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Kaillera P2P smoothing reduce lag?


deadmeow

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Me and Darko were playing our Mac NHL92 league games today. We tried a few weeks ago, but bad lag, as I am in North America and he is in Europe. This time we used the smoothing option in Kaillera Host options, and set smoothing to "always". And we both hosted like this and the lag was gone, and there did not seem to be increased latency in the game.

Does anyone have any knowledge about this or have used this before to reduce lag??

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I add my analyzis on the smoothing issue.

Never = No changes

Near UB = never tested myself, but the idea of an changing framerate during the game might cause issues while playing, in theory at least

Smoothing extra = +1 frame

Smoothing always = +2 frame

So when I ping 110ms with Kingraph and get to play a 4 frame game, which works very well, if I added smoothing always the game would be frame 6 and that would be added latency. This added artificial latency might be usefull if your ping is not stable and your FPS is jumping in the game with someone, or just your connection. It will give smoothness to the game then but your players will react to keypresses slower than they would with that -2 frame game.

Some of the FPS lags are not about connection, but seem to be more like a compatibility of systems issue. Like against Seth, whom I ping very well with and there are no fps jumps caused by the connection, but my FPS starts to drop out towards ~20 every few game minutes and I need to alt-alt to reset it back to 60 for a while. I have not tested smoothing with this. Last time I tried this alt-alt after the lag system it caused my players go to a huge lag in player input on how they react to what I press. Seth on the other hand says the connection is great for him and by definition of raw connection between us it is. But something else is doing this.

It might be a good idea to get out all the info players have on their gens and have they noticed how the game feels best for them.

I got Windows 7 64bit and run gens on an XP compatibility mode as people have said that Gens would work very well with XP. Recommend that for everyone at least to test. I also play with no sound usually in gens, but don't think that has any effect on the game itself. Have tried other rendering options for a faster responsiviness too, but no difference felt in games, other than a possible placebo effect, 2xSAI looks a bit funny though and the combined interpolated and scanline make it look a bit too much of a Spectrum PC. Sometimes switching between windowed and full screen mode might give you a better feel of the game and your players in responsiviness, but this is another possible placebo effect. I'd be really happy to know if other players have noticed anything, just out of their mind, even anything having a placebo effect and if you have any solution for the problem I have had with Seth for example.

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Like against Seth, whom I ping very well with and there are no fps jumps caused by the connection, but my FPS starts to drop out towards ~20 every few game minutes and I need to alt-alt to reset it back to 60 for a while. I have not tested smoothing with this. Last time I tried this alt-alt after the lag system it caused my players go to a huge lag in player input on how they react to what I press. Seth on the other hand says the connection is great for him and by definition of raw connection between us it is. But something else is doing this.

What is alt-alt? I always have lag issues with Seth, even though we ping around 30. The game can get to a point where it so fast and basically unplayable for me. As you mention, Seth doesn't get the same effect on his end.

Does pressing alt+alt help reset that lag? This could've been a very useful tip for me if true! Lol.

Maybe I'll try smoothing vs. Seth in our next exis. Given our close proximity, adding a frame or two would be worth it if we can get cleaner games.

I use Win 7 and I don't change any of the default settings in GENS. Most of the time I play full screen. I generally don't have lag against anyone, just a few guys in particular, who I know have shoddy connections or have families that may be using the network at the same time.

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What is alt-alt? I always have lag issues with Seth, even though we ping around 30. The game can get to a point where it so fast and basically unplayable for me. As you mention, Seth doesn't get the same effect on his end.

Does pressing alt+alt help reset that lag? This could've been a very useful tip for me if true! Lol.

Maybe I'll try smoothing vs. Seth in our next exis. Given our close proximity, adding a frame or two would be worth it if we can get cleaner games.

I use Win 7 and I don't change any of the default settings in GENS. Most of the time I play full screen. I generally don't have lag against anyone, just a few guys in particular, who I know have shoddy connections or have families that may be using the network at the same time.

I used to reset that with alt-tab from fullscreen to windowed mode. But playing in windowed mode visiting the menu via alt and coming back from it fast with another alt press will reset the fps lag back to 60. Problem is that sometimes, just sometimes while it might fix the problem temporarily, it might give you an input lag. :E

I might try this weekend with different settings and gens compatibility modes more. It's easy to change by mouse2 on gensnetplay.exe, clicking properties and from the settings there change the compatibility mode.

To add to the discussion I have had the similar problem vs Swos one year ago when he used 2 setups for games if I'm correct. With his XP laptop I had a similar FPS problem as with Seth and on the other setup no problems. At least I recall this being the case. It was not connection caused fps lag but rather system compatibilities or something else.

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