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CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

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Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#11

Post by Sayrus »

bakies wrote: post #7
xeonmc wrote: post #4

> Does it cause pop-in when peeking? The goal is early reveal, not exact last-millisecond reveal. CS2FOW predicts using movement and ping, reveals enemies slightly before exact visibility, and keeps revealed enemies visible briefly. This intentionally leaks a small near-corner window to avoid late pop-in. This fails to address the main point of the "pop-in" issue relevant to fog of war systems, which is that it is th…

Why wouldn't you just send the positions to both clients in the same tick? Seems trivial to solve.

Peeker's advantage is not directly related to fog of war. The peeker is moving so before the movement is even sent to the server, the client's camera began moving. As such, the peeker will have at least a tick, usually more before that new position is available to the opponent.

"Fixing" this would make movement sluggish: any movement would need to be validated by the server. Meaning delay between pressing keys and actual movement.

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#12

Post by xeonmc »

webstrand wrote: post #5
xeonmc wrote: post #4

> Does it cause pop-in when peeking? The goal is early reveal, not exact last-millisecond reveal. CS2FOW predicts using movement and ping, reveals enemies slightly before exact visibility, and keeps revealed enemies visible briefly. This intentionally leaks a small near-corner window to avoid late pop-in. This fails to address the main point of the "pop-in" issue relevant to fog of war systems, which is that it is th…

Interesting, could it be mitigated by the server doing its own prediction and defogging the peeker early? Or is lag prediction in CS2 not entirely client-sided.

It's more that momentum-based defogging means that the peeker has control over how to manipulate the server's prediction, whereas the victim who is already disadvantaged by network latency now gets an additional penalty of the movement initiation being not telegraphed.

To solve this, the fog of war would need to use purely positional near-edge tolerances, which defeats the entire purpose of fog of war to begin with, which is the pre-aiming reaction time advantage of tracking the peeker through walls in addition to having a farther lever point from the cover than the peeker.

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#13

Post by [deleted] »

landr0id wrote: post #2

I wonder how often wall hacks are actually used in high-level competitive play by cheaters vs ESP. ESP seems like the better route to avoid manual review flagging suspicious activity. Audible cues (which this currently does not mitigate, and I'm not sure it can) are things that can genuinely separate players by skill and you'd think someone running such a cheat just has very good hearing. >CS2FOW uses static baked ma…

[deleted]

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#14

Post by xeonmc »

davedx wrote: post #9
dvt wrote: post #3

This has been done before in both 1.6 as well as Source. I helped with some of these implementations back in the late-2000s when I was playing professionally and I even tried to kickstart an anti-cheat hardware solution about a decade ago[1].. spent way too much time working on some of these problems. The main issue with occlusion was slightly increased latency, visual jitter because of interpolation (especially arou…

Why on earth don't the producers of the game implement this? It sounds trivial to do?

The many tradeoffs involved are not trivial, this can only feasibly work well on LAN.

This is the reason why Valorant is the least playable among all competitive shooters if your internet is anything lesser than Google campus fiber, ironically in spite of having even-slower-than-CS movement physics on its side to mask the problem.

Riot conveniently cherry picks the best case scenario and handwaves the actual technical tradeoffs in their smug "we solved peeker's advantage!" engineering blog posts that are really just barely-disguised monorail Gish gallop.

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#15

Post by [deleted] »

xeonmc wrote: post #4

> Does it cause pop-in when peeking? The goal is early reveal, not exact last-millisecond reveal. CS2FOW predicts using movement and ping, reveals enemies slightly before exact visibility, and keeps revealed enemies visible briefly. This intentionally leaks a small near-corner window to avoid late pop-in. This fails to address the main point of the "pop-in" issue relevant to fog of war systems, which is that it is th…

[deleted]

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#16

Post by mmh0000 »

davedx wrote: post #9
dvt wrote: post #3

This has been done before in both 1.6 as well as Source. I helped with some of these implementations back in the late-2000s when I was playing professionally and I even tried to kickstart an anti-cheat hardware solution about a decade ago[1].. spent way too much time working on some of these problems. The main issue with occlusion was slightly increased latency, visual jitter because of interpolation (especially arou…

Why on earth don't the producers of the game implement this? It sounds trivial to do?

Because what do you think matters more in an online game:

A. Smooth and consistent client experience, where bullets hit what you aim at (client-side prediction) where aimbots and wallhacks work.

B. Jittery/laggy client experience, where aimbots still work, but wallhacks are disabled?

You can only choose one option.

Generally, everyone agrees "A" is the best option and cheaters will be dealt with at game time. It's annoying, but that's the cost of online video games.

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#18

Post by frollogaston »

mmh0000 wrote: post #16
davedx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth don't the producers of the game implement this? It sounds trivial to do?

Because what do you think matters more in an online game: A. Smooth and consistent client experience, where bullets hit what you aim at (client-side prediction) where aimbots and wallhacks work. B. Jittery/laggy client experience, where aimbots still work, but wallhacks are disabled? You can only choose one option. Generally, everyone agrees "A" is the best option and cheaters will be dealt with at game time. It's an…

Also even if it worked perfectly, there'd still be other practical ways to cheat. In a way it's better to detect cheats than prevent them, because you waste a lot more of their time sticking them into a pool of cheaters and can also undo it. Though afaik Counterstrike tells you when you're low-trust.

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#19

Post by aidenn0 »

landr0id wrote: post #2

I wonder how often wall hacks are actually used in high-level competitive play by cheaters vs ESP. ESP seems like the better route to avoid manual review flagging suspicious activity. Audible cues (which this currently does not mitigate, and I'm not sure it can) are things that can genuinely separate players by skill and you'd think someone running such a cheat just has very good hearing. >CS2FOW uses static baked ma…

I didn't know what ESP was; from some googling, it appears to notify you when someone is aiming at you?

Re: CS2 Fog Of War: Server-sided anti-wallhack occlusion culling for CS2 servers

#20

Post by frollogaston »

nyeah wrote: post #17

Wallhack is locked into the DNA of CS for some reason. The most common defense by far is mass denial. For the great majority of players that seems to be good enough.

I'm fine as long as the game is somewhat evenly matched, and not fine if it's not. With or without cheating. Then whatever cheaters they can catch and shadowban, great. Smurfing is a way bigger problem anyway, cause some people treat the game like a job and will beat you more reliably than cheaters.
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