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Photon Fusion research

Photon Fusion is a high-end state transfer netcode SDK used to build multiplayer games. Photon Fusion is a part of Photon's many SDKs, such as Photon Quantum and Photon PUN. Photon Fusion is mostly used to make competitive games, where fast-paced and real-time synchronization between players are crucial. Since its real-time, Photon Fusion uses UDP as its transport layer as it is faster.

Photon Fusion has features such as client-side prediction, lag compensation, and tick-based simulation to enhance multiplayer experience. Photon Fusion also features replication systems, which can use either full consistency where each object is more internally consistent but uses more bandiwdth or eventual consistency where it uses less bandwidth but allows more object to be packed.

Photon Fusion users can use either a dedicated server, a hosted one, or a shared authority, where players connect with each other through Photon's relay. It synchronizes between each client's game and their specific object through Fusion, not exactly a peer-to-peer but more or less similar. Photon Fusion also enables roles between a host, client, and server, where players can either be one of them depending on the needs.

Starting Photon Fusion: https://doc.photonengine.com/fusion/current/tutorials/host-mode-basics/1-getting-started

Photon Fusion's main issues:

  • Latency : Photon Fusion has tools to test latency problems and simulate players with bad internet connection, to solve this, Photon has features such as being able to handle thousands of objects over hundreds of client connections, client-side prediction, and snapshot interpolations to provide smooth rendering even during bad connection. The tests are also done to ensure multiplayer games can run smoothly and connection between the players and the server are stable. (https://doc.photonengine.com/fusion/current/manual/testing-and-tooling/simulating-network-conditions)

  • Consistency : Photon Fusion can implement between 2 replication algorithm, which are full consistency and eventual consistency. Full consistency are where all players can see the same thing at the same time at anytime, while eventual consistency will follow up to it eventually, but it's more faster than full consistency. Features for this are tick-based simulation and lag compensation. (https://doc.photonengine.com/fusion/current/manual/data-transfer/eventual-consistency)

  • Scale : Photon Fusion supports from 20 CCU and up to 50.000 CCU. (https://www.photonengine.com/fusion/pricing)

  • Security : Photon Fusion's Infrastructure are DDos protected. (https://doc.photonengine.com/fusion/current/manual/advanced/encryption) (https://doc.photonengine.com/realtime/current/connection-and-authentication/secure-networks)

  • Cost : The cost to run a server in Photon Fusion increases with the amount of CCU, Photon Fusion offers free CCU up to 100, although it's for one app only, more than that will start to cost you, with billings hitting you per month. (https://www.photonengine.com/fusion/pricing) (https://www.photonengine.com/fusion/pricing-industries)