Comment by VRay
5 years ago
One quick nitpick: The latency in streaming isn't as bad as you'd think
Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games
(This obviously doesn't apply to high-end play on twitch shooters or fighting games though, those are pretty much screwed when it comes to streaming)
>> Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen. So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games
Source please?
I have produced / designed / managed a few AAA games in my life and none of them had a 200ms latency between when you pressed a button and something happened on screen. That delay would be horrible for a fighting game or a driving game. How are you even defining "something happening on screen"?
Let's suppose you are right, that there is a longish latency between when your input is polled and when the game systems fully react. That happens to some extent in RTSs, because changes in the game state are synchronized. But in that case the delay isn't going to hide the network latency, it is going to be added on top of the network latency.
Here's one site that attempts to catalog this: https://displaylag.com/video-game-input-lag-database/
Found an article from a few years ago: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_respon...
Not all games are that bad, especially these days. And your overall point is correct: adding even a little bit on top of that already horrendous latency is going to be noticeable by players.
Worst out of the 23 games listed in the first link has 8 frames of latency at 120 fps, which is about 66ms. Monitor input lag included.
200ms, while possible, is far from "most AAA+ games", as OP stated.
Sure, there's people that play on lowest-end consoles, on a crappy LCD TV with game mode disabled, but let's not consider that the norm for all players/all AAA+ games, and I'm going to need hard sources showing whether those worst case environments get even close to triple digit latencies.
They might be talking about engine delay (ie. frame times/framerate) but i've moreso seen delays of 100-150 milliseconds deemed acceptable by people playing console games on an old flat screen TV that doesn't have a low-latency mode available, and I haven't really experienced this on anything other than consoles since even cheap PC monitors tend to have <10ms display lag[0].
0: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015WCV70W
You probably know this 100ms = 10 FPS. What kind of display shows video at less than 10fps? Game engines aren't always synced to frame rates, particularly simulations. But a simulation that updates every 0.1s isn't great for fidelity.
A 30 fps game could go through a complete loop, updating everything: object positions, inputs in 33ms. At 60 fps assuming everything is synced to frame rate that would 16 ms.
I was asking for the commenter's source of information so I didn't have to guess what he or she meant. It's possible to make a game that doesn't respond a user's input in less than 200ms, but why would you? You don't need to be making a technical tour de force to respond in 16-33ms.
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Here, smart guy: https://youtu.be/CWYTOOtplY8?t=115
160+ ms response time, assuming Red Dead Redemption 2 is running at 60 FPS.
You can design an efficient game with just a few frames of latency in the engine, and then it will be as playable as offline Red Dead when you add on 80-ish ms of internet latency
Thank you for the example. You said most games had a 200 ms latency. I wasn't trying to attack you, I just doubted that figure, admitting I wasn't sure. You found one example of a game with 160ms latency, listed among a bunch that are much lower.
RDR 2 isn’t a racing game or a fighter. You could argue it isn’t really an action game.
Also, why do you believe the latency of a display or a controller isn't sequential to the delay on Stadia?
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> Most AAA games already have 200+ ms delays between pressing a button and anything happening on-screen
Absolutely false, and I don't know where you got that from.
If there was a game that had that kind of latency between input and reaction, people would notice and the reviews would be horrible.
Wow, I didn't realize it was that high. I stand corrected.
I think most of the above still applies, but maybe expand "it'll be good enough for some people" to include some portion of average console-gamers (assuming the rest of the productization is done right, and assuming those console-gamers have fairly good internet)
The thing is that, even there, if you're putting it on a TV you're likely not going to want to plug in your Macbook or whatever. Which means, if you don't already have a console, you're going to be buying dedicated hardware regardless. Which significantly cuts into the "savings"/"no-purchase" angle, and steepens the question of "what's the point of this?"
One thought though: Microsoft could use this as a way to keep last-gen console owners engaged. At some future date when the Xbox Series Y or Z or whatever comes out, people with a Series S might still be able to play the latest games by streaming them. They're using dedicated hardware that plugs into a TV, but it's hardware they already bought which is essentially being repurposed.
Edit: Another thing is that the subscription model and the streaming model don't have to go hand-in-hand. I think game subscriptions are absolutely the future, but I think there will always be a market for devices that download and run those subscribed games locally.
At 30 fps a 200ms lag would be over 6 frames of delay between input and the action happening on screen. Can you point to any examples of AAA games that actually have this much input lag?
Here: https://youtu.be/CWYTOOtplY8?t=115
> So there's plenty of room to redesign things to work around that latency in a lot of games
This is one of the worst parts of game Streaming - games potentially being designed around it, making them worse for everyone else.