how it is possible that computers are so fast that dozens of people from across the world can play video games together simultaneously?

Question

I’ve been thinking about this lately. I guess it just doesn’t make sense to me that 40 years ago we were barely able to move pixels across a screen and now there are games where even hundreds of people can play games like first person shooters on servers simultaneously where reactions down to the millisecond commonly decide the outcome of a game. How can we match the inputs of everyone and have them appear on someone else’s screen? Is it simply that information travels at the speed of light and we are really good at organizing it?

In: 20

Answer 1

There are more or less two things at play here:

1) Lots of high speed fiber optic networks. The fiber is MUCH faster than satellite communications across great distance, and these days there is LOTS of fiber making it cheap and bandwidth available.

2) Not all that much data needs to be sent. For the most part there are highly efficient algorithms to only send the bare minimum amount of data that has changed. For some games that may be just the position of entities that are moving or other state changes in the game.

So to answer your question: Information at the speed of light – Yes (fiber) but also closer distances (via transoceanic cables), and really good organization. And of course lots of fiber so its cheaper.