4 ms·
Some of these have always been quite counterintuitive to me, particularly the networking ones. Google Stadia was always an exercise in edge cases in expectation
by danpalmer 3y ago
Some of these have always been quite counterintuitive to me, particularly the networking ones. Google Stadia was always an exercise in edge cases in expectations on these numbers for me.
It felt weird that a gaming computer in a datacenter could be "faster" than a computer on my network, but one frame takes ~16ms to render, bandwidth is big enough to stream, network latency might only be another ~frame, and suddenly the image is on my machine within 2 or 3 frames. However there were unexpectedly slow parts! The controller actually ran over WiFi directly, so that inputs went straight to the server rather than via Bluetooth, comparing with Xbox Cloud on a Bluetooth controller, this made a huge difference, but that makes sense because Bluetooth's latency might be 1-2 frames itself. It's counterintuitive to me that the latency from my controller to my computer, less than 1m, might be higher than the latency from my computer, to my router, to my ISP, to Google's DC, and to a server. Similarly, the latency on HDMI from a computer to my TV is in the same ballpark of a few frames because of all the processing my cheap TV does to look good.
- samwho 3y agoMan, I had such high hopes for Stadia. I was an SRE at Google when it was being built and knew some of the traffic folks working on the networking parts of it. Some of the absolute best people. Such a shame. I’d never have considered adding WiFi to the controller to _reduce_ latency, that’s absolutely wild. Thanks for sharing!
- CrimsonRain 3y agoI'm not sure why you'd find it wild. Any gamer with decent tech knowledge never buys Bluetooth wireless devices (mouse kb headset etc) for gaming precisely for this reason. Sites like rting measures latency for the same reason.
- danpalmer 3y agoGamers know about bluetooth latency when specifically compared to wired peripherals, and in that case I think that's intuitive. The counterintuitive part is that WiFi – a much more complex spec, plus all the IP stack, connecting to web services from a small low powered device, etc – is faster than a "simple" bluetooth connection designed for such devices.