Server-Side Hitscan vs Ballistic Projectile Registration: Competitive Benchmark Analysis and ハードウェア Interactions

[Sarah Cooper]

How are you all seeing server CPU budget hold up when running dense projectile simulations with RK4 integration on the authoritative side? I’ve been benchmarking a custom ballistic system where each round recomputes drop and drag via numerical integration every server tick, and I’m watching frametime spikes correlate directly with projectile count rather than player count. Anyone else hit a wall where the physics step becomes the

[Ella Brown]

Great topic to kick off this thread. The core distinction that trips people up is that hitscan and ballistic systems interact with lag compensation completely differently. In a hitscan title, the server essentially does a raycast at the exact server tick when your shot registers, applying lag compensation by rewinding enemy positions to their last known coordinates based on your ping. The problem here is input-to-display skew: if you’re running a 360Hz panel but your GPU is delivering uneven frame times (say, spikes past 8ms), your visual target placement diverges from where the server actually sampled the enemy, so you’ll “see” a headshot that registers as body. With ballistic projectiles, you’ve got an additional variable—projectile velocity and travel time means the server has to predict where the target will be when the physical projectile arrives, which is why slugs like the Voltshot or R-99 alt-fire feel inconsistent at range. The registration window is far tighter because you’re not just matching their current position but their velocity vector.

On the hardware side, what actually matters for consistency is your input latency chain, not just raw FPS

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