I've been convinced for some time that the meter stutter is caused in large part to WGT sending and receiving packets during the swing...WGT should consider that a player having an uninterrupted swing is more important than notifying me that a friend is now online...check 1 time for friend updates (and invites) as the next shot loads and be done with it.
so i did some simple testing...1st of all i observed my IP traffic while nothing was running except the wgt gameclient...on average 3 packets are sent and received in the time it takes to execute 1 swing...i was doing just practice swings as fast as the game would allow.
then i decided to test the swing meter stutter while i was allowing IP traffic and with IP traffic disabled (zone alarm allows you to disable all IP traffic)....this test was in 50 swing increments, a total of 200 swings...all practice swings as fast as the game will allow, with the following results;
WGT Meter Stutter Test Results
| |
Minor Stutters / Major Skips |
| Server |
Allow IP Packets |
NO IP Packets |
| Test conducted with all programs closed running game booster |
| wgtg05 |
17/2 |
15/0 |
| psj-gs05 |
16/1 |
15/0 |
it was counted as a minor stutter if i felt the stutter would have affected my concentration and ability to execute cleanly...a major stutter is a start-stop stutter than can send your ball out of play.
what i determine from these results is 1) major stutters only occur when IP traffic is allowed (see my opening comments about WGT constantly sending/receiving packets even during a swing). 2) the minor stutter counts were unaffected by the IP traffic status or the specific WGT server (meaning it could be the flash code, it could be my hardware...aka its something relatively predictable).
i would add that in all 36 of the stutters experienced in the test, the stutter started early enough in the swing that i would have aborted the swing had i been playing a round.