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Broadcasting delay solution?.

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Artemix

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Post Thu Jul 13, 2017 7:28 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

bob wrote:I was wondering if perhaps we've misunderstood your "delay while broadcasting", and you are not talking about how one toons game window doesn't necessarily see the other toons move/cast/etc at the same time as you do on their other toons respective game window.

Can you elaborate on how this delay manifests?, and what actions you are doing that the others are having a delay on?


Yes, sorry if I wasn't providing much detail about the issue I experience, I will try to make it clearer:

While playing with 4 characters, using 2 monitors, I have my main window in monitor A and the other 3 chars in monitor B:

1- I click and my character moves instantly in my main Window, broadcasting that click to the other 3
2- in the same main window I notice that the other 3 characters follow me, but, there is a small delay.

Now, in most situations this small delay is not important, but, if you are running a speed farm build where your characters move really fast (Arachyr Manujama with multiple chickens :D) the screen gap between your characters is enough to create a functional problem, since your explosions happen at different parts of the screen.

Hope I clarified it better, if not please let me know, thanks.
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MiRai

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Post Thu Jul 13, 2017 9:45 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

Artemix wrote:in the same main window I notice that the other 3 characters follow me, but, there is a small delay.

I don't know how many times we can explain that this is only visual. It is impossible to eliminate that visual delay because your game clients are not communicating with each other on your computer, they're communicating with the server and the server needs to send that data to each game client before they're properly updated.

The server (the Blizzard computer that runs the game world) is physically located somewhere different than your home, and the distance between you and it, for the purpose of this thread, is measured in milliseconds—this is the latency that we're talking about in this thread. As far as I know, Diablo 3 doesn't report this number in the game's user interface (unlike a game such as World of Warcraft), but I promise that it's still there even though you cannot see it.

Now, let's pretend that you have a latency of 100ms (1/10th of a second). When any of your characters move in the game world, it will take 100ms for the server to receive that information from that particular character's game client, and then another 100ms for that information to be relayed back to the remainder of the game clients on your computer. The information in the game has to take a round-trip to the server, and then back to your house before the game clients are "synced up," but because of latency there is a visual delay.

Everyone deals with this when they multibox, and you can see this in the D3 Quick Setup Wizard video of mine, as well as small presentation I gave about latency in MMORPGs.
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Artemix

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Post Thu Jul 13, 2017 11:45 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

MiRai wrote:
Artemix wrote:in the same main window I notice that the other 3 characters follow me, but, there is a small delay.

I don't know how many times we can explain that this is only visual. It is impossible to eliminate that visual delay because your game clients are not communicating with each other on your computer, they're communicating with the server and the server needs to send that data to each game client before they're properly updated.

The server (the Blizzard computer that runs the game world) is physically located somewhere different than your home, and the distance between you and it, for the purpose of this thread, is measured in milliseconds—this is the latency that we're talking about in this thread. As far as I know, Diablo 3 doesn't report this number in the game's user interface (unlike a game such as World of Warcraft), but I promise that it's still there even though you cannot see it.

Now, let's pretend that you have a latency of 100ms (1/10th of a second). When any of your characters move in the game world, it will take 100ms for the server to receive that information from that particular character's game client, and then another 100ms for that information to be relayed back to the remainder of the game clients on your computer. The information in the game has to take a round-trip to the server, and then back to your house before the game clients are "synced up," but because of latency there is a visual delay.

Everyone deals with this when they multibox, and you can see this in the D3 Quick Setup Wizard video of mine, as well as small presentation I gave about latency in MMORPGs.


If the latency of all my clients (main + 3) is the same, which should be, and the events are being broadcasted in ISBoxer instantly, then I shouldn't be seeing any delay of any sort between my main and my other 3 characters, they should be moving at the same time, regardless of the delay my physical connection has with Blizzard servers.
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bob

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Post Thu Jul 13, 2017 3:22 pm

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

There should be near zero latency between each character receiving keyboard/mouse input from ISBoxer/Innerspace, but only for the local character that each game is in control of. I.e. each game window is running a specific character. That specific character receives the instructions directly from your local computer as to where they should be and what they should do, and they should do that particular action near instantly IN THEIR GAME.

For each game window, for the characters that it does not control, it only receives positional information from Blizzards servers.
Despite the fact that the games are all running on your local computer, they do not talk to each other. The games send messages to each other over several thousand miles of wires, and those messages take a while to go from one game to another.

This is not something that can be fixed. It is just how a MMO works. If D3 had a local lan option, then it would be near perfect synchronisation. It does not, it has to network through Blizzards servers, and that just adds latency and can look a bit disorientating when multiboxing if you are looking at ONE game window and expecting ALL toons to move at the same time.
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Artemix

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Post Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:01 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

bob wrote:There should be near zero latency between each character receiving keyboard/mouse input from ISBoxer/Innerspace, but only for the local character that each game is in control of. I.e. each game window is running a specific character. That specific character receives the instructions directly from your local computer as to where they should be and what they should do, and they should do that particular action near instantly IN THEIR GAME.

For each game window, for the characters that it does not control, it only receives positional information from Blizzards servers.
Despite the fact that the games are all running on your local computer, they do not talk to each other. The games send messages to each other over several thousand miles of wires, and those messages take a while to go from one game to another.

This is not something that can be fixed. It is just how a MMO works. If D3 had a local lan option, then it would be near perfect synchronisation. It does not, it has to network through Blizzards servers, and that just adds latency and can look a bit disorientating when multiboxing if you are looking at ONE game window and expecting ALL toons to move at the same time.


I did some testing yesterday, and performance apparently does influence this delay, when the screen is empty and I get a steady framerate the delay is almost non-existent, when things get a bit agitated I can notice the delay increases.
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bob

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Post Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:26 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

Well yeah, the more things on the screen, requires more data to be synchronised with the servers, and also more processing required per client before it can display the positional updates from the servers. Add in some graphical effects that need to be processed too, then it can make things lag even further as first notification of the effect, position and other sundry bits, needs to take place, then it needs to be calculated, and displayed, so the latency seems even longer due to the extra work that takes place.

Still, that is just how an MMO works.
When playing single player, you just don't see it. You only see your perspective, which is your character always (well mostly except when you lag out) responds to your commands near immediately. Your associates in a group do not see your character move at the same time that you do, because of latency.
When multiboxing, each respective character for their logged in game (i.e. you select a character per window), will appear to do stuff first, and the others in the group (i.e. the ones which you did not select to play in a particular window) will all need to send updates via the servers, and thus lag behind.
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Artemix

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Post Fri Jul 14, 2017 3:50 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

bob wrote:Well yeah, the more things on the screen, requires more data to be synchronised with the servers, and also more processing required per client before it can display the positional updates from the servers. Add in some graphical effects that need to be processed too, then it can make things lag even further as first notification of the effect, position and other sundry bits, needs to take place, then it needs to be calculated, and displayed, so the latency seems even longer due to the extra work that takes place.

Still, that is just how an MMO works.
When playing single player, you just don't see it. You only see your perspective, which is your character always (well mostly except when you lag out) responds to your commands near immediately. Your associates in a group do not see your character move at the same time that you do, because of latency.
When multiboxing, each respective character for their logged in game (i.e. you select a character per window), will appear to do stuff first, and the others in the group (i.e. the ones which you did not select to play in a particular window) will all need to send updates via the servers, and thus lag behind.


Oh, so you say that the positional information of the other 3 characters on the screen is the real one and the one I see of my broadcasting main character is only a visual enhancement to make the appearance of no delay?. That makes sense, however I swear I noticed it on the background clients too, but hard to look at both.
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bob

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Post Fri Jul 14, 2017 4:43 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

Artemix wrote:however I swear I noticed it on the background clients too, but hard to look at both.
Yes, the "background" clients will show the same behaviour too, but on those ones, the respective character that they are driving (i.e. the character you logged into that game) would appear to do stuff immediately and the other toons of the group (including your "main") would lag behind.

Each game window is driving a specific character, and each specific character will appear to do stuff immediately, while the others lag behind a bit because the others not being driven through a particular window are subject to the latency of only receiving updates about the others via the Servers.
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Artemix

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Post Fri Jul 14, 2017 6:18 am

Re: Broadcasting delay solution?.

bob wrote:
Artemix wrote:however I swear I noticed it on the background clients too, but hard to look at both.
Yes, the "background" clients will show the same behaviour too, but on those ones, the respective character that they are driving (i.e. the character you logged into that game) would appear to do stuff immediately and the other toons of the group (including your "main") would lag behind.

Each game window is driving a specific character, and each specific character will appear to do stuff immediately, while the others lag behind a bit because the others not being driven through a particular window are subject to the latency of only receiving updates about the others via the Servers.


Thanks for the clarification, now everything makes sense.
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