War Thunder FAQ — Ping, Servers, Network

Yes. PingAim uses a WFP kernel driver to route aces.exe traffic — the only method compatible with War Thunder's BattlEye anti-cheat. BattlEye blocks DLL injection, so PingAim's WFP driver method is used exclusively. BattlEye operates at the game process level and does not interfere with network-layer tools.

Ghost shells have two causes: War Thunder's low ~11Hz server tick rate (a fundamental game limitation), and high ping or packet loss amplifying that limitation. When your client registers a hit but the server has already moved to its next tick, the shell misses on the server side. PingAim and Ethernet can eliminate the latency/packet-loss component, but some ghost shells persist due to the tick rate itself — that requires a server-side fix from Gaijin.

Lower is always better, but the more important metric is jitter and packet loss — at the game's ~11Hz server tick rate, a single dropped packet equals roughly one missed simulation update. Per Raaen 2014's cross-genre latency-threshold survey, action-game tolerance sits around 100ms before reaction-based engagements visibly degrade; jet combat at 700+ km/h suffers earlier than ground battles because relative velocities compound across each tick (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.entcom.2014.10.005). The community consensus on the official War Thunder forums is that stable low-jitter ping matters more than raw ms — see https://forum.warthunder.com/t/high-ping-players-and-server-net-code-quality/65598.

No bans have been reported from using VPNs or network optimizers (WTFast, ExitLag, NoPing, LagoFast, etc.) in War Thunder. BattlEye targets cheat software that injects into the game process — it does not monitor network routing. Gaijin's EULA does not explicitly ban network optimizers. WTFast officially lists War Thunder as a supported game.

War Thunder does not have a dedicated Australian server. Australian players must connect to the SA/Southeast Asia server in Singapore (~150-200ms), the US server (~180-220ms), or occasionally the Japan server. The SEA/SA server is also restricted to weekends and high player-count periods, leaving Australian players with poor options. This is a longstanding community complaint with no announced resolution from Gaijin.

Community testing consistently reports War Thunder's server tick rate at approximately 11Hz, meaning the server sends world updates 11 times per second. This is very low compared to modern games (CS2: 64Hz, Valorant: 128Hz). Gaijin has not published official tick rate figures. The low tick rate is the primary reason ghost shells, sparks, and vehicle desynchronization occur — and why high ping amplifies these problems significantly.