flag, then someone spawns there, or an enemy squad will turn up - to the extent where now, if I'm sitting taking a 'deserted' flag - I can actually get an edge on the enemy because the lag is telling me they've just turned up somewhere...

Actually, thinking about it, I think that might actually be the key factor - it always seems to be situations where an enemy heli/tank/squad turns up.

Gotcha, and deja vu.

Yeah I don't know either, sorry to not help much.

I'm not sure because I experience the full spectrum of problems.  My wifi sometimes just dies on me so I am disconnected back to the login screen where I have to retry connecting to the internet.  As well as those in game moments that happen to fast for me to understand, just odd little spasms.

Within the realm of the hiccups I don't know, but it could deal with the field of vision.  I don't know enough about networks and the program itself but the lag could be created between server and computer as they try to negotiate load sharing.  That is your comp might not keep track of a whole lot until somebody or a squad abbruptly enters your field of view causeing your comp to do more work.  And I don't know how that kind of computation gets negotiated, whether you are continuously recieving information about everybodys location, or enough information for your field of view and minimap details or what.  But if those negotiations were poorly programmed and lots of people enter your field of view at glitchy times or angles, it might result in the lag you are experiencing.

But I experience to many additional bugs to properly diagnose the problem, that and I haven't found a cure on any of the low ping servers I play on, but I mostly play 64 player maps.  I'll try maps of different sizes and tell you later.