How to Adjust Network Smoothing Factor in BF4

A setting in Battlefield 4 that every PC player should be familiar with is the Network Smoothing Factor.

Have you ever been sure your shots were right on target against a moving enemy, but no hits were detected? Adjusting this setting may help with this problem.

First, an explanation of network smoothing. In online multiplayer games, each player’s actions are delayed when the server receives them. This delay depends on the player’s ping to the server and any packet loss. Battlefield 4’s game engine compensates for these delays by way of “netcode” which estimates where players will be positioned and displays this predicted position. The network smoothing slider allows you to choose how much estimation is used for determining enemy positions (interpolation).

Every player should adjust this setting to best work with their own internet connection. If you have a good connection to the server, you should be able to decrease the setting and see an improvement in how accurately your shots hit moving targets.

Follow these steps:

1. While in game, press the Escape key
2. Click Options, then the Gameplay tab
3. Adjust the Network Smoothing Factor slider all the way to the left to 0%
4. Play a multiplayer game for several minutes. If you don’t encounter any problems, leave the setting as is. Otherwise, increase this setting by the smallest increment of 10% and play again.

When you test out gameplay, what you want to look for is whether infantry and vehicle models move smoothly when in motion. If they jump around the screen, it will make aiming at targets difficult, so you’ll want to increase the network smoothing factor. If your teammates and enemies move smoothly nearly all of the time, you’ve found a setting works with your connection.

If you have a low ping to most servers you play on (50ms or less) you may find that the 0% setting works well for you. This is a bit of a change from BF3 where most players needed the setting to be a bit higher or animations would be very jerky, even with an excellent connection.

If your ping is often 100ms or higher, you may need to keep the slider at its default of 50%. Very rarely will this setting need to be set higher than 50% unless you have a great deal of packet loss on your connection. To test for packet loss, run a test at pingtest.net.

Remember to play with Network Smoothing at the lowest possible percentage while maintaining smooth gameplay. This gives you the lowest latency and best hit registration.