5 ms·

That seems like an okay situation if you don't play games that are sensitive to input latency and if you hate money.

by na85 4y ago

kqr 4y ago
I'll have to evaluate what the input latency is like -- I'm not that sensitive and I have a good connection to a central location. But I suspect anything above 50 ms would be difficult to live with. I don't hate money but I love the space and freedom from not having a physical rig at my desk slightly more than money. (Also worth mentioning that I have like an hour a week for video gaming at most.)
- calgoo 4y ago
  Yea I have moved to using GeForce now and am loving it. The one issue I have and that I want to test moonlight for is using mods. I’m even looking at setting up thin clients at home for the wife and myself and just have remote desktops available using moonlight or similar (don’t want to use vnc or Remote Desktop).
  - kqr 4y ago
    Yeah, visual-enhancing mods is in this case the reason I would like something beyond my laptop integrated GPU.
Nextgrid 4y ago
Counterpoint about the input latency: on a proper internet connection I was able to play competitive shooters just as well as I do now locally. Agreed about the money aspect of it, though surprisingly it's not the hardware that costs the most, it's AWS's price-gouging on egress bandwidth.
- pineconewarrior 4y ago
  "Just as well" is very relative here. For people who are truly competitive 100ms is enough to create a massive disadvantage against someone of similar skill.
  - itsboring 4y ago
    I agree, but I feel like discussions about latency always focus on competitive play, while for me at least, low input latency is important even for single-player FPS games. Before 144hz+ screens were popular, I’d turn off v-sync and deal with tearing just so the mouse movement didn’t feel “mushy”. It didn’t make me a better player, but it FELT better and therefore increased enjoyment.
    - pineconewarrior 4y ago
      Yes, same here. I feel I am very sensitive to this (among other sensory things, honestly).
  - infinityio 4y ago
    That's true, but what makes you think the latency would be 100ms? With a good internet connection and a nearby server you could realistically expect latencies in the single millisecond range (although encoding/decoding might add a frame to that, it'd still be significantly lower than 100)
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      In my case the Steam overlay reported either 13 or 25ms (can't remember) total latency (including video encoding/decoding) and the latency to the game server was 5ms. This put my total latency at around 30ms max which wasn't too bad and not too different from other players. Granted, it's not a perfect comparison (other players have high network latency while mine was input latency which can't be compensated by the game). It did however impressively exceed my expectations (I expected it to be completely unplayable) so I suggest you try it.
- na85 4y ago
  Moving from the East Coast to the West Coast destroyed my ability to be competitive in counterstrike (not counting ranked queues) because the server I used to play on regularly was in Kansas or something and the added 50 ms of ping was enough to throw my aim off. No offense but either you're at a really low level or else you're playing games that aren't actually very dependent on reaction time.
  - infinityio 4y ago
    > the added 50 ms of ping was enough to throw my aim off On the flip side - if you live in the same city as a stadia server and you have real fibre to your house, you could realistically expect single digit ms latency to the stadia (edit: or knock-off stadia, using a cloud server or similar) box - it would still be noticeable, but 5ms is the same difference in input lag as dropping from 90fps -> 60fps - obviously it's not nothing at all, but if you aren't investing in a dedicated gaming computer it's unlikely it'd annoy you that much
    - solardev 4y ago
      Maybe 5ms of network latency, but it takes a lot longer to encode your mouse movement into a packet and send it over a wire, add 5ms, then wait for the cloud data center to route it to the right VM, decode your packet, send it to the game, capture the framebuffer, and send it back to you. The end to end roundtrip is more than just network latency. Anecdote: I've used a lot of cloud gaming providers with fiber to the home, and while the experience is great, it's very noticeably laggier in first person shooters compared to going from 90fps to 60fps. It's a different kind of latency... beyond 60+ FPS, there are more frames in between, and so motion is smoother. But even at 60fps, your "time to first frame (update)" is still very low, compared to over the internet (or even to a local Steam remote desktop). Cloud gaming at 100Hz/FPS still feels laggier than 60fps local because of that mouse lag. Modern graphics cards are very good at rapidly encoding frames using hardware accelerators, but it's still nowhere near as good as drawing directly to the screen. Even the fastest multi-gig networks are orders of magnitude slower than your internal buses and ports, especially in latency.

That seems like an okay situation if you don't play games that are sensitive to input latency and if you hate money.

by na85 4y ago

That seems like an okay situation if you don't play games that are sensitive to input latency and if you hate money.

kqr 4y ago

I'll have to evaluate what the input latency is like -- I'm not that sensitive and I have a good connection to a central location. But I suspect anything above 50 ms would be difficult to live with. I don't hate money but I love the space and freedom from not having a physical rig at my desk slightly more than money. (Also worth mentioning that I have like an hour a week for video gaming at most.)

calgoo 4y ago
Yea I have moved to using GeForce now and am loving it. The one issue I have and that I want to test moonlight for is using mods. I’m even looking at setting up thin clients at home for the wife and myself and just have remote desktops available using moonlight or similar (don’t want to use vnc or Remote Desktop).
- kqr 4y ago
  Yeah, visual-enhancing mods is in this case the reason I would like something beyond my laptop integrated GPU.

Nextgrid 4y ago

Counterpoint about the input latency: on a proper internet connection I was able to play competitive shooters just as well as I do now locally. Agreed about the money aspect of it, though surprisingly it's not the hardware that costs the most, it's AWS's price-gouging on egress bandwidth.

pineconewarrior 4y ago
"Just as well" is very relative here. For people who are truly competitive 100ms is enough to create a massive disadvantage against someone of similar skill.
- itsboring 4y ago
  I agree, but I feel like discussions about latency always focus on competitive play, while for me at least, low input latency is important even for single-player FPS games. Before 144hz+ screens were popular, I’d turn off v-sync and deal with tearing just so the mouse movement didn’t feel “mushy”. It didn’t make me a better player, but it FELT better and therefore increased enjoyment.
  - pineconewarrior 4y ago
    Yes, same here. I feel I am very sensitive to this (among other sensory things, honestly).
- infinityio 4y ago
  That's true, but what makes you think the latency would be 100ms? With a good internet connection and a nearby server you could realistically expect latencies in the single millisecond range (although encoding/decoding might add a frame to that, it'd still be significantly lower than 100)
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    In my case the Steam overlay reported either 13 or 25ms (can't remember) total latency (including video encoding/decoding) and the latency to the game server was 5ms. This put my total latency at around 30ms max which wasn't too bad and not too different from other players. Granted, it's not a perfect comparison (other players have high network latency while mine was input latency which can't be compensated by the game). It did however impressively exceed my expectations (I expected it to be completely unplayable) so I suggest you try it.
na85 4y ago
Moving from the East Coast to the West Coast destroyed my ability to be competitive in counterstrike (not counting ranked queues) because the server I used to play on regularly was in Kansas or something and the added 50 ms of ping was enough to throw my aim off. No offense but either you're at a really low level or else you're playing games that aren't actually very dependent on reaction time.
- infinityio 4y ago
  > the added 50 ms of ping was enough to throw my aim off On the flip side - if you live in the same city as a stadia server and you have real fibre to your house, you could realistically expect single digit ms latency to the stadia (edit: or knock-off stadia, using a cloud server or similar) box - it would still be noticeable, but 5ms is the same difference in input lag as dropping from 90fps -> 60fps - obviously it's not nothing at all, but if you aren't investing in a dedicated gaming computer it's unlikely it'd annoy you that much
  - solardev 4y ago
    Maybe 5ms of network latency, but it takes a lot longer to encode your mouse movement into a packet and send it over a wire, add 5ms, then wait for the cloud data center to route it to the right VM, decode your packet, send it to the game, capture the framebuffer, and send it back to you. The end to end roundtrip is more than just network latency. Anecdote: I've used a lot of cloud gaming providers with fiber to the home, and while the experience is great, it's very noticeably laggier in first person shooters compared to going from 90fps to 60fps. It's a different kind of latency... beyond 60+ FPS, there are more frames in between, and so motion is smoother. But even at 60fps, your "time to first frame (update)" is still very low, compared to over the internet (or even to a local Steam remote desktop). Cloud gaming at 100Hz/FPS still feels laggier than 60fps local because of that mouse lag. Modern graphics cards are very good at rapidly encoding frames using hardware accelerators, but it's still nowhere near as good as drawing directly to the screen. Even the fastest multi-gig networks are orders of magnitude slower than your internal buses and ports, especially in latency.