Stuttering cars, characters, pedestrians?

I have a brand new PC with an ATI Radeon 6950 and an i5 processor. Was thinking I should be seeing no glitches at all when playing CoH -- maybe my expectations are unreasonable -- especially since my settings are Default plus these few changes:

1) Resolution set to 1920x1200.
2) Character detail at 200%.
3) World detail at 200%.
4) Depth of field effects turned off.

Yet one of the things that just drives me batty is that moving objects tend to "stutter" while I'm standing still just watching them go by. Cars will move, then stop, then move, then stop, and the jerkiness is totally frustrating from a lack-of-immersion standpoint. When the server (I play Virtue) gets really full, then I even see pedestrians stutter in mid-stride. And I see a lot of it with player characters, too.

I'm just wanting to know, is this anything to do with my PC, or is this a network or ISP or server lag issue? (Sometimes my powers don't fire off as quickly as I think they should, either, but this might just be my perception.)

If I had to guess - And this is only a guess - I would say it's the multiple core processor. Limiting your processor cores to 1 or 2 in BIOS might help.

I'd guess lag if thing are hiccupping or rubberbanding a lot.

Have you tried using /netgraph to check your latency while these experiences are going on?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

No, I don't know much about the diagnostic tools available. What should /netgraph show me if it's good or bad?

If it's short green lines near the bottom bar, then it's good. If it's tall green lines, or any color besides green, then it's bad.

It'll also give you a numerical representation of your ping to the CoH servers (the number of milliseconds it takes to send a command to the server and get a reply). The lower number, the better. I know mine is generally in the 100-150 range, but I must admit that I don't know the threshhold between smooth gaming and bumpy, hiccup-y gaming.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

I'll give that a try. Thanks!

World detail @ 200%, this increases the amount of items the game has to render by more than a factor of 2...

I run with this set on my old Pentium 4 PC with a Sapphire 4650 HD AGP card,
I find that setting:

FSAA: 2 (or less)

Ambient Occlusion: Advanced Customization
To a lower Ambient Resolution setting.

Shadow Mode: Shadow Map Shader
A lower setting. (I use Medium)

Anisotropic Filtering: 16x

And the rest on Ultramode settings works for me.

And remember at 200% World Detail you are rendering more detail and this extra detail all gets treated with your rendering settings.

Full Ultramode setting details here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=219881

Everyone telling you "Do things to change things on your computer" is wrong.

Pedestrian and car movement is controlled server-side. When cars and pedestrians are walking jerkily, in stutter-step, but not suddenly jumping forward, that is an indication of server-side processing lag.

If they're stuttering and then suddenly appearing several feet further on their path, that's a sign of connection problems between you and the server.

Changing world detail to 100% on your computer may help with that, but only because it might require the servers to send less information to your computer.

Uncertainty. Serverside processing lag is usually not affected by computer settings. However, transmisison lag can be. Other changes like "Make your computer only use two cores in BIOS" is just sheer strangeness and not going to have an effect.

Well World Detail is affecting more than just draw distance in the post Ultra Mode World, I seem to remember it also affects the distance of which objects cast shadows and are referenced in reflection off water.

Also I believe the location of cars and pedestrians are based on server time as they are simply moving on a fixed path. Retransmitted lost packets from the server with out of order server time could cause what you are seeing.

Also turning off sending buff numbers will reduce network lag a fraction too.

Unless I'm deliberately collecting combat data, I eliminate the Combat tab entirely on characters I play a lot. This definitely helps client-side lag.