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LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

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Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#51

Post by Melatonic »

1_player wrote: post #33
bullen wrote: post #6

The elephant in the room here is that you can pay to win in any game by buying a monitor with higher reftesh rate and use a larger GPU that uses more electricity to have 2x more time to react. Fortunately for us humans that seems to stop at 120Hz because most games can't even hold that at a steady rate with a 3090. Now whether a 300+W gaming device is interesting in the long run will be answered this year by your ele…

> The elephant in the room here is that you can pay to win in any game by buying a monitor with higher reftesh rate and use a larger GPU that uses more electricity to have 2x more time to react. I'll be honest, it sounds like you have no idea how competitive gaming works, or any sport at all. Your comments sounds exactly like thinking one can be better at football by buying more expensive boots.

I agree - this is not true at all. A really good competitive gamer is going to destroy even a very very good casual gamer even if you gave them a crap rig running at like 30FPS

Definitely there are real advantages to running higher framerates but its all diminishing returns. If your rig is fast enough to maintain CONSISTENT frames that is probably more important than going for the absolute highest - there is a reason many set a minimum / maximum FPS target. Consistency is important.

Most of the really competitive games arent really all that hard to run either these days - even an older but still decent gaming computer can do great. Considering how cheap it is now to build something that will run most games well vs how it used to be in the past I think the pay to play aspect has actually REDUCED quite a bit. You can buy a quality mouse these days for 20-30$ that would blow away what we had 10 years ago and that mouse probably would last you for as long as you want.

Reminds me of an old racquetball tournament where they would put everyone in the same level (as in the top players intermingled with the bottom) but depending on the players skill they were given a type of massive handicap. If you were in the very top tier racquetball level they gave you a racquet that had been strung in a very clever circular way where there was a literal HOLE right in the middle of the racquet where the sweet spot was!

Spoiler: Those guys still often won

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#52

Post by badsectoracula »

Melatonic wrote: post #43
beebeepka wrote: post #34

I just want to say I am glad pro gaming took over. Back in the day it was only Quake players advocating for 120 FPS (for various reasons, including Q3 physics being somewhat broken), 125hz mice and stuff like that. I am talking 20 years ago. The number of lost souls parroting the old "human eye can only see 30 fps" has gone down considerably over the years. The last 10 years were fantastic in that regard, despite the…

I think people were saying 60fps was the limit but still I agree That being said in the quake days I dont think monitors could go over 60hz anyways so even at 120FPS you were not gaining a similar advantage from what we have today. From what I remember however there were other advantages to high FPS in games like Counterstrike as well in terms of player movement - the monitor might have "smoothed" the motion back dow…

> I forget how refresh rate worked on CRT's though - maybe those could higher than 60?

Yes, even the standard VGA 13h mode (320x200x8) is 70Hz and many CRTs could do 85Hz. By Quake 3's time CRTs that could do 120Hz and above were very common. Personally i have such a CRT as well as another that can do 160Hz.

Also FWIW the refresh rate is only part of the story - CRTs have practically instant "response time" so 120Hz on a CRT vs 120Hz on a LCD feels very different (in favor of the CRT). Supposedly OLED could be made to be close but personally i haven't seen such a case (and people who have both OLED and CRTs still say that CRTs are better there). I have a 165Hz LCD and doesn't hold a candle to the CRTs i have around in terms of motion feel.

Nowadays you can find small-ish CRTs for dirt cheap on Facebook Marketplace, etc (some even give them for free) - i recommend trying to find one that can do 120Hz if for no other reason than to experience the liquid butter smoothness of FPS motion (and join us in the lamenting its loss in modern monitor tech :-P). Also kinda amusing that when those were new chances are the PCs they were used with couldn't do high framerates (and low framerates do not feel as bad on a CRT as on an LCD, but i'm not sure if it is related).

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#53

Post by Melatonic »

snovv_crash wrote: post #45
Melatonic wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people were saying 60fps was the limit but still I agree That being said in the quake days I dont think monitors could go over 60hz anyways so even at 120FPS you were not gaining a similar advantage from what we have today. From what I remember however there were other advantages to high FPS in games like Counterstrike as well in terms of player movement - the monitor might have "smoothed" the motion back dow…

My dad had a big old 19" Nokia CRT that did 90Hz. Of course resolution was capped because this was all being controlled from VGA.

Interesting - I had a nice high end 21" CRT at one point I got for free when some tech company went under and told the building maintenance to just trash all of the brand new equipment. Luckily my uncle was that maintenance guy and I got free pick of whatever parts I wanted before it went to the landfill.

I do remember being VERY good at the original counterstrike (pre v1.5) comparatively - I know CRT's have very low input lag - I wonder if I was playing at higher fps / hz and didnt even realize it!

From what I remember VGA could actually do some decent resolutions (SVGA and whatnot were more limited) and DVI was starting to rear its head around that time as well. I vaguely using a resolution like 1900 x 1200 which is about what a modern 1080P HD is doing (slightly higher in fact)

Now this is making me wonder how my plasma TV actually compares - from what I remember plasmas do not have a "hertz" so to say but also werent really coveted for gaming (although burn in may to be to blame for that). Input lag on it seems decent but I would guess might be its big limitation. Surprisingly it does do 10 bit video and while it wont accept an HDR signal I suspect the display itself is capable of showing more dynamic range than many of the cheaper "HDR" LCD's

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#54

Post by taeric »

jaywalk wrote: post #32
taeric wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it is a big factor in competitive cycling. Such that, just getting good is not enough. You have to get good and but the best equipment. Not that big of a deal when you are all getting together in real life. You can see if you were at a disadvantage due to equipment. Online, you don't get to see.

There's nothing unique about competitive cycling in this regard. Take two tennis players of comparable skill and give one the best racket and the other a $20 one from Walmart. Or in football, do the same with two receivers and give one the latest Nike Vapor Jet gloves and have the other use no gloves. Or golf with clubs. I could go on and on. Equipment quality will always have an impact in sports.

To an extent, I can't but agree. The number of components in cycling is staggering, though. And I have seen far more people effectively buying a few seconds time in cycling than I have elsewhere.

And, at high end competitive, I don't really see a problem. Even low level, I don't see a huge problem. But it does exist. Is why I offered this as a "being fair."

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#55

Post by taeric »

1_player wrote: post #33
bullen wrote: post #6

The elephant in the room here is that you can pay to win in any game by buying a monitor with higher reftesh rate and use a larger GPU that uses more electricity to have 2x more time to react. Fortunately for us humans that seems to stop at 120Hz because most games can't even hold that at a steady rate with a 3090. Now whether a 300+W gaming device is interesting in the long run will be answered this year by your ele…

> The elephant in the room here is that you can pay to win in any game by buying a monitor with higher reftesh rate and use a larger GPU that uses more electricity to have 2x more time to react. I'll be honest, it sounds like you have no idea how competitive gaming works, or any sport at all. Your comments sounds exactly like thinking one can be better at football by buying more expensive boots.

I think the open post was more lamenting that casual play will be annoying by folks that pay to win. And... That feels likely?

Not really new, mind. Lan parties that had that one person that spent way more than everyone else was a thing. Did they automatically win? No. But they punched over their league in the party.

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#56

Post by ddash1729 »

paulhodge wrote: post #29
HelloNurse wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is about adapting algorithms that deal with congestion of network packets to reduce congestion of a game loop (refreshing as fast as possible, but no faster).

is it? I thought the article was about optimizing the communication of CPU -> GPU. It definitely uses a lot of network-theory language so it reads like a foreign language to me (in a good way).

No post body was provided.

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#57

Post by VRay »

terafo wrote: post #42
eertami wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely diminishing returns the higher we go with refresh rates. 60hz to 240hz for example is like playing a completely different game. But going from 240hz to 360hz, even in CSGO it's a lot harder to notice a difference. Personally I believe the newly announced 300hz 27" 1440p monitors[0] are going to be the perfect sweet spot for the foreseeable future. I imagine it will be a long time before technology…

There are definitely diminishing returns with increase of refresh rates. But nonetheless your comparison is unfair, since you are comparing quadrupling of refresh rate with a mere 50% increase, which is similar to comparing 60 to 90, not 60 to 240. And with advent of VR demand for refresh rate increase of display panels will only grow, since it's much more noticeable while using headset.

It doesn't make any sense to invest much in displays over ~90hz vs just working on adaptive refresh rates

Your eyes really do work at a pretty low speed. At some point it makes more sense to just track the eyeballs and put updated scenery in front of them at the exact instant the game engine produces it, rather than try to run at some insanely high speed generating frames that aren't actually having any effect on the player's brain

90, 144, 240hz, etc all look better than 60hz because there's less random lag between when the game generates a frame and when it appears on the screen. You can't see an 8ms delay, but you CAN see a variable 0-10ms delay that's happening as the game engine and computer monitor drift in and out of sync again and again.

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#58

Post by pugworthy »

ishitatsuyuki wrote: post #4
hffftz wrote: post #3

I usually get 10ms ping on CSGO.... they must have something better? (I have 5ms right now with a Comcast cable link)... as much as I hate having to call Comcast for any issues, when it works, it is pretty good.)

Input lag has nothing to do with network ping. Input lag is the time between you perform the action and the computer shows that on screen. It depends on your frame rate, refresh rate, and peripheral polling rate, as well as how good the game schedules things (which is what LatencyFleX tries to optimize). Network ping on the other hand is often hidden away. Whether you are on 2ms ping or 100ms ping, the bullet always…

> Whether you are on 2ms ping or 100ms ping, the bullet always goes where you aim at

However what you are aiming at may not actually be where you see it. If it's another player or something critical to multiplayer gameplay, then you are going to see what the server has told you you're going to see at that location. And latency means that will be delayed. So you may think you have a clear hit on a target, but with latency the target may have moved and you haven't gotten an update yet. Or by the time your fire command gets to the server, the target has already moved.

This can get pretty confusing especially if the game does client side hit effects (like bullet impacts). You shoot, you see immediate feedback of the bullet hitting, but due to latency your target moved and you missed - so the feedback is false. But if you don't do the client-side hit effect, there's a strange subtle delay that feels wrong. Client tells server they fired, server determines hit location, server sends back "hit here" message, client draws hit effect.

Valve has a writeup at https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_... which covers some of the issues with network latency.

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#59

Post by hlbjhblbljib »

beebeepka wrote: post #34

I just want to say I am glad pro gaming took over. Back in the day it was only Quake players advocating for 120 FPS (for various reasons, including Q3 physics being somewhat broken), 125hz mice and stuff like that. I am talking 20 years ago. The number of lost souls parroting the old "human eye can only see 30 fps" has gone down considerably over the years. The last 10 years were fantastic in that regard, despite the…

Human eyes can only see 30 fps, 15 per eye, so you only need two monitors with 15Hz each

Re: LatencyFleX: A new approach to game latency reduction

#60

Post by winrid »

pugworthy wrote: post #58
ishitatsuyuki wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Input lag has nothing to do with network ping. Input lag is the time between you perform the action and the computer shows that on screen. It depends on your frame rate, refresh rate, and peripheral polling rate, as well as how good the game schedules things (which is what LatencyFleX tries to optimize). Network ping on the other hand is often hidden away. Whether you are on 2ms ping or 100ms ping, the bullet always…

> Whether you are on 2ms ping or 100ms ping, the bullet always goes where you aim at However what you are aiming at may not actually be where you see it. If it's another player or something critical to multiplayer gameplay, then you are going to see what the server has told you you're going to see at that location. And latency means that will be delayed. So you may think you have a clear hit on a target, but with lat…

It doesn't matter if where the player actually is, is somewhere else. As long as you aim at them and shoot before they shoot you, even if they are no longer there, the server will "rewind" and say you shot them, up to a certain limit. This is covered in your link :)
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