The Lag: Feel It, Frame It, Object It

Not to play the role of the devil; but I noticed no discussion about Input delay in Action games.

Is that a thing?

If you say: "Yes, of course it is, punk! Bastards are getting away with it, too!" you're probably very experienced pre-HD (old). You can feel the responciveness of an action when it's clearly off in stuff that is now HD re-re-remastered. You have my sympathy.

If you shrug and mumble:"Hum? I dunno. No big, man. All the same. Well, what can you do about it? Nuthin', right?" you might be very innocent (spoiled). Maybe you care more 'them achievements and whats-that-other. I have only silence for you.

And if you say:"I'd never buy anything anyway! It's the Internet, suckers!!" you don't care about quality or achievements of creators.

As far as I am concernd, I am ripe enough to expect quality when I buy something (again). I demand that the party refreshing games and emulating legacy titles are expected to treat it like an item of culture (which to me it is, even when I can't vouch for the quality). That means to re-create it on foreign hardware ever changing the closest as possible. Obviously that includes lag.

Alas, it seems a mass of consumers don't care or doesn't know any better. Buying and consuming without some spite to reject junk, only done to fuel the neverending hunger.

What do you say?

Yeah it's definitely a thing, shmup and fighting game communities talk about this all the time. Some people are more sensitive to it than others, I'd probably put myself in the middle. But there's no doubt it makes a big difference in games where you need to react quickly to things.

https://inputlag.science/ This website is extremely helpful, lots of good info and metrics mainly from fighting game perspective.

Realistically almost all emulation-based ports are going to have more input lag since they still have the original input lag of the emulated hardware + latency from the port system. If you are M2 you can pull some technical wizardry but most port studios probably don't have that level of expertise. For 3D system emulation it seems a lot harder, and if you're trying to tackle the Sega Saturn or something then you're fucked.

For native code ports things tend to fare a lot better since you can just run the game directly on the port machine. Of course you can still fuck it up though (apparently the 3D Ninja Gaiden Master Collection has input lag issues?).

M2, especially their ShotTriggers division for shmups, is the best in the business for my money. All their ports are very low input lag (I think Battle Garegga has a setting for less lag than the actual PCB?) and have tons of awesome features. Other than that the gold standard is either hardware emulation (FPGA systems like MiSTER) or software emulation with runahead (performance-intensive but can reach lower lag than original hardware).

Everyone reading this probably knows already but these days your setup has a massive impact on input lag, using a CRT or variable refresh rate monitor makes a huge difference compared to a random HDTV with the post-processing turned on. Controller also matters a lot due to things like USB polling which wasn't an issue on older systems, that website at the top has more info.

Also this isn't a hard and fast rule but in my experience PC tends to have lower input lag than consoles for whatever reason. Driver settings can impact this a lot though so sometimes some tinkering is required, consoles are more "out-of-the-box" as usual.

But yeah, very few people notice or care about this stuff so the monetary incentives just aren't there for the amount of work it takes outside of competitive genres like fighting games. I usually just play software emulation with runahead if possible, it's gonna be better than the "official" ports in most cases.

TLDR I have a VRR monitor and play emulated with runahead, or original hardware

I grew up playing a lot of MMOs so input lag is something I'm more used to, and has resulted in a habbit of dubbletapping inputs to make sure they go through (I don't even notice it anymore). That said there's definitely games where I notice delays in inputs.

>when it's clearly off in stuff that is now HD re-re-remastered.
No problems in Dragon's Dogma, Okami or Bayonetta remasters. Haven't played others.

When I play my PS2 on my HD TV I notice a little input delay.

HotPocketHPE wrote:
https://inputlag.science/ This website is extremely helpful, lots of good info and metrics mainly from fighting game perspective.

Thanks for that. Will delve in, but to a point.

I feel that too much intellectual stuff will hurt my personal equilibrium. As long as peeps like me or you can sense it, the lag I mean, I stay interested. When it becomes a matter of instruments readings alone and the topic academic I funk off, swerving the nerd-fight.

The site seems not of that kind. That's cool.

I've heard that there is input lag with various SNK collections(Metal Slug, King Of Fighters).