Discussions about possible future Multiplayer modes

Since the other thread went a bit off topic, here is its content about the multiplayer copied over, so that we can have a longer discussion.

Quote from antigoon

Since the Robin 400 is a popular towplane, is or could it be possible in multiplayer for a player+player tow for a glider? ie. the Robin is flown by a player, and the glider is flown by a player?

The major issue is the ping between the two devices. Some people are pleased with 10ms ping but others have 300ms. So worst case: each person has a ping of 300ms, then you lose 0.6 seconds just by sending the data back and forth. If you have to calculate something based on that data, you easily lose 0.7 - 0.8 seconds total. In that time the dr400 moved almost 30 meters, so you really would have to extrapolate the position of the aircraft well in order to get a smoth experience. You can't just have the towing plane jump left and right, up and down for more than a few centimeters in an instant, otherwise you would get in trouble with the rope physics calculation. Or you leave away the physics, so that the towing plane is never affected by any rope forces...
And for a formation flight of F18s near Mach 1.0 it could quickly be 250+ meters. So when one player sees the other player at its side the other player sees him 250meters behind, unless you find a way to synchronize the times, maybe give every player itself a delay of 100ms that isn't to noticeable but still send its actual position to over the network... receieved data could be interpolated and then both pilots would see each other at identical locations.

Quote from antigoon

Wow, that might just get complicated. Hadn't thought of ping/netlag kind of things. A standard 100ms delay for all wouldn't be possible I think, that would mean you'd need massive servers if you want to calculate 10 or 15 aircraft and all their positions/physics etc.

So, impossible? Might be. Sad But thanks for the good reply

The calculation time that it takes to extrapolate the positions is least problem. The largest load would be on the (average) graphics card, you can't render than four aircaft at the same level of detail that the default aircraft have... An average graphics card simply can't handle the amount of textures (roughly 1 GB for those textures of four aircraft alone, leaves only 1GB for the scenery if are lucky to have a card with 2GB memory) and 200.000 triangles * 4 players + couple 100.000 ~= 1million triangles to be rendered at 60 frames per seconds... bb frame rate. If all players use the same airplanes, you could probably render 5 HD players to the screen... But if you want more aircraft and more variety you need to decrease the quality and start to replace aircraft models.

Since every player already calculates their own physics the servers don't have to do that at all. Their job is to synchronize the players and forward the information of a player to everyone else. Extrapolating the positions from the history of the aircafts path, current velocity and total mass is quite simple. Creating a smart algorithm that can deal with stutters or lack of information, when one player disconnects for a short period of time, that is what makes this a more difficult task. And of course the whole delay issue mentioned above.

Suggestion: Multiplayer modes
I would like to have multiple kinds of multiplayers for the Aerofly FS 2:

• private networks with up to 5 players in high definition for formation flights or hanging out with couple of friends, maybe up to 20 players with a low resolution setting.
• public servers like vatsim, pilotedge where you see all aircraft near by that fly on these networks, you would have to speak to the vatsim/pilotedge controllers and follow their instructions.
• public free for all with simlified aircaft models, no voice chat here, but simple text chat. Here is would be great to have a checkbox to filter out other players by testing their realism level (no fighters, no "emergencies", no "away from keyboard" on the runways for more than 30s, if they fly to fast, to steep, or inverted => fade them out and only make them reappear if they behave for a couple of minutes). That way, if you are annoyed by other players, you don't need to see them... And nobody needs to ban them manually, you can always see all other traffic even if you are derping around.

For all of the modes it would be nice to see

• option to display all vatsim/pilotedge/... aircaft even when I am not in any multiplayer session
• option to sync ai aircraft with the network and display ai aircraft in addition to other players

How would you like to see the multiplayer?

Cheers,
Jan

Personally, I have never tested the multiplayer feature in Condor. Maybe I should look if I find a good video example...
What are the main features that make the Condor multiplayer good for you, maybe the Aerofly FS 2 could implement similar things?

Oh yeah, there is IVAO, too. I forgot to add them, sorry.