Is UDP good enough for network gaming? Absolutely. IMO, UDP is the only thing good enough for online, real time gaming.
To answer a few questions, the --multiplay code uses only UDP. I believe there is another effort going on that uses TCP and a central server to provide multiplay functionality, but I don't know much more than that. When we put our code together, we wanted the network to have as small an overhead as possible, thus having a minimal effect on frame rate. UDP, is as small an overhead as you'll find. If you need extra reliability, then implement your own protocol at the application level - sequence numbers, ACKs, NACKs - whatever you need, you can still keep it lighter and faster than TCP/IP if it only needs to be simple. If I had the time to develop the Multiplay code further for flightgear, I'd add sequence numbers to the "update" packets (that contain player positions), and simply throw away any that arrive out of order, and add "control" messages that require ACK, but keep them 1 to 1 so message queue complexity is greatly reduced. If you develop a full on message queue - you may as well have used TCP/IP. Cheers, Diarmuid Tyson. > I was think considering the choice of network protocol > for a scenario server I am considering (see old posts > for more details), I am not sure if "fire it and hope > for the best" is the best system for a scenario > server. > > I would have suggested broadcasting but I found a > higher probability of network storms in prior > implementations. > > Thoughts? > > > > > Paul, > > > > I have used the UDP interface for the remote > display, but I believe that it can use either. I > realy prefer UDP since it has let network overhead, > and if a packet gets lost you won't be held up waiting > for the retransmission. That said, if you are on a > noisy network you may have to use TCP. > > > > Jonathan Polley > > > > On Sunday, August 03, 2003, at 04:06PM, Paul Morriss > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > >Hi all, > > > Does flightgear use UDP (connection-less) or > connect > > >oriented in the networking code? > > > > > >Also do you feel that UDP is good enough for > network > > >gaming. > > > > > >Thanks > > > _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
