Thread: Let's talk about RATES

The update has made things seem a bit choppy at times. It may very much be related to your rates and many people have been tampering/tweaking. I've tried all sorts of stuff, but cannot settle on anything.


So what has worked for you and do you feel a difference?

Things to post:
-Rate
-cmd
-updaterate
-interp
-interp ratio

I have all of my rates at what they have always been at TPG, 30000, 66, except I have settled on interp .06, it seems to work best. But who knows, no matter what I do it is still choppy at times. I have tinkered with all of them and it all seems the same to me. So who knows.

Not sure if this will be helpful for you CSS guys, but since CSS is now using the orangebox engine that TF2 uses, here's what TF2 folks generally use. Maybe its of use.

rate 50000
cl_updaterate 66
cl_cmdrate 66
(Lower these to 50 or lower if you are getting choke over 10ish. Or if you aren't getting consistent 66 frames a second, lower it to your max frame rate.)

cl_interp_ratio 1
cl_interp .02
(change to .015 if you have a good/close connection to server and no choke. Use .03 or even .04/.05 if you have a sketchy connection or choke)

cl_smooth 0
(turn it to 1 if you are getting jittery players moving around)

So far this is what I've read to be the norm:

After reading numerous threads on the new engine update and how to optimize CS:S hit reg and hitboxes now, I have come up with the following guidelines for rates.

I wanted to get this info in one place that would be easy for people to find. It took me some time to search, test and assemble the following results.


//PRO: Best reg, hitboxes better aligned to on-screen model position
//CON: Some other players might have slight reaction time advantage
//lerp in netgraph will be approx. 30 ms
rate "60000"
cl_cmdrate "67"
cl_updaterate "67"
cl_interp "0.030"
cl_interp_ratio "1"


//PRO: Slight player advantage for better reaction time
//CON: Hitboxes not perfect on moving and strafing targets
//lerp in netgraph will be approx. 15 ms
rate "60000"
cl_cmdrate "67"
cl_updaterate "67"
cl_interp "0.015"
cl_interp_ratio "1"

Also, as long as tearing is not an issue for you, I recommend not using vsync or limiting max_fps. Both WILL put you at a disadvantage in competitive game play.

These rates assume the following:

• 66 tic server (the only option now although there is reportedly a 100 tic server plug-in available)
• Good server connection, 60 ms or less
• Broadband internet connection, 1.5+ megabits/sec
• Yes, I know you don't really need a 60K rate, but it does not hurt anything to have it

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...ighlight=rates

Originally Posted by Captain Coors

cl_smooth 0
(turn it to 1 if you are getting jittery players moving around)

So, what does cl_smooth 1 do? I mean I can read what you posted, but what is it actually affecting?

Also use net_graph 4 and check the value on the lower left corner called "sv". Thats the server frames per second.

If its chopping around then the server is lagging not you. It should be a stable number like 500 if its a 500 fps server which I would guess the TPG CSS server is.

If its jumping around then the server has issues.

just put cl_interp 0 in console and the engine will set your interp(lerp) to cl_interp_ratio/cl_updaterate automatically.

Hmmm, haven't tried that...

Originally Posted by Toker

So, what does cl_smooth 1 do? I mean I can read what you posted, but what is it actually affecting?

cl_smooth 1 adds a slight amount of game delay so that the engine can smooth out player movement.

The amount of delay is based on the cvar cl_smoothtime x with x being a number like .1 for however many milliseconds of smoothing you would want.

Some people remove it in TF2 because we don't want game delay on shots, but maybe in CSS it would screw up hitboxes since you guys are aiming at small targets like heads versus toon land where we are using shotguns and rockets to aim at the general model.

I personally use the rates bellow with good registration. But if I Alt-Tab out of source sometimes I find my registration goes to crap.
Rate 25000
cl_updaterate 101
cl_cmdrate 101

Works for me..... and should anyone else essentially..

rate "35000"
cl_cmdrate "66"
cl_updaterate "66"
cl_interp "0"
cl_interp_ratio "1" [or "2" if you want everything smoother in exchange for 15ms more update delay, especially important if you get any choke or loss]


Your calculated cl_interp will be 0.0152 (_ratio=1) or .0303 (_ratio=2).