Acceptable ping playing online

[Levian]

Hello guys,

I've been playing this game for over two weeks. I play in Brazilian servers most of the time, but unfortunately there are some people that don't take it seriously, and just keep bumping and crashing all the time. Sometimes I find nice drivers, sometimes I don't.Yes, I play demo servers, and I don't want to buy a S2 license until I'm good enough.

In foreign servers, the ping is usually above 200 hundred. The question is, if a play in these servers, am I gonna mess with other people and lag it? Or is it still a good ping to play Lfs?


C ya

[Lible]

In europe anything above 250 is high.
I guess that with a ping of 300 it should be ok (The minimum of packets per second in LFS is 3 = 1 packet per 333 ms)

[Levian]

So you're saying that my car won't appear and disappear all the time if I get anything below 300...

That's good news. I used to play Counter Strike a lot, and anything above 200 lagged the server.

[danowat]

I generally like anything under 100ms, but I can remember playing ok on dial-up up to about 200ms and it was ok.

[Becky Rose]

200ms or more (shift-f8 debug 0.2 over driver name) does cause jitter and the variation in packet delivery times messes up the packet prediction - this can result in accidents around you that where otherwise not your fault. Worse yet is that in LFS it tends to be the other cars that pay the price of somebody with a laggy connection (because upload speed are less than download speeds). Often for the laggy car everything feels fine.

It is a sad thruth that a lagging player can completely destroy a race, put them in the middle of the pack through the first turn and the whole server starts arguing with each other and throwing insults around.

[AndroidXP]

Most important is the connection stability. High ping just means that your car will somewhat lag behind what you are doing, and you will see actions of other drivers later. If your connection is unstable (high packet loss), then things may get ugly, with disappearing and warping cars. But just high ping itself is no problem usually. I recently raced someone on the STCC Copper & Bronze server who claimed he had a ping of 400, but I didn't even notice. :)

[Gunn]

So you're saying that my car won't appear and disappear all the time if I get anything below 300...

That's good news. I used to play Counter Strike a lot, and anything above 200 lagged the server.It is very much different than CS when comparing latency. Most of my online racing is done at 180-250 mark and I would say that anything below about 230 is very playable. You should get a good connection to US-based servers, I would expect.

[Leprekaun]

Personally, I'm running on an ADSL 256 Kbit connection and I see between 100-170 Ms and I have no problem at all. As for 300, hard to say really if its good.

[andy_bonjon]

at home in jersey most of the servers i race on are between 20 and 60!! lol here at uni in west london in usually 50 - 700+ and my connection is so unstable that i can have really low pings one minute, then refresh the server list page and they become huge!

as for playability personally once i get over 100 i find lag starts becoming a major problem... but from what other people have just said the lag could be my unstable connection :shrug:

[SamH]

I'm not sure about connections from Brazil, but I just chatted to someone in Oz (pretty well 50% the way around the globe). His latency was around 0.2 (debug mode), and it was definitely acceptable. In the thick of a pack it might be a bit more problematic, but I think if people are focusing on giving each other the room they SHOULD be giving them, easing off rather than chancing potentially suicidal moves around corners etc, that kind of latency should be perfectly okay.

In other words, I think latency can be offset against responsible driving in 9/10 cases.

[edit] and to reinforce AndroidXP's observation, I totally agree.. a solid 200ms ping is far better than an unreliable/unstable 30ms ping.

[Levian]

I'm not sure about connections from Brazil, but I just chatted to someone in Oz (pretty well 50% the way around the globe). His latency was around 0.2 (debug mode), and it was definitely acceptable. In the thick of a pack it might be a bit more problematic, but I think if people are focusing on giving each other the room they SHOULD be giving them, easing off rather than chancing potentially suicidal moves around corners etc, that kind of latency should be perfectly okay.

In other words, I think latency can be offset against responsible driving in 9/10 cases.

[edit] and to reinforce AndroidXP's observation, I totally agree.. a solid 200ms ping is far better than an unreliable/unstable 30ms ping.
I have a 2mb cable connection at home.

How can I find out if I have a stable connection?

[Becky Rose]

It's not really a case of dropped packets either, but variation in delivery times (ping being 15ms one moment, and 500ms the next). Key causes for this are: Shared internet connection; Bit Torrent; Malware; Another internet application open; and Wireless.

If dropped packets are a perenial problem for you, and/or you have a shared internet connection, then it might be worth investing in a router with QoS which can be configured to reserve & guarantee a certain connection speed for given machines on the network - thus ensuring your gaming computer always has a good connection, and other household users get to share what you dont reserve - bear in mind that web pages require very little bandwidth anyway, the problem is where another machine requests a web page and then hogs the line until it's fully downloaded.

[StanleyCarter]

well we can always dream one day that'd be zero lag no matter where you are, what a wonderful moment that would be....

[Becky Rose]

well we can always dream one day that'd be zero lag no matter where you are, what a wonderful moment that would be....
Even when if such a technology is invented it's rollout in the UK would be a long way behind, it took BT 14 years to prove the transistor worked...

[SamH]

I have a 2mb cable connection at home.

How can I find out if I have a stable connection?
Mostly you find out if your connection is bad because someone else tells you so. You can press Shift+F8, and LFS will add figures above each car, showing the connection performance (lower numbers are better). If everyone's numbers are high, the likelihood is that it's your connection that isn't good. :)

[StanleyCarter]

well, as stated earlier, checking the ping numbers on the server list before you join is a good indication on whether you'd lag in that particular server....

For me, anything below 300 is acceptable. Europe servers has the worse lag for us Malaysians though, it's a pity since there's just so many good drivers in Europe :S

[Levian]

I'll check this out tonight and tomorrow I'll post the results ;)

I really liked the respect and way that you guys answered my question, even though I'm a demo player. Can't wait to improve and buy the license :)

[RiGun]

I usually race in servers with less that 150 ping but lately I've started to race in the STCC servers and sometimes I get 300 or 400, when you are racing in a pack with that ping you have to be very carefull, if you get to close to someone it's almost certain that both of the cars with be thrown away in the air because the lag sometimes makes cars be in the same spot at the same time and that is not nice to see, but if you are aware of your ping and try not to contact other racers cars other racers wont even know that you have that much ping, at least i haven't recived any complain about beeing laggy and if i get any i will surely go into spec mode while the ping goes down. So I think that if you are used to be clean on your racing you can race in servers with 300+ ping.

[Gabkicks]

under 100 ping is good :)

[Becky Rose]

Your car is reasonably stable Rigun, because your ping time doesn't vary that much - in cases where the ping is constantly erratic the car is much more jittery, and last night I had to get two players to leave because of that reason.

(And for me, under 20ms is good :) )

[[RCG]Boosted]

(And for me, under 20ms is good :) )
20? O_o
the lowest ive ever seen was 42 :|
sometimes i wonder how the heck u guys get such a low ping lol.

[Motörhead V8]

any server under 300ms should be fine to race, unless you have a very instable connection

here in brazil we got only a few servers under 100ms, around 2 or 3 sometimes

europe servers stay around 300ms here

i'm using a 250kb link and my connetion is very stable, i have good races at european servers, only sometimes i got a little lag

[farcar]

I'm used to seeing the Euro servers have a response of 300+. When I race them, I don't ususally notice any lag, and noone's ever complained about me lagging. I'll only play slower cars though. No BF1 :).

[Woyta]

I have only WiFi 256kbit/s but very nice pings.
My ping for many servers is something about 40ms.
Only few servers very very far away have ping over 100ms.

[jayhawk]

Boosted;286528']20? O_o
the lowest ive ever seen was 42 :|
sometimes i wonder how the heck u guys get such a low ping lol.

I have a 8mb cable connection. I am assuming so does she.
http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/2804/speedtestne2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[mrodgers]

Well, being the dialup guy, I always respond in these threads. My 56k is very stable. I just loaded up the server list and my pings are 13 servers between 226 - 300 and 6 from 338 up to 452. I would have no problems at all with up to 300 ms. I would more than likely not have problems with the 4 servers at 338 ms and wouldn't bother trying the 369 and 452.

I've asked many times if anyone sees a problem with me lagging or jumping around. I always get a response that it looks good, no lag and no jumping. I've been doing this on dialup for almost 2 years now without problems. I have successfully connected and raced on servers all over the world including Australia, and in the UK one night with an Aussie who was running on 28k dialup.

I try to keep my limit to 15 cars or less out on the track for my connection. I suffer more from framerate loss with more than 15 cars than I do with lag.

[jayhawk]

I've asked many times if anyone sees a problem with me lagging or jumping around. I always get a response that it looks good, no lag and no jumping. I've been doing this on dialup for almost 2 years now without problems.

When I was racing you the other night you were smooth, no lag at all.

[Davo]

Being all the way down south doesn't help with my connection. My average ping is 350. I don't have any trouble racing and no one has complained saying I'm lagging out. It seems as long as the actual connection is stable and fast enough it's more important than a good ping. The only down side are lag crashes where it's a lottery to see who gets thrown to the side of teh track from the smallest touch. I race clean but sometimes people get a nasty shock when the racing gets too close :)

[[RCG]Boosted]

I have a 8mb cable connection. I am assuming so does she.
well i doubt its the reason, i got a 6 mb connection and i had the same pings with an 1 mb connection (different ISP).

[Alkanphel]

Lol im getting pings of 400 ~ 500... I guess i'd better not play online T_T

[Levian]

I've tried that shift+f8 thing and the numbers I get are usually below 0,5, is that good?

[Davo]

I'm not sure what the numbers mean exactly, but as long as the gameplay is smooth and people aren't disappearing or laggin out you'll be fine.

[mantis9]

I feel so spoilt, with a crappy BT line in the middle of the uk 378 out of the 457 servers LFS found were under 100ms.
The lowest 14 were all at 32ms. The next 3 were at 33ms and the next 50 servers were all at 43ms. Anyone know why that is?

[Davo]

Most likely most of the LFS servers are hosted in the UK by 500servers or whoever else does server rental.

[delray25]

I'm from Australia and often have only servers in the 300 - 400ms ping range available. Anything below 350 is good enough, when I'm desperate I'll settle for 360ms(if its worse I'll pass), average is around 320 to servers in Germany and England. I usually have a high quality 4mb down/1mb up connection from my provider, I make sure no (absolutely NONE) other applications are running that could use up bandwidth.

It is very very rare that anyone complains to me about me being laggy, though it has happened. But then again I have experienced laggy players that were connected to an Australian server (30-40ms) and I knew they were connecting from within Australia. Sometimes I race on an Australian server and people I know are Europeans connect and its no problem. So, with a quality connection pings of up to 360ms are acceptable IMHO.

A testament to the quality netcode our devs have produced, I say:)