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Holy cow, I was Donny Brook's lab mouse

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...but it was for the greater and better cause anyway, especially for all FPS fans out there.

About a year ago today (back in August/September 2006), my office mate Derek and I signed up for a little gaming tournament to help beta test some sort of FPS experiement on LAN sponsored by MS Research, codenamed "Donny Brook".  We both had no idea what the objective of that experiment was going to be, but we signed up anyway because of (1) it was from MS Research (so this ought to be real good), (2) a lunch gift certificate to tasty cafeteria food would be given, and (3) what better way to slack off work to go play some awesome game (I believed it was Quake).  So off we went.  Derek kicked my bottom shamelessly that day.  At the end of the day, we filled out a survey -- something about performance and latency stuff but I didn't really care that much since I was still reeling from the loss.

And just today, I happened to stumble upon more information about the MSR experiment from a year ago on youtube.

Hey, I recognized that guy in blue shirt!  And the name of the experiement, "Donny Brook", also rang lots of bells. The actual white paper on this research is here (pdf file) which I thought is pretty cool and would make online Halo or Counter Strike much more awesome.

The realistic application for this is probably not going to be to have a 500 vs 500 game of Counterstrike.  I don't think there's a map large enough to hold 1000 players.  Both Terrorists and Counter Terrorists would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder, which would negate the fun of the game.  And if I happened to be the first to die (which I did a LOT), how long must I wait until the other 999 players perish?

However, what I thought about the upside of this was the reduction of lag (aka the single most and widely used excuse in any online FPS, period).  This would also enable players from variable bandwidth network, from low to high, to be able to establish connection and play together without glitch.  I would love to be able to play with some of my oversea friends without having a 700+ ping rate.  This would be a dream come through. 

Oh, and I would have to start looking for some new excuse after getting headshotted since I can't hide behind the 'lag' curtain any longer.  Maybe my new excuse would be 'Hey, not fair.  I was picking my nose' or 'WOS (Wife Over Shouler)' or 'Dang, I just fat-fingered'. 

Err...

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