How lag - high(bad) ping rates affect gameplay

**PanzerHans** · 01-13-2006, 02:22 PM

I've been asking myself this question lately, but am a bit uncertain how to conclude. I usually get on the servers early when there are few people on it. When I check my ping rates I usually get around 200-300ms. I tend to win as many one on one combats as i loose. Later on as the evening progresses my pingrates goes down to 800-1200ms and I will loose a one on one firefight more often then I win. A noticeable effect when I have high(bad) pingrates is when I mount a 50cal. to gun at a transportchopper, the only place I can hit it when it is moving horizontal to my posistion is at the area around the tail rotor. If I aim at the cabin part of the helicopter I'll miss.

Do you guys who have lower(good) pingrates have to aim for the tailrotor as well?

Does anybody know how the engine deals with lag?

Shafik · 01-13-2006, 03:43 PM

I play at a steady 200+ ping and can hit the cabin part of the chopper, or any other part. I do feel the lag when gunning guy with a saw-249 running horizontal to my position. Impossible for me to hit him.

kornkobcom · 01-13-2006, 04:02 PM

Oh noes! Here come the wild anecdotal theories on teh nature of lag and network code!

: )

warcriminal2 · 01-14-2006, 07:04 AM

I seriously think people make too big of a deal about pings and laugh at servers that enable their highping kick at like 250ms. Anything under 400 is decent depending where they are connecting from. I usually run about a 50-60 ping when I connect to the TG server which I beleive is in Texas. When I play on servers in the UK or Europe I usually get around 180-200 ping and cant really tell much if any difference. Perhaps its more noticeable in faster vehicles like the jets but I cant really tell on the ground.

One thing I do look out for are fluctuations in my own ping. Like I said, I usually have about a 50-70 ping on most texas servers and when my ping shot up to about 185 the other week I hit up Adaware and my ping went back to normal. Spyware is a sumbish!!!!!!!

(TG Irr) Kurushii · 01-14-2006, 08:19 AM

Dude I feel your pain. I love playing evening GMT - silky smooth gameplay, but as the server fills up my frame rate seems to go down and down till I'm like a cross-eyed drunk and a positive liability to my squad.
Anyway - why does this happen? Ping is a constant 118. Would more expensive bits of circuit board in my PC help?

warcriminal2 · 01-14-2006, 08:23 AM

maybe you need more ram. you should have at least a gig or two gigs if you wanna be a rockstar!

MrPaladin-TPF- · 01-14-2006, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by (TG Irr) Kurushii

Dude I feel your pain. I love playing evening GMT - silky smooth gameplay, but as the server fills up my frame rate seems to go down and down till I'm like a cross-eyed drunk and a positive liability to my squad.
Anyway - why does this happen? Ping is a constant 118. Would more expensive bits of circuit board in my PC help?

sounds similar to a problem I was having...

When more people come into the server, your internet conection isn't really stressed more.... but your video and processor are... run some tools to find out how hot your running and perhaps try lowering your details (espeically the textures) and see what results you get

notalegend · 01-16-2006, 05:51 AM

Here's my 'for what it's worth' view
I have a UK Broadband (Wanadoo) connection. When I started playing BF2 I was on a 1 meg connection, ping @80-120, until recently I was on 2 meg, ping @ 40-50, and now 8 meg, last night my Ping averaged 25. It has made no difference to my game experience, which as fas as I can see is entirely determined by my equipment and settings. As I play on a laptop i need most things set pretty low, and it is tinkering with these that has kept my FPS at 30-35.
On an associated note, I still can't get my VOIP working. I thought it might be due to my modem/router and a lack of ports, so I have a new one. Portforward.com suggests I need a static IP address before I can open the correct ports to make this work properly, but it doesn't appear that Wanadoo supports this - any thoughts?

FishRoy · 01-16-2006, 03:47 PM

I feel for you high-pingers, but I'm glad to hear that you can still play.

I live in the Dallas area and ping about 10-15; a lot of servers are in Dallas so I kind of luck out being so close to a lot of gaming servers.

I remember back in the day of 56k though; damn I couldn't play anything at all!

smallfatcat · 01-17-2006, 02:36 AM

On UK servers I get a ping of around 15-20ms which is very nice indeed. On the TG servers I get about 120ms which is higher than I'd like but the quality of play on the server makes up for it.

I only notice the difference because I'm used to extremely low latency, and the added bonus of a very fast server with a fast connection makes up for the lag.

Shafik · 01-24-2006, 09:36 AM

There is a 64 player ranked server in Israel. My ping is about 7 on there.

Pooper · 01-26-2006, 03:09 PM

It seems on my system (1gig-ram, 256video on a 2.9GHrtz pc) that my lag issues come from eithier being near or inside buildings like constructiion sites or tv station, or the lag gets real bad when large scale fighting is going on close, you know the chopper shooting everything to hell 50cals goin off and everyone is shooting all at once. The building issue happens no matter how many players are on but the "action lag" I get seems to depend on how many people are on server in game. My game settings are all on low as well. But because my video card is not supported I feel lucky to being playing at all. I just try to stay away from buildings and then grin and bear the action lag.

BHack · 01-26-2006, 03:58 PM

Ping is very important in online gaming. Yes you can still play at 120 ms but you'd be better at 25. I can easily notice differences between 50 ping (TG server) and 75 ping (map pack 3 server we were playing on the other night). I've been playing online games for many years now and notice the symptoms.

That being said, ping does not affect your framerates. Two separate issues. Your framerate will take a hit from more players being on the server, but your ping shouldn't.

That being said (again); notalegend's post does not follow from my years of my own personal experience and Information Technology bachelors degree would tell me. Not saying it's not possible, but upping your bandwidth should not affect your ping at all. Ping is an indication of the time it takes for data to travel basically "there and back". The actual ping number is generated by timing only 4 packets, which is nothing, which means bandwidth isn't an issue.

Also, I would say it is very near impossible to get 25 ping from anywhere in the UK to a dallas, TX server. Your literally breaking laws of physics with that one. Eletrical signals cannot travel that fast over copper, and I HIGHLY doubt the entire route is going through optical fiber.

**UnDeaD77** · 02-10-2006, 11:34 PM

I also notice higher pings above 200, which is what I only got from 56k connection, now that I get 11-12 on TG its more like, realtime-ish? than any sort of delay. I only prefer pings under around 80 or I won't even join.

notalegend · 02-13-2006, 08:06 AM

Bhack - interesting points, but I can only tell you what I have observed. And my Ping absolutely does run as low as 25, in fact even lower, but NOT on TG servers, because as we all know, I can't play on them due to unresolved VOIP issues.