Infinito3010:
When you say the meter is not rendered on your computer. That is incorrect. When you move your mouse in the swing meter zone, doesn't the meter move. Before, you could disconnect from the internet, and make practice swings, hence the meter is rendered on your computer locally. When you click the results of where you are relative to the ding line, your club selection, spin applied is sent to WGT's server and vector results sent back to your computer to be displayed on your screen.
I think it's the use of the term 'render' that was getting confused, I was referring to it in the graphic sense, as in 3d/graphic rendering. There is no rendering in that sense going on.
As for rendering your results on the screen. Yes that is exactly what is going on, how you setup up your shot, the 'strength' of the shot should all be sent to WGT the instant you let go of the mouse button initiating the 2nd state of the swing meter, it seems obvious that there is data being sent when you let go of the button.
Upon clicking the 3rd state, trying to hit the ding, the resulting animation is sent back to your computer for you to watch. That's it.. there isn't anything being rendered, you're simply watching a animated representation of your shot.
Upon letting go of the mouse button (2nd state) so that the meter starts to move, your shot parameters are sent to WGT, the client window is in a wait-state, waiting for you to click again and compete the cycle - it's also in a send state because it's waiting to send the 'ding' back to the server so it can apply the proper deviation etc. So again, you've got a lot of dependencies on network traffic, out bound and as everyone knows that tags your connection harder, well can.
This is not a graphically intensive game, and ram? Well, not really and only in so much that the OS is dependent on it. IE trying to run WIN 7 say on 2gb, but in saying that, I play with 3gb on the T-61 with Intel video chipset, and my meter is smooth most, about 99% of the time. My hiccups really only occur from the wifi/connection tossing packets out the window or other dirty aspects of it.
On a side note, more than happy to talk about Flash/AS if you're familiar with it, worked with it since it was a plugin for Director. It's actually quite capable of some pretty impressive things - if it's used within the scope of what it's designed for.