Forza3 Multiplayer WARP (Flying cars?)

[troym72 0]

I logged in to play Forza3 online for the first time over the weekend.

Is it normal for the warp to be crazy bad? There were literally cars flying 20ft above the track at times. Sometimes opponents would appear to miss a turn, slam into the wall, then suddenly reappear on the track 2ft from my front bumper (which usually resulted in me hitting them).

After this happened a few times, I felt like I couldn't even trust that the opponent cars were indeed where they appeared to be. So, I tried racing as far away from everyone else as possible and if I had to pass someone (god forbid) I waited until a straight where I could pass them with plenty of space between us. Even this didn't always work.

I finally got so frustrated I just gave up playing online! My fiance even noticed the change in my mood I was so frustrated - LOL.

I'm in a rural area so my bandwidth is not impressive (1.5mb down - 128k up) but when I ping the outside world from my PC the lag is minimal (<100ms). I'm using DSL from Frontier Communications (my only hard-wired internet choice). I do not have satellite or WiFi internet. I know that satellite internet is notorious for horrible lag.

This seriously worries me because when my Fanatec GT2 comes in next month, I plan to sign up for iRacing. However, if this is the kind of lag/warp I can expect, its going to be useless for me to even try iRacing.

Any suggestions or opinions? Is the problem my connection or is it just the way Forza3 online racing works?

Thanks,

Troy

[Lewi6 0]

What country you live in has an affect on how much lag you get. Also 1.5 mb down might be a little slow.

I'm in Australia and have 8.5 mb down local speed and find that I experience only very occasional lag with the States but when I race someone from Europe I get the floating car thing more often.

But mostly my experience is good with Forza. Unfortunate that rural areas have to suffer with low speeds.

[starfox550 0]

This is the symptom of a bad internet connection in FM3.

As a rule of thumb:

• If only one person is transporting/flying all over, then it's likely that person has the connection issue
  

• If many/most cars are transporting/flying, then it is your connection.

It's not so much the Upload/download speed that affects this, it's the ping speed, a high ping will mean the data transfer will become erratic and the game will become uncertain where the cars are relative to their actual position on the track, some games deal with this by the cars becoming invisible/visible (blinking) for a moment or two, possibly popping up right on a corner of your car or a line which was empty a second before, forza cars either fly or teleport at warp speed (sometimes taking you with them if you happen to be in their path lol)

Do a ping test on your connection here: http://www.pingtest.net/, anything under 50ms is excellent-good, 100 - 200ms in forza is playable without to much disruption to others, anything more than that is not recommended. It's also worth doing tests to servers that are local to people you might be playing to gauge how much the ping varies internationally, not just locally to you.

As a ref: The majority forza players I've raced are in the UK, Spain, Australia, and the U.S! The Aussies can give my connection a tough time, as the server distance is quite a long way from the UK.

One last note: try to make sure your internet has as little usage from others/other devices in the household as possible while you're racing, any extra load on your bandwidth will not help with your connection to others at all. Kick everybody off youtube, facebook and stop any running downloads, they've had all day for that, it's racing time now! lol

[troym72 0]

Thanks all for the suggestions. I'm in the central USA.

After several hours of troubleshooting, I finanlly found the issue. MY TV and DVR!! Yes, my Television and Satellite DVR.

After doing a number of ping tests from my PC (using the same router) to different parts of the USA and coming up with 200 - 600ms for all areas (very poor). I finally disconnected everything from my LAN/WAN router except my XBOX360. I had my TV, DVR, XBOX360 and PC (wireless) all plugged into it. Once I only had my XBOX360 plugged into my router, my ping rate decreased dramatically. It still wasn't fantastic, averaging about 100ms and sometimes dropping to around 200ms for a second or two, but much better than before. With full intention of signing up for iRacing when my Fanatec GT2 (now delayed to JUNE!!! ERRRRGGGG!) arrives, I also ping tested to the iRacing service and got a ping rate of sub 100ms most of the time. Yeah!

I have been able to play Forza with some warping from time to time, but not nearly as bad as before. I even managed to get my ranking up to Amateur - sarcastic woohoo!

So, I'm not sure why my DVR and TV were using so much bandwidth, but they are both now banned from my router while I'm racing online!! haha.

Thanks again for your help and suggestions!

Troy