Notably, the online game streaming services have on the order of 150ms of latency. It starts to become noticeable, but it’s still entirely playable for many. If the gamers can handle 150ms of input lag, certainly we can deal with 30ms while typing in our consoles.
So, I just made the following experiment. I filmed my screen and mouse at the same time, then grabbed a window and flicked as fast as I could.
On my 120 Hz screen the window starts moving within five to six frames (at 240 frames per second video) of the mouse moving, meaning an end-to-end latency of around 20 ms.
Windows 10, nVidia graphics card with hardware scheduling, Ryzen CPU, using the cheapest 120/144 Hz screen that was available at the time (<200 €).
> That’s not true, though. It takes more than 30ms just to render your frame, deliver it to the monitor, and wait for a screen refresh.
For cheap non-CRT screens you are correct. Otherwise, not so much. And even if you're using a cheap screen, latencies of 50ms vs 30ms (typical numbers for vsync on vs vsync off) definitely have an impact on player performance besides just feeling more/less sluggish. See also my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23806493
That PC gamer article is horrible and amateurish. There's no mention of what vsync/nvidia driver settings they used etc. Also games like Destiny are pretty far from being optimized for low input lag.
With CRTs and properly optimized/coded games like CS you can achieve input lag as low as 5ms (though that's just the time until the monitor begins drawing the first rows of pixels after the change).
That’s not true, though. It takes more than 30ms just to render your frame, deliver it to the monitor, and wait for a screen refresh.
PC Gamer recently measured some actual latency results. They found 60-80ms was fairly standard for lag between input and on-screen events: https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-stadias-input-lag-compares...
Notably, the online game streaming services have on the order of 150ms of latency. It starts to become noticeable, but it’s still entirely playable for many. If the gamers can handle 150ms of input lag, certainly we can deal with 30ms while typing in our consoles.