4 ms·

> I don't know where this is coming from. Polygon's hands-on review mentions this latency, along with a few other criticisms, including the feel of the control

> I don't know where this is coming from. Polygon's hands-on review mentions this latency, along with a few other criticisms, including the feel of the controller: http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/28/4157602/ouya-feature http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/28/4157602/ouya-feature

jonny_eh 14y ago
I know where the statements are literally coming from, but not why they're saying it :)
- jader201 14y ago
  > This was most apparent in the Ouya port of Canabalt. On iOS, Canabalt is a game of twitch reflexes. On the Ouya, I needed to react much earlier, knowing it would take an inordinate amount of time for me to get off the ground. Have you guys not had the same experiences w/ Canabalt, or have you not heard any other reports of this? I personally have a hard time noticing latency like some others report w/ games, unless it directly impacts gameplay (i.e. music games like Rock Band). I don't notice it on other games like FPSes, but many people are very sensitive to latency in games like this.
  - JamesCoote 14y ago
    I just played canabalt on my OUYA devkit (I'm making a game for the OUYA), and I didn't experience any latency from the controller. A bunch of people played it last night when I demoed the OUYA at gamecity in Nottingham and no one complained about it then either. I haven't played canabalt on iOS and I'm not a big console player, so maybe I'm just not attuned to it
- jonny_eh 14y ago
  @jader I've got over 8000M in Canabalt, a personal high score on my ouya, much higher than I've ever got on my Nexus 4. If there was significant lag I don't think that'd be possible. I've talked to the developers of the ouya port and they're baffled by these reports as well. People subconsciously looking for something negative? No clue.
  - jader201 14y ago
    Yeah, I sometimes think sensitivity to input lag is very subjective. Also, another factor is the TV and/or receiver (if they have Ouya going through one). But surely Polygon editors would factor this in? I'm not a game developer (or hardware expert), but are there not tests that can be performed to capture input lag? At least that way it could be ruled in/out at the hardware/software level, assuming you have a baseline reference of any input lag from TV/receiver.
    - mey 14y ago
      John Carmack has done a bit of research on this, he has a good explication on SuperUser http://superuser.com/a/419167 http://superuser.com/a/419167 Edit: Also on his blog http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/02/22/latency-mitigation-strategies/ http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/02/22/latency-mitigation-... tl;dr High speed video camera capturing button input and screen in the same frame to measure the complete cycle. Diagnosing why is harder.
  - podperson 14y ago
    Doesn't HDMI give you the new and wonderful possibility of display lag? (This is particularly pronounced when playing games using iOS devices, especially older iOS devices, with AirPlay.) Because the time between a frame being rendered and appearing on screen can increase, you are reacting slowly to events on the device which you perceive as control lag when in fact it's display lag.
    - mortenjorck 14y ago
      Compliant HDMI shouldn't introduce any latency itself. It's just a digital signal, no different in principle than the signal from a wired game controller. Where latency can creep in is a TV's image processing algorithms – a color adjustment algorithm might add a few milliseconds, an edge enhancement might add a few more; a 120hz motion compensation system will add a lot more. Most TVs will allow these to be disabled (often in a specifically labeled "game mode") but a few may inexplicably not allow them all to be disabled, hardwired for a certain degree of latency. AirPlay, on the other hand, introduces a lot of latency because it's compressing the image prior to transport and uncompressing it on the other end. This generally introduces significantly more lag than any TV image processing.
- shardling 14y ago
  Maybe it is video lag? (i.e. their TVs are adding the lag, not the controllers.)

jonny_eh 14y ago

I know where the statements are literally coming from, but not why they're saying it :)

jader201 14y ago
> This was most apparent in the Ouya port of Canabalt. On iOS, Canabalt is a game of twitch reflexes. On the Ouya, I needed to react much earlier, knowing it would take an inordinate amount of time for me to get off the ground. Have you guys not had the same experiences w/ Canabalt, or have you not heard any other reports of this? I personally have a hard time noticing latency like some others report w/ games, unless it directly impacts gameplay (i.e. music games like Rock Band). I don't notice it on other games like FPSes, but many people are very sensitive to latency in games like this.
- JamesCoote 14y ago
  I just played canabalt on my OUYA devkit (I'm making a game for the OUYA), and I didn't experience any latency from the controller. A bunch of people played it last night when I demoed the OUYA at gamecity in Nottingham and no one complained about it then either. I haven't played canabalt on iOS and I'm not a big console player, so maybe I'm just not attuned to it
jonny_eh 14y ago
@jader I've got over 8000M in Canabalt, a personal high score on my ouya, much higher than I've ever got on my Nexus 4. If there was significant lag I don't think that'd be possible. I've talked to the developers of the ouya port and they're baffled by these reports as well. People subconsciously looking for something negative? No clue.
- jader201 14y ago
  Yeah, I sometimes think sensitivity to input lag is very subjective. Also, another factor is the TV and/or receiver (if they have Ouya going through one). But surely Polygon editors would factor this in? I'm not a game developer (or hardware expert), but are there not tests that can be performed to capture input lag? At least that way it could be ruled in/out at the hardware/software level, assuming you have a baseline reference of any input lag from TV/receiver.
  - mey 14y ago
    John Carmack has done a bit of research on this, he has a good explication on SuperUser http://superuser.com/a/419167 http://superuser.com/a/419167 Edit: Also on his blog http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/02/22/latency-mitigation-strategies/ http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2013/02/22/latency-mitigation-... tl;dr High speed video camera capturing button input and screen in the same frame to measure the complete cycle. Diagnosing why is harder.
- podperson 14y ago
  Doesn't HDMI give you the new and wonderful possibility of display lag? (This is particularly pronounced when playing games using iOS devices, especially older iOS devices, with AirPlay.) Because the time between a frame being rendered and appearing on screen can increase, you are reacting slowly to events on the device which you perceive as control lag when in fact it's display lag.
  - mortenjorck 14y ago
    Compliant HDMI shouldn't introduce any latency itself. It's just a digital signal, no different in principle than the signal from a wired game controller. Where latency can creep in is a TV's image processing algorithms – a color adjustment algorithm might add a few milliseconds, an edge enhancement might add a few more; a 120hz motion compensation system will add a lot more. Most TVs will allow these to be disabled (often in a specifically labeled "game mode") but a few may inexplicably not allow them all to be disabled, hardwired for a certain degree of latency. AirPlay, on the other hand, introduces a lot of latency because it's compressing the image prior to transport and uncompressing it on the other end. This generally introduces significantly more lag than any TV image processing.
shardling 14y ago
Maybe it is video lag? (i.e. their TVs are adding the lag, not the controllers.)