Choppy movement?

[dp]

Took a stroll online this morning to test the waters. Joined a ctf server with 8 other players. Noticed anyone with a ping higher than mine (some were very high) moved in a very choppy fashion, like the server had no idea where they were, then would get an update, place them, lose them, they'd disappear, over and over.

Also, rocket and laser jumping, strafe jumping (or whatever you guys call it) and moving in general: Practiced offline and got it down pretty well, but online I'm all over the place, going the wrong direction, losing a bunny hop, turn, laser, etc.

I've tried to approach this methodically. Rate's set to 25000 which seems to be standard max (?), haven't messed with anything else...using really low vid settings. Found and looked through the DP docs (cvars), trying to figure out what could help/hurt, at least trying to figure out if this is a server-related thing.

sv_clmovement_enable 1 whether to allow clients to use cl_movement prediction, which can cause choppy movement on the server which may annoy other players

What is that about? I would assume with a ping like 50 this isn't affecting me, but...

There's gotta be something obvious I'm missing. My conx rock solid, ping on the floor, playing COD4, CSS, UrT, OA, etc.

Is there some list of cvars to try for this stuff? I've seen cl_movement and gl_finish mentioned but nothing seems to apply.

Any help welcome!

[divVerent]

sv_clmovement_waitforinput controls the "player warping", which actually is a feature to even out varying network latency on the internet.

By default this is set to 4, which is equivalent to 0.2 seconds. If the server does not get a new movement packet in time, it waits for up to 0.2 seconds before forcing a server-controlled move.

What you are seeing simply are players with packet loss, where this kicks in all the time. This waiting has the advantage that it is smoother for the affected player on his side, but the disadvantage that others see him choppy.

[dp]

Thank you for the explanation, divVerrent! That explains the first part perfectly. What about the packets that seem to go missing or "warp" - can't fire/fire late, turn weird, strafe or bunnyhop dies, etc? Just did a test to the datacenter where that server is (not to the server itself), no packet loss, ping 54, 17 megabits down, 1 up. And it really looks like the closest server to me. Firewall's a non-issue, little Linux box w/ iptables.

I can blast bots for hours but I'd really like to shoot at more people! In-game too! Thank you again, sir.

EDIT: Erm, actually I don't think the first part was fully explained. I just got on a minstagib with two guys ping 80-90, me at 50, and they're still warping all over. I spec'd one and it was like watching a slideshow but my fps was steady and high the whole time.

ANOTHER EDIT: It's even worse now, but my ping hasn't changed and I don't have any packet loss to the Savvis DC in Dallas. Now *I'm* warping too, at least from my perspective. The faster I'm going, the worse it gets, and sometimes the warp is off in some completely random direction or puts me a few feet to left or right of where I was or completes forgets my speed or both. Krank (?) mentioned someone had a problem with a particular video setting causing that, but I dont' know what it could be! Using lo.cfg, everything else at defaults, no vsync, nothing running in the background, *nothing*. It would be nice to test this somewhere else, but Galt's Gulch seems to be the only server in the states with people on it when I'm here.

AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...meh

Uh, and how do I take a demo? Apparently the key bind for demo in some games is QUIT on Nexuiz.

FINAL EDIT: System: 3.88 GHz Intel dual-core, 4 gigs of RAM, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R mobo, BFG NVidia 8800 GT (factory OC; 512 MB), X-Fi Xtreme Gamer soundcard, ms natural 4000 kb and sidewinder mouse on USB, a PCI nic (probably a RTL8139c+ chipset, I have a few and would have to double-check), *no* shared irqs. OS is XP SP2 w/ hot fixes current. Cable modem connection from Roadrunner, 20Mbit/1Mbit, no p2p detection throttling or other bs, little Linux box w/ iptables as router, never see a bit of packet loss in tests or other games (COD4, CSS, UT, UrT, OA) unless the server itself is horked.

I really like the speed of this game, and I'd like to figure out how to play it online reliably. PM me if you have a definite suggestion.