Network

14 lines · 1% of the archive

Sub-tick, tickrate, netcode, packets, latency, rubber banding. The smallest category in the archive.

Across 12 updates, 2023-10-13 to 2026-04-21. Published updates only.

Every line, newest first

reworkPlayers will now experience the full camera motion due to external sources of aim punch (e.g. getting shot) regardless of network latency. The effects of aim punch on bullet trajectories are still applied immediately on the server.

reworkAdded detailed network quality display option, which can be used to display the raw packet loss and jitter numbers.

fixChanged how packet misdelivery is measured. Previously, if packets arrived out of order, this could be counted as misdelivery even if it was corrected and did not impact gameplay. Also, jitter was not considered, even though excessive jitter can disrupt smooth gameplay. The new measurement method will only count reordered packets as misdelivered if they impact gameplay. Furthermore, if network jitter exceeds a threshold where gameplay is affected, the packets are counted as misdelivered even if they are not dropped and arrive in order

reworkSettings Recommendations Added a Settings Recommendation popup if NVIDIA G-Sync is enabled but not V-Sync and/or NVIDIA Reflex. It is generally recommended to enable all three settings together when they are available. Note that applying these settings will limit your frame rate to your display's refresh rate or slightly lower, which is usually the smoothest-looking and lowest input latency settings combination. See https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/418E-7A04-B0DA-9032 for technical details.

reworkImproved behavior when user input does not arrive on the server in time due to packet loss or client frame rate issues

reworkcl_interp can no longer be changed directly. Some players had scripts that were setting this to a large value, leading to very bad rubber-banding. The interpolation amount can be adjusted through the "Buffering to smooth over packet loss" setting instead

reworkVarious adjustments to sub-tick shooting
reworkAdded cl_ticktiming console command that prints a report breaking down the various sources of latency
reworkAdded an option to buffer server updates and user commands by one or more packets. This can be used to smooth over stuttering due to packet loss, at the expense of increased latency

reworkAdded code to correct packets that arrive out of order in quick succession. These packets were showing up as loss in the net graph.

reworkThe Accept Match popup will now show server information if latency is notably high