What's the best cl_interp for the game?

[Screaming Hotep Man]

As the name of this thread suggests, I am searching for the best version of cl_interp that won't make me up bump into far away projectiles and invisible models, that is all.

[Tom]

the lower the better, use net_graph 1 to see are you dropping packets.

[Gtkp_]

People who deliberately use cl_interp 5 to get facestabs should be banned

change my mind

[trash]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2mBNz4NvGc
read comments for details
tldr;
cl_interp 0
cl_interp_ratio 2

My recommendations on how to configure your interp for Team Fortress 2 (or basically any Source game):
====================================================================================================
1. Set cl_interp to 0 (so that the game will look at cl_interp_ratio instead).
2. Set cl_interp_ratio to 2, unless you have a very good reason to use a different value. (Bump it up to 3 if your net connection is bad enough that you're still having problems at 2. Drop it down to 1 _only_ if you actually know what you're doing and why you're doing it.)

An interp ratio of 2 enables the game to compensate for 1 consecutive dropped packet. A ratio of 3 enables the game to compensate for 2 consecutive dropped packets, and a ratio of 4 allows for up to 3 consecutive dropped packets, and so forth.

Lowering the ratio to 1 (the effective minimum) can be desirable, particularly when playing non-hitscan classes, because it reduces the artificial interpolation lag you experience from 30 ms down to 15 ms. But it comes at a big cost, because you remove the ability for the game to cope with even small amounts of jitter or packet loss without resorting to extrapolation. (It is possible to set up your game configuration to use different interp ratios when you play different classes. But that's beyond the scope of this wall-of-text; Google is your friend.)

Extrapolation is what your game client does when it doesn't know how everything is supposed to be moving because it missed information from the server _and_ also doesn't have enough interpolation history to figure out "average" values that would serve as reasonable stand-ins for the missing data. So instead, the game does the least horrendous thing it can: it assumes that all objects will just continue moving in a perfectly straight line in the same direction that they're currently going. Needless to say, this very rarely matches reality, and it also leads to sudden jerks when the next server update _does_ arrive and objects jump to the location where they were _actually_ supposed to be.

When extrapolation isn't an option, the game client more-or-less throws its hands up in the air and just freezes everything in place while it waits for data to start arriving again from the server telling it what to do. Once a proper server update does arrive, then everything un-freezes, and the positions/velocities/states of all the entities in the game suddenly jump to their actual correct values for the current time. This sudden-stop-and-freeze-up, then wait, then suddenly-jump-and-resume-everything phenomenon is very jarring, which is why interpolation is so important.

[Screaming Hotep Man]

"People who deliberately use cl_interp 5 to get facestabs should be banned"

sweats

[Tom]

Originally posted by Gtkp_:

People who deliberately use cl_interp 5 to get facestabs should be banned

change my mind

sorry, cl_interp can only be between ~0.015 and 0.5

[aw dangit]

Originally posted by slop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2mBNz4NvGc
read comments for details
tldr;
cl_interp 0
cl_interp_ratio 2

My recommendations on how to configure your interp for Team Fortress 2 (or basically any Source game):
====================================================================================================
1. Set cl_interp to 0 (so that the game will look at cl_interp_ratio instead).
2. Set cl_interp_ratio to 2, unless you have a very good reason to use a different value. (Bump it up to 3 if your net connection is bad enough that you're still having problems at 2. Drop it down to 1 _only_ if you actually know what you're doing and why you're doing it.)

An interp ratio of 2 enables the game to compensate for 1 consecutive dropped packet. A ratio of 3 enables the game to compensate for 2 consecutive dropped packets, and a ratio of 4 allows for up to 3 consecutive dropped packets, and so forth.

Lowering the ratio to 1 (the effective minimum) can be desirable, particularly when playing non-hitscan classes, because it reduces the artificial interpolation lag you experience from 30 ms down to 15 ms. But it comes at a big cost, because you remove the ability for the game to cope with even small amounts of jitter or packet loss without resorting to extrapolation. (It is possible to set up your game configuration to use different interp ratios when you play different classes. But that's beyond the scope of this wall-of-text; Google is your friend.)

Extrapolation is what your game client does when it doesn't know how everything is supposed to be moving because it missed information from the server _and_ also doesn't have enough interpolation history to figure out "average" values that would serve as reasonable stand-ins for the missing data. So instead, the game does the least horrendous thing it can: it assumes that all objects will just continue moving in a perfectly straight line in the same direction that they're currently going. Needless to say, this very rarely matches reality, and it also leads to sudden jerks when the next server update _does_ arrive and objects jump to the location where they were _actually_ supposed to be.

When extrapolation isn't an option, the game client more-or-less throws its hands up in the air and just freezes everything in place while it waits for data to start arriving again from the server telling it what to do. Once a proper server update does arrive, then everything un-freezes, and the positions/velocities/states of all the entities in the game suddenly jump to their actual correct values for the current time. This sudden-stop-and-freeze-up, then wait, then suddenly-jump-and-resume-everything phenomenon is very jarring, which is why interpolation is so important.

That's actually interesting, I've always used ratio 1 and interp 0.33 for hitscan and 0.152 for projectile

[Tom]

Originally posted by Kore4n_ALT:

Originally posted by slop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2mBNz4NvGc
read comments for details
tldr;
cl_interp 0
cl_interp_ratio 2

That's actually interesting, I've always used ratio 1 and interp 0.33 for hitscan and 0.152 for projectile

Isnt 330 ms interp a bit too much?

[trash]

Originally posted by Kore4n_ALT:

That's actually interesting, I've always used ratio 1 and interp 0.33 for hitscan and 0.152 for projectile

that's nearly functionally the same thing, ratio 2+interp 0 and ratio 1+interp 033 both result in an interp of ~30ms
it's just cleaner and more precise to set it to default exactly to the server tick time * ticks you want covered by interp

0152/0 interp is 1 tick, virtually the same as 0/0
if you understand the risks/benefit of having interp on min for projectile classes go ahead and use it

[The Undertaker]

Originally posted by Gtkp_:

People who deliberately use cl_interp 5 to get facestabs should be banned

change my mind

nah, they are just hand capping them selfs to get some weird kills

[Sanich]

leaving a comment to see this post later

[Rando the Crit Clown]

Originally posted by Sanich:

leaving a comment to see this post later

why don't you just favorite the video trash linked instead

[Sanich]

I'll do that too