Ways you deal with lag in game

[disfigured]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

Check your ISPs upload stability.

Most of the time everyone has enough download to play any online games, and stability isn't an issue. ISP's are good at providing download. But upload is what can cause stutter and lag.

I use BroadBandReports, but there are other places to test up/down load speeds.

Check your speeds as many times in a row as the free service will permit. See in your upload varies greatly.

Cable systems are notorious for having extremely unstable upload speeds in some situations. It's a roll of the dice with cable.

Remember it's not speed your looking for it's stability. Since download is usually above and beyond what you need to play in most "broadband" connections, it's upload that needs to be watched as a the culprit for lag.

I reccommend doing the "tweak" test at BroadBandReports . Run the test, make the changes they recommend, with the free tools provided.

Don't load a generic "speed patch" for surfing, it most likely won't help you for gaming. If nothing else works, think about DSL.

I had to dump a cable connection that had twice the DL speed of my cable. Cable in my neighborhood simply was too unstable to play any games with out being extremely frustrating.

Even with a slower up and down load speed then my former Cable Provider, my DSL is much better for gaming because both speeds (especially the upload) is rock solid.

[{ATS}Takeout]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

Good points Disfigured. Sorta what I was saying. I have DSL and have much better connection than our cable here although the cable has much higher overall throughput. Online games need to receive and send info. If either one isn't cutting it you'll have problems. Remember that multiple connections to a server at once can cause lots of stutter, as in the start of a round or if the server is far away geographically, the connection from you to the server may have problems. Try to ping the server IP. Also DSLreports is another good test site, good for Canadians too. They have comparisons by postal/zip code as well.
I find my ping to be an almost constant 45, and I have no problems at all.

[disfigured]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

Also DSLreports is another good test site........

It's one in the same now, DSLReports is BroadBandReports. I forget when they changed the name. Probably did it not to alienate cable users from using their site.

I started using it when it was DSLReports when I had cable, now I have DSL and it's BroadBandReports. Eh... go figure.

Another thing that can save headaches for people is so simple.

Join games that have the lowest ping possible to you. Make sure by refreshing and re-refreshing the game to see if continues to have a low ping.

As much as one would like to join a server that is populated or "well known", it's probably better to just join the ones that have the best ping to you.

Forget the ingame browser it's a total P.O.S, and so is X-fire for judging whether a server is decent or not. Those two programs simply don't have the tools for sorting, pinging, and tracerouting servers with any kind of ease.

Download and learn how to use Qtracker. It's much easier with Qtracker to filter, ping and traceroute servers. Plus it makes it easier to track, and sort them. Finding a server that's very stable to you and keeping track of all the ones that you've visited is hard enough, never mind if you try to do it with X-Farter or the ingame browser.

Make a folder of "favorites", in Qtracker. Sometimes I'll see a server ping up with an incredibly low ping. I'll test it and reping it, and throw it in my favorites , even though I've never even played on it.

Remember Ping is King.

[Scinto]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

logoff and play another day :|:

[{ATS}Takeout]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

Thanks for clarifying Disfigured, haven't been there in a while. I only play FullContactWar VOIP/Squad server and have a constant 30-40 ping, cant seem to get better anywhere else either, so thats where I play. Excellent games and players there though.

[914 motob]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

command for the PB scan was appreciated and thanks for the interesting posts disfigured/Takeout
Scinto, I understand the short comment and if I played a lot, I'd take your advice...thing is, I play with older friends (50+) and we all lack the knowledge of online gaming and how the internet works. yes, we are new to online gaming, but all of us have been gaming on our PC's way back to the commodore days. Appreciate everyone's feedback!

[disfigured]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

command for the PB scan was appreciated and thanks for the interesting posts disfigured/Takeout
Scinto, I understand the short comment and if I played a lot, I'd take your advice...thing is, I play with older friends (50+) and we all lack the knowledge of online gaming and how the internet works. yes, we are new to online gaming, but all of us have been gaming on our PC's way back to the commodore days. Appreciate everyone's feedback!

Once you go online, you'll never go back, especially if you have friends who you play with.

I'm 43 and caught the online bug over 10 years ago, and haven't played anything offline except a few things here and there.

It is the better way of gaming if you do anything of a competitive nature. I started with playing Linx golf for money with friends online, and moved to race sims, flight sims, then shooters.

If you can play offline and understand graphics and the other demands of games, it's only the additional knowledge of how online games connect and work that is stopping you from the superior PC gaming experience. IMO anyway. Don't give up, straighten out your connection and play BF2 online, you'll never regret it. Or you'll become so addicted you'll hate me for encouraging you in that direction.

Plus I'm surrounded by kids, we need all the older players we can get our hands on. :cry:

[ACE_FIN1972]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

Iqaluit. I'm there now... damn is it ever cold. Thank heavens I don't have to go outdoors much: the store is directly linked to my house... very convenient.

-20 degrees, blizzard...

Sounds familiar to me, yesterday we got 20cm snow and it was -10 degrees here in Finland. (Global warming hurry up )

Seems really interesting place if you are outdoor people ("Thank heavens I don't have to go outdoors much" :laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh, specially in the summer. Anyhow, here is a small task for you if you are not a native (local shop for the local people...dig it?). Not too difficult to find translation from the net, but much easier if u ask some local people. ( Hope I got it right )...

[AmericanDad]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

That how I deal with lag

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmqUQ1gPxCM

]

[imported_ethanhunt]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

Theres another thing, you push the ~ button and type in "pb_sleep500" w/o the ". This make's it so pb only scan you computer for hax every 500 secs instead of every 10. but I forget how to make it stick, it's something like "write_cfg", can't rember if you know post it.

Thanks for that. Anyone here mess with the latency settings?

This is from the BF2 guide on tweak guides

Usersettings.con

This file is found under your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\Settings directory. There are two particular settings of interest here which are reported to help reduce the inaccurate feel /hit detection of weapons fire in BF2:

SettingsManager.floatSet GSDefaultLatencyCompensation 0.100000

This setting controls latency (or 'lag') compensation, which involves the game attempting to offset the delay between information being sent from your machine to the server and back again (as measured in milliseconds by your Ping). In games without client-side latency compensation, you have to lead your target by a certain amount, since whenever you fire a weapon your bullets will actually register in the game world with a delay equal to your Ping. In BF2, whenever you fire a weapon, whatever appears in your crosshairs at that particular moment is registered as being hit, regardless of where they actually are at that point in time. This removes the need to predict where your target will be based on ping delay, and makes the game feel more responsive. However it can also introduce quirks like ducking behind a wall and still being hit.

In any case, this setting controls the default latency compensation applied, and the normal value is 0.100000 = 100ms. Some people claim that by adjusting this value to match your average ping in the servers you play, it can improve hit detection. For example, if you typically have a 50ms Ping, setting this to 0.050000 should improve the feeling of accuracy in the game. To be honest having experimented with this setting in isolation I didn't notice much difference either way. I believe the latency compensation is actually dynamic, only starting at the default value given in this setting, and adjusting to match your average ping over time. However even if it isn't, in general you can try to match your Ping with this setting to see the results. Note that lowering this setting well below or above your average Ping will only add to lag and may decrease your accuracy at best, so stick with keeping it equal to the Ping you get on most servers.

http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_7.html

[YoDiddy]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

i deal with it by finding a lower pinged server

[|-TC-| NZSAS-Trooper]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

Yeah.

pb_sleep 500

then

pb_writecfg

Yes!!!! thankyou!!!! I've been trying to figure it out for sooo long

Sounds familiar to me, yesterday we got 20cm snow and it was -10 degrees here in Finland. (Global warming hurry up )

Hahaha were having 20-25*c days over here

[TotalBF2er]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

I've been searching on this forever and it seems like there are some good tips out there on disabling certain processes and making sure your hardware or PC is up to spec in order to acheive smooth game play. Each player seems to have a little different issue when playing online, but the most common issue I've seen/heard in game is how bad the studdering or lag is. Pilots not being able to control flight, gunners missing targets or not even trying... they all seem to apologize in advance before taking flight. What steps do you take to ensure smooth game play? What's your routine maintainance?

I just get pissed off, refresh the server browser, see a server that says 45ms, go into it, and it changes to 158ms in-game, get pissed off and hit Quit.

I would like to try more RAM though, see if the stuttering stops a bit. (Got 1.256GB)

[Warm Pudgy]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

simple enough
when i have lag, i hide and play commander

[EvilP]

Re: Ways you deal with lag in game

I go downstairs and tell my housemate to turn bittorrent off.

He'll argue that he's only getting 4kb/sec down and I argue that it takes over a second to ping google.com .

Also try defragmenting your harddrive. Sorts out slow loading generally and if your PC is getting data off the drive(s) midgame it won't halt to seek the drive if the file is fragmented.