Explanation of LERP and Hitboxes... I hope.

[Ford 1st MRB]

As the video shows, the higher your LERP, the farther off the hitboxes are from your actual target when it is moving. This makes shooting at the player you see pretty much pointless because their hitbox is in a different location according to the server.

High LERP means, no packet loss, but inaccurate hitboxes, Low LERP means some packet loss but very accurate hitboxes.

The suggestion would be to play with your rates to see how low you can get your LERP and still have it in the white. A yellow LERP means you are losing packets, so try and avoid that if at all possible.

The commands:

net_graph 1

cl_updaterate 100

cl_interp_all 1

cl_interp_ratio 1

cl_interp 0.021 (this is the value you need to adjust to adjust your LERP in the server. Setting it to decimal points will adjust it. IE: cl_interp 0.1)

Keep adjusting the cl_interp rate until you find the lowest possible LERP that stays in the white. 0.021 was as low as I can go but depending on your connection speed, processor, yadda yadda yadda, you may be able to go lower.

Hope this helps explain why you all suck so bad.

[Woz 1st MRB]

Don't know if it's true or not but I've heard lerp doesn't just make you more accurate to hitting enemy's. it also makes their shots more accurate on you as well... any truth to this?

Replying to a very old post, but I figured it would be nice to have this info here for anyone to see.

TL;DR It does not make a big difference in accuracy for you or the other players. It only determines how soon you will see a players actions, which is important when considering reaction times against someone coming from behind cover.

Interpolation (lerp) is a client side setting. This means that it only affects how the game is rendered to you, and not to anyone else.

The delay that you are tweaking is the delay between the time you receive a server snapshot and the time that it is rendered to the client. The default of 100ms lerp on a 66 tick server (15ms snapshots) means that even if a packet is lost, there are substantial packets in that 100ms timeframe to keep animation smooth.

Naturally, this interpolation of motion leads to some minor inconsistencies in movement / animation in terms of congruence to the true server state, and is only made worse when packets are lost. This is where some hit registration errors happen. The rest of the hit registration errors usually come from the server being overloaded, or your connection having too much jitter (the average difference in ping of each packet sent).

Before I completely answer the question, I want to move on to some clarifications about how networking in this game works.

I think that the video might create the notion that interpolation (lerp) makes you miss the other player because you are shooting in the wrong spot, but this is a misunderstanding. The client keeps track of the interpolation delay, and communicates this to the server along with its command packets (what keys you've pressed, what mouse movements you've made, etc.). The server then takes this into account when determining hit scans (whether your shot's trajectory intersects another player and where). Because of this delay (which is compounded with latency, more on that later), you end up with those oh-so-frustrating deaths where you are certain that you had already ran behind a wall when they shot you.

An interpolation of 100ms means that you will see players coming around a corner at least 100ms after they have done so, but on the other hand you will see them duck behind a corner 100ms after they have done so, which can play to your advantage sometimes. Compound this with latency (your ping) and that delay becomes even greater. This is why it seems like people who pop out from behind corners are able to shoot you so fast. Depending on your interpolation settings, they receive a jump on you in a reaction-times race that amounts to nearly a 50% lead! (Average human reaction times are about 200-250ms)

So, high interpolation will not necessarily make you easier to hit, nor will it necessarily make other targets easier to hit; It will, however, give your opponents an advantage when coming out from cover against you. This reaction time race is the main reason why optimizing interpolation is important.

I am glad to answer any other questions about networking in this game. Just ask here and I will reply.

[J. Hill]

helps explain why i suck so bad.