F1 2010 (PC) Online Lag Issues?!

[Paul Wijnen]

Hi every1,

I have already posted this in the racing club, but maybe someo1 else knows the answer. Lately when i race online i'm practically unbeatable.. I am a good driver but this game is bugged as hell:

My lap times are around the same or a bit slower then the people below me, yet i finish more then 30 seconds ahead at the finish (usually around 10% race distance). Also at the start i can pass the whole field in 2 corners, it's like my car has nitrous. As i said when i compare my laptimes with the guys who finish below me they are not slower then me.

The reason why i bring this up is because i really don't wanna win like this.. random people start accusing me of cheating and i can't do anything about it!

Things i tried:
-Reinstalling entire game and deleting all mods.
-Changing host, has no effect if i host or someo1 else.
-Resetting modem/internet connection.

I asked CM about this on their forum, they said its due to lag issues.. The only thing left i can think of is changing settings in my router, mayb forward some ports?

p.s. I have tested this with a friend, and a few days ago all of a sudden the issue seemed fixed. He drives about as good as me, and he could keep up with me the whole race and finished only 2 seconds behind me. The next day the issue was back, we drove testrace and i was 35 seconds ahead of him after 5 laps..

 

[wabbithunta]

A few things suggestions you may want to look at
Check your ping times and settings for playing online as it may depend on who is playing online with you. You may find that it could be a pc problem, ie someone else has a pc that has a spec that is lower than yours and this can also inhibit your connection speed, inasmuch as this person may unwittingly be the cause of a probable lag issue. As their pc is slower then the connection will automatically use their pingtimes as a base level and so as daft as this may sound this does and can happen. So whoever hosts the game may need to set a "bottom limit" on speed by setting pingtimes. I used to have this problem when playing other games online and we found this to be the case on some games.

Check all your ingame video settings as well as your graphics settings for the games and try to make sure that they are in sync, I use an Nvidia card GeForce 8800GT, and adjust the settings in the control panel on my pc and then adjust them ingame as well to suit, I found that some were either being overridden and caused conflicts and therefore caused the game to lag and also slow down the frame rate too.
Try turning off any "unwanted/un-needed" programmes running in the background as they can take up resources that can put a drain on memory on your pc.
Also it can be a pain when programmes decide to update stuff in the background and this can make your game jump/jerk around when it happens in the background. This happens to me when BT updates Netprotectplus for firewall updates/antivirus protection etc. I turn this off when playing online to stop downloads but keep the firewall on and then turn it back on afterwards.

You may also want to check your broadband connection to see if it is being "throttled" or not.
Where I am, in the UK, I have a decent(?!) speed, as I'm about 1k from the nearest BT exchange that serves my area. If the connection speed is slower then this could also affect your speed as you may no doubt get a lag issue this way. BT love to "throttle" the speed here without telling you that they are doing it, to allow others a better connection speed. My brother is further away from the BT exchange, about 3k, so depsite the fact that BT and other users pay for a fast(er) broadband connection, myself and my brother are both on Option 3 and we may not always get a fast speed that matches up. You may have to complain a number of times and also prove what speed you are getting at various times of the day/night and then your provider will hopefully up your bandwith to suit your connection. My brother has now got a vastly improved connection and he has no trouble now when online as his speed can now cope with this when playing online!

GFW Marketplace may also be a problem too, as M/soft did an update recently and now another little programme runs in the background when playing games online via Steam (another "problem" in itself!) I have to wait for my game to load then come out of the game then turn it GFW Marketplace off and then go back in afterwards. This happens to me a lot when when playing Fallout: New Vegas (another bug ridden game!) There isn't a setting in GFWL Marketplace that allows you to turn it off either and so you have to wait for it to load then close it afterwards! I mean.. do you really want to jump out of a game you are playing to look online to see what they are selling!? This isn't a problem with this game (F1 2010), but it can happen with other games that suffer from lag problems as this appears to automatically run and then open up when I go online via Steam and GFW then runs this!

So despite the fact that you may have more than enough memory to run the game... turning off these "unwanted progs" will free more up for you and should help on frame rate etc. I assume you do have more than enough memory to run this game too as you haven't mentioned what specs you have for your pc.
Although as to why there is a huge time difference that you speak of in your post you may both need to make sure that you're both using the same settings in-game to ensure a "level playing field" as it were. Refer to my suggestions at the start of my post.
I hope these suggestions are of some use for you when trying to resolve your problems.

 

[Paul Wijnen]

Wow, thanks for your extensive reply wabbit! I have tried to keep the background programs to a minimum, but this shouldnt be much of a problem with my specs (see below). The thing you say about the ingame connection settings is interesting tho, i am going to experiment with this tomorrow. It can't really be my internet connection either since i have a 10Mbps line (1 Mb Down / 0.1 Mb Up). Im afraid the problem is with lag between different players/games and is somewhat unavoidable, its just a shame that it actually affects race results in such a bad way.. Anyway thanks for the tips, i will post if i find out something new!

PC Specs:
Asus P6X58D-E
Core i7-950@3.5Ghz
6 GB Corsair DDR3 1600 CL8
Radeon HD 6870 1GB
Intel Postville SSD 80GB
Win 7 Ultimate 64

 

[James Chant]

A quick goolge search will find you a speed test site onset a reasonable idea of your connection speed

 

[Jace11]

I have horrible lag issues too. At the start of a race everyone else magically jumps 2 seconds infront of me. Then they stutter around the track and I leave cause its rubbish. Interestingly I have the game on PC and PS3 (gonna sell my PS3 copy when I get round to it) and my PS3 is connected to web THROUGH my PC. PS3 online play is great! Very little lag, but PC is worst online experience ever, but they both use the same connection... I don't get it, is the PC net code so bad? I played japanese people, americans, europeans on PS3 and never saw this...

 

[Paul Wijnen]

I tried some more things this morning, and i'm pretty sure this is due to general connection/server issues. Whenever i play with people from Brazil for instance the gaps are huge, i win 3 lap races with more then 30 seconds lead. When i play against europeans (mostly germans) the issue seems gone and they finish either right behind me or in front of me, depending on how good they are

 

[Tomas Torasen]

I think we had an incident there online, Paul. =)

This makes me wonder how often this can be in effect in races online, different scenarios, and we dont even suspect it's there. Maybe the fastest online are the slowest? Maybe those who think they are slow are really fast? lol

Crazy times with all the bugs in this game.

 

[wabbithunta]

IMHO
This does sound like it may well be ping times. As that is what can happen.. jerky frame rate and jumping around and others then are reduced to running at a lower speed, generally the slowest/lowest connection in the "group" at that present time.
I don't even think you can alter them in the game (ping times) either as I've rarely raced online. Each time I tried to do so there were the "normal" (?) gung-ho types that love to wipe you out in corners or smash into the back of you and drive you off the track as well as people with slower connections and pcs too. You hear them on mic moaning about the speed/lag etc as well as others havinga pot at the "idiots" who run people off the tracks too.

It also makes me wonder now if there is in fact a problem that may be, or already has, reared its head... ie online lag in games vis-a-vis connection issues and servers as people have different pc setups.. graphics cards, memory etc. and as they may be racing around it may look ok for them... as I've raced online a fewtimes and at the start of a race cars have clearly "ghosted" at the start, just like the car in a TT race, and I've gone right through them but within about 5-10 seconds they then revert to "normal" and that's when I sometimes get rear ended or forced off the track.
Got fed up of it so I stopped racing online

 

[Andre Gravningsmyhr]

ha ha maybe i m fast as hel