4 ms·
I am soooo grateful for this post. After years and years of words and one-off measurements, this is the first time I have seen clear measuring of the key metri
by cagenut 2y ago
I am soooo grateful for this post. After years and years of words and one-off measurements, this is the first time I have seen clear measuring of the key metrics, specifically for someone considering the 'fast twitch shooter' (counterstrike et al) use case. To sum:
- the satellite handoff period is 15 seconds
- you cycle through the three nearest satellites
- on the farthest one, inside the 15 second stable connection window, latency is 40 - 55ms
- on the middle one latency is 30 - 45ms
- on the closest one latency is 20 - 35ms
- the moment of handoff between satellites is a 70 - 100ms latency spike
- more importantly it is a near guaranteed moment of ~10% packet loss
so my takeaway here is "it will mostly seem fine but you will stutter-lag every 15 seconds". given that not every 15 seconds will be an active moment of 'twitch off' shooting the engine will probably smooth over most of them without you noticing.
this could probably be used in subtle ways the same as laghacking already is. like if you knew some packet loss was coming and you knew how your engine handled it you could do things like time jumps around corners so you appear to teleport. or if the engine is very conservative then you could at least know "don't push that corner right now, wait 2 seconds for the handoff, then go".
edit: side note, thinking about the zoom use case, and this would be kindof awful? imagine dropping a syllable every 15 seconds in a conversation.
- bhbh 2y agoThis is not how it works in practise. I’ve been on Starlink for more than three months, and I play CS and other competetive shooters daily. There is no such a thing 100ms latency spikes every X seconds. Same for packet loss. Teams calls are no problem at all, and the latency and quality of the Internet is comparible to that of a fibre lane. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if you didn’t know you are on the Starlink network.
- brokenmachine 2y ago>the latency and quality of the Internet is comparible to that of a fibre lane #doubt
- EricE 2y agoBased on what? The receiver knows where it is since it has GPS. Starlink knows the orbits of their own satellites. Why wouldn't they queue up connections to upcoming satellites and then hand off from one to the next in anticipation of the one you are on eventually rotating out? What's up with the apparent assumption they only track one satellite at a time or until there is a communication problem? That would be stupid (and why they obviously don't do that).
- brokenmachine 2y agoBased on life experience with anything wireless. From cellphones to wifi to bluetooth, it's all shit compared to fiber.
- j45 2y agoI have tried Starlink as well and video calls have been fine.