Why is it so difficult to drive?

[Kent Gissing 5]

Something I really hate when driving any car in this game is the fact that every once in a while, the game will just randomly give you a boost and you will end up wrecking the car against a wall or a tree. Or, which has happened to me frequently, the game will bounce you several meters back on the road and you have that moment of being temporarily disoriented and the turn you had just begun to execute now leads you straight into a barrier.

These things seem to happen most often in cities, probably has something to do with loading and rendering, but it still makes driving extremely hazardous if you want to keep the car which you have spent hours and hours to build and maintain, as the cars are extremely fragile. Just now I had a Volga in pristine condition, I snail-paced myself past barriers in Elektro and then suddenly WOOOSH, a sudden boost straight into a block of concrete, car ruined and everything is going to have to be collected again. It's getting to that point where cars are just goals in and of themselves; get the car, park it in a tent and have it collect dust while you enjoy the achievment, but actually drive it at your own peril.

What I want to know is, is it a known bug that others are experiencing too or is it something that just happens to me? I have a private server where I have an unnaturally fast day-night cycle, but other than that, I have made no particular changes to any default settings.

[cj187_berlin 23]

+1

[matiman 166]

it is a known behavior unfortunatly. I repaired 9 cars since beta and crashed 3 because of these kind of lags. And I'm pretty sure everyone else that drove a car experienced these lags at some points.

 

My understanding of the issue is that cars are managed on server side in SA (instead of arma/mod where they were managed client side). That means any desync between client and server could cause this.

So if you have a slight internet lag, server will continue to move the car forward, but client will freeze (as it can't reach the server for few seconds), and when the client resync with server, your car will be teleported forward (may be in a tree or a wall if your unlucky..)

I confirm this happens a lot more in large city, or near camps, probably because the server have more objects to handle and is more likely to have performances drop.

 

That said (and if I'm right of course), it will probably be a very difficult issue to adress, because this is not just cars that needs few improvement, but the whole client/server sync layer that must be optimized, and server performances more globally.

That sadly makes me beleive we will never have working helicopters in SA, at least if they are managed the same way cars are today... 

[Guy Smiley 534]

1 hour ago, matiman said:

it is a known behavior unfortunatly. I repaired 9 cars since beta and crashed 3 because of these kind of lags. And I'm pretty sure everyone else that drove a car experienced these lags at some points.

 

My understanding of the issue is that cars are managed on server side in SA (instead of arma/mod where they were managed client side). That means any desync between client and server could cause this.

So if you have a slight internet lag, server will continue to move the car forward, but client will freeze (as it can't reach the server for few seconds), and when the client resync with server, your car will be teleported forward (may be in a tree or a wall if your unlucky..)

I confirm this happens a lot more in large city, or near camps, probably because the server have more objects to handle and is more likely to have performances drop.

 

That said (and if I'm right of course), it will probably be a very difficult issue to adress, because this is not just cars that needs few improvement, but the whole client/server sync layer that must be optimized, and server performances more globally.

That sadly makes me beleive we will never have working helicopters in SA, at least if they are managed the same way cars are today... 

I can confirm something like this.  I had just left Electro heading east and I decided to open it up.  I was doing about 100 km/h when I froze for a couple of seconds, heard a clunk and got the "you are dead".  Lost a lot of stuff but oh well.  Start again and will not drive so fast until they fix, if they are able to fix, this

[cj187_berlin 23]

Patch 1.01 has better driving Performance than 1.02!

 

With 1.00 and 1.01 I never crashed a car! NEVER!!!

 

And 3 days after 1.02 I was stop 10-12 meters in front of a closed industrial gate and got instant lag.

One second later I hear two times crahsounds and my car stands inside the gate!

Ruined radiator, hood, wheels and battery. 😞

[Kent Gissing 5]

22 hours ago, matiman said:

So if you have a slight internet lag, server will continue to move the car forward, but client will freeze (as it can't reach the server for few seconds), and when the client resync with server, your car will be teleported forward (may be in a tree or a wall if your unlucky..)

That would be a possible reason. However, I am running my own server on the same PC I use to play. And no, it is actually a closed server, so for all intents and purposes it is only me in that world. The intent is for me to be able to use my own server environment as sort of a test realm for myself when it comes to things like building bases or learning to drive cars without running the risk of being sniped by some PvP jagoff with a scope. ^^ But yeah, so lag is not really an issue here, unless there is some necessary data being transmitted from my server to Steam and then back to my PC again.

[matiman 166]

4 minutes ago, Kent Gissing said:

But yeah, so lag is not really an issue here, unless there is some necessary data being transmitted from my server to Steam and then back to my PC again.

Internet lag is a possible reason for client/server desync, but I supposed you could have same kind of desync with performances drop on server side (that could explain that it happens more often in large cities).

[Evilsausage 87]

Still things work quite well in Arma 3. Even if this is more demanding you would think they would have it fixed by now. After all they have had many years to solve the issue....

[Mookie (original) 799]

This is the sharp end of how BI has failed to invest enough in the game. It's just a joke that in 2019 you can't drive a car in a computer game.

Beta my ass.

[-Gews- 7443]

7 hours ago, Mookie (original) said:

This is the sharp end of how BI has failed to invest enough in the game. It's just a joke that in 2019 you can't drive a car in a computer game.

Automobiles first introduced to DayZ in 2014, still flying into the sky and suffering undriveable lag or desync in 2019.

For some reason I didn't have any unreasonable problems in ARMA 3 even sliding my pickup through cities at up to 150, 200 km/h or however fast it goes on the high-pop KOTH servers.

But DayZ SA the vehicles seem almost unfixable? 


(Of course sometimes ARMA 3 has its small issues too)

 

[Kent Gissing 5]

Lol, just had another absurd close call.

Drove a LADA to the town of Krasnostav, made it through the city without much incident, then just as I was about to exit on the other side of town I figured I would run down a zombie because he was more or less in the way. Well, the Zombie remained standing up and clipped through the car unharmed, and I was like "Uh-oh"... if you drive a car straight through a frozen zombie and he just passes through, then you know what's about to happen. And true enough, just as I figured, the next moment the game suddenly warp-jumps me and the car all the way back (!!) to a point on the road before we even had entered the town, it was like going through a hyperspace tunnel without all the fancy effects. XD I slammed down on the brakes hard and luckily, this time I managed to come to a complete stop without crashing into anything. But my heart was racing almost as much as if I had been in a PvP skirmish.

I think this thread should just be about people talking about their close calls. You just kind of have to laugh at it at this point. ^^

[Private Evans 1303]

As stated in Arma3 devblogs and interviews a large part of the Arma team is now working on the enfusion engine ( the rest seems to work and support Vigor instead of DayZ). They further said that we will not see a new Arma title in the new future because of the new tech that will be used in all BI future games ( Enfusion) does not meet their standarts by now !!

This engine is simply far away from being finished and even more far away from being next gen in this current state. This goes for vehicles, interior lighting, view distance, weather systems, ragdoll even map creating ...

it will still take years not months to get everything on par with the current used next gen engines used in other games....and DayZ being the proving ground

 

 

[lex__1 168]

I often notice one strange pattern when the server is lagging behind.
If I accelerate the movement forward, the character throws, or you can see the character jumps. But in other situations, acceleration does not reproduce jumps.
I think everyone had a bad experience when climbing the vertical stairs, on the roof of a building or on a tower ... When I accelerate to the top of the stairs, I can get a strong lag. If you continue to accelerate to the top, you can lose touch with the stairs, fall \ fly off the stairs and die. But if you speed down the stairs, the speed of rapid descent does not reproduce the lag for the character. In both actions there is a rapid movement of the character, but the lag is recorded only in one direction of movement. It seems that the lag occurs only when the server calculates the expenditure of energy of the character in motion, and not the fact of a rapid change in the position of the character. Movement of the character to the top of the stairs causes a large expenditure of energy and down without spending energy.

[amadieus 316]

Cars work pretty good in offline mode... It just becomes a bit sad to get a new car in the last patch while online they are almost unusable due to server performance issues.

[Kent Gissing 5]

On 4/18/2019 at 6:53 PM, amadieus said:

Cars work pretty good in offline mode... It just becomes a bit sad to get a new car in the last patch while online they are almost unusable due to server performance issues.

What do you mean "offline mode"? How do you play offline?

[amadieus 316]

4 hours ago, Kent Gissing said:

What do you mean "offline mode"? How do you play offline?

You can toy around in the offline mode with this community mod: https://github.com/Arkensor/DayZCommunityOfflineMode/releases

[Kent Gissing 5]

 

Here is a clear example of what I am talking about.

 

 

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

On 4/15/2019 at 7:19 PM, Evilsausage said:

Still things work quite well in Arma 3. Even if this is more demanding you would think they would have it fixed by now. After all they have had many years to solve the issue....

This is one thing I would strongly defend the devs on. I'd rather have mechanics which strives for 'authenticity' and remains long overdue WIP than drive smoothly like in Arma 3, where vehicles have that distinct feel of Need For Speed from 20 years ago. What I mean  first and foremost is, obviously, how the 'S' key works first like a brake and then like the rear gear. What is this? And the whole engine RPM shtick works badly at the moment, but at least it's there. All that Arma 3 shows is how easy it is to implement vehicle driving from 1995 - and why we shouldn't do that.

And yeah, currently the cars drive poorly. My solution is to maintain slow-to-average speed - around 50 kmh in cities, at sharp turns, etc. 70-80 kmh at smoother patches, 90-100 on really nice long stretches of road. The cars are actually very sturdy and you shouldn't destroy any car parts even if you hit at a wall at <50kmh. Your mileage may vary with this.

Having said, just yesterday I totaled a car at the Chernogorsk blockade after a crash to desktop. It never hurts to ask active admins for help/compensation on community servers.

[-Gews- 7443]

1 hour ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

This is one thing I would strongly defend the devs on. I'd rather have mechanics which strives for 'authenticity' and remains long overdue WIP than drive smoothly like in Arma 3, where vehicles have that distinct feel of Need For Speed from 20 years ago. What I mean  first and foremost is, obviously, how the 'S' key works first like a brake and then like the rear gear. What is this? And the whole engine RPM shtick works badly at the moment, but at least it's there. All that Arma 3 shows is how easy it is to implement vehicle driving from 1995 - and why we shouldn't do that.

I disagree, ARMA 3 driving has been a lot better than what I experience in DayZ.

I got pretty good, I think, at driving the pickups in KOTH, entering Kavala at near 200 km/h and sliding around the streets. In DayZ I just avoid vehicles altogether. Btw, ARMA 3 does indeed have engine RPMs, torque curve, etc. Somewhat more advanced than it appears on the surface. A lot of A3 vehicles sucked, but some were pretty nice. It depends on their config. But they can work very nicely, and DayZ I haven't experienced that. And I don't expect to see DayZ kart-racing anytime soon. 

Feels a lot more "authentic", or whatever, than DayZ, simply because I can actually decently control my vehicles. Of course, it would be nice to have both, but having good control of the vehicle, is to me is more important than having manual transmission mechanics. 

By the way, sure it has the manual gear-shift mechanics, but DayZ driving really isn't very authentic in the end.

Proof? Plug in a wheel, and prepare to cry...

[Tarkules 153]

2 hours ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

What I mean  first and foremost is, obviously, how the 'S' key works first like a brake and then like the rear gear. What is this? And the whole engine RPM shtick works badly at the moment, but at least it's there.

S always functions as brakes. You put the gear in Reverse and hit the gas with "W" to drive backwards. I think most of the problems in vehicles originates from server/sync/lag issues, not lack of development. I mean, sure, a car honk would be a nice addition but network problems are more urgent and basic to address.

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

12 hours ago, -Gews- said:

I disagree, ARMA 3 driving has been a lot better than what I experience in DayZ.

 

Hm, interesting. I played mainly Exile, I don't know if it has anything to do with that. Various servers, maps and mods (within that modpack, ofc). The entire physics and mechanics, either the reverse or going through forests, felt like something I vaguely remember from the 90s. If my toon ate a magic mushroom and suddenly got bigger but also faster, that would be more or less that kind of experience. Maybe I'm getting it wrong, maybe it's different solutions for Exile. I don't remember that much (and I don't care that much) about cars in other games, but I do remember being far from impressed, from NFS to Arma 3 alike. I played KOTH some, but largely on foot. 😉

And yes, gears and RPM work abysmally in DayZ at the moment. I do all forest roads on 1, all hard roads on 2, on long straight stretches I use 3. Gear 4 is useless even if I step on the pedal at the NWAF. RPM works poorly and unauthentically. It's really early stages of WIP (I believe we're still in alpha, not beta). My only point was - at least it's something.

It's kinda like with bicycles in Exile, where I feel like a circus bear on a trike and a part of me chuckles most of the time. I miss bikes in DayZ, but not like this. I'd rather wait, even years not months.

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

11 hours ago, Tarkules said:

S always functions as brakes. You put the gear in Reverse and hit the gas with "W" to drive backwards.

I'm not an expert in racing games, but I tried some titles. As far as I remember, S is used to slow down and then to reverse, like no element of anything in the world. DayZ is the only game I know where you put the reverse on and use W to go backwards. And I'm really loving it. I remember all the car models in DayZ on the Polish streets back in the day and I would just hate it to see a Volga with automatic transmission.

There are probably more games where you use W/reverse to go backwards, I just don't know them.

I agree that our main problem nowadays is lag, but there's still helluva room for improvement in car mechanics.

[-Gews- 7443]

8 hours ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

Hm, interesting. I played mainly Exile, I don't know if it has anything to do with that. Various servers, maps and mods (within that modpack, ofc). The entire physics and mechanics, either the reverse or going through forests, felt like something I vaguely remember from the 90s. If my toon ate a magic mushroom and suddenly got bigger but also faster, that would be more or less that kind of experience. Maybe I'm getting it wrong, maybe it's different solutions for Exile. I don't remember that much (and I don't care that much) about cars in other games, but I do remember being far from impressed, from NFS to Arma 3 alike. I played KOTH some, but largely on foot. 😉

And yes, gears and RPM work abysmally in DayZ at the moment. I do all forest roads on 1, all hard roads on 2, on long straight stretches I use 3. Gear 4 is useless even if I step on the pedal at the NWAF. RPM works poorly and unauthentically. It's really early stages of WIP (I believe we're still in alpha, not beta). My only point was - at least it's something.

It's kinda like with bicycles in Exile, where I feel like a circus bear on a trike and a part of me chuckles most of the time. I miss bikes in DayZ, but not like this. I'd rather wait, even years not months.

I don't have A3 installed but I remember I specifically enjoyed the offroad pickup and kart. The sedans were crap, turned too jerkily. You could slide the pickup pretty well, which is nice for adjusting when you only have WASD to control it, and the kart is a kart. It's not much of a driving simulator but it was a big improvement on A2.

Not looking at the entire car config, but DayZ actually has the proper gear ratios input IIRC. Not that this means it works correctly. 

[-Gews- 7443]

Here's one from Reddit just today (lol)

[Tarkules 153]

I really like the controls as they are. Much closer to realism than other games.

I just wonder if they will dare to implement a clutch someday. Only players aged above 30 will be able to drive then, which is another step towards a safer apocalyptic world 🙂