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Swing Meter Module

• DannyPhan 1,013 Posts

  Wed, May 16 2012 1:49 PM

  AvatarLee:

  To the OP... do me a favor, while you are in a game and ready to hit the ball, unplug your ethernet cable or turn off your wireless, hit the ball, and observe what happens.  What I think you will see is pretty solid evidence that the "meter module" or the meter portion of the game is, in fact, run completely from your machine.  THEN... re-activate your internet connection.... Surprise!  You hit the ball!

  Bottom line, there is no relation between internet speed and the smoothness/roughness of the swing meter.  What does effect it is all the stuff happening in the background (and network interrupts are some of those) during the swing meter animation.  There is no easy solution, but it is a problem between the user's computer, WGT programmers and Adobe Flash.

  Finally someone who knows what is really happening!!!!

  I wanted to call BS on this whole thread but was keeping it to myself.

  the WGT servers are located in New Jersey, USA the ping times from Australia are prolly around 300ms or more (That's 1/3 of a second) and the ping times from NYC are prolly around 25ms that's like 12 times faster. 

  Using his logic the meters in Australia should be really laggy?????

  I have seen this a lot swing to hit the ball and after I click the ding (hopefully) the client freezes, after 20-30 seconds I get the message that it can't talk to the server quit or retry, after clicking retry my shot finishes as it should have before the interruption. I DIDN'T HAVE TO RESWING  , just reconnect......

  The shot calculations may be on the WGT servers but the meter is on the local computer.

  Danny

• bearclaw27 553 Posts

  Wed, May 16 2012 4:26 PM

  AvatarLee:

  To the OP... do me a favor, while you are in a game and ready to hit the ball, unplug your ethernet cable or turn off your wireless, hit the ball, and observe what happens.  What I think you will see is pretty solid evidence that the "meter module" or the meter portion of the game is, in fact, run completely from your machine.  THEN... re-activate your internet connection.... Surprise!  You hit the ball!

  Bottom line, there is no relation between internet speed and the smoothness/roughness of the swing meter.  What does effect it is all the stuff happening in the background (and network interrupts are some of those) during the swing meter animation.  There is no easy solution, but it is a problem between the user's computer, WGT programmers and Adobe Flash.

  With all due respect Av, I think your second paragraph sorta contradicts the point you made in the 1st paragraph..(network interrupts)

  I, like many on this site, have stripped my computer down to the bare essentials, and I still experience severe meter issues at times..

  I think that WGT is certainly profitable enough now, that they could afford to develop and test a separate swing module(which would run on the users pc)..Hey, if it works, I'd be willing to pay a nominal fee for it...(ie, maybe WGT could actually make money on the module..)

  On the flip side, as mentioned by tangaszen, any localized module would be extremely attractive to those who are prone to hack..

  --bear

   

• AvatarLee 1,644 Posts

  Wed, May 16 2012 5:45 PM

  Servicing interrupts is much much different than the amount of bandwidth that your internet connection is capable of.  Interrupts from network data packets are only one of many many types of interrupts that occur every second on any given PC.  Every time you move your mouse it causes hundreds of interrupts that cause your processor to divert attention from the current task, that why I lmao every time my wife shakes the mouse around out of frustration when her computer is acting slow.  A network interrupt is a data packet that arrives from a different computer and needs to be serviced.  But the fact that the swing meter still works even when you are disconnected is proof that it is running from code stored on your local machine.

• bearclaw27 553 Posts

  Wed, May 16 2012 8:32 PM

  OK Av... But, I have seen many times during a round, when my meter goes bad on a shot, then continues to stutter etc, until I restart my game, and  then it seems OK..

  I'm not sure how to explain that...

  I don't believe that the meter prob is necessarily a bandwidth issue, but I do agree that wgt should do some research into whether a locally run 'meter module'  might help us out...

• agrafixman 55 Posts

  Thu, May 17 2012 7:08 AM

  I think the problem with your solution is that it then opens up the program and that "module" to hacking and programmer cheats.  That would DEFINITELY give an unfair advantage to some.

  I have what I consider to be a fast connection (30 MB/s down and 5 MB/s up) and I STILL get meter problems occasionally.  I will admit that I always have meter issues when I try to play on a wireless connection when I am on the road.  I usually post a crazy high score just to keep my "consecutive days" streak alive and then resign myself to not playing until I get back home.

  I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think there is no truly safe way to solve the issue without creating other potential problems.  I suspect that is why it has not been addressed to this point.

• Tightrope 1,072 Posts

  Thu, May 17 2012 4:08 PM

  Yes, a separate meter would open up doors for cheating that both we and WGT prefers shut. As many have said, meter is running independently from the network servers. Not only that, and believe me, I have tested it, as soon as you touch your meter all connections to the Internet are halted. Everything. If you have started to move your meter and a chat message, or an invite, or anything, is sent to you, it will not be recieved by your computer until you have finished, or cancelled, your shot. It simply does not listen while meter is in motion. And it does not talk either.

  When you you "click away" your shot, the application takes the data, the precision, spin and strength of your shot and send it to a server in the "cloud". It is processed and the result is played up on your computer.

  No, what destroys the meter is your computer. First of all, your computer needs to be a PC. I have reasonably new MacBook Pro with 8Gb RAM and it is useless for WGT. Meter is as predictable as a blonde in a shoe store. Instead I play on a old Dell PC Laptop that has hardly enough memory to remember my last curses on Kiawah 17. Meter is smooth. Linux, on a strong computer, works ok with latest Flash versions.
  
  Of course, to get my PC to do the WGT for me, I had to make sure it does nothing else. Make sure no other process, like indexing my archive of Happy & Naked, jumps up and steal CPU power from my belowed meter. A more modern PC would not have that problem, but mine have.
  
  Don't get me wrong, for anything else I use Mac, so I am no PC nerd. Just a general nerd. And I wanted top use my Mac, therefore I researched it thoroughly, hoping to find something that I could take to WGT and say "Look, this is WRONG!". There was not. Well, apart from them building this in Flash.
  
  The idea is good, runs on every platform and so on, but since it in practice does NOT work on every platform, that plus is not much of a plus no more. Instead it has become their anchor. The chain that they have tied to their ankles and prevents them from moving forward.
  
  Why? Because Flash is operating on the "surface" of all the little things that ticks inside a computing machine. Your computer see Flash as "not important". You can tell your machine that Flash is "important for me" and it will, when it wants to, give it some consideration. But you can not force it to take Flash, and an application running on Flash, as serious as a "real" program.
  
  Another thing one must remember is that Your computer is running Flash and Flash is running the applications. So make sure to close all browser windows and tabs that have small Flash ads in them. They do not stop working when you touch your meter, WGT has no power over them.
  
  Flash is dying, nobody wants it no more. Apple has removed support for it on many of it's products.
  
  I am sure WGT work hard on a "real" application. The Beta stamp is still there, after all these years, and it will never be taken away for the Flash version.
  
  I am curious to know if anyone have managed to get a good meter on a Mac.
  

• YankeeAirPirate 124 Posts

  Thu, May 17 2012 8:23 PM

  Tightrope:

  Flash is operating on the "surface" of all the little things that ticks inside a computing machine. Your computer see Flash as "not important". You can tell your machine that Flash is "important for me" and it will, when it wants to, give it some consideration. But you can not force it to take Flash, and an application running on Flash, as serious as a "real" program.

  Okay, so maybe what WGT needs to do is come up with a "real" program, to either talk to the Flash that sends the onboard swing meter data, or to bypass it. Everything you've described, I've already done on my reasonably new PC. No browser windows open other than the one running the Flash game screen, no other programs running at all, Startup is empty, Game Booster running and I'm on cable. But yet I'm still getting ate up by meter balks and leaps.

  Again, for my money, I'd concede the hacks that some might do to a client-side swing meter if it would provide me with a consistently smooth one. Despite the assurances of some, I'm going to be a tough sell to convince that the system isn't already being juked by some/several/many. So, what's to lose?

• MBaggese 15,378 Posts

  Thu, May 17 2012 8:50 PM

  YankeeAirPirate:

  Game Booster running and I'm on cable

  Kind of a contradiction from the start of this thread by yourself?

  Now you have cable and want a break?

  Gimme a sec, will quote ya soon.

• MBaggese 15,378 Posts

  Thu, May 17 2012 8:52 PM

  YankeeAirPirate:

  My biggest complaint is that WGT apparently refuses to acknowledge the great disparities of Internet connection speeds, bandwidth traffic jams and other technical gotchas that afford the super high speed users a killer advantage over we the great unwashed.

   

  The average joe doesn't get much better than cable speed?

• YankeeAirPirate 124 Posts

  Thu, May 17 2012 11:25 PM

  Well, MBaggese, I hope you can only imagine my disappointment when you promised me a contradiction and I'm yet to see one in what you are quoting.

  First off, most "average joes" are also suffering swing meter gotchas, too. Whether it shakes out to be a matter of overall Internet connection speed, how many hops the data must pass through, or a shortcoming of Flash, THE PROBLEM REMAINS, and about all I've heard so far is: a) why it's doing it, and: b) that I/we are supposed to just put up with it because WGT doesn't know of any way to overcome that game-killer glitch.

  The upshot of what I've gathered from this thread I started -- and thank you all for your input, I've learned a lot -- is that it's not going to get any better anytime soon.

  As for me, I have enough frustrations in my life without forking over money for virtual golf balls only to have half of them jerked into the netherworld by a balky/leaping swing meter. I'm done with this thread and done with WGT.

  I used to encourage friends to come aboard, but that'll not be happening again unless and until I hear about some long overdue fix for the swing meter problem. Such a great concept for a game --such a pity WGT can't fix that most critical aspect  of it. CYA.