Posted: 13 Jun 2004 00:17

Guys, every day I browse these forums, and every time I play this great game, I hear people complaining about 'Lag!!'. I think we need to clarify what the various causes are and what the solutions are, since most people are getting confused about this.


Ping Lag

This is a general online gaming term, and refers to a situation where there is a delay between the actions of your character, and its impact on the environment, due to your Internet connection. For example, shooting your gun at a target, and the hit being registered a fraction of a second later. This lag occurs because of Ping which is the time in milliseconds for the round trip between when you do something on your computer, that data being sent to the server through your internet connection, registered, and the impact returned to your computer and displayed on your screen. The lower your ping, the less of this lag you experience, the higher your ping, the more lag you experience. To view your ping in real-time during a game, open the console (press ~ or TAB) and type 'Stat Net' (without quotes) to turn on/turn off a network statistics display (or press F6).

To reduce your ping, see the ConfiguredInternetSpeed and Netspeed in my America's Army Tweak Guide. Also refer to this Netspeed and Tickrate Tutorial. Note that depending on your internet connection type, and the distance between you and the actual server, your ping may not be able to be reduced too much more.


Packet Loss

If you have a relatively low ping but you are experiencing a 'warping' effect, whereby walking forward a few steps sees you suddenly warp back to where you started, then you are getting packet loss. This means that some of the information being sent/received through your internet connection to the server is being lost en route, and has to be re-sent immediately. There are two causes of packet loss - client side and server side. Client side is your PC and your Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you experience packet loss on all servers, and in various games then the likely culprit is the setup of your modem/network card/adapter and/or your ISP may be having problems. Contact your ISP for correct setup details and also to determine whether they have a known issue. Most often packet loss is due to a particular server experiencing problems and dropping packets. Leave the server in question and/or contact the server admin if it's a private server to inform them of the problem.


If you have a low ping and your character is not warping around, but your graphics feel slow, stuttery or 'laggy', this has nothing to do with your internet connection or the server, or high ping players on the server. This is specific to your system and is caused by one of the following:


Stuttering

If you have a low Ping, but experience frequent pauses during a round, some of which can be longer, some shorter, often occuring when you first see or hear a new item, character or sound, this is called Stuttering. It is often erroneously referred to as 'Lag', but it has nothing to do with your Internet connection.

Stuttering is simply your system struggling to get updated information not from the Internet, but from your hard drive. It can be reduced by optimizing your drive and making better use of memory as covered in my America's Army Tweak Guide and the Drive Optimization and Memory Optimization chapters of the TweakGuides Tweaking Companion. If nothing else helps, you will need to purchase more RAM and/or a faster hard drive.


Graphical Slowdown

If you have a low ping, but your graphics and controls feel 'laggy', especially during combat and heavy firing, you are experiencing a graphical slowdown. This is not based on your internet connection, it is directly the result of your system - especially your graphics card - struggling to draw all the details and special effects on the screen. You can verify this by pressing F6 (default key) or typing 'Stat FPS' in the console (or using FRAPS), and looking at the framerate counter in the top left corner of the sceen. If this shows low figures, usualy below 20-15 Frames Per Second (FPS), then the 'lag' (graphical slowdown) will be particularly noticeable.

The only resolution to this issue is once again to optimize your system and settings (See my America's Army Tweak Guide) and finally to consider upgrading your hardware. America's Army has various fixed settings which cannot be reduced beyond a certain point (even using tweaks or in-game settings). These require a great deal of computing power, and as new features are introduced into the game, like the Karma Physics engine from V2.1 onwards, or the newer SF maps, or the AI in V2.7 onwards, you will need more computing power to keep up. Meeting the minimum system requirements will give you barely playable results, and often you will get very large slowdowns during intense battles or close quarter combat.

For plain english info on how gaming graphics works see my Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide


High Pingers are giving me the Lag!

This is blatantly untrue. High ping players joining a server may give a momentary ping spike, but once they are on the server, as annoying as it may be to see them warping about or running into walls, their ping does not impact directly on your ping in any significant way. The server allocates a maximum capped amount of bandwidth to each individual (Netspeed cap of 10,000bps), so again a player with a higher ping cannot draw more bandwidth than anyone else. The server doesn't slow down to provide data at a slower rate for dialuppers for example. If you look at your Ping (press F1) and see that it is relatively low (i.e. below 200ms) then any lag you experience is because of graphical slowdown. If you're experiencing warping, that's packet loss and due to the server. If your ping is extremely high, and/or those of other players suddenly become quite high, then you may have a valid point in saying the server is laggy. However once again, this is not due to high ping individuals, since they cannot force a server to lag out. Note that virtually any time large numbers of people join/leave a server you will experience brief moments of ping spikes.


Simple rule: Press F6 (or Stat Net) and check your ping. If it is fairly low then any lag you experience is based on your machine and its graphics and detail settings, and/or programs running in the background. Check my guides below and some of the tutorials and stickies in these forums for details on how to optimize your setup, but in the end if you keep experiencing lag with a low ping you will need to upgrade your hardware.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 00:23

Perhaps we can get this linked in a sticky thread in the TS forum sections? Another outstanding guide Koroush.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 01:15

Thanks. If a mod feels this needs to be moved to General Support or elsewhere, I have no problems with that. Wherever people ask most about 'lag'.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 01:18

New threads will always be created on the same subjects, but at least we'll have a little something to link to next time around.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 02:44

On a side note, Sometimes this warping lag, is a server-side issue somewhere, (possibly overloaded on that end ) as usually when I get it, it is complained about by all players , and my stat net will show no loss, just latency as if the server's momentarily chug a bit ...it almost seems like they sometimes get a stuttery tick to the action... and this is usually where thos odd Bugs crop up like not being able to reload or having to drop your gun to get the server to make it work properly again.

Well if you notice in stat net that you have loss, then it's most likely your connection .
I've seen this weird server lag settle down and rear its ugly head less lately as SCI get's things ironed out from the patch rollover.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 03:15

That's right. If you're on a server and some people complain about lag or warping and others do not, then 9 times out of 10 it is your machine/connection that is the problem. Server-side problems will affect everyone on a server, so checking your own Ping to start with, and seeing if everyone else experiences the same problem are two useful indications of where the problem lies.

In my experience though, most servers are just fine. I see people with pings below 100 complaining about "massive lag" when quite clearly it is their machine that is struggling to render the game in intense battles. Yet they will not accept that it is their machine, and seem to think it is a server problem.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 03:43

i would say this should be hanged on the wall for awhile.

mean as a sticky somewhere..
maby in tech, but not that much people visit thre thou..

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 03:48

Let me first say this, beutiful post, very deserving of a sticky.

Quote:

High Pingers are giving me the Lag! This is blatantly untrue. High ping players joining a server may give a momentary ping spike, but once they are on the server, as annoying as it may be to see them warping about or running into walls, their ping does not impact directly on your ping in any significant way. The server allocates a set amount of bandwidth to each individual (Netspeed cap of 10,000bps), so again a player with a higher ping is not giving you lag. If you look at your Ping (press F1) and see that it is relatively low (i.e. below 200ms) then any lag you experience is because of graphical slowdown. If you're experiencing warping, that's packet loss and due to the server. If your ping is extremely high, and/or those of other players suddenly become quite high, then you may have a valid point in saying the server is laggy. However once again, this is not due to high ping individuals, since they cannot force a server to lag out. Note that virtually any time large numbers of people join/leave a server you will experience brief moments of ping spikes

Im so glad that someone finally came out and said this. Being that I play on Dialup (I usually ping around 230) when the server gets laggy the blame/votekicks automatically point to me (since my ping is usually 200ms more than anyone elses, I would be pinging at around 500). Thanks for the post[/list]

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 03:49

[quote="[172]Maverick.lw"]Let me first say this, beutiful post, very deserving of a sticky.

Quote:

High Pingers are giving me the Lag! This is blatantly untrue. High ping players joining a server may give a momentary ping spike, but once they are on the server, as annoying as it may be to see them warping about or running into walls, their ping does not impact directly on your ping in any significant way. The server allocates a set amount of bandwidth to each individual (Netspeed cap of 10,000bps), so again a player with a higher ping is not giving you lag. If you look at your Ping (press F1) and see that it is relatively low (i.e. below 200ms) then any lag you experience is because of graphical slowdown. If you're experiencing warping, that's packet loss and due to the server. If your ping is extremely high, and/or those of other players suddenly become quite high, then you may have a valid point in saying the server is laggy. However once again, this is not due to high ping individuals, since they cannot force a server to lag out. Note that virtually any time large numbers of people join/leave a server you will experience brief moments of ping spikes

Im so glad that someone finally came out and said this. Being that I play on Dialup (I usually ping around 230) when the server gets laggy the blame/votekicks automatically point to me (since my ping is usually 200ms more than anyone elses, I would be pinging at around 500). Thanks for the post

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 04:27

great compilation......very nice



G-13

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 05:00

u made one mistake hitting f1 to check your ping dont help much because it wil not show your true ping u have to use the stat net command for that. good post and i have used your tweak quide incresed my fps by 10. gj bro

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 05:07

[172]Maverick.lw, sadly people have been saying this for a LONG time and backing it up with theoretical proof. It hasn't changed anything and people still cling to their beliefs as strongly as ever. When gamers lag and they die as a result, they always, ALWAYS go looking for someone to blame. If they don't find any, then it must be some inexperienced player's fault. If no other teammate was involved, then it must have been a cheat.

Gamers are a severely insecure sect of people in general. Most are incapable of accepting that they made a mistake, or that anyone could be better than them once they've put in an amount of time they deem sufficient to be '1337'. There's always someone else to blame, and when there isn't, they'll make something up.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 05:20

phoenix - you are correct in that Stat Net gives you a better indication of your ping, so I'll update the first post to mention that. However using F1 is usually good enough to let you know if you're experiencing ping lag or not (i.e. if your ping is sky-high or relatively low).

Tedsmith - you are correct. Many gamers have a hard time accepting defeat, and look for scapegoats. I draw the line however when I see people votekicking some poor player with a 300 ping because they believe it is "causing lag". It seems more and more people are votekicking for ridiculous reasons, and a higher ping should never be a reason to votekick.

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 05:42

PersianImmortal, as usual, a very informative and useful guide. I have always to others that high pingers where not the cause for thier lag.

One of the tools I use with windows XP is "Pathping". It is trace route (tracert) and ping mixed together. This tool gives you a more indepth look at what is causing your packet loss. This tool is wonderful, it gives you better idea where the packet loss is occurring enroute to the game server.

Pathping
http://www.microsoft.com/resou...ng.mspx

Posted: 13 Jun 2004 05:48

Very good post Persian. Now if only people would actually believe the facts, I hate it when people start a votekick on people who have high ping.