3 ms·

> The original link discussed typing latencies in the range of 1-30ms. 30ms is close to extremely annoying. You will notice a 30ms latency in a video game when

> The original link discussed typing latencies in the range of 1-30ms. 30ms is close to extremely annoying. You will notice a 30ms latency in a video game when moving around, turning etc. Having that kind of latency on mouse movement can make it close to impossible to hit fast targets in a shooter for instance, because it will destroy perceived synchronicity of input with the response, confusing your brain and destroying immersion. The same can be said about navigating in a terminal based text editor. A few milliseconds of delay can take your brain from "I am the cursor" to "I am controlling this cursor, which respond a short time after I execute a certain action". Frustrating. What is also super frustrating to me when using vim in a slow terminal is that I will consistently overshoot the line where I meant to place the cursor. I realize most of the latency probably comes from my brain and nervous system, but a few ms can be just enough to make the cursor end up in the next line instead.

occamrazor 6y ago
30ms is the video refresh latency with a typical 60fps monitor and a double framebuffer, without any latency from the application itself. Most videogame players have a similar setup and they evidently don’t find it “extremely annoying”, ot they would have stopped playing a ling time ago.
- chmod775 6y ago
  >Most videogame players have a similar setup and they evidently don’t find it “extremely annoying” I do. And it's not just me. There's a reason many players of fast twitchy shooters are playing either without vsync, or vsync + uncapped FPS[1] (+ the newer "low latency" modes of modern drivers, but mileages vary). This stuff has already been well understood, A/B tested, and documented back in the CS1.6 days. A CS player who hasn't at least put some thought into it or doesn't care is extremely rare. And CS is still topping the steam charts daily at up to a million or more concurrent players. People have no issues noticing vsync ON vs OFF (well that's easy) or vsync + uncapped vs capped FPS in blind tests. I challenge you to get a friend to perform a blind test with you to try this for yourself. There's also a reason that reduced input lag is part of the sales pitch of everything from monitors and GPUs to input devices. It's because people do care (irrespective of the effectiveness of what vendors try to sell you). Hardware manufacturers, driver developers, and game studious aren't putting time and money into this because nobody gives a damn. [1]: vsync + uncapped FPS is called "fast" vsync in nvidia driver settings Edit: I'm going to give an example of why these numbers matter in fast shooters. Suppose you pit two players of equal skill against each other, each having a reaction time range of 300ms - 400ms, and whoever reacts first wins. One player is playing with a total input latency (mouse to screen) of 50ms, and the other with a latency of 30ms (these are typical numbers of vsync on vs vsync off). The player with 20ms less latency is going to win about 70% of the time.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  "30 ms here", "one frame of latency there" is exactly how Android (and some PC apps) end up with touch latencies in the triple digits. FWIW most people who semi-seriously game don't use 60 Hz screens and don't use normal V-Sync. They use 120-155 Hz screens, or increasingly 240 Hz screens and fast v-sync (=driver-managed triple buffering combined with a frame queue length of 0 or 1). They also try to run the game with as high FPS as possible.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> 30ms is close to extremely annoying. You will notice a 30ms latency in a video game when moving around, turning etc. That’s not true, though. It takes more than 30ms just to render your frame, deliver it to the monitor, and wait for a screen refresh. PC Gamer recently measured some actual latency results. They found 60-80ms was fairly standard for lag between input and on-screen events: https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares-to-native-pc-gaming/ https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares... Notably, the online game streaming services have on the order of 150ms of latency. It starts to become noticeable, but it’s still entirely playable for many. If the gamers can handle 150ms of input lag, certainly we can deal with 30ms while typing in our consoles.
- chmod775 6y ago
  > That’s not true, though. It takes more than 30ms just to render your frame, deliver it to the monitor, and wait for a screen refresh. For cheap non-CRT screens you are correct. Otherwise, not so much. And even if you're using a cheap screen, latencies of 50ms vs 30ms (typical numbers for vsync on vs vsync off) definitely have an impact on player performance besides just feeling more/less sluggish. See also my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806493 > https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares-to-native-pc-gaming/ https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares... That PC gamer article is horrible and amateurish. There's no mention of what vsync/nvidia driver settings they used etc. Also games like Destiny are pretty far from being optimized for low input lag. With CRTs and properly optimized/coded games like CS you can achieve input lag as low as 5ms (though that's just the time until the monitor begins drawing the first rows of pixels after the change). Here's a few links on input lags measurements: http://www.esreality.com/post/2691945/microsecond-input-lag-measurements/ http://www.esreality.com/post/2691945/microsecond-input-lag-... https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1381&hilit=csgo+input+lag https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1381&hil... http://esreality.com/post/2640619/input-lag-tests-ql-csgo-q3a/ http://esreality.com/post/2640619/input-lag-tests-ql-csgo-q3... People doing A/B tests: https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1134 https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1134 And a demonstration that even input lag as low as 10ms can be noticeable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4

occamrazor 6y ago

30ms is the video refresh latency with a typical 60fps monitor and a double framebuffer, without any latency from the application itself. Most videogame players have a similar setup and they evidently don’t find it “extremely annoying”, ot they would have stopped playing a ling time ago.

chmod775 6y ago
>Most videogame players have a similar setup and they evidently don’t find it “extremely annoying” I do. And it's not just me. There's a reason many players of fast twitchy shooters are playing either without vsync, or vsync + uncapped FPS[1] (+ the newer "low latency" modes of modern drivers, but mileages vary). This stuff has already been well understood, A/B tested, and documented back in the CS1.6 days. A CS player who hasn't at least put some thought into it or doesn't care is extremely rare. And CS is still topping the steam charts daily at up to a million or more concurrent players. People have no issues noticing vsync ON vs OFF (well that's easy) or vsync + uncapped vs capped FPS in blind tests. I challenge you to get a friend to perform a blind test with you to try this for yourself. There's also a reason that reduced input lag is part of the sales pitch of everything from monitors and GPUs to input devices. It's because people do care (irrespective of the effectiveness of what vendors try to sell you). Hardware manufacturers, driver developers, and game studious aren't putting time and money into this because nobody gives a damn. [1]: vsync + uncapped FPS is called "fast" vsync in nvidia driver settings Edit: I'm going to give an example of why these numbers matter in fast shooters. Suppose you pit two players of equal skill against each other, each having a reaction time range of 300ms - 400ms, and whoever reacts first wins. One player is playing with a total input latency (mouse to screen) of 50ms, and the other with a latency of 30ms (these are typical numbers of vsync on vs vsync off). The player with 20ms less latency is going to win about 70% of the time.
formerly_proven 6y ago
"30 ms here", "one frame of latency there" is exactly how Android (and some PC apps) end up with touch latencies in the triple digits. FWIW most people who semi-seriously game don't use 60 Hz screens and don't use normal V-Sync. They use 120-155 Hz screens, or increasingly 240 Hz screens and fast v-sync (=driver-managed triple buffering combined with a frame queue length of 0 or 1). They also try to run the game with as high FPS as possible.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> 30ms is close to extremely annoying. You will notice a 30ms latency in a video game when moving around, turning etc. That’s not true, though. It takes more than 30ms just to render your frame, deliver it to the monitor, and wait for a screen refresh. PC Gamer recently measured some actual latency results. They found 60-80ms was fairly standard for lag between input and on-screen events: https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares-to-native-pc-gaming/ https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares... Notably, the online game streaming services have on the order of 150ms of latency. It starts to become noticeable, but it’s still entirely playable for many. If the gamers can handle 150ms of input lag, certainly we can deal with 30ms while typing in our consoles.

chmod775 6y ago
> That’s not true, though. It takes more than 30ms just to render your frame, deliver it to the monitor, and wait for a screen refresh. For cheap non-CRT screens you are correct. Otherwise, not so much. And even if you're using a cheap screen, latencies of 50ms vs 30ms (typical numbers for vsync on vs vsync off) definitely have an impact on player performance besides just feeling more/less sluggish. See also my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806493 > https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares-to-native-pc-gaming/ https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares... That PC gamer article is horrible and amateurish. There's no mention of what vsync/nvidia driver settings they used etc. Also games like Destiny are pretty far from being optimized for low input lag. With CRTs and properly optimized/coded games like CS you can achieve input lag as low as 5ms (though that's just the time until the monitor begins drawing the first rows of pixels after the change). Here's a few links on input lags measurements: http://www.esreality.com/post/2691945/microsecond-input-lag-measurements/ http://www.esreality.com/post/2691945/microsecond-input-lag-... https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1381&hilit=csgo+input+lag https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1381&hil... http://esreality.com/post/2640619/input-lag-tests-ql-csgo-q3a/ http://esreality.com/post/2640619/input-lag-tests-ql-csgo-q3... People doing A/B tests: https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1134 https://forums.blurbusters.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1134 And a demonstration that even input lag as low as 10ms can be noticeable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4