Lag spikes in build 240

Kamamura

Hello, I don't know how many of you experience similar problems, and I did not find specific topic for this very issue.

In 238 and 239, I had latency to the closest servers (Germany) between 30-40 ms (ping measured by the game). It was very stable throughout rounds, and the gameplay experience was quite satisfactory.

However, since 240, I my average ping jumped 20ms everywhere, and I experience occasional lag spikes over 200ms ping quite often.

I have quite strong PC, so I don't expect bottleneck there (Core i5 3570, GTX 670 with 4GB onboard, 8GB RAM at 1333, Creative XFi Gamer, and a dedicated Intel NIC). Latest drivers, updates for everything, Windows 7 64bit. Can provide DXDiag or other outputs, but I frankly think that my gear is not the problem. Every other game runs fine. Builds prior to 240 did run very nicely.

Just to let you know that there are problems. The recent network performance downgrade have pushed the game to the realm of unplayable, so I now only play as Commander or not at all. Shame, great game overall.

I really hope there will be patches to correct this.

DC_Darkling

when it happens check net_stats 1 in console for stuff like choke problems and server tickrate.
use net_log 3 in console to create a logfile which logs a godly amount of info. NO clue what to do with that log tbh, but I was some playtesters ask them, so they may help.

Kamamura

The situation is better with 241 build, there are no more lag spikes, but the latency is still worse than in 239 by 10-20 ms. Interestingly enough, I am beginning to think that the problem is actually caused by worsened client-side engine performance that was somehow masked by using triple buffering vsync - everything was subjectively smooth, but somewhat delayed with subjective hiccups. With double-buffering, everything became really jerky. Note that I had run the game on max, which is probably not a good idea, so I disabled ambient occlusion and vsync altogether, and the network latency improved marginally, and the jerkiness was gone.

How do I display FPS, is there a console command for it?

DC_Darkling

yes.
r_stats 1

net_stats 1 shows some basic rates info.

I can confirm that if your fps goes down due to your cpu, you're latency will skyrocket!
My cpu desided not to go in turbo after many alt tabs yesterday, and my fps dropped to 5 and my ping raised to 300+.. had to restart NS2.. heheh
SO yes, it does matter

Kamamura

Okay, I deleted and reinstalled the game, tried r_stats, and my performance is not the bottleneck, on powerful enough server, I can have around 40 ms ping stable, rstats also stable even in wildest fights, VSYNC+Tripple buffering on. No problems whatsoever now, but number of players and server performance is also a factor.

The game actually plays quite nice now.

DC_Darkling

Well glad your performance went up

IronHorse

DC_Darkling wrote: »

yes.
r_stats 1

net_stats 1 shows some basic rates info.

I can confirm that if your fps goes down due to your cpu, you're latency will skyrocket!
My cpu desided not to go in turbo after many alt tabs yesterday, and my fps dropped to 5 and my ping raised to 300+.. had to restart NS2.. heheh
SO yes, it does matter

This bug happened to me, and is reported.

Kamamura

Well, I was playing today again, and the problems hit back. I examined r_stat and net_stat during the play, and the r_stat seems to indicate that my system is capable of rendering everything on full detail with vsync and tripple buff. The gameplay is very smooth too. However, the pings suffer greatly - I have find out that Ambient Occlusion setting affect it, after switching it off completely stabilized the ping somehow.

Strange is, the player list and net_stats show completely different values, the latter being twice in value of the former. I am starting to think that the game has some weird problem in scheduling, as if the packet creation/sending was somehow hampered/delayed by the CPU being busy with some load that is not passed to the GPU. Or whatever, just a fantasy, I am not a game developer, but it does not happen in other games. I am on VDSL line, the capacity far exceeds the values that are being transfered by the game according to net_stats.