The reception of this thread hasn’t been awful. The reception to the “where can I find a Qanba PCB, I’m throwing away my PS360+ in the trash” has been awful. Go back and look. There are tons of newly joined members affected by this bug now. I’m not disrespecting the OP, I like this info. I wish it was confined to the likes of those that can consume, process, and make use of it, rather than causing the mass hysteria that it has regarding whether a low tier PCB should be exchanged. The fact is that the number one thing any player can do to get better is to practice (practice, are we talking about practice?).
Let me frame it in another way. The world record for the fastest in-door top speed belongs to one Tanner Foust. He broke the world record by going 188MPH in doors. Did he do it in the worlds fastest car? Not by a long shot. He did it in a relatively modest Audi R8. There are literally 30-40 cars faster and 20-30 cars quicker. Does this mean that since he used a fairly pedestrian vehicle to break the world record that YOU can jump into a Koeniggsegg CCX-R and own the world record since it is a significantly faster vehicle? No, you’ll just kill yourself. Likewise, if you’re getting killed at tournaments while using a MCZ Pro, it 99% because you need to get better, not because of a missing frame–whether or not you can actually see it isn’t the point. Are there points in a match where it might make a difference? Sure, but that one hit you’re giving up isn’t what costs you the match, it’s the other 15.
I don’t mind your testing methods. Any method can be useful provided its consistent and the data is readable. I think your data qualifies. I’m not attacking you, I’m just disgusted that the ADD nature of online web surfers will potentially do harm to companies who provide a very good product. Truth is that every single stick on your list is a quality stick. However, now we have potential buyers treating MCZ sticks like they are mayflash, because they don’t bother to read all of the data.
You aren’t wrong, I just disagree and think this information is neither dangerous nor irresponsible and that it should be available to anyone as an informative post in Tech Talk. The data was posted, it was graded according to Teyah’s opinion, and the full site was responsibly linked with info on the methods and the raw data. My initial reaction was skeptical and I think the info shouldn’t be taken at face value without others’ test results being similar, but this mass hysteria stuff and hush-hush mentality is kind of silly and myopic.
The problem is that it is already causing buyers to shy away from perfectly good equipment in the mistaken belief that they are somehow being affected by “inferior” equipment. The MCZ Pro is still a steal at $80, and anyone in the market for a good cheap stick should be all over that, regardless of the results here. IMHO, this data is only really useful to extremely high-end players and those who are in the PCB business (which is who I called out earlier, I didn’t leave the OP out because I was disrespecting him, but because I don’t believe he has any products on the market). And even with high-end players, you still see success with the “low-tier” sticks. I’m all for reducing lag, I just think that we all need to step back and accept this data for what it is–a good conversation starter that could potentially affect equipment in the future, it is not a be all end all elixir to cure your whiffing ails. You’re (the ubiquitous you) are whiffing because YOU suck, not the stick.
As a newish user, I think this is good stuff! I hope this discussion can remain objective and be relating to the test’s procedures and results.
I strongly believe everyone is free to have their own ideas and thoughts about the data/tests. I also strongly believe data like this is very informative and useful. I hope no one makes you feel like these tests and similar ones conducted in the future are not good information! I appreciate the great work, and I think many others do too.
Problem for who? The next batch of FightStick Pros are probably going to sell out again anyway, at $80. I just ordered one since I don’t have that form factor yet.
what I’m trying to get at is it’s not for anyone in this thread to decide what works for other people, what those people can notice, what impact it will have on their results, or what they should buy. it’s very bizarre to me that people feel they need to explain things to you and assume they know more about your experience than you do. there are several people in this thread who have let everyone know that 1-2f lag is either not perceivable or barely perceivable, and that it won’t make enough of an impact on their results to matter. this is without knowing anyone’s background, how good they are, what games they play, or what their level of competition is. at best it’s useless conversation, at worst it’s annoying and condescending, and derails the thread.
I play 3s on arcade regularly and want to make sure my OE console setup is as close to that as possible for training mode. I know exactly when I need to input red parry during common blockstrings. I know how long I have to confirm Chun low forward on arcade. etc etc. any departure from an ideal setup is me training and adjusting to the wrong timing and when I go back to arcade I will be doing it wrong. I know from experience how much lag I can tolerate, and I don’t need people telling me about how they can play my game with 3f of lag just fine. all they’re telling me is that they don’t play the game against strong competition because if they did they would know better.
I’m sure the people that you’re describing exist, but the point is it’s not up to anyone here to make value judgments on their decisions or experience. you and I are in agreement that the test results themselves are worthwhile. all I’m asking is that it be all this thread is about. if some random baddy comes in and asks about a stick, who really cares? he’ll continue to be bad. doesn’t hurt anyone. thread can continue without disturbance. but this constant complaining about “people are drawing the wrong conclusions from this thread” is toxic. it’s a waste of a lot of time/effort for everyone involved. time better spent figuring stuff out.
The data is great. The thing that sucks for those of us that are here to answer questions about the nitty gritty tech stuff and those of us that mod for end users is people aren’t going to read the thread to understand what those results mean. They will see a chart and their ignorance will lead them to misconceptions and we will get really frackin tired of answering stupid questions about pcb induced lag. The moment I saw this thread I thought “Cool. Nice work.” shortly followed by “Fuck my life.” This isn’t OP’s fault though. Nature of the beast (web).
IMO There are way too many variables to control for to get a certain result. In Vanilla SF4, on the Xbox, with a VGA monitor (but not with NTSC), the frame rate changes (changing the duration of a frame by .1 ms or so) when buttons are held down on the controller.
A while ago I did some testing and did see similar lag numbers - about 3.5ms when comparing the PS360 (no plus) to a Madcatz SE stick on an Xbox360. At the time one of the theories that I came up with was that the MadCatz stick is polled at 125 Hz while the PS360 is polled at 1000 Hz. Since the polling rate is negotiated between the console and the stick, and, IIRC UD sensibly and deliberately runs a high polling rate on his converters, we may see inconsistent results if we retest using UD converters.
A decent first approximation for confidence intervals is to divide by the square root of the number of trials. The square root of 1000 is about 31, and the timing resolution of a frame is 16ms so 16/31 - half a millisecond is about right. At that resolution, posting hundredths of milliseconds in the lag numbers is a bit misleading.
Some FAQ type stuff that I ran into, which might be nice to include in the OP:
How much of the lag is due to the stick?
For various technical reasons, current generation consoles seem to run at least 3 frames of lag - about 50ms - for game processing. (The PS3 will often have 4 frames of lag) There may also be significant display lag. Because of limitations intrinsic to USB, a fast stick and host will typically lag around 1 ms. That means that - even for sticks with less than 4 ms of lag - the contributed lag will be in the single digit percents.
Will my gaming experience be significantly improved by changing sticks?
For humans there’s a spike of lag sensitivity in the 80-100 ms region. That’s around 5-6 frames. Game processing is likely to add 3 (possibly 4) frames. That means that if your display lag is getting into the 2-3 frame range, small changes elsewhere can have a big impact. If your lag is already below 80ms, or well above 100 ms then changing sticks will have little impact on the gaming experience.
How much does lag matter in competitive settings for fighting games?
This is a controversial topic. Most things in fighting games are either ‘very reactable’ or ‘unreactable’ over a pretty wide range of lag windows. This is true even for reactions that require precise timing. Player performance is probably more impacted by unexpected changes or variability in lag than by absolute lag, and many major tournament winners have used sticks with of 3.5ms or more.
The only thing that really scares me is that people seem to be mad about the stats. Some people are acting like they did not expect it, or that they did not know it.
If you look at the stats rufus posted then everyone can see why anyone is saying they can see the difference between sticks. The numbers prove that people should be seeing a difference with even below a full second of lag from the stick. Rufus just choose to present it as it should have little impact, but his number shows that not to be true…
If the system is giving you at the very least 50 ms and we start to notice something at 80-100 then the stick and the tv have to combine for less than 30ms for us to not to notice something/anything off… Once you start to see something off you will continue to notice anything you see off.
What about if you are always looking at the same thing… does that help us to notice things at less than 80-100… Someone like Diago/Ryan Heart that have seen sooooo much of the game, they really do not notice something at less than 80-100 in SF… Really…
I mean who did not know that the VLX/VSA Kai is the best damn stick on the market… And when the fuck has madcatz been known for anything other than crap ass shit…
Oh you mean to tell me that MadCatz is still making shit products… Hori is still the top of the line and mod chips are striving to be the best since they do not have a stick to go with… Come on… What is there really to argue about here… How the shit was tested… really…
We should really thank this dude for giving us thins info because it keeps the mod chips honest and makes us the consumer admit that we have been eating up crap ass stickS for well over 6 years now. It is not like we really did not know this stuff. The VLX came out and every single other stick was not even close…
The only crazy part about the numbers is that the sticks do not run the same on both systems… The VLX running ata more than 5 times the ms’s as XboX makes playing on the PS3 even less appealing… But I still love my PS3…LOL
props to the op despite all the shit flinging.
but all i’m getting from this thread aside from the first post is a bunch of people who apparently haven’t had to bounce around between different versions of the same game acting like everyone else is just exaggerating and can’t possibly notice a difference. you’re acting like sycophants and talking out of your asses.
if you don’t mind playing a shittier version of the game than you could be playing, great, just keep it to yourself.
not everyone who uses a stick plays sf4. just because it doesn’t matter much to you doesn’t mean it isn’t important to others.
This is just not true. If it is above 100 at all then any additional ms will only be noticed. I do not even see how you would come to that conclusion.
And on the other side, we already know that the systems will give off at the very least 50 the tv might give off as little as 2-10 or as much as full frames of lag. that means that even 6 ms from a stick could bring you really close to 80 and you could start to notice right there.
It is not like these games are new to us, we play them way to much and think about spacing and positioning. We sometimes see stuff before it happens… Anything off and a lot of the FGC should be able to notice because the number say we should…
If you are increasing your input delay, you are increasing your handicap. If you would like to step down from 100ms of delay to 80ms, you should want to step down from 150 to 130 for the same reason, even if you’re still playing sub-optimally.
Input delay cuts off your options and functionally slows down your reaction time. Reacting to a jumpin for example- In faster games, you may need zero/very little delay to react to a jump with a counter that takes a while to input (ie. flash kick super, other supers). On the other end, even with heavy levels of delay, you can still counter on reaction with something that is essentially a single button press (ie. regular flash kick). In the median range (DP, or moves that have more startup time etc), where you are on the delay spectrum determines how easily you are able to counter.
Likewise, it also determines your ability to punish whiffs- something simple like whiffed/blocked Jab DP can be hard to punish in a lot of games, and depending on the counter your character has to use. If you’re playing Alpha 2 and you can activate CC and stop time, you might be fine. But if you’re trying to thread the needle with your character’s crouching medium kick, whether it hits in 4 frames vs 8 is the difference between difficult and impossible.
The importance of this kind of things varies by game and by match, of course.
edit: As far as the table in the first post, I think an “F” grade for 1 frame of input delay is a little harsh.
Just wanted to say that I’ve been lurking for years because of all the shitfests, and that this is the first thread that I’ve felt the need to respond to.
Well done on your scientific approach
I think you should perhaps build a little donation/vote script, so that people can see that you’re $100 off buying a KAI, and then they can chip in a couple of dollars to get you closer. A thorough lag test on a stick of people’s choice would be nice, and I’m sure they’d be keen to see it! Also, you would get popular sticks forever
I personally really want to see a lag test on the RAP v4 Hayabusa on PS3, and would chip in a fiver for it easily. It’ll cost me $200 including postage to get the stick to Australia, and $5 for a thorough lag test is nothing.
New sticks are going to keep popping up forever, and you’re the first to develop an extensive methodology and sample set based on it.
I can’t believe there is still a discussion about the importance of these numbers. Should we not mention input lag for monitors either because people are going to complain that they lost because of lag?
What if the monitor in a tourney adds 1 frame of lag because the TO thinks that 1 frame doesn’t matter, then you will use someone elses stick because you thought they were all the same and you get an additional frame of lag, oh and the splitter the guy uses for his double monitor setup may add some lag as well, is then the lag significant for you?
In games with 1-2-3 frame links or techs or parries how can you people say that a 30% -40%-50% percent change in the timing isn’t going to make a difference? and of course it is not about reacting 1 or 2 frames slower it is about changing setups and that your opticoacoustic cues are always going to be off because of the faster or slower timing.
All these sticks are fine on their own the problem is when you think changing sticks is not going to make a difference, of course minimizing lag is ideal so that you can react faster but if we are talking about buying a stick then 1 frame is not going to make any difference on your play since you are going to get used to playing with that stick’s timing over time.
