Smooth Quake

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Revision as of 10:13, 3 June 2010 by *>Kalma (→‎Tools: hidusbf and video guide)

This page contains solutions and tips for various tearing, lagging, jerky and sucky Quake configurations.

Common tips

  • More FPS = smoother quake. So is important to use independent physics. This is preset on ezQuake client.
  • Use maximum vertical refresh frequency of the screen. This is the ultimate tip. See below for how-to.
  • Overclock the usb port to have at least 500hz (updates) per second. This is ultimate tip #2.
  • Turn off vertical synchronization on your graphics card settings and also in ezQuake by setting vid_vsync 0.0. If you want to keep things smooth but not suffer the quality loss of turning vsync off, enable double/tripple buffering. In software rendering version you have to use -dibonly command line options and vid_nopageflip 1 setting.
  • Dont forget to install soundcard/motherboard/chipset drivers from the hardware manufacturer's site. They also tend to have a FAQ or something similar there. To identify the hardware on Linux, run lspci. Windows has a built-in one in the control panel, but it's not the greatest so there might be some good 3rd party tools.
  • Make sure that no other program is running when you run quake. They steal your CPU and therefore make FPS hits. This is especially true if your pc is old. Be sure that your system is not running any malware. Make sure other background applications do not cause CPU spikes (see below)
  • Turn off threaded optimizations if you have multicore CPU and NVIDIA GFX card; You will this setting in your GFX card settings

Important tips

Setting independent physics

No matter what your monitor type is, make sure you got this enabled. To set it on Ezquake:
cl_independentphysics 1
cl_nolerp 0
pushlatency 0 (older clients)
cl_physfps 77

FPS Limit Fine-Tuning

Don't set cl_maxfps to 0. Define a limit, based on the power of your pc. The more the better, but you want a stable value, so you got to figure that number out. The number you choose must be related on your monitor's refresh rate. cl_maxfps can be equal, double, triple, 10 times the value of refreshrate. This usually delivers good results. Just don't set it too high, you want stable fps.

Especially with LCD devices be aware if your FPS limit (cl_maxfps) is a multiplication of your display refresh frequency. For example using 75 Hz display refresh frequency and FPS limit 225 (= 3*75) will be significantly different from using 235 FPS.

Setting cl_maxfps to a value that is below your systems limit also lends cpu time to other processes. This alleviates problems with mouse responsiveness (mouse driver) and CPU spiking (other programs).

Vsync fine-tuning

While vertical synchronization introduces image lag and forces one to use lower FPS rates than possible with unlimited FPS, on some configurations when fine-tuned it gives much smoother gameplay than when turned off.

To toggle vsync on, type vid_vsync 1 and cl_maxfps 0 in the console. Now you need to determine what is your video lag and FPS. Type /show vidlag and /show fps; You should use new hud (scr_newhud 1) to have these counters visible. The goal is to have stable FPS equal to your display frequency (60 / 75 / 120 / 150 ...) while having the video lag as low as possible. Make sure you have client version that has the cl_vsync_lag_fix and cl_vsync_lag_tweak variables.

Start with setting cl_vsync_lag_fix 1. Your video lag might decrease now, but also FPS may decrease. This is where cl_vsync_lag_tweak comes into play. You have to find the lowest value of the _tweak variable that gives you stable FPS equal to the display frequency. Such a value will decrease the video lag as much as possible without breaking FPS stability. For example tweak set to 0 will decrease video lag to almost 0 ms, but most probably will shut down your FPS rate. And tweak 20 typically won't reduce video lag at all, even if your FPS is super-stable. So find some good value in between.

Setting custom refresh rates

Which value? The higher the better. Current LCD technology limits to 75hz in any resolution. But on CRT's thats a different story. Depending on the quality and size of your crt monitor, you can use higher/lower refresh rates. And screen resolution is important also, if your monitor handles 154hz on 640*480 it probably wont handle with 154hz on 800*600 or 1024*768. Common advice is to use screen resolution of 640*480 so you can use the highest refresh rate possible. If graphic quality is important to you, you might wanna try higher resolutions, but it will lower your refresh rate.

If you got a recent graphics card, the drivers probably has inbuilt custom refresh rate feature. If not, its recommended to use an external program like Powerstrip or Refresh Lock. Search the net on how-to's or contact us if you got trouble.

Mouse refresh rate

This measures how many times the input of your mouse is updated. Preset value is 125hz. But if you "overclock" this value to 250hz, 500hz or even 1000hz, you will notice a GREAT improvement on the smoothness. 1000hz is too resource consuming, and its not that different than 500hz. You can try 1000hz only if you have more than 500fps. There are several programs that do this, you can try this. You can check your current mouse rate using this tool.

Some examples

These are usually good combinations of refresh rate, cl_maxfps and mouse rate. These refresh rates are only possible on CRT screens.
Sync everything and you get smooth experience (125Hz monitor, 125fps, 125Hz mouse). Sync parts of it with very high refreshrates and you'll get smoother experience (150Hz monitor, 500fps, 500Hz mouse). To make it overkill, use very high refreshrates with slight desync (150Hz monitor, 13*77=1001fps, 1000Hz mouse).
1) 120Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 120, 500Hz mouse
2) 154Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 154, 500Hz mouse

even better 1): 120Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 240, 500Hz mouse
even better 2): 154Hz monitor, cl_physfps 77 + cl_maxfps 1001, 1000Hz mouse

In any of these cases you can use you can try setting the cl_maxfps to 77, 154, 231, 308, 385, 462, 539, 616, 693, 770, 847, 924, 1001, 1078, 1155, 1232 and so on
Thanks to Renzo by providing the info.

CPU spikes

If you feel like the game runs smooth for a while but you recognize small disturbing semi-periodic interrupts, those can be caused by background applications. Start by opening Task Manager (ctrl+alt+del) and checking whethe some other processes are consuming the CPU time.

If that doesn't help you, use following tools:

  • Process Explorer - Contains CPU Usage graph where you can track for CPU spikes and display what process is causing them. If it's the "System" process, check for wrongly uninstalled/conflicting firewalls or buggy drivers.
  • FileMon - Simple tool to show you which Windows applications are accessing your hard-drive

In Windows 7, you can use Resource Monitor: enter "resmon" in start menu search box.

Useful Ezquake commands

  • if you get pixels in ezquake, try gl_ztrick 0 or 1
  • if you need more fps (you can use fps.qwd demo for benchmark), try r_dynamic 0 or use lower screen resolution.

Tools

If you dont have quake installed already use NQuake as the installation media.

You can find lots of tips for the ezQuake client in the Independent Physics Guide.


If you have an ATI or NVIDIA card you should always install their official (proprietary, only in binary form) drivers to get the highest fps. There's also a popular 3rd party driver with some optimizations for ATI/NVIDIA. It comes with various tools for adding modelines and overclocking; (note that r200 is fully supported in linux with the opensource x.org driver)

Other tools:

TFT screens

See TFT for some tips if you're using a TFT (LCD) monitor.

OS-specific settings

Other settings depend on the Operating system you are using. See below for OS-specific tips.

Linux

See Smooth Quake in Linux

Macintosh

Ezquake is in general the recomended client, but you can also try fuh if everything fails :P Binary version of Fuhquake > http://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/fuhquake/




If nothing helps please come to irc #qwrookie and we will try to fill in the missing pieces

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