FreeGameDev

A while back I came across https://github.com/catid/WLANOptimizer. It's supposed to help reduce latency spikes on WiFi connections on Windows systems. I mentioned it to Hiker a while back, and he added an entry to https://github.com/supertuxkart/stk-code/projects/3 to test to see if it makes a noticeable difference. However, most of the devs have been busy working on lots of other code for the upcoming release, (or don't use Windows), so it hasn't really been evaluated yet.

So, to the community (well, those in the community running Windows): Would a few of you be willing to test the demo described in the page I linked and report if/how much it helps? If a few people can confirm that it helps and doesn't create issues, it's more likely to be included in the next release.

(Disclaimer: Please note I am not an official dev and this is just a post made by a community member. :)

I would be happy to help if I get the chance/have the time . A couple of questions:

Does it matter which version I am using (beta/git)?
What specific changes should I look for (overall better performance on tracks like Cocoa Temple, less frequent lag, etc.)?

Mainly less ping, you can even just test using the demos provided at that page, any ping improvements in the demo should translate to better STK, but it's easier to look at a graph

Sounds interesting Should I change my build script to include the https://github.com/catid/WLANOptimizer module into my experimental STK nightly build?

You can if you want to, though just running https://github.com/catid/WLANOptimizer/ ... er_gui.exe is probably an easier test. :)

I tried stand_alone.exe yesterday, but the result is not very conclusive I think. The ping is usually around 50ms but sometimes it may jump to 100ms when not running this app. And the game randomly jitters, usually 1 out of 3 races. After running this app the thing remains same I think. Maybe there should be a network statistics function in STK so that I can compare the differences?

Do you have two systems you can use? https://github.com/catid/WLANOptimizer/ ... er_gui.exe should give you some nice graphs

Ok it seems I am having some problems:

With the WLAN optimizer disabled I can run the peer2peer test on my computers just fine, but when I enable the WLAN optimizer it always switches to disabled after a few seconds. Any ideas on what is happening?

Let me know if you need more details!

The peer2peer.exe program contains the optimizer code, no need to also run stand_alone.exe. By default, the two "windows" in the GUI are spawned right on top of each other, so it looks like there is only one, but you can just drag the header of the "window" to move it to a blank area, so you can see the graphs on both.