Starts and Ping

Starts and Ping are two components of TypeRacer that affect a user's WPM (Words per minute).

Starts
A "start" is defined as the WPM displayed after the first letter of a quote during a replay.



A race commences once the traffic light turns green. The WPM start is calculated by dividing 12000 by the number of milliseconds it took the user to press the first key after the green traffic light appears. The formula for a start is thus 12000/(milliseconds). For instance, a user who took 200 milliseconds to type the first letter on a quote would attain a 60 WPM start. This means that faster starts (Fewer milliseconds) generally result in higher scores as less time is wasted on typing the first letter of the quote. An instant start would theoretically be a 0 millisecond start, however it is not clear what the WPM after the first letter would be.

For racers who attempt to reach high scores on short and easy quotes, the start tends to play an important factor in determining the end speed. To put things in perspective, a 100 WPM start instead of an instant start would approximately make a 16 WPM difference for a player typing at 300 WPM on a short 55 character quote. Therefore the WPM would be about 284 WPM instead of 300 WPM due to the delay. For a player typing at a 120 WPM pace on a 300 character medium-sized quote, a 100 WPM start instead of an instant start would make around a .5 WPM difference. In general, the start will make more of a difference as the quote length decreases and as the player's speed increases.

Ping
"Ping" is defined as the connection between a player's client and the TypeRacer server. It is measured in milliseconds (ms). A user with low ping has good connection to TypeRacer while a user with high ping will tend to experience more lag. Upon completing a race, the player's client will inform the TypeRacer server that the text has been completed. However, during this interaction, the WPM will continuously decrease until the TypeRacer server receives the information. This interaction subsequently creates two scores: Real or Unlagged speed and Registered speed.

Similarly to starts, the difference between real speed and registered speed due to a user's ping will increase as the quote length decreases and the user's speed increases. Typing at 299 WPM real speed, MaximumChris(Newkeyboardlove) is known for losing 44 WPM on a short quote due to his high ping. The race was consequently registered as 255 WPM. Rarely, a user's registered speed on a quote will be higher than the real speed at the end of the replay. This is colloquially known as "reverse-lag".