Overwatch video explains high bandwidth rollout with plastic cups

Are you ready for a netcode-related Overwatch video featuring words like PACKETS and INTERPOLATION? Well, good, because that’s exactly what Blizzard have recorded for you. With added plastic cups for visual aides.

Actually, now I come to think about it, they could be paper cups. Definitely cups though.

Lead engineer Tim Ford and senior engineer Philip Orwig are present and correct to talk about the new, high bandwidth system that’ll be used by Overwatch to more accurately measure and relay player actions (um, I think). The pair of them say the company has a dynamic tool that will measure whether a given player’s connection can actually handle the new update rate and, if not, automatically bump them down to the older one.

Pragmatically speaking, this all means players should experience far fewer instances of “being shot around corners” and have more chance of predicting (and preventing) escape moves. Important stuff for a multiplayer game. The high bandwidth update is live for “quite a bit of the globe” on PC, but not yet present for the console versions.

Here’s the tech chat.