Hi,
Just thought I'd give you an official response about the current state of driving in APB and what we intend to do in the future.
The driving experience is affected by many factors, and each cause different behaviour:
- The server update rate: low server update rate manifests as general latency between starting server-authoritative actions, and seeing the results on your computer.
- The client update rate (fps): low client update rate will introduce latency between all input and seeing the results on your computer.
- Network latency (the amount of time it takes for your network data to travel across the internet to our servers and back to your computer): this feels similar to low server update rate.
- Spikes in the server update rate (the server taking longer to process an update that it usually does): this results in objects being corrected, snapping to their locations on the server.
- Spikes in the client update rate (the client taking longer than usual to do its work for an update): when this is happening it usually has a large impact on driving, as the client computer freezes but the server is still simulating your vehicle, so when the client unfreezes, you've often crashed or lost control.
As you can see, the update rate and performance of your computer, and your geographic location will have a large bearing on your driving experience. The update rate and “spikyness” of the server also have a large effect, and we are working on that.
Each aspect needs to be to be right before the game will feel as we intend it to. Please, continue to objectively report your experience with driving, but understand we're not done yet and we are closely monitoring the situation.
Thanks,