[Guide] Complete guide to "Render". Who it affects. Who are the winners and losers.

Lots of people throw the word "Render" around. But do you know what it means? Who are the "winners" in the Render issue? Who are the losers? This thread answers these burning questions.

What is Render?
To put it simply, render means that an enemy near you is visible. In other words they have been drawn by your client and therefore you can see them. Invisible infiltrators are still rendered, in their case, you would be rendering their blurry wobble (or not, depending on range). You do not need a target to render to kill it, but it's pretty hard to kill someone who has not rendered. Note also that if someone is not rendered their shots do not render either.

What is the range and effect of render?
Generally, it is accepted that infantry Render between 400m and 600m and tanks and aircraft Render out to 700m and 800m. It has never been confirmed that these issues are purely client side, purely server side or a little bit of both. It does seem to be the case that bad computers are rendering less items to keep frame rates up, from what I can tell of bad you tube videos.

It also seems to be the case that heavy fighting with large numbers reduces render range.

Ok, I understand Render, who are the winners and losers and why does it matter?
Generally, there are only 3 classes that are affected by Render seriously. Lets look at each case.

They are:
The Liberator - Advantage over "Everyone Else"
The AA Max - Over Liberator
The Infiltrators - "Everyone Else" over Infiltrator.

Big winner: Liberator, Loser "Everyone Else"
A liberator can fly at 1000m. Looking at the render distances above, you'll quickly see that this means the liberator will not render to any units on the ground at any but the highest ground locations (like the crown).

Render Bombing is the art of using a Liberator + 150 Dalton and the extended map (which will show little icons of enemy units below you that have been spotted by anybody) to fire down blindly on targets below. You can also fire at terrian where infantry is highly likely to be during large battles, such as near any around any entrances to barricks, spawn points, etc.

There is absolutely no ground based defence against this tactic nor can there be. Shooting up at an unrendered liberator is almost impossible. This is part of the reason why so many people whine about Liberators.

Big winner: AA Max, Loser Liberator
Much the same as the issue above, the AA Max is infantry but the liberator is naturally an aircraft. This means that liberators that are flying between 300m and 800m can be seen by the AA Max, but cannot in turn see it or where it is firing from. This is generally a big issue around tall bases where Render Bombing is impossible (crown is a good example).

Big winner: "Everyone Else", loser Infiltrator
A very simple one here, the primary target of the Infiltrator is infantry. He can shoot out to 800m+ very easily and kill targets doing so. The problem is, Render tends to stop at 600m for infantry at the absolute maximum. Thus, the sniper class finds himself heavily gimped. The problem only gets worse in high-infantry consentrations because this further reduces render distance.

There is some debate if scoping improves directional render. This needs to be confirmed.



I hope this helps people out there dropping the word "render" like it's a magic word that everyone immedately understands.

That's cool and all except for not being able to hit people that haven't rendered for you yet. Kind of limits flight ceiling bombing.

The dalton seems to fire grenade like bombs and they do hit and kill out of render range as the server tracks them, where they land, who is in the area when they land, etc. Plenty of other weapons also kill out of render range that are similar, such as dumbfire missiles, grenades, etc. Ironically, also claymores/mines which can be thousands of miles away and still kill for you.

The Dalton fires server-size objects, which detect damage when they explode. This effectively lets you shoot beyond the render range and still get kills, because the bullet you're firing has it's own hit detection and explodes well within render range of any targets on the ground

I wonder where all the aircav are rushing to explain how Render Bombing is fair and ground AA needs to learn to play?

Give it a few minutes. They're all online.

did a test back in beta.

dalton and zepher dont damage unrendered targets - thats why u cant destroy vehicles from high alt when they have 10 engies repairing them xD

maybe it hast changed since lauch, have to test again.

This is incorrect.

The Dalton and Zephyr shells function exactly like MBT shells, Lightning shells, HA rockets, underbarrel grenade launchers, and everything else that doesn't actually spawn an entity in the world. They cannot damage unrendered targets, period.

The only things that can damage unrendered targets are things that spawn an actual actor into the world: standard grenades, AT/AP mines, C4, and unattended vehicles if someone's standing too close when they explode. This is because none of those things are handled client side - they're handled at the server level, and any damage they do is simply credited back to the parent actor.

The OP is right in that MAX units have a serious advantage over air right now, and that sniper infiltrators get boned on a regular basis. He's wrong about pretty much everything else, including the cause. One of the SOE devs confirmed outright this is purely a server issue, your client's performance isn't taken into account. The rendering problems are a result of them introducing a render distance scaling mechanism to avoid excessive load on the server in large fights. There is also no debate about scoping improving rendering distance. It doesn't. This has been confirmed.

Pretty sure you're right, but could you throw a source link to the dev post at all?

This explains so much.

Like getting hit by explosions that never render and the only clue I have of there ever being an explosion is the wreckage of the sunderer I spawned at. (I have bad luck and end up spawning into Dalton shells at least 2-3 times per play session...)

The real issue is that they can see you but you can't see them.

Whenever you get killed by someone and it doesn't show the model of what killed you, I imagine that's a case of them being able to render you but you being unable to render them. They need to do something about that.

Yes, render issues are a problem and probably do help the libs. Those who say Dalton can't do what he describes haven't experienced it first hand. Secondly, I have no idea how the client works but I bet it receives locations and then decides whether to render them or not. The hit code is client side, it would be trivial to hack it to just report hits whether they are rendering or not. And it would be very hard to catch, basically risk free cheating.

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But I find the biggest render issues are in medium to large fights where close enemies are not rendering and I am being gunned down by enemies I cannot see. My machine is good and I have setting set to low for best performance (cloakers are just a non-issue in PS2, sadly. I don't play one but they were a great part of PS1). Yet I have render issues. This leads me to the conclusion that in big fights, it is a server side problem. Not everyone is being updated in a timel;y fashion. I can also tell this when I gun someone down but I am not being accurate and it is taking awhile, yet they don't move at all. Its because I have not rendered for them and to them they just suddenly die or invisible bullets are killing them.

The main purpose of limiting render distance is not to improve performance on the client (by drawing fewer models).

The main purpose is to limit the amount of bandwidth (client-server communication) that the game needs to use in big fights.

Your game client does not constantly receive the location of every single player on the server - that would be insane and everyone would need an amazing internet connection in order for the game to work.
Instead, the server determines which players are nearby and important enough for you to know about and just sends you information about them. Exactly how it determines which are important is a bit of a mystery, and obviously there are currently some issues with how it works.

Also, if hit detection were purely client side and the server completely trusting of the clients, we would be seeing a hell of a lot more hacking. I've played (and made) games that work like that, and it's a nightmare - tweaking the client to report false hits to the server is indeed trivial. There clearly is some form of server-side validation going on for hit detection in Planetside 2, otherwise we'd be seeing waaaaay more hacking. Professional companies simply don't design games that are that simple to hack.

It isn't that we haven't experienced it, it's that we've tested it, and the Dalton can't hit things that don't render.

I'm honestly kinda confused as to why this "discussion" topic exists. There's nothing to discuss. We know why it does what it does, and we know what is affected. We've known since shortly after launch. Now we're just waiting on SOE to get around to doing something about it.

Actually, we've known since beta. I recall SoE having tweaked it before launch, but don't quote me on that.

Meant in its current state. Beta had the code in place but it was nowhere near as crippling as it is now.

I stopped here because this is blatantly untrue. There's been NUMEROUS occasions where I've known for a fact someone is where my X-hairs are, and they suddenly "vanish" and it misses, they pop back in and it hits and this goes back and forth for ages, while the computer decides if it wants to render them or not. The person is staying dead still at the time.

There's been numerous occasions I'm pummeling HE down range. It should be hitting something, but it's not. There was a turret there, but once again, it's flashing. When I see it, I hit it, when it's vanished, I miss...despite being in EXACTLY the same location.

There's been numerous occasions I've been sniping, got them in my sights, fire and automatically let it reload so I'm suddenly not looking through my scope and they vanish again...no hit, look through scope, their there, same place.

I'm going to make a bet that it's the same reason that sometimes grenades from the UGL don't always do damage. Due to the game being both server and client hit detection, you saw them but they hadn't seen you when the nade exploded.

Can we get any source of OP data? Esp. about dalton shell being a separate actor in the world and not a client-side handled projectile? We have tested it more then one time woth zepher - it appears that all those projectiles are client-side calculated. Which is "you can not hit something you don't see".

You can't hit anyone who you haven't rendered. I've shot at locations with 20+ players with a dalton cannon without hitting a single of them many times, shot with a sniper at a guy who I was going to hit in the head, but the server made him disappear because the distance was too far and etc. This is making it very ridiculous to play as an infiltrator when there are more than 100+ players at a place, the crown for instance, because you can only render people around 100 m away from you.

Exactly what I was saying.

The crown is a great example of this, there are 100s and 100s of people there, if you could hit people you couldn't see, people would just shell the place from a mile away and rake in 1000s of kills. While it's a farm fest atm, it's no where near as bad if it was how the OP says it is. Granted, I didn't read all of his post, just up to the part where he bolded something that's clearly not the case.