This thread on Net Lag and Collisions gives me the same headache that General Relativity's "Nothing goes faster than the speed of light, not even information" gave me.
The difference being, replace "Nothing goes faster than he speed of light" with "Nothing goes faster than the speed of the Net"
For instance, both create problems defining "the past" as in things that "Have Happened". In GR we end up breaking "the past" into two flavors, the past that has happened and we know about (effective past), and the past that has happened and we don't know about because the information has yet to arrive. Net lag appears to cause this same effect.
Also, even defining two events happening at the same time becomes problematic. Its is entirely possible for three people to report two events happening in three different orders:
Dude #1 can say "Event A & B happened at the same time"
Dude #2 can say "Event A happened first, then B"
Dude #3 can say "Event B happened first, then A"
The worst part, all three are correctly reporting what they observed. To absolutely fry your brain, try and figure out what "really" happened. After much sweat and tears, the conclusion is "it depends on your frame of reference". In the case of Aces High, 'frames of reference' work out to My net lag + Your Net lag + everyone else's net lag.
Where I'm going with all of this is, because of net lag, NO two persons will record the exact same series of events. The result is, two pilots can record two DIFFERENT series of events. One pilot can film a collision, another can film the same event and prove that they DID NOT collide. Neither is wrong, conversely neither is right.
So, I offer a mighty
to HiTech and crew for making all of this net lag transparent (for the most part)! Obviously HTC does a lot of work in the 4th dimension (time).