How does this relate to TF2 in the old days freezing for a few seconds, and then everything happens in fast motion when the client catches up? (Explosions, you die, etc)
Interpolation, even at the highest settings, has a limit. If multiple data packets from the server are missed in a row, either due to the server hanging or your internet choking, the client basically gives up on guessing where everything is and the world pauses.
As soon as it gets a fresh game state from the server though, it then has to reconcile the paused client game state (wrong) with the server where stuff kept happening (right). It does that over the interpolation interval to get back in sync, so the world appears to run super fast.
That basically never happens today because of how far hardware and connections have come. It can, it just doesn’t. And I think they’ve improved the netcode’s stability a lot since the olden days so the server doesn’t hang nearly as much as it used to.
How does this relate to TF2 in the old days freezing for a few seconds, and then everything happens in fast motion when the client catches up? (Explosions, you die, etc)
Interpolation, even at the highest settings, has a limit. If multiple data packets from the server are missed in a row, either due to the server hanging or your internet choking, the client basically gives up on guessing where everything is and the world pauses.
As soon as it gets a fresh game state from the server though, it then has to reconcile the paused client game state (wrong) with the server where stuff kept happening (right). It does that over the interpolation interval to get back in sync, so the world appears to run super fast.
That basically never happens today because of how far hardware and connections have come. It can, it just doesn’t. And I think they’ve improved the netcode’s stability a lot since the olden days so the server doesn’t hang nearly as much as it used to.