Latency and Lag in console games

[Stoney Mason]

Good article and a follow-up to this article in the past.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-article

It's a pretty good example of why some games feel latent and is related to frame rate. From the old article which was mostly geared toward 360 games.

Burnout Paradise     67ms
BioShock (frame-locked)    133ms
BioShock (unlocked)    as low as 67ms
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare    67ms-84ms
Call of Duty: World at War    67ms-100ms
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood    100ms
Forza Motorsport 2    67ms
Geometry Wars 2    67ms
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith    67ms
Grand Theft Auto IV    133ms-200ms
Halo 3    100ms-150ms
Left 4 Dead    100ms-133ms
LEGO Batman    133ms
Mirror's Edge    133ms
Street Fighter IV    67ms
Soul Calibur IV    67ms-84ms
Unreal Tournament 3    100ms-133ms
X-Men Origins: Wolverine    133ms

And the new article which is mostly based on PS3 games.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-console-lag-round-two-article

BioShock 2 Frame-rate Locked     133-150ms
BioShock 2 Frame-rate Unlocked    100-150ms
Call of Duty: World at War    66ms-100ms
Dante's Inferno    100ms
Killzone 2    150-183ms
LittleBigPlanet    100ms
Mirror's Edge    133ms
MotorStorm: Pacific Rift    116ms-133ms
Resident Evil 5    100-150ms
Ridge Racer 7    66ms
Street Fighter IV    66ms
Unreal Tournament III    100-133ms
WipEout HD    84ms

[maxy]

Damn
You beat me to it

[Stoney Mason]

The humorous bit is of course the Killzone 2 numbers. I remember on GAF when it was mentioned that the game had a healthy dose of input lag, people were chased off and told it didn't and to stop trolling the game. And then the new excuse later down the road was that the patch fixed all that.

Thanks to the work of Ben Heck, we can now revisit the game (the patched version, of course) and get the exact measurements we need. More than that, it's possible to gauge response time when the game is running both in optimum conditions and also when frame-rate is suffering. So here are a few shots of Killzone 2. Bear in mind that aside from a new controller monitor, all other elements of the test are identical to the previous DF feature. That's the same Dell monitor we used last time, while our Kodak Zi6 720p60 camera was used for recording the action.
Killzone 2 latency can finally be accurately measured, both at its optimum 30FPS and also when the engine is struggling.View this video in HD

With the game engine operating at 30FPS, we can assume that the response should be at its optimum. Where frame-rate is steady, and factoring out the display lag, a nine-frame gap between button press and on-screen action is confirmed, regardless of the weapon used. So yes, Killzone 2 latency is confirmed at 150ms, a full 50 per cent higher than many 30FPS first-person shooters.

But the later measurements in the video are also revealing. As frame-rate drops, so does response time. It stands to reason really - the game is missing screen refreshes. Temporal resolution is dropping, so the time taken to display the results of your input fall with it. But by how much? According to the final shot, we can see latency rise to as high as 183ms in Killzone 2. Combined with the lag in LCD monitor displays, there's a strong chance it'll rise above a fifth of a second.

There is a sense of inertia in Killzone 2. The feel of the game is dramatically different to the Call of Duty titles and there is the sense that it is so by design. Halo 3 can run at the same 150ms lag for actions such as jumping. However, pulling a trigger shouldn't apply and in the case of Killzone 2, the 150ms figure is steady whether you're jumping or shooting. In the latter case, Halo 3 is timed at 100ms, which in terms of my testing (plus that of Neversoft co-founder Mick West) appears to be the fastest response a 30FPS game is capable of achieving.

[Don Flamenco]

yeah, I seem to remember getting railed for saying KZ2 felt laggy.  They said it was intentional and that I should go back to playing COD if I wanted a "camera on a stick" or something and that KZ2 was going for realism

[Kestastrophe]

The initial control setting and camera acceleration in KZ2 amplified the latency, imo (I thought it was nearly unplayable). It was made significantly more playable when they patched in "precision control" setting or whatever it was called.

[Stoney Mason]

yeah, I seem to remember getting railed for saying KZ2 felt laggy.  They said it was intentional and that I should go back to playing COD if I wanted a "camera on a stick" or something and that KZ2 was going for realism

There is indeed inertia in Killzone 2 which is by design but it also has input lag on top of that (which almost certainly isn't by design). So you get a game that can feel very laggy at times indeed when you combine inertia, input lag, and decreasing frame rate at times which can all hamper a person's perception of the "feel" of a game.

It's still a good game imo. It's just annoying that fanboyism won't even allow people to see what is clearly in front of their eyes. Compared to most shooters that game feels laggy control wise.

[cool breeze]

Unreal Tournament III    100-133ms

a bit surprising, actually.  I still think UT3 PS3 (haven't tried 360 version and assume they're similar) has the best dual analog controls right behind CoD4/WaW/MW2.