Topic: The Input Lag Thread

For me, time and time again Input Lag is the most commonly over looked part of the shall we say, technical stack of a game, that has the biggest difference. It can downright destroy a game.
The MK collection has just launched and went on to receive pretty good scores in reviews from mainstream outlets.
Then the Fighting game community got it's hands on it.

The archival material is apparently pretty amazing and it's UI well designed.

Yet the game has been reported to have lag so bad the menu itself is laggy and when you play the games themselves people are reporting having a ton of additional input lag.

How mainstream review can miss this if it is so self evident I don't know but ultimately if this is seen as a game preservation project, then it fails on that front, as this is not the experience you would have on real hardware in the arcade or back home on your megadrive in 1992.

The techstack has changed a lot since 92, and now we have all sorts of heavy engines, middle ware, post processing effects, emulation etc going on, and of course modern displays which bring their own Lag.
But equally the hardware running these is literally orders of magnitude higher than what we had back in the day.

I would personally like to see input lag as a standard component of all reviews, technical or mainstream, and commitments in preservation projects to not just preserve from a visual and audio standpoint but the actual interactive gameplay too.

I'd been tempted by the collection but in the current state, not something I can support.

I'm deep into the Input Lag subject. I love it. And it's one of the many symptom I survey about appreciating and working on my mental health since a decade or so.

I'm gonna try to sum it up as best as I could. It's based on my own experience and - of course - I'm not a doctor.

Input lag is a very weird thing as people will feel it depending only on how their brain works: do they live everyday by feeling or do they live everyday by thinking?
Of course it's not a yes/no answer: every human lives by feeling and thinking every day.
The real question is: how much of thinking and how much of feeling?

Our brain has a wonderful power: it can adapt to everything.... which is awesome in a way as we can do incredible things, like becoming a master at piano, a master at drawing, etcetera. But it can also very easily become a trap into bad habits or bad thinking. We get used to those and think those are normal.
And we all fell into that trap one way or another to a small or big degree.
Crazy people are a extreme exemple of that. For those, everything is normal: we're all the crazy ones.
"Weird people" or weird habits among people is a very good and most common exemple too.

If you have a day job that requires thinking, it will take away some parts of your ability to feel. Which is totally fine... to a certain degree. To this day, nothing in our modern society tells us that we should feel instead of thinking. On the contrary, let's take a very wide common exemple: the whole market of advertisement relies mostly on creating needs you don't have. In other words, it relies on you not feeling what you really need. And a lot of the modern economy relies on that. That's an exemple among many others.

But a healthy brain should feel more than think everyday. That's the equilibrium. We can achieve it with video games actually. But the best is human interactions. Even interactions with animals.
Einstein once said that a healthy person should not work more than 3 hours a day: I'm pretty sure that's what he meant. Thinking creates stress. Which is ok to a certain degree... and if you think too much, you fall into that trap of overthinking.

To come back on the topic of reviewers and input lag: one of the worst job I've ever done for my brain was being chief editor of a big daily website about movies for 8 years. I'm not saying it was the only cause - it wasn't at all. But everyday had to be a new day, with new articles, papers, interviews, etc. I was thinking about that 15 hours a day. After a few years, thanks to other problems on the side, I did lost all my ability to be any good at video games. Input lag? I didn't knew what it was back then but I could "feel" it before those years and I couldn't anymore after.

So obviously, having been a journalist, reviewer and chief editor for 15 years in total, and having come back from all those problem to a spectacular degree but with a lot of patience over 10 years (thanks to daily meditation), I can spot those who are making that job and over-thinking it. And man there's a lot. On a side note, that's also why I like DF: the team never seemed to have forget how to enjoy (aka feel) a video game.

Digital Eclipse is notorious for input lag. Most of their collections are plagued by it.
So I was expecting input lag in the MK Legacy Kollection.
I'm not surprised most journalists never noticed it: that's not their job. Their job is to think all day about what to write next.
The fighting game community is like the ones who master piano or drawings I was talking above: they feel the games they are playing. It's the base of what they enjoy. So obviously, they spotted it immediately.

I hope I haven't gone too far off the rails with my reasoning

Sega Genesis/Megadrive Classics on Nintendo Switch (not sure about other consoles) has bad input lag, I'm not particularly sensitive but I noticed it straight away in this collection. I don't think a single review mentioned this issue which made me feel like I was going mad.

The Input Lag in Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (again by Digital Eclipse) is so big that it makes the games unplayble for professional players.

For exemple, it's impossible to parry in Street Fighter III as it requires very frame-accurate reflexes.
Parry is the base mechanic of Street Fighter III... 🤦‍♂️

I love that since Capcom has taken over their collections and develop them internally: Capcom Fighting Collection 1&2, Marvel VS Capcom Fighting Collection, Capcom Beat Them Up Collection.
According to measurements, the lag is so low on PC in Capcom and Marvel Fighting Collection, that it equals the arcade board's lag... That's incredible.

Interesting points about Think versus Feel.. funnily enough in the FG community there's a concept of playing by feel and the concept of learning frame data. Old school players play by feel first and foremost and add the frame data on top, modern players looking to advance as soon as possible study frame data before even handling the character.

Then again, I'm always + Frames if I believe hard enough.

Back to input lag, this is also the primary reason why Frame Generated frames are "fake". That and the artifacting.

However I'd love to try high base frame rate, eg 120, doubled to perceptual smoothness of 240.

30 to 60 though? Stuff of nightmares!

Again Input Lag, for me the single most important technical feature.

There's actually a great opportunity for DF to test on games and particular investigate if input lag is variable on PS5 in over heating conditions.

There's long been an imo false narrative that Street Fighter becomes laggy on PS5s that are on for too long or get too hot at tournaments.

What is actually happening is a combination of lag from The System/Screen/Game being introduced by the particular set up (at a tournament there are hundreds) not being configured properly.

SF6 of PS5 should be running at 120hz output, on a PS5 with VRR enabled on a low lag 120hz VRR display.

I've always been interested in the input lag on displays — thank goodness for the emergence of 'Game Mode' on most televisions these days — but it's AV amps (Receivers if you prefer, or are American) that often generate lag.

Although perhaps the new HDMI standards are fixing that.

Shouldn't do, not if you switch off your AVR's video processing. I've had a number of AVRs from different brands over the years and not one has introduced input lag with the processing bypassed (I have a Leo Bodnar lag tester).

I know they shouldn't do, but what about if they put their own digital graphics on screen, like volume changes?

Bypassing the video processing means no OSD. As far as the video signal is concerned, it's straight from device to display.

@1040STF Very interesting and educational!

I instantly notice it with shooters. But it’s not always the compilation / software itself. Its often the controller you play with as well.

For example a shooter just feels unplayable with a Joy-Con to me.