Voice chat on next-gen consoles

[silhouette]

Hi guys,

I have been enjoying this feature on 360 quiet some time now. After using this for a long time with my buddies overseas, I can make an educated guess that it is not using point-to-point connection. Rather, using dedicated servers in all regions that use dedicated lines between them, and you and other participants only connect those dedicated servers. The reason I am thinking it that way is there is no lag, no call-quality issues, no drop-out in the voice quality no matter what/when/whom I am speaking to/how many people there are on the line. I can say that the communication quality is always on the par with commercial conference bridges I use at work to have teleconference with people all over the world. Even, the 360 chat system provides very good quality echo cancellation. Btw, for point-to-point IP calls, this is usually not the case. If you want to speak with someone overseas with a point-2-point VoIP application, there is always a slight lag and some occassional frame-drops in best case as the application cannot guarantee that packets will be received in receiving side in time (worst case is frequent frame drops which makes the conversation almost impossible). The only drawback in MS system I see is the use of a narrowband codec. MS can simply use a wideband codec as it is guaranteed that there is no public switch telephony at the other end, but I guess because of the bandwidth/cost reason, they choose to go with a narrowband codec (which uses current telephone bandwidth between 300 and 3400 Hz).

I wonder if people who owns PS3 can give their comments on this topic. I read somewhere that PS3 uses AMR-WB speech codec that encodes speech at wideband (i.e. 50-7000 Hz). So, the overall quality should be better given that there is no frame dropouts. However, as the Sony's online is free, I doubt that they have this server based system. So, their system might be more prone to commincation quality problems. Can anyone comment on that? Especially, people who chat with other people in other continents and/or chat with multiple people at the same time whose locations are far from each other...

 

[Rainbow Man]

I fail to see why a server based setiup would give better performance and quality vs point to point.. If anything I would think servers would be susceptible to crowding and overload when a great many pepole uset he service.. And packet loss and genreal internet congestion would not be less of a problem either I think.

But then I guess there's a lot I fail to see that more knowledgeable people can.

You ask an nteresting question though. If PS3 online is free how much does Sony handle with dedicated servers? Then again I hear MS don' tactually run games on their own servers either so this might not mean much.

Seems MS mostly uses server capacity for file and media downloads..

Peace.

 

[ERP]

it's just point to point.

The hard part of getting voicechat to work is actually establishing the connection especially if both parties are behind a firewall.

 

[rounin]

You ask an nteresting question though. If PS3 online is free how much does Sony handle with dedicated servers? Then again I hear MS don' tactually run games on their own servers either so this might not mean much.

I wonder about this as well. I heard Resistance actually runs on Sony/Insomnica's servers but I'm not sure if this is true.

 

[patsu]

I heard Resistance actually runs on Sony/Insomnica's servers but I'm not sure if this is true.

Yes it's true. I think jstevenson in GAF (Insomniac staff) mentioned it in the Resistance thread there. This is one of the reasons 40 player online play is so smooth.

 

[silhouette]

I guess I have to be clear a little bit more. When I mentioned server, I only mean a server for voice chat. For the last couple of weeks, my friends and I have been playing Rainbow Six. As I am the only one here in US, usually one of my friend hosts the game (the other guys are in Turkey). Three out of four times, there is always some lag, even occasioanlly horrible lag in the game on my side (as the game server is in Turkey). But, despite the game has so much lag, there is not a single problem in voice quality. Even one time, the game was totally unplayable on myside because of lag, and there was no voice quality issue at all. That's why I think, for the voice chat, you are always using dedicated MS servers.

How does this work? The thing I am going to write is speculation on my side. I am going to dig some more and hopefully get you guys more info. When you open a voice chat channel (btw in 360, you can have upto four private channels + a game channel. So, even while playing the game (any game), you can have voice chat with one of your friends in one of this dedicated channel),you are actually connecting to one of the MS's server that is closer to you physicvally. As I am in Texas, probably I am connecting to one in mid-south region of US. My friends over there most probably connect to a server in Europe (as MS officially do not support 360 in Turkey, so I do not think there is any server over there). And, there is always a dedicated line between the US servers and EU servers. So, when a voice packet sent from my 360, it first goes to this physically close US server, possibly then combined with other people's voice packets and then sent to EU server. As the line is totally owned by MS, there is no or neglibile lag. When this super packet reaches EU, it is again split into individual voice packets and then sent to my friends through internet. Since the amount of routing between me and my friends are minimized with this approach, there is no lag and no "packets reaching late" related quality issues. It is also possible that when EU server sends the voice data from my friends, it may mix them before sending me which also minimize the number of packets. That's why you get crystal clear voice communication no matter where you are.

Anyway, this is just speculation on my side. As I said, I will dig this more and come back you guys.

 

[inefficient]

I can only play on the Japanese Resistance servers. And I have NEVER heard anyone talk during a game yet. So I have no idea how it even works or sounds like. I haven't bothered getting the equipment myself yet. I was planning on getting a BT headset after I upgrade by phone to BT later this year.

 

[Graham]

I wonder if the 360 uses some sort of distributed system.
So 15 players...

You send your message to two players, they relay it to two more, they relay it to the remaining two each...
It's just it does seem inconsistent sometimes how much of a delay there is. Often times if the game itself is extremly laggy, the voice chat is still fine, even if the host disconnects. You could optimise it too, so those players talking send to each other first.. It would help even the load of precious upload bandwidth.

Then again you don't often send to more than 4 people.

 

[kyleb]

That's why I think, for the voice chat, you are always using dedicated MS servers.

It is, that is part of what we pay for.

I can only play on the Japanese Resistance servers. And I have NEVER heard anyone talk during a game yet. So I have no idea how it even works or sounds like. I haven't bothered getting the equipment myself yet. I was planning on getting a BT headset after I upgrade by phone to BT later this year.

I've only heard people talk though my headset, I don't think the voice comes though without one. Sound quality is respectable.

 

[silhouette]

It is, that is part of what we pay for.

I've only heard people talk though my headset, I don't think the voice comes though without one. Sound quality is respectable.

Any dropouts/cuts within conversation (speech replaced by noise like sound), etc? How many people at the same time? What are their demographic region (such as everyone in US?)? I am really curious and trying to find out if such a server based model is required or not?