Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also clear on rhythm games like Stepmania. Here's a random video from a keyboard user: https://youtu.be/TWiMnENdcyY?t=56 At this speed the player is reacting (and hitting with correct timing) about ten notes (arrows) per second. This is possible by memorizing and reacting to group patterns instead of individual notes, but more importantly, reacting unconsciously. A player can play at this level without consci…
A big difference between Hexagon and most other rhythm games like Stepmania, Beatmanias IIDX, Guitar Hero, etc , is that pattern is the same. Just like musicians memorize complex music that they later perform[1] with precise timing, the same is possible for these step/note patterns. I've personally seen someone perform one of the insane speed/note-density DDR songs blindfolded . Humans have surprisingly good internal…
Keyboard latency
161–170 of 274 posts
Re: Keyboard latency
#162I'm surprised the "humans don't notice 100 ms" argument is even made. That's trivially debunkable with a simple blind A/B test at the command line using `sleep 0.1` with and without `sleep` aliased to `true`. To my eyes, the delay is obvious at 100 ms, noticeable at 50 ms, barely perceptible at 20 ms, and unnoticeable at 10 ms. Not to mention that 100 ms is musically a 16th note at 150 bpm. Being off by a 16th note e…
> strike a key less than 100 ms after some visual stimuli, I'm sure I couldn't do it The video game "Super Hexagon"[1] is a surprisingly interesting demonstration of this limitation, and how the mind tries to workaround the problem. The higher difficulties ("hexagonest"[2]) seem impossible at first. In the easier levels you can react , but now the time it takes to see the scree, parse the simple graphics, recognize t…
Re: Keyboard latency
#163I'm surprised the "humans don't notice 100 ms" argument is even made. That's trivially debunkable with a simple blind A/B test at the command line using `sleep 0.1` with and without `sleep` aliased to `true`. To my eyes, the delay is obvious at 100 ms, noticeable at 50 ms, barely perceptible at 20 ms, and unnoticeable at 10 ms. Not to mention that 100 ms is musically a 16th note at 150 bpm. Being off by a 16th note e…
> strike a key less than 100 ms after some visual stimuli, I'm sure I couldn't do it The video game "Super Hexagon"[1] is a surprisingly interesting demonstration of this limitation, and how the mind tries to workaround the problem. The higher difficulties ("hexagonest"[2]) seem impossible at first. In the easier levels you can react , but now the time it takes to see the scree, parse the simple graphics, recognize t…
Re: Keyboard latency
#164Has anyone benchmarked the keyboard latency of recent generations MacBook Pro Retinas?
Re: Keyboard latency
#165TextEdit: ~81 ms from key depression to when LCD pixels begin to shift. For Sublime Text: ~86 ms. Both of these text editors are pretty well matched.
However, if you boot into Recovery Mode in macOS, you gain access to a GUI without a V-synced/tripled framebuffer. Terminal in Recovery Mode: ~57 ms
Finally, the kicker. macOS users have always had access to a terminal interface upon boot called single-user mode:
Single User Mode: 37.5ms (all three measurements were the same)
If you want to experience what the latency on old computers felt like while typing, simply reboot your mac, and while it's starting up, hold 'Command + S'!
Re: Keyboard latency
#166> It’s possible to get down to the 50ms range in well optimized games with a fancy gaming setup, and there’s one particularly impressive consumer device that can easily get below that.
Is the device in question mentioned anywhere?
Re: Keyboard latency
#167I'm surprised the "humans don't notice 100 ms" argument is even made. That's trivially debunkable with a simple blind A/B test at the command line using `sleep 0.1` with and without `sleep` aliased to `true`. To my eyes, the delay is obvious at 100 ms, noticeable at 50 ms, barely perceptible at 20 ms, and unnoticeable at 10 ms. Not to mention that 100 ms is musically a 16th note at 150 bpm. Being off by a 16th note e…
Hm, neat. I notice about the same result -- 0.1 is quite obvious. If you want to blind A/B test yourself, run this: DELAY='0.1'; VALUES=(0 0); VALUES[$((RANDOM % 2))]=$DELAY; alias test_a="sleep ${VALUES[0]}"; alias test_b="sleep ${VALUES[1]}" Adjust DELAY as you want, and then use test_a and test_b and see if you can guess which is which, then run alias to see for sure.
https://jsfiddle.net/zs8bncxj/1/
I can still get it right pretty much 100% of the time, but the difference does feel a lot more subtle than what I was seeing in iTerm.
(If you change the delay, you need to hit randomize to make it take.)
Edit: Also we should keep in mind that we're not testing the latency we set in either test. We're testing that delay plus the delay from I/O. So 100ms might be indistinguishable. But by the time we pile everything on, we're getting closer to 200.
The result is the same as far as UI design is concerned; don't assume that you can get away with 100ms; most of that leeway has already been wasted by the OS and hardware.
Re: Keyboard latency
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also clear on rhythm games like Stepmania. Here's a random video from a keyboard user: https://youtu.be/TWiMnENdcyY?t=56 At this speed the player is reacting (and hitting with correct timing) about ten notes (arrows) per second. This is possible by memorizing and reacting to group patterns instead of individual notes, but more importantly, reacting unconsciously. A player can play at this level without consci…
A big difference between Hexagon and most other rhythm games like Stepmania, Beatmanias IIDX, Guitar Hero, etc , is that pattern is the same. Just like musicians memorize complex music that they later perform[1] with precise timing, the same is possible for these step/note patterns. I've personally seen someone perform one of the insane speed/note-density DDR songs blindfolded . Humans have surprisingly good internal…
But new versions come out, with new sets of songs, and people play songs of the same approximate difficulty as well. If it was simply memorization, they wouldn't be able to play same or near difficulty songs. They'd have to "ramp up" as they memorized the new song.
Obviously, people's brains are reacting to similar patterns (each song has a "style" and many songs are of the same "style" with things like jumps, diagonals, triplets and so on), as well as other subconscious neural reactions.
When you're playing 9-step (out of 10) step songs, you're not watching individual arrows at all. It'd be impossible. You unfocus your eyes and play through your peripheral vision. Your body reacts. You don't need to think at all.
(So nobody is arguing that the Hexagon game isn't "more random" . They're arguing that it's more than just randomness at play.)
It's really no different that carrying on a conversation while playing a game of casual pong with a friend. Everyone just calls it "muscle memory." The pattern is never the same with a ball bouncing off a table. It's not rocket science.
Re: Keyboard latency
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also clear on rhythm games like Stepmania. Here's a random video from a keyboard user: https://youtu.be/TWiMnENdcyY?t=56 At this speed the player is reacting (and hitting with correct timing) about ten notes (arrows) per second. This is possible by memorizing and reacting to group patterns instead of individual notes, but more importantly, reacting unconsciously. A player can play at this level without consci…
I used to play Stepmania a fair amount, and one of my controllers had a noticeable amount of latency. Despite this, I was about to be about as effective as with the lesser-delay controllers. I think part of the reason is from my experience as an organist: some instruments have a noticeable delay from the time that the key is pressed to when the sound reaches my ears, whether due to delays built into the control mecha…
Chivalry, for example.
Part of the fun is learning to control the wind up correctly so that you are in the exact place (you being a moving, rotating person AND then being a moving rotating person) somewhere in the future as opposed to "close in until within range/in-scope, then immediately triggering the left-mouse button." You have to continue guiding the attack as the attack is winding up.
Another interesting one is long range sniping in simulator and quasi-simulator FPS games like say, PUBG. There's bullet drop, and people can move toward, away, and side-ways. You've got to place the shot ahead of the target, for a given targets speed (walking vs running, vs in a vehicle), and lead the appropriate amount. The amount also changes with distance (obviously) as well as different guns have different bullet velocities (less velocity = more lead), as well as different scopes (2x/4x/8x/15x) which offer drastically different required mouse movements to get the appropriate crosshair movement (even if the "lead" corrected for magnification is the same).
God, I love our brains. I would love to read a textbook on EXACTLY that kind of learning. Subconscious, neural learning.
Oh, and that's one great thing about PUBG. The combination of low-level muscle memory for maximum speed target acquisition and firing, with the constant high-level mental strain of planning 2, 3, and 20 steps ahead. Solving for "this situation right now" (shot this guy on my screen AND how do I outflank this guy walking nearby but out of sight that is also trying to kill me), solving for "what happens next" (if I fire, will it attract another, full health, group of people that will kill me?) and solving for "how do I keep getting closer to the blue zone to reach the end game without dying."
All of those circuits are absolutely required to "win" in a game with 100 players and only one winner. For the fun of it, I really should write down my other mental processes that go on. Getting further in the game (closer to 100) is all about learning to train your brain into juggling many problems at the same time as well as specifically targeting areas where you are lacking. Like if you're not good at close combat, you can get near the end by sneaking but you will eventually die. And combat at short range, medium range, and long-range combat all have different strategies and tradeoffs. Combat with groups is different that combat with 1 enemy, or a pair.
Re: Keyboard latency
#170I probably missed something but: > It’s possible to get down to the 50ms range in well optimized games with a fancy gaming setup, and there’s one particularly impressive consumer device that can easily get below that. Is the device in question mentioned anywhere?