Online Arma plays like i'm on dial up

[Pogoman 1]

ok i've had arma for about 4 months now and i've been playing it online almost exclusively, ignoring the lag i took for granted as hey, its pretty incredible game pushing the boundaries with the map size and number of units etc. i did however recently find out that arma actually doesnt lag for some, if not most people, and so now im trying to figure out what my problem is.

heres a video of me playing on a server by myself with a ping of about 50, no desync, a constant 30fps (due to fraps) and this was taken at the start of a warfare game:

now this lag happens on every online mission i play, not just the ones with tonnes of units but even small coop games like ambush a convoy or something. strangely enough usually the actual human players dont lag at all, its just the ai that warp and rubber band etc, and as you see in the video the further away they are the greater the lag becomes. it still actually happens however even if they're 10m away although to a lesser degree as you can see, however i was told that shouldnt be happening much, and for me it occurs constantly.

my internet connection is cable broadband 10mbps down and 256kbps up and no other online game gives me lag.

any help here would be great. im gonna experiment with the arma demo online as i remember playing it 2 yrs ago and not experiencing any of these problems.

any insight on the problem would be great :S

EDIT: oh and i've already forwarded ports 2302-2305

[ck-claw 1]

I get that too,but im running a low spec system!

What are your pc specs?

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

Well ArmA unfortunately isn't the best performance-wise in multiplayer, you will probably always see the things you are seeing with AI, like the stuttering movement.

Another thing is alot of people connecting/disconnecting to games can seriously lag the hell out of it, to the point where its unplayable. That can contribute to the AI lag.

[Pogoman 1]

i've got an Asus 8800gt 512mb, an e6750 conroe dual core clocked at 3.4Ghz, 2gb of corsair ram and i never lag like that in singleplayer, it only happens in multiplayer. thats not to say i get low fps in multiplayer (i usually average 60fps), just that i dont think its hardware related. plus that wasnt desync because the warping ai happens all the time and there was no1 on the server when i took that video, so i had 0 desync.

[Orton 0]

Well i know the problem i also got a problem with the lags sometimes that bad that i must close the server i tried different setups different maps.I think it is the game itself.It is a shame that when you have a server that you paid for and people are joining you for a nice battle they lag the F*out and disconnect.I would do the same thing i really hope they will resolve this in arma 2 i much see it with arma 1.

But on the other hand some servers dont lag so much and i wonder why.......i got a ping of 35 and i also lagg the sh*t out of my own server maybe there is some1 with a good setting for me that knows his/her server is running good , if you could pm me that would be great.

[Daniel 0]

Perhaps the server itself doesn't always have such a great rig? As far as I know only AI controlled by the player is tied to his machine. Everything else is dependant on the server.

[Pogoman 1]

well holy crap i just tried the arma demo on a server where i had a ping of 400, and the ai were perfect. there was like zero lag on them. the only lag i saw was the other human players, which was understandable given my ping of 400.

that means theres something wrong with my arma install or sumthing :S

[Orton 0]

@pogoman does it also not depends on what kinda server you are playing on?A usa or a uk based.I have a server on the uk and the ping there is always 45.Maybe you where downloading something or whatever.

if i was you check the multi play and look for a low ping server.

[Pogoman 1]

wait the arma demo thing was just a false alarm, the ai under my command were fine but all the other ai was still laggy as. tried reinstalling anyway and played on some 1.08 servers tho and it was much less laggy, so something about patch 1.14 makes arma laggy for me

and yeah im using low ping servers usually Orton, that was just a test in the demo and there was only a server with 400 ping. i still get lag on servers where i have a ping of like 20

[BraTTy 0]

Have you tried without your cpu not overclocked?

Not sure of your bios or motherboard but often changing the bus speed of your cpu changes your pci bus speed and may be mucking with it

[Orton 0]

Could it also not be the setup?We cant look in youre pc but if you have all high then sometimes it looks like it is laggy but it is youre pc that cant handle the heat.If you have a good graphics card then let him do the work.Shadow ups and that kinda things.If youre system sucks put it on low.

If you think it is good try medium you never know.

[BraTTy 0]

strangely enough usually the actual human players dont lag at all, its just the ai that warp and rubber band etc, and as you see in the video the further away they are the greater the lag becomes. it still actually happens however even if they're 10m away although to a lesser degree as you can see, however i was told that shouldnt be happening much, and for me it occurs constantly.

Rereading your initial message I have seen a few discussions related to AI warping. Apparantly it is common and depends mostly on server settings

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=73463

[Pogoman 1]

yeah the thing is all the other players i play with dont get any lag and i've shown them the video and they say they dont get anything like that so its not the server.

even tho my PC's not chugging and i get good fps i'll try putting everything on low anyway and see how it looks, tho i still dont see how it could be a PC problem as theres no lag for me in singleplayer.

EDIT: ok yeah i put everything on very low and the ai still warped while i was getting 200fps, so i hope we can finally discount my system causing the lag...

[BraTTy 0]

Have you tried without your cpu not overclocked?

Not sure of your bios or motherboard but often changing the bus speed of your cpu changes your pci bus speed and may be mucking with it

changing pci bus speed may be mucking with your network adapter whether its built on the motherboard or not

Not sure if this is the case as alot of todays motherboards allow you to manually set the pci bus speed clock also

But you have over 700 mhz overclock ...try it not overclocked

[Pogoman 1]

i only overclocked recently, as this is a new system im using and i got arma around about the same time as i bought it. before i was overclocking it was still like this as i remember noticing the lag on my first day of arma when i just got my computer and spending hours checking with my isp to see if my Internet was playing up, only to realise all other online games worked fine, so i dont think its the overclocking.