PlayStation Move input latency analyzed by Digital Foundry

No, it's all still Alpha code.

It was mostly just tech demos they got to use. If you watch the video on their site it doesn't look that much different from a lot of the E3 stuff they showed last year.

To paraphrase the site, "we were testing it with tech demos, which we're hoping would be close to the optimum conditions featured in games."

Forgot to add, Engadget has the move on display this Saturday as Joystiq advertised earlier (Engadget the show) , I am sure Sony will step up and possibly prove their statements..

Its not that I am buying into their marketing but when you see a video like this :

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gdc-10-sony/63129?type=flv

You have to question footage purportedly showing lag using a shaky handy-cam recording, where the experiment just seems flawed.

Just watch this demo and then show me how that is in anyway suffering from Lag, That is a live tech demo being recorded properly from GDC 2010.. Why didn't digital foundry just approach Sony in GDC 2010 and ask them to prove the latency claims ? There is so much that is just weird about this whole experiment.. If I was cynical I would say its only designed to generate site hits and actually proves nothing..

The fastes today is PS3 XMB - and that is with putton press
"the very fastest response has come from the PS3 XMB, which has been pegged at three frames, or 50ms."
That 22ms is probably only the time it takes PS3 to analyse the frame.
The camera has 16,6ms capture time (60fps), you will need reference it with at least one frame earlier to measue movement, then output it, etc.

So added latencies will be easily in 100ms range.

This "test" has already been debunked by various sources online.

The camera is capable of:

60fps @ 640 x 480 == 16 ms
120fps @ 320x240 == 0.8 ms

High res shouldn't be necessary for tracking, do you know what res the camera is tracking at ?

The camera is so fast it nearly saturates the usb bus read here:
http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=9238&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30..

That should be enough to question your analysis..

Also in regards to the 50ms lag from XMB read here:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_responsiveness_in_video_.php?page=3

This is where Digital Foundry gets its information from. You have to admit all things taken into account that analysis they have is no where near accurate especially when you are measuring in ms, what they try to assert is just hokum.
Its not proper tech analysis I will be the cynic and say its only purpose is to generate hits..

Anyway they themselves have updated the article, to reduce the sensationalism, they have received enough hits from the article obviously..

McDuck (Scrooged) = Sony Fanboy.

This person is using attack tactics to distract from the fact that tests on basic (this is the meaning of rudimentary) movements to be much slower than Sony's claims, even though within acceptable latencies by game standards. He is attacking a product which isn't even in public testing yet because the product made by his company is being attacked. BTW rudimentary movements aside I suspect when it comes down to more complex movements this device tanks. Why? Because its nothing more than a Wii mote which tanks on complex movements, and if Sony's Duel camera technology is all of what Natal is why are they coming out with this over priced piece of junk first?

really 3dpenguin ?

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gdc-10-sony/63129?type=flv -- watch that thats in real time..

http://forums.ps2dev.org/viewtopic.php?t=9238&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30.. -- Read this it contains the conversation between the guys reverse engineering the ps eye and writing the driver for linux, it contains some very useful information. From their conversations you can see that they were really quite impressed by it and the pseye is really quick and its cheap..

The guy who wrote the eurogamer / digital foundry article got so badly slated within the comments section of that same article that he had to update it and add the following:

"As mentioned at the beginning of the piece, there is independent corroboration for Sony's sub-frame latency claim at the mechanical level, but the key measurement comes from gameplay.

So, this is indeed a tentative analysis with one big unknown remaining (the lag of the display itself), and others still undefined, for example whether the demo itself is smoothing the data and introducing further latency as a result." -- eurogamer.net/articles/playstation-move-controller-lag-analysis-blog-entry



And if you actually read the comments on the article, you would have read this:

"Richard's Update:
"So, this is indeed a tentative analysis with one big unknown remaining (the lag of the display itself), and others still undefined , for example whether the demo itself is smoothing the data and introducing further latency as a result."

Translation: This is not analysis at all, as I can't do proper analysis without knowing atleast one factor to calculate lag.
This is the article of me scribbling random bull without knowing :
-application processing time
-display lag
-my cheap handy camera lag
so I came up with this formula: X+Y+Z=133ms and I'm calling it analysis.
GTFO" --- SHARXTREME -- 18/03/10 @ 15:12 #71


Infact practically every comment within that article points to just how flawed the article is.. We are all just a bunch of sony fanboys because we dare to criticise an article written by someone who even admits his scientific methodology is extremely flawed..

Again watch the gametrailers video at the top.

Seriously first get a clue do some research into the capabilities of the device then come back here and start talking nonsense..

Also when a guy holds a PHD and claims under a millisecond of lag and he is the same guy that helped develop the device I would take his word of it over yours.. Dr. Richard Marks is the guy in the gametrailers demo showing the device.. The movement looks extremely fluid the writing on the screen has no sign of latency at all.. It tracks his head and hands real time, with no sign of latency at all, look how fast he is moving his hand and the tracking keeps up with him, which is absolutely amazing.. It actually demonstrates that the latency has to be less than a frame some of the punches he is throwing is really fast and he is throwing them repeatedly fast and it doesn't lose sync.. Basically if its capable of tracking some one that fast it shows that it will have no issues out in the wild..

The real test would be to give the controllers to this guy :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBTM6_l-Gdk and see if it can keep track of him

under a millisecond is wrong sorry I meant sub-frame latency ..

I highly doubt a modern LCD adds two frames of lag to the overall input lag. Also, the additional latency between the game system and the screen, meaning the additional latency caused by the monitor processing and displaying the image, is certainly involved and included when measuring input latency; however, because their goal here isn't to measure the latency of a monitor, they should have just stuck with a CRT to eliminate postprocessing in the LCD.

LCDs can add 2 frames lag easily.

Note in this link "input lag" means input to the display, which is output in terms of our discussion.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/monitors/2009/02/06/the-dark-side-of-overdrive/1

Some TV LCDs have a "game" mode to reduce input lag at the expense of response time. Was this LCD set in that mode? LCDs that do between-frame tweening (120Hz/240Hz/Filmmotion etc. mode) can add even more than 2 frames delay. Some particularly foolish people who set up demos at trade shows turn these modes on because they make graphics look smoother.

I also want to get those bad ole skeletons.

I forgot to add that this study is basically useless without comparing it to the latency between a dual shock and the resulting image on-screen. What they really need to do in order to process the additional input latency caused by the Move is to take an application (game) that can be controlled by either a DS3 or Move, record the lag with the DS3, then record it with the Move, and subtract. If there was 110ms latency with the Move, and 100ms latency with the DS3, we would know that the Move created 10ms more input latency than a DS3. This is a bit more important than knowing what the latency is by itself (which I HIGHLY doubt is over 100ms as they say; most of that is going to be due to the game, not the Move alone), because we need a basis on what to compare it to. If I knew a shooter like MW2 was only going to tack on 10ms of input lag when using the Move, I'd know it wouldn't make even close to a noticeable difference. However, if I knew the input latency caused by the Move was 50 or 60ms greater than that of the DS3, I'd know I wouldn't want to use it for a game that requires quickly recognized input.

the end.

Exactly! What they are doing is making a huge leap from the software application they tested and equating that with consistent input lag of the device itself. Basically, it's fuzzy math as dubya would say.

Certain frequency ranges do screw the IR function of the Wiimote up (infrared ranges), I haven't tried pointing the remote at the kitchen light to see if I'd get movement registered on the screen - but my TV does sit beside a window and 17 floors up - there's nothing to stop the sun from beaming in - even closing the shades, you still have small slits of light coming through.

Good luck pointing at anything, sometimes I use the sunlight to try to get a game going. Forget any FPS action on a Wii in a condition like this. During these times I look for games to play using the classic controller.

The total latency of a game is all that is important, it doesn't matter where its coming from.

Controller + System Devices + System (disc reader, processing, etc.) + Game + Through Cables + TV = Total latency

As long as these add up to a reasonably low number its not a problem. They should have tested the game out side of the PS Move mode, but this would be pointless seeing they were doing it on a Sony public display which was showing off "augmented reality" using the PS Move. From the video the delay looks like it was being caused by the cheap Eyetoy, and its always been cheap in its components, its basically a $20 web cam with a $60 price tag, but that could come down to video delay to prevent the video from playing back before the device was calculated, it also doesn't help that the boot operator was using a second controller, this will add to the process lag. To actually test this device they need to have access to it in a real game scenario and not this augmented reality junk, if this is all the Move does good luck on selling it to even casual gamers.

BTW from what I've seen anything less than 10 frames, or about 1/3 a second, is acceptable for game latency