Complete Movement Smoothing

[OnePercent]

Key words come to mind "Interpolation" and "Dead Reckoning" which are the technical terms that describe fluid, smooth multiplayer experiences. Well,  based on a video I have seen on Microsoft flight simulator 2020.

Case in point, it has been 10 years that Shores of Hazeron has been open to the public, and I believe it is time to drill this functionality into the game before an aspirational steam release.

Refer to the video's below to see my usual experience of the game's AI, animals and other players movement when observing from my own perspective (they all look the same)

https://youtu.be/Zddbo1-yn0c?t=44

Note that, that video is from 2015 and is still relevant to the issue at hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o7n6reHqLo

Crew movement; video as of this week. Same for troops etc and other players appear to slide show as well as they run - you can imagine what PVP is like...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyfguFib11E

Nature's animals, same as crew etc, video taken as of this week.

A good article on the topic as well: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1...g_for_.php

Now i'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the field, but i'm pretty sure a lot of other multiplayer, and even more faster paced games employ some form of this methodology in their design, and hopefully, we see the same being employed in Hazeron.

[Raymoo]

It's not as bad as that video now, though I think there are just more updates sent rather than interpolation being done. Sometimes ship movement does seem really jerky, but I think in the current game that when that happens the ship actually being moved slowly and jerkily because something on the server's end is lagging.

[OnePercent]

It is that bad, for me, always

[Neils Iyssada]

For me too. Could it be because of the server ping as I'm in Europe ?

[Celarious]

Can confirm it's also as bad for me, sometimes watching the AI pilot is like a powerpoint slideshow

[OnePercent]

And finally, player movement itself, video of a player moving from my perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7c_lICNSYQ

I just want to stress that it's not a game breaking issue (apart from being UNABLE to hit fast moving players in PVP fights) but I think it's important to highlight that appeal is relevant if you want to get a game noticed. I think it would benefit Hazeron greatly if the whole world sees gameplay in a clear and concise manner.

[Vectorus]

Also being in Europe, I see server-side motion as a faster or slower slideshow depending on the weather. I tend to think that smooth predicted movement with occasional rubberbanding - when client predictions don't agree with server decisions - is preferable to accurate but unsmooth movement. Certainly worth a try, anyway.

[OnePercent]

And this is already the case for our own avatars in a way, and I rarely get rubberbanding even with a 300+ms ping