Performance on horses is broken

Yeah, it's definitely happening everywhere if the connection to the server isn't perfect. I'm in Europe and I'm playing on a server in the US. The connection is usually not too bad, but horses are not controllable.

I am renting a VPS in Germany, I am based in London. My server hosts my websites, a teamspeak 3 server (which is never used by more than about 4 people) and my minecraft server (also usually not more than 4 people online at a time). And all is running smooth. In games like Battlefield, Dungeon Defenders, etc. my latency is usually the lowest of all (surprisingly), I can't remember the figures now, will check the next time I login. However altogether that makes me believe it can't be my connection. But I am open to suggestion if someone believes otherwise. 🙂

Is there something else that is "server controlled" so I could have a check if there's a difference between riding a horse and the other action? Because that would mean if this only occurs whilst riding a horse than it can be pinpointed to that. If it's also with the other action (i.e. using a minecart), then it might be an other issue?

This also happens on my SSP world, everything else runs smoothly and i'm getting about 150fps but when I ride the horse it freezes for a few seconds the carries on. It seems worse when vsync is turned off. The lagg is so bad that sometimes it completely misses the jump.

Confirmed for both SSP and SMP, Happens on Pigs and Horses, It doesnt lag the mob just simply stops moving because I can still look around and see the chunks loading

Have this bug too, in solo and multi

I can second this — both in single and multiplayer.

Happens to me too, in 1.6.1 singleplayer.

Confirmed. In SSP and SMP.

Confirmed on single client connected to a 1.6.1 server over a gigabit connection.

Can also confirm. Makes me feel very nauseous. Have only tested in SMP, again the server is very capable of running minecraft and I highly doubt it is a server related issue.

I confirm this issue. I think horse movement should be client-controlled, just like player movement. In my server is simply impossible to use horses because of this.

Confirming - 1.6.2 SMP, over localhost or gigabit LAN

I have the same issue. I think the horse lag is related to mob lag that has been present ever since the mob AI updates. My server is an old laptop, but it runs the server just fine (no block lag, etc), except for the mob lags.

Confirming for 1.6.2 Vanilla SMP and Gigabit LAN games. Has very little to do with hardware. (Running on a RAMdisk, with 4gb of allotted Ram, still receiving lag).

As Eduardo Mezêncio said, horses should be client controlled. Horses are completely unenjoyable on SMP on new and even preloaded chunks. Even on my LAN server for me and a few close friends, horses lag sometimes. I really hope you guys decide to make them Client controlled.

I'm gonna agree with Luke. It will only improve the enjoyment of horses. On my server we usually just let the horses be, because we can't really ride them. If we ever choose to ride them, we have to stop moving every 3 seconds because of we can't be sure where in the world we are.

Agree with Luke, if the server's lagging at all, horses move much slower than you can even sprint. same goes with minecarts and boats.

Same thing goes for me. I have massive problems in single player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIbY978bQN0

Not only on servers .. got this bug in singleplayer too.. The horse runs a bit then stops for a while, runs a bit and stops for a while and so on

I am sorry that I have not been active in this bug report, I thought it went un-noticed. However I can confirm that it has nothing to do with the horses. It is a direct result of the lag caused by the zombies tracking bug. When in peaceful they work perfectly fine.

Matthew. This is not fixed when switching to preaceful. I tried it in the latest snapshot 13w37b

I highly doubt anyway that it can be called "fix" when you have to switch to peaceful first to be able to use a feature like riding a horse. That's maybe something like a workaround (that obviously doesn't work) and certainly not a fix.

hmm. It has gotten a lot better since they rewrote the network code in 1.7.2.
Still not perfect, but playable and better!

This affects 1.7.2 - Any chance of an update to the "affected versions"?

same issue. 1.7.2. horse "rubberbanding" and movement lag when on a horse present on server only.

I still say that the horse model is too complex and that the unnecessary complexity(or laziness to create a fresh model instead of copy/pasting the mocreatures model) is possibly causing a lousy amount of lag that could've been, AND STILL CAN BE, avoided.

Well I remind you Thomas that the Mo'Creatures creator helped Mojang importing the horse.
Also I think it's confirmed in 13w48b

And that means what? The Mo'Creatures model was still and is off-setting from the rest of the entities.

If it was the model it would only affect single player mode also and not just plain movement glitching on servers.

This happens for me in single player too

Oho, that's what they WANT you ta thinks, but I'd be willing ta bet that the complexity of the model does affect the overall performance. What with the game engine having to process all those moving parts at once.
And even then, a lag spike client-side is still an issue if connected ta somethin' unbalanced within the game.
Still, if they're gonna keep it in, they oughta fix the other entity models ta match it and rework the processing format.

I experienced this starting with 1.7.2; horses were fine in 1.6.4. Good frame rate, and no noticeable lag except for when riding horses. Problem persists in 1.7.4.
Shared server and client running on Windows 64-bit ultimate, with 64-bit Oracle Java. 16 GB RAM, i7 processor. Large survival world which dates back at least to March 2012. Huge villages in areas not loaded when seeing the lag. Lag also seen by remote users connecting to my server, with only one player connected.
I tried changing various video settings, with no improvement. I tried changing processor affinity, and task priority, with no noticeable improvement. I updated to the latest 64-bit Oracle Java, with no improvement. I changed settings in my antivirus (Kasparsky Pure 2.0) with no noticeable improvement.
I upgraded to 1.7.4, with no noticeable improvement. I created a new single-player test world in Amplified Survival, and the lag was MUCH worse than the multiplayer server.
I looked at what the Windows task manager and resource monitor reported, and it suggested disk throughput might be the issue. I have 2, 7400 RPM SATA drives. I moved the world to the second drive, where it's basically the only thing active on that drive, and the horse lag was greatly improved.
As best as I can tell, the horse, and nothing but the horse, stalls whenever there is any disk activity. Unclear yet whether it's reading, writing, or both.
Awesome game, and riding horses is a blast! But PLEASE fix this issue!

Update: I tried a number of suggestions that I found on line, including Java arguments for changing garbage collector and putting GC on a separate thread. That actually made it worse. I defragged, and I used Microsoft Sysinternals utilities to try to understand what was going on. I see strange things in the network setup, that look like a lot of ports are looped back from the server to itself. I tried changing Window 7 Aero settings, with no noticable improvement. I have NOT tried Optifine, which I read can help with threading.

However, I did stumble across one TINY change that so far seems to have completely alleviated the problem: I changed the command line to add "nogui". Astonishingly, that seems for now to have completely solved the problem. One of my remote users has confirmed. I will update this report after we get some more playing time in to make sure.

Working command line: (Windows 7 64-bit)
"C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe" -Xmx2G -Xms2G -jar "minecraft_server.1.7.4.jar" nogui

I miss the console and the ability to enter commands there, but it's much better than not having a playable game at all!

Is there a way to enter commands to a Windows server with "nogui", in the command window, instead of the player chat?

Why on earth is horse movement held up by the gui?

you can probably enter commands in your webbrowser using a bukkit server with a http webserver plugin,
but in Vanilla only the player chat remains

@Ken McFarling..
You're a lifesaver! Thank you!

Really weird that adding that to the command-line makes so much difference.

Issue is still occuring on my server, but i can see that its not a problem on others. Is there a setting or network setup that seems to be the cause of this?

This still occurs even in SSP. Horse lag makes them pretty much useless.

Horses are remarkably stable in a friend's small server on 1.7.9.

^that must be because he was using good hardware. Someone else's server (1.7.10) has horrendous horse performance. Latency for blocks and such is pretty good, but then getting on a horse is a mess.

even in the latest uber-optimised 1.8 snapshot (SSP!) I still get laggy feel while on a horse on my top-tier MacBook Pro Late '13

Its an optimization issue with the standard tiny amount of lag that is the 'internet' in general. The way the code tries to calculate were the horse is at on a multiplayer server and then calculate were you are at takes twice as long for it to just figure out where you are at so it lags trying to keep up. It gets even worse when you are trying to lead other horses or animals with a leash while riding another horse.
My normal ping is around 80 which is rather low considering i'm in america and playing on a server based in germany, I get no lag movement while dismounted and just running around, it only starts when I get on a horse, and then ends as soon as I get off the horse and it is only in relation to the horse moving. It also seems to work find when going backwards which makes me think it has something to do with the way the game calculates horse movement and trying to upload/download that to the server which is the problem.
On a single player game where there is no upload/download lag, horses work perfect fine, except for all the other issues, like their massive hit box, and the way they need to inhabit the very same block as you when you are using a leash on them...

confirmed for 14w32b

It does happen on single player, if your computer is not strong enough to handle having the server and the client running at the same time. It's the same reason boats get so far off that they run into things you're nowhere near. They seem to have done something about it in the most recent snapshot (14w32d), but it's kinda weird. I haven't played with it enough to be sure whether it's a good fix or not.

confirmed for 14w34b in single player mode. no fps drop, just a stuttering horse.

Seems to be gone in 14w34d.

Confirmed for the latest snapshot (1.8-pre2)

I thought it had something to do with more chunks being loaded/unloaded in quick succession due to the faster movement, but that doesn't seem like the problem since other vehicles in the game aren't affected as much as horses are.

I noticed a way better handling in 1.8.2 pre-release. Still got stopped a few times, but way less frequently !
As I can't say if lag was involved, it's clear it has been improved since last version.

Even playing on a local server (gigabit LAN. Can't get a better connection than that, really) horses lag a lot. Enough that we've relegated horses to decorations in the paddock, and use spectator mode and/or teleportation to cover moderate to long distances.

Created:
29/Apr/13 6:22 PM

It has almost been two years now since this bug report. Its a major issue that is being neglected. It makes me wonder if I ever will be able to use the horses in Minecraft. I'm not even the only one with this issue. PLEASE. FIX IT. I don't want to be stuck on pigs for the rest of my Minecraft gaming....

Remember to keep the affected vertions up to date! They can accedentley skip it, if they look trough bugs with the newest affected version.

Even though this is a small and annoying bug, it's there! Horses should work like boats, witch they're on fixing at the moment.

(Yes, confirmed for 1.8.3)

I'd like to officially go on record stating that horses have been like this since they were introduced in the game. They are absolutely unusable like this. Please fix this issue. Thank you.

Still happening to me very frequently on vanilla, singleplayer Minecraft version 1.8.7
Even though these large chunk updates that are apparently causing the stuttering might be a natural process that comes along with generating and loading new terrain, I think it doesn't need to affect horse performance in such an annoying way.

Confirmed to affect vanilla 1.8.8. It was a mistake to program mounts this way. They should be controlled client-side, the same way as the player character. The same goes for boats and mine carts, which suffer similar choppiness and rubberbanding (they always have). As of 1.8.8 (and all previous versions), horses are mostly useless in multiplayer.

Confirmed. 1.8.8 Hosting a LAN server and I am the only one affected. Other players are silky smooth, but my horse alternates between running and freezing.

Edit: After a short while everyone was affected.

Affects 15w43a

In 15w47c, a secondary effect of this is that as you log out and back in, your horse has been duplicated with the same equipment. To be checked if this also duplicates the items in the chest on a donkey.

Is this something they changed in 16w06a? (Have done zero testing, but I didn't know if this was the 'smoother riding' issue discussed in the snapshot release blog.)

Just checked 16w06a, and I'm not noticing the lurching stop-and-go it had even in 16w05b. Any confirmation?