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Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

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Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#241

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

magicalhippo wrote: post #219
lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think you can and will inevitably fail to do it in blind testing.

While reaction response is around 100ms, for predictive movements, ie press a button exactly when a bouncing ball hits the ground, average people can get down into 5-7ms of timing accuracy[1]. Trained people can get below 4ms in certain cases. Of course, the brain adapts. I played an online shooter at >100 FPS using my 144 Hz monitor (when that was the best). I visited a buddy who's PC could only muster 30-40 FPS, an…

Well, of course people can generally see the difference between 30 and 100+ FPS but it is much bigger delay than 1ms OP claimed they can distinguish.

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#242

Post by ant6n »

teodorlu wrote: post #79

Very interesting! Latency numbers are written with three significant digits (4.21 ms). I'm curious about the accuracy of the measurement device. If it can measure tens of microseconds, I'm impressed. If it can't, the conclusions in this article should be taken more coarsely.

For 300 tests, it seems reasonable to report with some more precision on the median.

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#243

Post by pbhjpbhj »

wongarsu wrote: post #78
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sure, but if I just need to troubleshoot why Minecraft-launcher (a first party app) won't launch ... it didn't give any output; it didn't even exist apparently, but only because MS were hiding it, had to crack out Process Explorer just to get something to troubleshoot on ... then it turns out the "turnkey" app from their first-party app store, loading the first-party app, on the same company's OS just failed with…

The developers of Process Explorer have a lot more to do with the OS than the makers of Minecraft, even if the company name is the same on all three

SysInternals was an acquisition (2006) too.

I'm pretty sure that Minecraft launcher was made since that (2014) acquisition?

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#244

Post by preisschild »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #15

One thing that's lovely about Linux is this kind of analysis is not only possible, but meaningful. These results will get reported back to the graphics software authors and the distribution packagers and the ecosystem will improve. There's no sense with Microsoft that kind of improvement is possible. I recently switched to Linux after years on Windows desktop, mostly because the KDE Plasma desktop feels snappier than…

> Also the feeling that if something isn't working right I can probably tinker and improve it

And thats exactly where free software shines. Enough people fixing issues they deem worthy of spending time on means the overall software will only improve with time.

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#245

Post by preisschild »

inigyou wrote: post #99
smokel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things do indeed improve, but some other things require a massive effort that no hobbyist or small company can make happen. This is most obvious in places where a lot of coordination is required, for example in supporting proper color correction throughout all applications, or decent support for advanced printer functions. There are many incremental changes, but we often get stuck in local minima for years. Stil…

Because if it's open source you can't make money from it or have multiple tiers.

Not directly from it, but from the products you build on top. See Valve's use of Linux for example.

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#246

Post by cl3misch »

This hits a very soft spot for me. My beloved Spelunky 2 has huge input lag "on Linux", which makes it unplayable for me. It's pretty much the reason I keep my Windows 10 install around. I could not come up with a configuration on Linux that avoids the lag.

It's extra infuriating that online sources report the game running flawlessly but seem to ignore input lag.

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#247

Post by Tuna-Fish »

horsawlarway wrote: post #123
jandrese wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context here is the article's author is a twitchy FPS player, those extra 3ms are something that community agonizes over. I appreciated how much effort was put into controlling the variables in this test. There's a whole lot of witchcraft associated with these kinds of efforts and he sat down and did the measurements and got real numbers. My hat is off to OP.

ping is going to dominate over 3ms in pretty much every situation. And the non-xwayland numbers are all within a single ms of each other. --- Not to undermine the measurements of the author (agree with you, it's a cool effort), but my read is that this was basically proof that it doesn't matter.

Latency is additive, it doesn't matter how much latency you already have, any extra on top always still hurts.

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#248

Post by Tuna-Fish »

lII1lIlI11ll wrote: post #205
slackfan wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell down to about a 3ms difference in lag. Actually even down to 1ms, it's not all its cracked up to be, lemme tell you.

You think you can and will inevitably fail to do it in blind testing.

It directly impacts performance when playing twitch fps games, any input lag causes measurable difference in score. This is before people even notice it happening.

Re: Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK

#250

Post by account42 »

datakan wrote: post #13
cgyvbunji wrote: post #3

He seems confused at the end why people think wayland is so slow, but don't you think it's because of his xwayland result? People were probably running x11 games on wayland and noticed that significant lag. Just a wild guess. Very nice article, wish people did actual measurements like this more often, of all sorts of things.

I've been using Linux since the mid 1990's. I'm no newbie to any of this. I literally can't tell the different between X11 and Wayland when using either of them and I don't care about all the arguing. This is just Vim vs Emacs and Gnome vs KDE all over again. At this point when I see people complaining about it I just click off the page. It's all stupid and pointless.

Ignorance is not something to be celebrated.
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