There was a reason why I kept losing.

GraXXoR

GraXXoR
Good Evening Commanders

Sit down... Let me tell you a story... Mine's a Sidereal Ale '56

Thank you, most kind...

So, I used to get pasted in my Sidey.
Seriously pasted.
No, I mean it... Seriously.
Truth was, I couldn't hit for [redacted] I would point aim and fire and they would literally be ahead of my beams... Every time. As if they knew where I was going to aim next.

Yeah, I know... right..?

And, and when I did get a kill, even a minor one, I was seriously left sweating, and my right palm was practically welded to my $300 X-65F HOTAS.

The truth, I tell ya! Still, it was an Alpha back then, and I managed to convince myself rather unconvincingly that they'd sort all this out.

So, like the loser I was, retreated to the comforting and welcoming, open arms of the ED forums... But my pain didn't end... No siree... For I was further distressed and shamed to find out that few such tales were to be found in almost limitless depths of the forum chatter: No other commanders appeared to be suffering at the hands of omniscient AIs...

So what was I doing wrong?

I had the top end GFX card, the beastly OCed CPU, the force-based "twitchstick" HOTAS from hell...

There was something amiss...

Had age robbed me of my finely honed prowess? Perhaps. Had I succumbed to the "Roman disease" of complacency in superiority which ultimately lead to its downfall? Um... Maybe, whatever... I digress...

ahem...

In any case, the reason remained unsolved.

After all, I had got used to being called names when I played Descent in the long distant past of my tertiary education stint. And it certainly wasn't because I was a loser: Au contraire.

So what was it?

As it turned out, the reason was rather humdrum and I now feel obligated to give back the pint of finely brewed galactic ale which I received under what some might consider false pretences... Much akin to a trailer to an M. Night Shyamalan film...

Aaaanny way....

Back to reality.

I was using a new Philips 28" 4k 288P6 monitor which stated it was "gaming tuned" with 1ms (actually measured typical 5ms) response time on the website...

--- QUOTE ---

SmartResponse 1ms refresh for fast gaming

SmartResponse 1ms refresh for fast gaming SmartResponse is a exclusive Philips overdrive technology that when turned on, automatically adjusts response times to specific application requirements like gaming and movies which require faster response times in order to produce judder, time-lag and ghost image free images.

--------

[redacted]

Ghost free?... The images were practically posthumous.

For while there were no light trails or otherwise, it turned out that my monitor had over 100ms input delay (input lag)! Which I calculated it with the help of my iPhone's slo mo capture to be somewhere in the region of 120ms, showing enemies that were already gone, missiles that had already detonated and space station antennae that had already impacted.

In effect, as a gaming monitor, the Philips 288P6 was an absolute dog. My 2004 vintage BENQ 19" IPS side monitor running on the intel Iris builtin processor had less lag than my "green team 780" even with it's vanilla drive voltages.

TLDR

Basically, if all else fails and you're in despair, check your monitor's INPUT DELAY... Forget response time GTG and others, most modern monitors excel at those... But input time is still deregulated....

There are websites that have recently started to list (TOMS?) their own measured input delay times (input lag times) for any monitors tested.

Good flying and thanks for the beer ;-)
 
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xxThe_Dice_manxx

xxThe_Dice_manxx
Found this out a long time ago playing CS:GO, so I bought an AOC 144mhz 1ms delay gaming monitor, no worries ever since.

Great story tho, have some rep.
 

Kambalo

Kambalo
I need to check that out, I thought that I was loosing because I sukkk horrible at flying and shooting. :eek: :D

You just gave me new hope. :D
 

Morbad

Morbad
Pixel response time and input latency are completely different monsters.

Pixel response is how fast the pixels can change color/brightness. Lower is better. Since most transitions are not full on to full off or vice versa, and because lower number sound better, grey-to-grey times are used (GtG) for advertising purposes. That said, despite being widely advertised, response time is rarely a problem or a significant contributor to perceived latency.

Input (or processing) lag is rarely advertised, or even mentioned as existing. Nearly all LCDs contain a scaler and other electronics that translate and manipulate the signal it receives from an input before it's actually sent to the LCD panel itself. Without a scaler, no fancy multi resolution scaling or other monitor level adjustments would be possible/easy. The issue here is that some scalers, and some firmware configurations, can have a considerable delay to them. The best scalers delay your image by only a handful of milliseconds, but there are displays that have vastly higher input latency. Many TVs are especially bad in this regard, and can delay an image for 4-5 full frames (~100ms) before pixel response time is even an issue.

Sounds like your old display had excessive input latency.

GraXXoR said:
There are websites that have recently started to list (TOMS?) their own measured input delay times (input lag times) for any monitors tested.
Click to expand...

TFTCentral is the best site for these sorts of measurements, but DisplayLag, Tom's Hardware, and Anandtech do a serviceable job.

There are other tweaks you can do as well to minimize overall control/input latency. Making sure you are using the optimal input source for your display, using native resolution if at all possible, turning off any special features/enabling "gaming mode", reducing the depth of the D3D context queue (also known as flip queue size, or max pre-rendered frames), and ensuring your controls are using the fastest polling rate available can all help.
 
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GraXXoR

GraXXoR
There are several ways to measure input lag, but the easiest is to use a program which provides clear visual feedback to a simple button press, such as a timer. (Mechanical clicks keyboards provide the audio feedback needs to sync) Now point an iPhone or another slow mo capable vid recorder at your setup and start it recording. Then a swift button press can be captured and the delay between press and display updating can be checked.

Of course this is not very scientific, (to be certain, you wow need to cf with another, known, monitor to remove other variables) but it will at least get you to the correct ballpark.

Good luck and I hope your monitor is swit and sure!
 

Yaesu

Y
You know whats depressing?
Finding out your expensive 27" Dell U2711 2560x1440 monitor has an average of 28-30ms input lag.

input_lag.jpg


You know whats even more depressing?
Finding out your average reaction time is 200-245ms.

Human Benchmark
 
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Morbad

Morbad
Yaesu said:
You know whats depressing?
Finding out your expensive 27" Dell U2711 2560x1440 monitor has an average of 28-30ms input lag.

You know whats even more depressing?
Finding out your average reaction time is 200-245ms.
Click to expand...

30ms is not the end of the world for total input latency, but a 10% overall improvement in almost anything is generally going to be perceptible.

If you have a ~200ms reaction time (that test doesn't correct for the latency of your system and display) the 100ms it takes for an optimized setup to register your inputs on screen is the equivalent going from average to the bottom 10% of people. Knocking off 50ms with a few tweaks here and there, plus a better display, is absolutely worthwhile for situations where reaction time matters.

Yaesu said:
Human Benchmark
Click to expand...

Just retested myself on my laptop using the actual buttons rather than trying to tap the touchpad:

qmKhyrW.png

I get about 20-30ms less on my desktop.
 
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Snyperal

S
What an entertaining post! I tried to quote the posthumous line but it went horribly horribly wrong.

I'm glad you've figured it out! Do you play any other games like FPS? If so was it noticeable there?
 

flint read

flint read
Not had any trouble with my Cintique 24hd but then i would not recommend it as a purely gaming monitor at a 2 grand price point!

interesting post though never thought to check that timing as you rightly say they all seem to trumpet the ms response time ill bear that in mind the next time im asked to help a friend build a gaming rig, thanks always good to learn a new thing!

+1
 

Thoemse

T
Interesting question. Should be next to nil though. Latency and input lag are the death of VR and lead to nausea.
The latest SDK just made latency a lot less again - elite need to be recompiled for that first though.
Having no trouble hitting stuff with the dk2 either. :)
 
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