You're subscribed to Gamer's Nexus and Battle(non)Sense, but you're still skeptical?? You must be hard to persuade. Check out the section below to see some new explanations of how system latency might be affecting your game.
Importance of System LatencyWhy is system latency important?
Average human reaction time is 215 ms according to humanbenchmark.com(there are issues with their testing methodology that I could rant on for hours). Average reaction time for high level gamers is, generally, going to be much lower, meaning that a delay of 15-50 milliseconds can be accounting for 10-35% of your reaction time!Nvidia's research has shown that a difference of 8 ms (from 20 ms to 12 ms) in system latency can account for 13% faster TTKs(time to kill). That 8 millisecond difference (per frame) compounds to a whopping 182 ms difference in task completion time over a 1.5 second period.
* Image attribution: Nvidia 2020
In the images below, I've drawn hitboxes on an enemy. As this scenario begins, the enemy in the picture begins moving to the left. This occurs on the server (and internally on your machine) before it is actually displayed to you.
- The red represents where the enemy's hit box actually is in a moment in time.
- The blue box represents what you see on your screen at a certain system latency.
- The purple area is the overlap between the 2 areas and represents your best chance to hit the target.
| 0 ms System Latency | 15 ms System Latency | 75 ms System Latency |
|---|---|---|
* Disclaimer: The images above are a good estimation of what the system latency issue looks like, but the numbers are not entirely accurate. More accurate & interactive depictions are on the way.
As you can see, at 0 ms system latency, the blue box completely encompasses the red box. "What you see is what you get." As the system latency begins to creep up, the amount of the visible hitbox that is "hittable" decreases.
While the example above is a good depiction of the issues that high system latency can cause, it only paints a part of the story. This is the delay seen on every frame... but your system latency is occurring on every single frame and there is a compound effect that occurs. In a game, you're not firing a single shot, but reacting to the result of each and every shot that you fire. This compound effect is a bit too in-depth for this page, but you can read more about its effects in this Nvidia white paper.
