Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor • Hacker News Board

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#41

Post by Izkata » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 1:10 AM UTC

tofof wrote: post #23

sillysaurusx wrote: post #10

I can buy that humans can see at least 120hz at a minimum. 60Hz is the generally accepted threshold, but I’ve long suspected that 120Hz has mostly imperceptible effects that are still noticeable, if rarely. I can’t buy this: > I've also learnt I do benefit from the 8 kHz setting of my mouse, as even at 3200 DPI with fast & smooth motion, some frames still miss a pointer update It may be true that pointer updates were…

So tired of defending against this same, old, completely wrong intuition from people especially those saying "do the science" to justify their ignorance instead of looking themselves since the science has already been done and it's coming up on a full century old. From this one paper alone, humans can perceive information from a single frame at 2000 Hz. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1945.9917254 Humans can read nu…

> this same, old

I think the original claim got corrupted into what people argue about now: those lower fps were found to be roughly the border between perceiving something as smooth motion and jerky stop-motion (like claymation). Then someone misunderstood "smooth motion" to mean we can't perceive any better than that, and it started getting repeated incorrectly as the upper limit.

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#42

Post by pvg » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 2:12 AM UTC

andai wrote: post #30

amluto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many years back (we were on CRTs), I was in similar shoes, convinced my friend couldn't tell the difference between 60 Hz and 90 Hz when playing video games. That’s a silly experiment. I could look at a CRT with a completely static image and tell almost immediately whether it was at 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz. Flickr at 60Hz was awful , 90Hz was clearly perceptible, and even 120Hz was often somewhat noticeable. And most C…

The effects you describe are specific to CRTs only, right? Caused by the electron beam effectively illuminating one pixel at a time?

Yes this a (computer) CRT thing. The commenter might be misremembering the exact numbers, 60 Hz baseline is a flat panel thing, by the mid to late 90s, 75 Hz was something a typical computer CRT would generally aim for and was part of various standards and recommendations.

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#43

Post by TheTon » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 2:35 AM UTC

Several years ago, a coworker made an Arduino "mouse" that traced a square with a 1KHz report rate. Multiple systems running Windows 10 and reading mouse updates via either regular window events or the Win32 raw mouse API would occasionally lose events, meaning the square would drift over time. We tried both with a custom app and with drawing programs like Paint.

We could not reproduce the issue on systems running macOS or Linux, and we chalked it up to a bug in Windows. It was hard to know if it affected real mice but I expect it did. I haven’t tried retesting with more recent versions of Windows to see if it is fixed, maybe it has been.

Anyway, I’m not disputing OPs claim, I can totally believe it, but I always thought it was funny that pro gamers on Windows with high end mice could be losing the occasional movement and apparently nobody noticed that.

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#44

Post by mrheosuper » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 2:35 AM UTC

BearOso wrote: post #3

ptramo wrote: post #2

With 240 Hz displays you probably want your mouse polling setting at 4000 or better 8000 Hz. This tool lets anyone confirm that on their hardware.

That's a recent invention. Only the latest gaming mice can poll at that rate, and not particularly well on USB2. They're usually limited to 1000. Neat tool, though. I'm also very sensitive towards latency.

most of 8k dongle is usb 2

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#45

Post by eviks » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 3:24 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #10

I can buy that humans can see at least 120hz at a minimum. 60Hz is the generally accepted threshold, but I’ve long suspected that 120Hz has mostly imperceptible effects that are still noticeable, if rarely. I can’t buy this: > I've also learnt I do benefit from the 8 kHz setting of my mouse, as even at 3200 DPI with fast & smooth motion, some frames still miss a pointer update It may be true that pointer updates were…

Where did you get 60 as generally accepted from?

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#46

Post by sillysaurusx » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 3:37 AM UTC

eviks wrote: post #45

sillysaurusx wrote: post #10

I can buy that humans can see at least 120hz at a minimum. 60Hz is the generally accepted threshold, but I’ve long suspected that 120Hz has mostly imperceptible effects that are still noticeable, if rarely. I can’t buy this: > I've also learnt I do benefit from the 8 kHz setting of my mouse, as even at 3200 DPI with fast & smooth motion, some frames still miss a pointer update It may be true that pointer updates were…

Where did you get 60 as generally accepted from?

People were skeptical that 120Hz vs 60Hz made any difference in gaming. I’m still not sure how skeptical I should be. The threshold seems somewhere between 60 and 240, and it’s really hard to believe that 240 makes a measurable difference in real world performance (e.g. competitive games). But I can believe 120Hz matters vs 60Hz.

There’s also confusion over human response time vs whether you can perceive something. Even if 240Hz looks slightly different, if a human can’t react to that difference (other than to say it looks nicer, which is a personal preference rather than an empirical assessment of “better”) then it doesn’t really matter anyway. Kind of like how Avatar looked different in 48Hz instead of 24Hz, and at the time it was hailed as some revolution in movies, and then it came and went. Personal preference.

As a direct answer to your question, I was a gamedev from 2005 to 2012, and back then people were arguing that 120Hz couldn’t make a difference and that 60Hz was fine. It stuck with me, since it seemed mistaken. So I shouldn’t have said “generally accepted,” just “I vaguely remember the world arguing a decade or so ago that 60Hz was good enough in all situations, e.g. competitive gaming.”

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#47

Post by tverbeure » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:03 AM UTC

sjoedev wrote: post #22

nkrisc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this sort of effect odd what makes people think they can tell the difference - they can notice the indirect side-effects that correlate with the difference. A pro FPS player might notice that they loose contests peeking around corners more often. Obviously network latency in online games will be a factor as well, but since it likely averages out for both players over time, I would guess you can mostly discoun…

I play video games at a decently high level (like top ~10% in a few competitive games). To support what you’re saying, I can tell the difference between 144hz and 240hz if I’m in control. For example, if I can shake the screen around. If I’m just watching, I’m not sure I could even tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz.

esports games are played with vsync disabled, which means you'll get tearing when there's a rendered frame update in the middle of a scan. At 60Hz, you'd definitely see the tear, at 144Hz much less. So that would be a way to notice the difference as a third party observer.

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#48

Post by tverbeure » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:05 AM UTC

brookst wrote: post #25

tverbeure wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher refresh rates don't have to be perceptible to be useful: they can shift the balance in head-to-head gaming. Imagine 2 identical gaming setups with 2 players that have the same skill set. In an FPS game, you'd expect each of those players to win 50% of the games. Now switch one monitor from 120Hz to 240Hz. On average, the player on the 240Hz monitor will see their adversary 4ms earlier than the player on the 12…

Do any competitive FPS games actually render 240 different frames in a second? Because if both players’ hardware is doing 60FPS, that monitor difference changes nothing.

I've been told that many esports FPS games are played with graphics set to the lowest quality from maximum frame rate.

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#49

Post by turboponyy » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 11:05 AM UTC

timewizard wrote: post #36

haiku2077 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, most will go up past 500FPS, even old ones like Quake and classic Counter Strike. https://youtu.be/nqa7QVwfu7s

More directly if the game engine only updates player state every 60 seconds (tick rate) then is this 4ms advantage actually present for the 240Hz case? Further if your network has more than 4ms of jitter then I don't think you can make any concrete claim in either direction.

Yes, because the visual feedback on your client matters as well (faster reaction times).

Also, it means each frame is more recent. Also, higher refesh rates reduce the mean variance between the timestamps of rendered frames offered by the GPU that are drawn on the monitor, meaning the visuals are smoother. The smoothness is pleasing to the eye and makes it easier to focus.

Re: Toys/Lag: Jerk Monitor

#50

Post by turboponyy » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #10

I can buy that humans can see at least 120hz at a minimum. 60Hz is the generally accepted threshold, but I’ve long suspected that 120Hz has mostly imperceptible effects that are still noticeable, if rarely. I can’t buy this: > I've also learnt I do benefit from the 8 kHz setting of my mouse, as even at 3200 DPI with fast & smooth motion, some frames still miss a pointer update It may be true that pointer updates were…

> It turns out that there’s a way to test this experimentally. Do a double blind experiment, just like in science. If you can tell which monitor is 240hz more than randomly, then it matters. Ditto for the pointer updates.

You can easily tell - easily. There is a reason why monitors go 500Hz and beyond now.

I consider 240 FPS at 240Hz to be choppy. I can tell the difference between ~200 FPS and framerates of 300 FPS and beyond at 240Hz - telling the difference between 120Hz and 240Hz would be absolutely trivial.