Actually I’m using it at my desk so the PC is very near. I have yet to hook my PC to a TV set.
Logically, I would’ve expected that anything under about 16.5 ms should be undetectable on a 60 Hz (update frequency, frames per second) game, because that’s the length of one in-game period. I’ve heard a lot of people say that anything 10 or over is obvious by feel though, so maybe there’s something else I’m not getting? I’ve also heard top players say that 1 frame of input delay is virtually unnoticeable, and 2 frames only barely, so I’m not sure what to believe.
Something to note: competitive players for first-person shooters on PC have refused to use wireless mice and keyboards ever since they were introduced, and continue to do so to this day. I definitely do think that fighting games are the more time-sensitive of the two genres, but their needs are still pretty significant and as a group they’ve had way more experience dealing with that kind of shit than people from arcade/console backgrounds. I don’t doubt that wireless communication has improved over time but I simply do not think it’s within the limits of current technology to make a wireless device efficient and consistent enough to be lag-free for a 60 frames-per-second game.
Thats the point though man. What you just posted is also why that first article someone posted earlier is invalid when evaluating all of this. These modern wireless gaming controllers are made specifically for gaming and they operate on a far superior signal and tech in general than mice and keyboards.
Yeah in Dead or Alive 4 offline tournaments the rules are usually that you must use wired controllers for the tournaments. This makes sense considering Xbox controllers I believe (not sure) run on the same technology used for cordless phones, microwaves and other technologies that use air waves. Possibly messing with the game. I remember there were also issues at one Final Round tournament where people’s PS3 wireless controllers were desynching during a Tekken 5 DR tourney. I know PS3 runs on Bluetooth so results may be different.
Basically…fighting gamers still have to stick themselves close to the screen like years before to ensure a faultless game. I’m used to that any ways since at a big tournament you’re kinda forced to sit close to the tv because of the insane crowd usually behind you. If you’re still an arcade goer ur face is always infront of the game any ways.
so basically its like this?
if you re playing at home for fun with your friends and all, wireless is good but if you re hardcore or play in tourneys then wired is the way to go…
right?
Not really. If the tests Sontawila did are accurate, 360 and PS3 wireless have about a one-tenth of a frame lag, which nobody is going to notice.
They aren’t. The fact that the wired and wireless controller showed the exact same latency should prove that beyond any doubt. I’d love to compare one my Cthulhu boards against a SIXAXIS, but I cant afford to destroy a SIXAXIS. Ditto for wireless 360 pads. If anyone has wireless PCB’s they’d be willing to loan so some real damn tests could be performed, please get ahold of me. Or better yet, ask me how to do it and I’ll tell you how to test yourself. For the most part I gave up on this thread because people’s desire for the wireless is stronger than their understanding of the physics involved. I’m stuck between “Fuck it, play on whatever you want” apathy and “You can’t be serious”.
how did you get the pc to recognize the ps3 controller wirelessly?
I may have an extra sixasses I could donate.I think I have 3 total, I don’t need the third one. Let me know if you really want it. (or if you find some time to do some basic contract work wiring up a stick for me 
)
Toodles, I have an extra wireless 360 pad (and windows wireless adapter) I could send you for tests… I also have an extra wireless sixaxis pcb though the only problem with it is that the part with the pins is ripped off but everything else is intact. If you could still use it for a test ill send that also and we could find out the real deal once and for all. :tup:
[edit] final cut and I must have been writing at the same time…lol
“The part with the pins”? You mean the connector that the plastic flex goes into? If so, then trying to do anything with it would be damn near impossible; the pins to that connector are the easiest place to access everything. If the plastic part of the connector is gone, but the pins are still there, itd be usable, but I’d need those pins to solder to.
Do you know if you have one of the common ground wireless 360 pads? Because that’d be a whole shitton easier to do it with.
P.S. I’d do my best, but I wouldn’t be able to guarantee they they would be able to be fully assembled back into pads. Just FYI. I’ll send them back, but they may be only usable as the guts of a stick afterwards.
Ok… so the ps3 pad is dead.
R.I.P.
I guess ill keep the battery and toss the pcb.
The xbox 360 controller I was referring to is a regular non common ground xbox 360 controller I planned to use in a stick anyway at some point so it wouldn’t matter if you opened it up…BUT…
I actually have a common ground 360 PCB in a project box wired to a saturn pad via barrier strip I could send no problem if you send it back when your done. 
I dont use it much its only used when some pad loving friends come over to play street fighter so I could sent it no problem.
If that piece tore off, then you’d have to try and follow each of the 20-ish traces to another spot on the board to connect to. It could be salvagible, but itd be a pain to do.
I appreciate the offer, but it looks like we got the wireless 360 covered thanks to Crackbone.
If anyone is thinking of using a SIXAXIS inside a stick, I’ll be happy to solder the resistors to it before returning so you can use it without the plastic flex piece.
ok. Couldnt i use the circular points on the underside like in this graphic? (on the PCB pic on the left of the underside of the PCB)
Toodles, I got you on the ps3 controller. I have a PCB gutted from the controller already. Do you need the flexpad or just the PCB and battery?
Just the pcb and battery. PM me if you need my address.
Yes, you most definitely could. I didn’t realize someone had already pinned it out. WTG slagcoin!
EDIT: Looks like I’m covered for wireless PCB’s. I’ll update when I get them and put them to the test.
Yeah, did that a while ago. Maybe should have mentioned something.
Hey Toodles, did you get a chance to check the lag difference in the wireless controllers yet?
I have ShinJN’s sixaxis pcb here, and just this week got in new boards and parts for cthulhu boards, so I have everything I need to compare the sixaxis to the cthulhu board. I have a local friend with a VSHG pcb I could compare as well, but I dont know when I’d be able to get ahold of it.
I will try to compare the ps3 stuff (sixaxis vs. cthulhu) this weekend if I can. Im still waiting on a wireless 360 board before I can test those.
SIXAXIS vs. Cthulhu:
I gotta admit it, I was wrong. I expected the SIXAXIS to be laggy, and everything I did says it isn’t.
If anyone needs more detail, I’ll go into it, but the general setup was like this: I used a pullup resistor with a small tactile switch on a breadboard, that would connect to ground when pressed. The signal was sent to a 74HC14 Shmidt trigger inverter; it would invert the signal so that the signal was high when pressed, and low when not pressed, plus being a Shmidt trigger, it should even out the bouncing that a normal switch always does. That signal went to two of the input on a 4066N analog switch (yes, I do love that chip.) so that whenever the signal went high (i.e., it was pressed) it would take a pair of wires and connect them together; in this case, it was connecting two pair: one from a Cthulhu board, and one from a SIXAXIS graciously loaned for this testing from ShinJN. So, in short, press the little blue tactile button, and both PCB’s would see a button press at the exact same, down to the nanosecond. I dont mean nanosecond as an exageration, I mean one billionth of a damn second.
I loaded up VF5, went into versus, and recorded four matches. All are with the SIXAXIS as P1, Cthulhu as P2.
- Goh vs El Blaze : Sixaxis was connected to the PS3 with a USB cable. Standard Cthulhu.
- Goh vs Aoi: Sixaixs was played wireless, standard Cthulhu
- Eileen vs Aoi: wireless Sixaxis, Cthulhu using 5k ohm pullup
- Eileen vs Vanessa: wireless Sixaxis, Cthulhu using 1ms refresh.
I have the replays saved; the four replays are about a 7.5 meg zip file, which is a little too large for me to host. If someone wants a copy, or can host them, let me know and I’ll email them.
These are the most boring replays you could ever possibly see. When the test button is pressed, it pressed X on both pads. P1’s controls were changed for arcade stick use, which P2 wasn’t, so P2 always won because he was always punching while P1 was always blocking. But, the information we need isn’t in the fight; turn on Command Display during the replay and watch; it will show the time between the commands (i.e. how many frames when the button isn’t pressed) and the duration of the commands (i.e. how many frames the button was pressed). That my friends is the real data. I’d do seven or so presses of the button, and then wait for time to run out, and I’d often press down on the cthulhu in the final seconds of the first round just to be 100% sure which character was controlled by which PCB.
In short, they were dead on, and it didn’t matter if the SIXAXIS was connected via USB or not. I have no way of knowing if the Sixaxis still communicated wirelessly when plugged or not, but it doesn’t really matter. About one in six of the presses would show a single frame difference, usually in the release of the button (which is weird to me). In the first few tests, I got the impression the difference in the release times was happening more with the Cthulhu than the Sixaxis, like they would press at the same frame, but the Cthulhu release would happen a frame later than the Sixaxis more often than the Sixaxis would release after the Cthulhu. The third test used a lower resistance pull up resistor to try and help with the return to neutral, but test 3 didn’t show any noticable improvement. In test 4, I changed the Cthulhu code to update the PS3 with the status of the buttons every 1 millisecond instead of every 10 milliseconds (16.6 times per frame instead of 1.6 times per frame). That appeared to help; there were frames recorded where the Cthulhu registered the press a frame before the Sixaxis. There were frames going the other way as well, so I think it was an improvement, but the race is still a tie to me.
In short, both the Cthulhu and Sixaxis are, in my opinion based on these tests, neck and neck. I’ll be using the 1ms updating code in all of the boards I send from here on out; no one will notice the change, I dont care how hardcore you are, but it will make me feel better sending them out with that extra 0.001% advantage. What I can say for sure is that anyone using a Sixaxis as the core of their board has nothing to fear from latency. I am seriously impressed with Sony that they were able to pull that off; I did not expect it to perform that well at all. I don’t know whether to feel sad that my board didn’t wipe the floor with the sixaxis, or proud that my board goes toe to toe with Sony engineering. shrug
As always, I’m open to questions.
A few pictures of the setup
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/7017/dsc03191smalllt2.jpg
http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/8140/dsc03192smallky3.jpg
http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/4584/dsc03193smalloa2.jpg
For those who don’t know, a little explanation. The whire numbers on the outside are the number of neutral frames before input. The yellow numbers on the inside are the number of frames the input was pressed. So the very first input was seen on the same frame by both PCB’s, but the button release was seen one frame earlier on the sixaxis than the cthulhu. The second press was seen at the exact same time (4+100 = 5+99) for the exact same number of frames on both. The third press was seen a frame earlier on the Cthulhu than the Sixaxis, and they both saw the release on the same frame. Fourth, fifth, and sixth inputs were identical on both, while the Cthulhu saw the release of the seventh input a frame before the sixaxis.
Edit: All tests were performed about 18 inches from the PS3. Im just being clear incase it turns out distance for the wireless affects latency.