Seriously, why does smoke seem to render client-side?

I could be wrong here, because I've not tested it yet. But it seems like smokes are rendered client-side rather than server-side, meaning that the smoke plumes look different to each player looking at them. This essentially makes throwing smokes a gamble--can they see me? Will I see them? Will both of us be totally blind?

Again, maybe they are rendered server-side, but it seems like different players are experiencing wildly varying degrees of visibility in smoke.

I don't see how they could be rendered server-side and still work with everything else rendered client side (rendering everything on server and sending video back to players is obviously no-go for a bazillion reasons).

So yeah, having particle effects set to low could easily lead to someone having almost visibility in "diffuse smoke", otoh in "dense smoke" they would just see a wall of grey.

NOTE: I'm not sure what settings actually affect particle effect rending or if it's actually used for smoke in this case but smoke is a classic example of particle effect.

Literally every other game that has smoke grenades does server-side rendering. What's the deal here?

Edit to add: pretty sure they were server-side in Ins2 as well.

last edited by tedeski

Ok, I just don't know enough of the "tricks of the trade" then, or we mean different things by "rendering".

If someone has a link to a technical description of how "server side rendering" is done for smoke (and how it's blended with the client-side rendering of everything else I'd be glad to read/watch one (I am a programmer, just not game/graphics one)

@mashiara I could be wording it wrong. What I mean is that the smoke sprites are visible to different degrees to each individual player. Meaning a particular puff of smokes might not be visible in the same way to two different people viewing it.