4 ms·

You just need to keep your models in GPU memory... which the game is going to want to use most of already but maybe in the future we'll have fully NN autoencod

You just need to keep your models in GPU memory... which the game is going to want to use most of already but maybe in the future we'll have fully NN autoencoded games!

mattnewport 9y ago
I think you're misunderstanding his point - it's not a question of latency due to the performance of the algorithm, it's a fairly fundamental tradeoff between smoothly blended animations and low latency response to user input. In many games the user wants to see close to immediate response to their input, e.g. moving the stick to turn or pressing a button to jump but that inherently conflicts with the desire to smoothly transition between animations. In reality, your brain starts planning an upcoming turn or jump and moving your body accordingly some time before reaching the physical obstacle you are avoiding. Control schemes for games generally don't allow for this kind of anticipatory input but rather you press the jump button at the moment you want to jump. This leaves no time to smoothly blend the animation - by the time the game receives the input it should already have started the blend some time ago.
- abainbridge 9y ago
  Exactly. In about 2002 I worked on a PS2 game where you played a dog (Yes you could do a turd. No you couldn't lick your balls). I spent ages tuning the code that determined how high to place the dog's centroid above the ground. I gained a lot of respect for the amount of geometry calculations a real dog has to do in order to keep its face out of the floor when running. The code needed to start reacting to a probable landscape collision hundreds of milliseconds before it happened in order to prevent the need for unnaturally large forces.
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  Fascinating. Obviously the thing to do is to predict user input. Capacitive sensors within buttons to try to detect when your finger is above or resting on a key? Or just hall effect analog buttons, so you can tell when the button starts to go down before it reaches the bottom of the depress action.

You just need to keep your models in GPU memory... which the game is going to want to use most of already but maybe in the future we'll have fully NN autoencoded games!

mattnewport 9y ago

I think you're misunderstanding his point - it's not a question of latency due to the performance of the algorithm, it's a fairly fundamental tradeoff between smoothly blended animations and low latency response to user input. In many games the user wants to see close to immediate response to their input, e.g. moving the stick to turn or pressing a button to jump but that inherently conflicts with the desire to smoothly transition between animations. In reality, your brain starts planning an upcoming turn or jump and moving your body accordingly some time before reaching the physical obstacle you are avoiding. Control schemes for games generally don't allow for this kind of anticipatory input but rather you press the jump button at the moment you want to jump. This leaves no time to smoothly blend the animation - by the time the game receives the input it should already have started the blend some time ago.

abainbridge 9y ago
Exactly. In about 2002 I worked on a PS2 game where you played a dog (Yes you could do a turd. No you couldn't lick your balls). I spent ages tuning the code that determined how high to place the dog's centroid above the ground. I gained a lot of respect for the amount of geometry calculations a real dog has to do in order to keep its face out of the floor when running. The code needed to start reacting to a probable landscape collision hundreds of milliseconds before it happened in order to prevent the need for unnaturally large forces.
nerfhammer 9y ago
Fascinating. Obviously the thing to do is to predict user input. Capacitive sensors within buttons to try to detect when your finger is above or resting on a key? Or just hall effect analog buttons, so you can tell when the button starts to go down before it reaches the bottom of the depress action.