You know those games of CSGO where whatever you do is wrong?
Round after round you try different tactics but seem to die instantly, as though your
opponents have a half second head-start in gunfights?
This was one of those games, so I got my own recording and compared it with the Source
TV to see how they compared.
The first thing I noticed was how similar they are.
I was hoping for a clear-cut difference with these clips but CSGO obviously employs lag
compensation and time travel stuff to make it as fair as possible.
I'll play the rest of the clips at 25% speed, matching up my character's movements between
recordings.
Now before I go any further I have a confession to make, I'm from England and this was most
likely an American server.
Despite all this, there were complaints all around about the server, EVEN FROM THE OTHER
TEAM who were dominating us.
The average rank on this server was about silver elite, though there was a Master Guardian
Elite on the other team because matchmaking.
As I go plummeting through the air towards this guy- the Master Guardian Elite- the difference
is noticeable.
The moment I die on my screen I suddenly teleport up in the air again to where I actually was
according to the server when I died.
This reminds me of all those times where I reach cover, only to die and to teleport out
into the open area again.
This is about as frustrating as it gets, apart from those AWP shots that obviously hit but
somehow don't.
I can understand if you're disappointed with my findings.
It looks as though, even with the server and lag I was experiencing, the difference is
still only in the last two shots you fire off with an automatic weapon.
With a ping of 100, about one tenth of a second, this seems to make sense.
It still means that, all other things being equal, you're two shots behind in a firefight,
which is definitely enough to make a difference.
Now this is an interesting one.
I was off to the side, admittedly, but if things were where they were on my screen,
I may still have stood a chance against the second person.
On my screen I'm still getting a couple of hits on him, while on the SourceTV recording
I'm missing by a mile.
Let me sync this up to the gunshots.
There are definitely some differences between these.
Here are stills of the moment the bullet fires.
In the first shot my bullet could have hit both of them but according to Source TV, I
was closer to hitting the person in the distance.
On my screen I was hitting the person in front, but Source TV shows it actually hit the man
behind.
The third shot is acceptable.
Both clips seem to show a headshot of some kind here and the ragdoll has replaced the
model in the Source TV view.
With the fifth, the death has been confirmed on SourceTV.
Oh look, the sixth shows a beautiful headshot on my screen, as opposed to a total miss on
the other one.
With the seventh shot, the first kill is finally confirmed on my screen.
Took two whole shots!
The next two shots are misses, fair and square.
As usual, I get the perfect headshot on the final shot which doesn't even count since
I'm already dead according to the Source TV view.
It felt like that for most of the game.
I know what 100 ping feels like but this was a lot worse and I can't help but think it
was the server that was at fault as well... but I have no proof of that.
So how does this one look in slow motion?
This is with my character's movements lined up, which seem to operate in a different reality
to the gunshots.
Now again, but with lined up gunshots.
Now that looked fine to me, whatever lag compensation was in place there seemed to work quite well.
Let's view another shot later on, with gunshots lined up once more.
Now in this case, SourceTV shows me as having better reflexes than my screen does!
I guess the real problem with lag compensation is that the ping isn't constant.
Fluctuations with the connection will cause it to always over or under compensate to some
degree, which is even worse than, say, always being slightly behind the action, since you
can never compensate for random delay.
I was hoping to find an example where I could line up one gunshot timing perfectly and for
it not to coincide with the next shot to show that there are random amounts of delay, but
I couldn't find an example in this match.
While we're on the limitations of the SourceTV vs the actual gameplay, take a look at this.
Who knows how many people have looked suspicious in SourceTV through no fault of their own?
In my opinion, if you're having a proper match you must still record your own demo, since
you can't rely on SourceTV to always show you in the best possible light.
Your own recording should at least give you some more protection should people suspect
you of cheating.
And that concludes this video.
I don't quite know what I set out to achieve and I understand that having lag doesn't exactly
give my findings the most weight.
The moral of this story is to stick to servers with the lowest ping possible.
But even in this worst-case scenario, remember that other people on my team, and perhaps
even the enemies I was facing, were suffering from the same problems.
Does this balance it out?
Does this mean that I just happened to suck massively for this entire game, when the games
played either side were okay?
Who knows.
Annoyingly, I don't know if I'll ever be able to test that.
Several people in this match reported the server and we can only hope that problems
like this become less frequent... for everybody's sake.