Originally Posted by
Topdecker
We did, apologies. But we also uncovered a comparison that may have been neglected.
Which app does a better job for low speed connections? I can't address roll20, but I did try Foundry using the same files that were in an FG classic campaign. It was a one-shot that I ran in FG classic and then tried it with friends in Foundry. I did it because I wanted a solid comparison at the time.
Foundry was unusable for me on slow but reliable internet. It managed to very roughly get through maybe 2 scenes of 5 and then became unresponsive on a map with a lot of lighting sources. This was back in the .4x days of Foundry and it may have improved, but the same one-shot came off fairly flawlessly in Fantasy Grounds classic. (Technical uncertainty here... Foundry may compose scenes and stream 'live' changes. It certainly appears to stream audio. Anyhow, I think that it creates and wants to maintain live data connections that are needed/wanted regardless of the need to transfer a file such as a map. These aren't very large streams, but when you're hard pressed for bandwidth every little bit matters.)
The ability to pre-load scenes combined with the buffering and re-try attempts of Fantasy Grounds was a clear and easy winner for low bandwidth usage. I also wonder if FG does a better job of handing out the data to clients, ensuring that full packets get moved before allowing another user to start the transfer of a packet, and so on. Data packet size and management of available bandwidth are really important when it is limited in availability. For instance, smaller packets are better if errors are occurring (re-transmitting is more efficient with less data) and I don't know if FG just starts smaller or if it senses and adjusts downward, but which ever one it is, it is well suited for poor conditions.
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