If there's a square grid in that process for Planetside 2, it'd have to be for coarse culling, not anything final. The game is pretty precise about ranging this

If there's a square grid in that process for Planetside 2, it'd have to be for coarse culling, not anything final. The game is pretty precise about ranging this stuff, if not always responsive (pop-in can be pretty bad in dense fights). The US East server had ~900 people on it an hour ago, and this isn't a peak time. With that many people, there are two continents open, but usually most of the players are on one continent or the other. Continents are big, and support many separate battles at once (spatially separated, no hard lines). A very big battle may have 200+ players, and with certain exceptions players in it won't need to know anything about players outside that particular battle. If there are actually 200+ other players near you (within the nominal 300 meter range where updates should be sent), the server won't be sending you data on all at once, just whatever it thinks is the most relevant subset (hence the pop-in). It also breaks the 300-meter default to send data on and for snipers (and probably some other stuff) a bit further out.