Invisible Walls (Invisowalls) and Lag

[Majination]

Invisowall: often blamed on lag not really caused by it. when a trail is dissapearing teh end of teh visible wall is not always teh actual wall so if you turn into a wall that has just passed you and you think you are in teh clear sometimes you arent. also in holes in the wall sometimes the hole is larger tahn it appears usually the game sorts this out and youll see holes shrink once and a while better to be safe and go for the center of the holes not the edges.

I believe, as do most others I play with, that the invisi-wall happens when a player is cored. It seems as though when a player dies the length of their wall is slightly longer than it appears. So, give ample room when maneuvering around the end of someone's tail that has just died.

[Lackadaisical]

I think majination is right, when a player gets core dumped, the server registrates is and sends it to the other players, because the other players get this info later than it happened on the server the tail in the game is already a bit further. When your comp receives the message it does stop the tail, but too late.

In theory you should be able to go trough the end of the tail you see from a player who is still alive, because the bike is actually in front of where you see it (at least it does on my screen..). And the end of the tail should also be a bit in front of where we see it too. Never tested it ingame though..

[Tank Program]

Also, I've noticed that with this "reversing" that the double command necessary to be sent to the server create a lag in the resonse to the client... So, a player who has just done that will appear to be going straight ahead but have turned. Also what that happens if the player does it just right they double over on their own trail. For some wierd reason it can become invisible when this happens, or just when there are sparks nearby sometimes... Just like have you ever noticed that if you get up on a wall really close your camera moves to the other side, and you appear on the other side of the wall you're actually on? That messes things up too with your display...

[Majination]

That messed up view you sometimes get when you grind along the outer wall is I think caused by the Smart Cam. Imagine you are speeding along and then make a 90 degree turn to grind along the wall. The Smart Cam kind of gets thrown past the outer wall before gradually coming back in to follow you. It is at this point that your view is all fubar and you are vulnerable. Under normal circumstances this "object in motion tends to stay in motion" makes the experience more real, but it sure would be nice if the camera would smack the wall and follow behind. =)

[Majination]

That's an interesting idea, Lack. I certainly never thought about it, but it makes sense. Just as the bike is always a little further than where it appears to be, so should be the tail. I'll have to try it out and see. =)

[n54]

just a very small opinion here:

it might be that invisiwalls arent so much a feature of missing "placement info" (where the tail actually ends) as it might instead be missing "property info" (is the wall visible or not).

outragous? maybe, but i seem to have had the following experience several times: invisowalls usually "appears" (haha) when i "see" the end while the player dies somewhere, while on the other hand if the end of the wall isn't rendered on the screen before after the player has died there usually isn't an invisowall there (hope that made sense to all).

hard to know if this has any merit without looking at the code (and understanding the code). what i'm saying is simply that i think it might be not only a lag problem but perhaps a rendering problem (and maybe only that).

another experience pointing in the same direction is that i've seen invisowalls corrected (they stop being invisowalls and are rendered correctly instead) while driving towards them (doesn't happen often thou).

how come? (this is all speculation)
1. player speeds along dragging trail calculated to end so and so by client
2. player dies small lag where the client still believes the player to speed along and calculates trail accordingly
3. client is updated about player death from server
4. clients sets value (coordinates) for where trail stops BUT somehow the difference in rendering of the wall isn't changed by the client

seems there are duplicate variables somewhere in the code (1 pair for wall end and 1 pair for rendering), and that they don't get syncronised fast enough otherwise i can't really see this happening but who knows?

*phew*

[Tank Program]

Hmmm, I agree with the rendering theroy. If you look at system options -> display options -> performance tweaks, and enable the second one down, on my system walls disapear entirely! (Or at least when I enable one of those the walls disapear.) Does this happen to anyone else?

[n54]

that's something different imo, concerns all rendering directly and universally (depends only on the make of gfx card).

i might be wrong about anything anyway thou

[Tank Program]

Happens on both my nVidia and ATI cards...

[Majination]

I had given this some thought while playing this morning but didn't quite fit all the pieces together as well as you have above, n54. I came to realize that I never seem to run into an invisiwall unless the tail was already within my view when the player died. I think you are on to something with it being a rendering problem.

I wonder if the beginning of the wall actually does NOT exist and is okay to turn into, meaning the entire length of the wall is slightly further than what it appears. If this is not the case and the beginning of the wall is drawn in the correct (updated} position when a player dies in your view, maybe the tail not being drawn correctly is simply an oversight in the coding of those routines.

[iceman]

ive had the camera do some strange things at times but find that if ya tap the zoom in or out keys the camera snaps back to where it should be

[juwb]

I had invisible walls as well (no wall visible behind my bike until I turned). This happens when I go very very fast (especially on servers that use brake as turbo and you do some turbo grinding...).

As long as it doesn't happen in normal games, I don't care...