why do some people use 30.3 interp instead of the lowest?

[real yarrow]

I notice some people choose to use the higher interp of 30.3 on hitscan specifically instead of the lowest interp, and I don’t understand why you would choose higher interp.

[whole carbon]

Because interp is a good thing

[real yarrow]

I don’t understand

[native cradle]

to give a bit more info, there's nothing wrong with interp, all online games have it, all interp is is just how long you want the game to smooth over. hitscan attacks are lag compensated, which means that the server takes into account your interp value when performing hit registration calculations. So technically, no matter what your interp value is, hitscan should feel exactly the same.
15.2ms interp is smoothing over 1 tick, and 30.3 is smoothing over 2 ticks. smoothing over 2 ticks is nice because if something happens and you drop a tick, it won't cause people to jitter
packet loss or choke is something happens on the best of connections, especially because sometimes the server itself is the one that hiccups.

in an ideal world, we could all use the default 100ms interp and be fine, but unfortunately, projectiles are not lag compensated, which is why low interp is helpful in the first place, because it does bring you a tiny bit closer to whats actually happening on the server.

so what mcoms has decided for mastercomfig is that for projectile classes, the lowest possible interp is preferred, so that you see projectiles even 1 tick closer to where they are on the server, and on hitscan, 2 ticks of interp is preferred so that you don't miss a shot due to someone teleporting 5 inches because the server had a hiccup

[real yarrow]

So would a 30.3 interp make character movement smoother than on lowest?

[leaden wyvern]

@real yarrow has leveled up! (2 ➜ 3)

[native cradle]

not really smoother, it just helps prevent against minor networking hiccups

I believe everything in theory should look the same no matter what your interp value is, its moreso just when thats being shown

[whole carbon]

In a nutshell, interp is a sacrifice of latency for protection against network inconsistencies that can affect hit-reg. You need it to stay consistent, and depending on the quality of your internet and performance of the server, you may need to increase it.

[real yarrow]

What if my ping is already good? I get about 30 on Chicago servers which are what I play on mostly.

[native cradle]

ping doesn't have anything to do with interp

its moreso about how stable your connection is, but, as mentioned earlier, sometimes issues can happen on the server itself, not on your end

there's not really a downside for using 30.3ms lerp over 15.2ms for hitscan

even for projectile classes its probably fine

[native cradle]

for example, even if you have 500 ping, if your connection is somehow stable enough that you never drop a packet, 15.2ms lerp would work perfectly fine. but if you had 5 ping but were dropping packets left and right, you'd probably want a much higher interp setting than that.
extreme example, but still

[wispy quest]

Also, WiFi is less stable than wired internet

[peak willow]

Do other games like l4d2 use the same tickrate as tf2? Asking bc not all source games use the same settings (like csgo)