7 ms·

I seriously did not understand how there could be no input lag, and even though I was asking people who both tried and watched it they all said that it was not

I seriously did not understand how there could be no input lag, and even though I was asking people who both tried and watched it they all said that it was not noticeable. I had a hard time believing it, and still can't... Stadia should, theoretically, be like playing an online multiplayer game with no lag compensation. Your inputs are received and processed, and the output is sent back at the network delay; this is going to be at best three to four frames late (60 ms on a good day, with 16 ms per frame at 60 FPS). Unless you run multiple instances of the game at the background and do input prediction at different modes (much like CPU branch prediction, I suppose), you will encounter this significant lag. Even with prediction, the experience just cannot be smooth.

taneq 7y ago
The best they could do is enforce a constant latency equal to your worst-case actual latency, so at least it was consistent and you'd be able to compensate for it. (This was a thing that RTS games used to do, consistent mid-level latency feels way better than variable latency.)
- me_me_me 7y ago
  Yes this is a key, consistency of lag for some is crucial for experience. I can see a lot of games to be playable with Stadia. However anything competitive PvP is a no-no. Playing TF2 I could tell whats is server ping with accuracy of around 30ms by using projectile weapons. Adding best case scenario 60ms is a big deal. Stadia simply can't ever compete with local setups. Currently multiplayer game will play with your local input and then resolve any inconsistencies on server side (this is the reason you were 'killed' when clearly behind a wall). While the resolution of the local input might differ to server the responsiveness feeling of local input is part of good play experience. There are corner cases for some games (RDR2 - all actions have long unskippable animation) or game play style racing games (input lag is hidden by the 'responsiveness of a car'). All that said, its still very impressive how low they got. I was expecting no less then 100ms.
  - voldacar 7y ago
    You are totally right about competitive shooters - in TF2 I can tell the difference between 10ms and 30ms ping, even with hitscan weapons. Nevertheless something like Stadia could probably catch on easily for things like mobas and mmos that don't rely as much on every single frame getting to the screen asap. Assuming the economics work out, that is
  - Paradigma11 7y ago
    But what if the TF2 server runs on the same Google machine?
    - grenoire 7y ago
      Then there's two ways to work with that: 1) It's only Stadia users against each other; 2) People who are directly connected to the Google machine still have an advantage over the Stadia players. The first is... OK. You'll be fine, the playerbase will be tiny and you won't be able to play with your non-Stadia friends. The drawback for the second one is a little less obvious, but the result is that the Stadia users will not benefit from the client-side lag compensation measures that Source (TF2's engine) implements. Most people in this thread miss the fact that in multiplayer games you're always ahead of where the server thinks you are, because you're playing on your timeline, and the server perceives you at RTT/2 behind. When you think you perform an action, the server travels back in time to determine whether how it played out (as opposed to actually executing your actions in what is relatively RTT/2 later).
      - Paradigma11 7y ago
        @2.) I disagree that this would necessarily lead to a disadvantage for Stadia users. When the prediction turns out to be wrong, your client has to correct which can be disconcerting. This is not the case for Stadia users. Prediction is certainly more comfortable, but i am not sure it is an advantage. What you are describing is just moving the prediction from the client to the server. If the server receives input from t-10 and recalculates the state(t) and sends it to the client then obviously (t-9) - (t-1) inputs are missing for the final state calculation at t.
- collsni 7y ago
  Exactly, I can't imagine making it work any other way.
hyperpallium 7y ago
They could be close to the server, with few hops, on a good connection. i.e. the same circumstances where fps don't need lag compensation because there isn't lag. IDK the techniques Stadia is actually using but MS has a prediction and local warping method. Consider that when moving or turning in a fps, in most frames you're making the same input as the previous one. A statistical model, noticing walls and enemies etc can do better. So if lag is n frames, they predict what your input would be pver those n, and send the result. Misprediction is still common, so they do local warping: locally transform the last received frame in accordance with the local input. Zoom for forward, pan left/right for turn etc. I think this would look a little like a stablized video, but it's only for a max of a few frames, so not as bad.
- grenoire 7y ago
  > I think this would look a little like a stablized video, but it's only for a max of a few frames, so not as bad. The issue is that the stabilisation is not just for a maximum of a few frames, because you're always behind by the amount of frames stabilised/processed/corrected. This would lead to the stabilised video feeling as long as you're moving... which happens rather often when playing games.
  - hyperpallium 7y ago
    The warping/stablization only happens on a misprediction, which would be much less than half the time. Ignoring that, I see what you mean that it's ongoing. But it resets every time a new frame is received, whereas a stablized video never resets from the start. To illustrate, consider a video with the camera spinning on an axis into the image (like a barrel roll; so the image rotates in 2D). To prevent the subject of the video from rotating, each image must be rotated in the opposite direction. You'd see the frame of the image rotating. Whereas, with warping, the orientation of the image would reset to level with each actual frame recieved. So the amount of rotation would be limited to a few frames worth - not spinning around 2pi like the stablized video.
nvarsj 7y ago
If google can get latency under a frame (16.67ms) or two then the latency should be almost unnoticeable. You can also time shift to hide the delay in one direction, assuming that Stadia modifies the game engine (you can send the expected game state at delay time in the future). FPS also have a lot of leniency to compensate. Other types of games are far less forgiving (platformers and fighting games) but they all tend to have fairly large internal buffers that can be modified to hide lag.
- grenoire 7y ago
  First of all, it's not always under Google's control what the user latency is. There are a myriad factors they do not control when it comes to the network connection. Second, Stadia does not send a game state like a multiplayer game server does. What you send is input, and what you get back are video frames. Had the game engine touched your own computer, you would be using the same tricks as any other online multiplayer game. Yet, we can see the input lag being a major deterrent in the play quality. Presently, the only defense for Stadia right now is that your average gamer probably won't give a crap if the game feels a bit laggy. We only recently had the stupid ongoing debate with console developers and publishers trying to convince people that 24-30FPS is the maximum that humans can perceive. Luckily that ended with eSports players going for 144Hz monitors and showing that there is an obvious (i.e. noticeable) improvement in reaction times and responsiveness. Hopefully people are convinced that cloud gaming latency does affect the way you play your game, and how much better it feels when you're playing on your own hardware; weaker or stronger it might be than the Stadia server farms.
krige 7y ago
seems to be rather inconsistent, one moment no input lag, but next: https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/1196488999524802562 https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/1196488999524802562
macspoofing 7y ago
>I seriously did not understand how there could be no input lag Of course, there is. >and even though I was asking people who both tried and watched it they all said that it was not noticeable. I had a hard time believing it, and still can't... Network latency is highly context-dependent. In the right environment, it could be minuscule. Online multiplayer has been with us for decades now, and in general works very well (even with FPS, RTS, and fighting games, all of which require a high rate of actions) so it is something that can be mitigated. In an online multiplayer game, your local state is updated quickly and the server state catches up (or uses some prediction heuristic) or rolls back client state. I'm sure there are some strategies to mitigate with pure cloud games... Having said that, a purely server-side streaming solution wastes the processing power of the client, with even a typical phone being a pretty powerful device. Maybe there is a hybrid approach lurking in here somewhere, where some processing is done on the client, and heavy rendering is still done on the server. This lightens the server load and improves latency.
Stevvo 7y ago
I remember playing borderlands on the first streaming game service back in 2010, I forget the name of it; there wasn't any noticeable input lag back then. I was lucky enough to have 10ms ping to the server, so inputs would only have been getting to the servers one or two frames late.
- sitzkrieg 7y ago
  nvidia grid beta?
rco8786 7y ago
I’ve played on these sorts of systems a good bit. There was a post on here a long time ago about using AWS GPU instances and Steam streaming to do exactly this. It’s really not noticeable (unless of course you hit a latency spike, which was pretty rare.). It of course requires a fast, stable internet connection. But the reality is that we don’t really perceive a 60ms lag as anything. Or at e very least it’s fast enough that our brain compensates for kt
gameswithgo 7y ago
i played an action game on a streaming service like 5 years ago and input lag wasn’t bad. it isn’t magic people just make too much of this. many many people play on tvs that have as much input lag as stadia has and are happy. the competitive fps gamer wont like it, or that kind of tv, but many people are fine with it.
- taneq 7y ago
  I don't think the people saying their game is affected by 20-30ms of extra latency are playing on bigscreen TVs. They're playing on G-Sync monitors with triple digit frame rates.

taneq 7y ago

The best they could do is enforce a constant latency equal to your worst-case actual latency, so at least it was consistent and you'd be able to compensate for it. (This was a thing that RTS games used to do, consistent mid-level latency feels way better than variable latency.)

me_me_me 7y ago
Yes this is a key, consistency of lag for some is crucial for experience. I can see a lot of games to be playable with Stadia. However anything competitive PvP is a no-no. Playing TF2 I could tell whats is server ping with accuracy of around 30ms by using projectile weapons. Adding best case scenario 60ms is a big deal. Stadia simply can't ever compete with local setups. Currently multiplayer game will play with your local input and then resolve any inconsistencies on server side (this is the reason you were 'killed' when clearly behind a wall). While the resolution of the local input might differ to server the responsiveness feeling of local input is part of good play experience. There are corner cases for some games (RDR2 - all actions have long unskippable animation) or game play style racing games (input lag is hidden by the 'responsiveness of a car'). All that said, its still very impressive how low they got. I was expecting no less then 100ms.
- voldacar 7y ago
  You are totally right about competitive shooters - in TF2 I can tell the difference between 10ms and 30ms ping, even with hitscan weapons. Nevertheless something like Stadia could probably catch on easily for things like mobas and mmos that don't rely as much on every single frame getting to the screen asap. Assuming the economics work out, that is
- Paradigma11 7y ago
  But what if the TF2 server runs on the same Google machine?
  - grenoire 7y ago
    Then there's two ways to work with that: 1) It's only Stadia users against each other; 2) People who are directly connected to the Google machine still have an advantage over the Stadia players. The first is... OK. You'll be fine, the playerbase will be tiny and you won't be able to play with your non-Stadia friends. The drawback for the second one is a little less obvious, but the result is that the Stadia users will not benefit from the client-side lag compensation measures that Source (TF2's engine) implements. Most people in this thread miss the fact that in multiplayer games you're always ahead of where the server thinks you are, because you're playing on your timeline, and the server perceives you at RTT/2 behind. When you think you perform an action, the server travels back in time to determine whether how it played out (as opposed to actually executing your actions in what is relatively RTT/2 later).
    - Paradigma11 7y ago
      @2.) I disagree that this would necessarily lead to a disadvantage for Stadia users. When the prediction turns out to be wrong, your client has to correct which can be disconcerting. This is not the case for Stadia users. Prediction is certainly more comfortable, but i am not sure it is an advantage. What you are describing is just moving the prediction from the client to the server. If the server receives input from t-10 and recalculates the state(t) and sends it to the client then obviously (t-9) - (t-1) inputs are missing for the final state calculation at t.
collsni 7y ago
Exactly, I can't imagine making it work any other way.

hyperpallium 7y ago

They could be close to the server, with few hops, on a good connection. i.e. the same circumstances where fps don't need lag compensation because there isn't lag. IDK the techniques Stadia is actually using but MS has a prediction and local warping method. Consider that when moving or turning in a fps, in most frames you're making the same input as the previous one. A statistical model, noticing walls and enemies etc can do better. So if lag is n frames, they predict what your input would be pver those n, and send the result. Misprediction is still common, so they do local warping: locally transform the last received frame in accordance with the local input. Zoom for forward, pan left/right for turn etc. I think this would look a little like a stablized video, but it's only for a max of a few frames, so not as bad.

grenoire 7y ago
> I think this would look a little like a stablized video, but it's only for a max of a few frames, so not as bad. The issue is that the stabilisation is not just for a maximum of a few frames, because you're always behind by the amount of frames stabilised/processed/corrected. This would lead to the stabilised video feeling as long as you're moving... which happens rather often when playing games.
- hyperpallium 7y ago
  The warping/stablization only happens on a misprediction, which would be much less than half the time. Ignoring that, I see what you mean that it's ongoing. But it resets every time a new frame is received, whereas a stablized video never resets from the start. To illustrate, consider a video with the camera spinning on an axis into the image (like a barrel roll; so the image rotates in 2D). To prevent the subject of the video from rotating, each image must be rotated in the opposite direction. You'd see the frame of the image rotating. Whereas, with warping, the orientation of the image would reset to level with each actual frame recieved. So the amount of rotation would be limited to a few frames worth - not spinning around 2pi like the stablized video.

nvarsj 7y ago

If google can get latency under a frame (16.67ms) or two then the latency should be almost unnoticeable. You can also time shift to hide the delay in one direction, assuming that Stadia modifies the game engine (you can send the expected game state at delay time in the future). FPS also have a lot of leniency to compensate. Other types of games are far less forgiving (platformers and fighting games) but they all tend to have fairly large internal buffers that can be modified to hide lag.

grenoire 7y ago
First of all, it's not always under Google's control what the user latency is. There are a myriad factors they do not control when it comes to the network connection. Second, Stadia does not send a game state like a multiplayer game server does. What you send is input, and what you get back are video frames. Had the game engine touched your own computer, you would be using the same tricks as any other online multiplayer game. Yet, we can see the input lag being a major deterrent in the play quality. Presently, the only defense for Stadia right now is that your average gamer probably won't give a crap if the game feels a bit laggy. We only recently had the stupid ongoing debate with console developers and publishers trying to convince people that 24-30FPS is the maximum that humans can perceive. Luckily that ended with eSports players going for 144Hz monitors and showing that there is an obvious (i.e. noticeable) improvement in reaction times and responsiveness. Hopefully people are convinced that cloud gaming latency does affect the way you play your game, and how much better it feels when you're playing on your own hardware; weaker or stronger it might be than the Stadia server farms.

krige 7y ago

seems to be rather inconsistent, one moment no input lag, but next: https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/1196488999524802562 https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/1196488999524802562

macspoofing 7y ago

>I seriously did not understand how there could be no input lag Of course, there is. >and even though I was asking people who both tried and watched it they all said that it was not noticeable. I had a hard time believing it, and still can't... Network latency is highly context-dependent. In the right environment, it could be minuscule. Online multiplayer has been with us for decades now, and in general works very well (even with FPS, RTS, and fighting games, all of which require a high rate of actions) so it is something that can be mitigated. In an online multiplayer game, your local state is updated quickly and the server state catches up (or uses some prediction heuristic) or rolls back client state. I'm sure there are some strategies to mitigate with pure cloud games... Having said that, a purely server-side streaming solution wastes the processing power of the client, with even a typical phone being a pretty powerful device. Maybe there is a hybrid approach lurking in here somewhere, where some processing is done on the client, and heavy rendering is still done on the server. This lightens the server load and improves latency.

Stevvo 7y ago

I remember playing borderlands on the first streaming game service back in 2010, I forget the name of it; there wasn't any noticeable input lag back then. I was lucky enough to have 10ms ping to the server, so inputs would only have been getting to the servers one or two frames late.

sitzkrieg 7y ago
nvidia grid beta?

rco8786 7y ago

I’ve played on these sorts of systems a good bit. There was a post on here a long time ago about using AWS GPU instances and Steam streaming to do exactly this. It’s really not noticeable (unless of course you hit a latency spike, which was pretty rare.). It of course requires a fast, stable internet connection. But the reality is that we don’t really perceive a 60ms lag as anything. Or at e very least it’s fast enough that our brain compensates for kt

gameswithgo 7y ago

i played an action game on a streaming service like 5 years ago and input lag wasn’t bad. it isn’t magic people just make too much of this. many many people play on tvs that have as much input lag as stadia has and are happy. the competitive fps gamer wont like it, or that kind of tv, but many people are fine with it.

taneq 7y ago
I don't think the people saying their game is affected by 20-30ms of extra latency are playing on bigscreen TVs. They're playing on G-Sync monitors with triple digit frame rates.