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Comment by Thaxll | Hacker News Reader

Keep in mind that those are online services and can be developed in every languages since it's not hard real time ( aka C++ gameservers ). Most online services for the video game industry are actually made in Java.

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> can be developed in every languages

Did you read the slides?

> Problems remain

   – C++ is the wrong language for concurrency
   – Code was becoming impossible to maintain
   – Poor error handling / debugging / metrics / scalability
   – Had to disconnect all users to change configuration

The point isn't that these things are impossible in other languages, it's that Erlang made solving these problems easier than other languages.

Game servers don't do hard real time. That would be overkill, and requires specialized operating systems typically used for niche applications like robotics; e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTLinux

I've been reading up on VR after trying an Oculus Rift. It sounds as if VR game servers will need something a bit closer to "hard" real time than current servers. I suppose it still wouldn't technically be "hard real time" but much "firmer real time". I guess this leaves me wondering if games will ever progress to needing "hard" real time.

That doesn't make much sense, think about lag, playing with somebody who is far enough that the speed of light makes a difference. You want a near real time graphics pipeline for each user to avoid vomiting, but other than that you will still get terrible terrible network problems one way or another which you can't control and will show up as ghosts in the game, stopped players, etc.

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