server.properties: view-distance= and client performance?

im not entirely sure how this setting works. my computer is decent enough to run the server and client and host a few other players with no problem. when i am playing on it i get ~100fps at all times (using glsl mod and every setting on max). i just increased the view-distance= setting in server.properties to 10 (from 5) and i like the result. my question is, will this ruin performance for my players? more than half of my small group of players are on old busted pcs which need optimine/optifog to maintain >25 fps. how does server view-distance= affect them? wouldnt their client settings override it? has anyone ever posted benchmarks or anything like that (client and server side)?

thanks for any info =)

 

as far as I can tell. The client settings override the servers.

Server side view distance is at 10 by default. They can only see that if they have their view distance to far.
If you set it to 15 (max). The server will send out 5 more chunks. This will cause the server to send more data over to the players when they first load the map, and slightly more when they walk around (only if they have their distance set to far).
So if you are using all your upload speed will you have less than players you want at max, you might want to keep it lower or at default 10. If you have upload speed to spare you can set it to 15.

 

thanks. i didnt realize the default was 10. i just looked at a .bak of my server.properties and it was set to 10. i must have dropped it to 5 in an attempt to get some extra fps for one of my buddies with an older pc and forgot i did it =) im gonna try 15 now for kicks and try to round up these guys and see if it affects them. my u/l isnt the best but i usually only have4 or 5 guys playing (including me) so i think it will be able to hang.

thanks for a quick and informative reply =)

 

I believe the server will always send all the visible chunks for clients, regardless of the client's render distance. This means the higher you have your view distance, the more data the client has to download. If a client has a slow connection speed, this could cause them some nasty lag. Also, going from 10 to 15 adds more than 5 chunks, it's extending the chunk load distance by 5. This adds a lot more chunks to load.

 

yeah that seems to be the case. i set it to 15 and did a test with my only buddy who has a decent computer. we set up a series of creativegates and inception links and ran/fell through them (changing worlds about 6 times in 30 seconds) and it lagged out so bad i typed 'wow lag' into the chat and it took 25-30 seconds to show up =) i set it down to 6 but havnt had a chance to try my crushing portal test run yet with a remote player. thanks =)

 

Thanks for this thread this helped me understand alot more on the chunks/view distance!!! Cheers

 

Is this the fog or is it the player load

 

Over at www.lolnet.co.nz we have the view distance set to 3, it just helps with general network lag and we find that many players have older computers... also the server isn't loading as many chunks from the hard drive.

 

I guess a bigger value might even improve performance on slow networks:

Ok, at first there has to be submitted more data, but if the players move a lot it might decrease because it does not unload the chunks so fast.