How to play with 10ms lerp on 100+ tickrate servers

This guide shows you how you can easily set up your net settings for 10ms lerp on special 100+ tickrate servers. This is especially interesting on MGE servers, where 1v1 or 2v2 battles need max precision and response times.

Prerequisites

Knowing how to enable and open up the TF2 console:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?l=german&id=217543736

What is lerp? (baby don't hurt me)

For a detailed explanation, you can check this guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=366151973
tl;dr: lerp is an intentionally added delay between server and client communication. The purpose is to stabilize unreliable network connections via interpolation. In short: If you have a good internet connection and want to reduce this delay to the minimum, then this is what you can do:

Minimum achievable lerp

Lerp is just cl_interp * 1000. The general formula to calculate cl_interp is:

cl_interp_ratio / cl_updaterate = cl_interp‬

If we set cl_interp_ratio 1, the minimum possible cl_interp is bound by the server's updaterate restriction. Standard servers, like the valve official servers restrict cl_updaterate to a max of 66. So we can get a minimum cl_interp of

1 / 66 = ‭0.0152‬

which corresponds to a lerp of 15.2ms

However on 100+ tick servers, cl_updaterate is limited by 100, which yields a minimum cl_interp of:

1 / 100 = ‭0.01‬

which corresponds to a lerp of 10.0ms

Adjust net settings with 4 simple commands

Open up the TF2 console and type the following commands in this exact order before joining a server:

1. cl_cmdrate 100
   
2. cl_updaterate 100
   
3. cl_interp_ratio 1
   
4. cl_interp 0

Note: cl_interp 0 does not set the lerp respectively to 0, it picks the lowest possible value by the above formula. This is why it is important to set cl_updaterate first.

Find a 100+ Tickrate Server

Find a 100+ tickrate server. Usually, they have this stated in the server names. You can use the ingame server browser or do a quick search on 3rd party sites like https://tf2-servers.com/ or https://teamwork.tf/.

Check the settings

Check your settings via net_graph 5:

✔️
The important parts to look for is the orange "lerp: 10.0 ms" in combination with the 101.8/s updaterate and 98.8/s cmdrate (those may vary a little, but it indicates the server set both to 100). As well as the server tickrate, which is stated at sv: 133.0.


Note this only works on 100+ tickrate servers! Even if those commands are set, the minimum lerp on the standard 66 tickrate servers is ~15.2ms. You can see this here:

❌
Here we see "lerp: 10.0 ms", which is deceiving since our cmdrate and updaterate is "only" 67.0 (indicating the server has limited it to 66, even though we allow up to 100/s). As well as sv: 66.8 indicating a 66 tickrate. So despite it looks like 10.0ms lerp, it actually is 15.2ms.

[alekny]

Thanks for your comment. The short answer is: Despite showing 10.0ms, it actually is 15.2ms minimum on 66tickrate servers, because the server caps your set cmd- and updaterate to 66. I've updated the guide to add some background info and make this matter more clear.

[Grayfox]

I have 10ms lerp on a 66tick server
How?
cl_cmdrate 100
cl_updaterate 100
cl_interp_ratio 1
cl_interp 0