Hmm..Input Lag

thelostsoul

@beldar I am curious how much I can reduce lag and. You can see in my above link to the GIF (poir quality) how much the barrel fall down until a move happens. In most games this isn't critical. But playing unforgiving bullet hell shmups or classic Marios, this can have a slight real world effect. On a "regular" TV I even wouldn't bother.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Input-Lag
I will try some of these settings. Did the guy who wrote this article over clocked? I did quite a lot and I have a fantastic cooling (no fan), so I should be able to do what this guy did without problems right? I also play on 640x480p resolution, so its less then the default.

I wish I would have a monitor with 15khz capability (240p).

mediamogul

@thelostsoul said in Hmm..Input Lag:

Did the guy who wrote this article over clocked?

@dankcushions wrote the original doc and I expanded a bit on the unsupported tweaks. I was not overclocking when testing the effects on the NES emulators. The results, while positive, were really only noticeable in the games that needed it the most. For example, when you have 4 frames, or 66.4ms to turn corners in 'Battletoads', every little bit is very noticeable.

thelostsoul

@mediamogul And the resolution was at 1080p right?

dankcushions

resolution and overclocking only affect input lag if you’re under 60fps in the first place. at stock settings on a pi3 and 16/8-bit consoles, you won’t be.

thelostsoul

@dankcushions The reason why I ask is, because I have some more room for performance, so I can use more of these tweaks to reduce input lag, which also increases the load.

dankcushions

@thelostsoul neither @mediamogul nor myself are overclocked, but again, the performance is only an issue when you drop frames. until then, you should be good to go.

be aware that all the tweaks in the 'unsupported tweaks' section are a) unsupported, and b) likely only feasible to that degree for NES, which needs around half the power of, say, SNES emulation, which has very little headroom.

thelostsoul

@dankcushions What about the other systems? Why are most talk about NES and SNES? Just because its more popular or is there a technical reason for it?
By the way, which emulators are tested on the said article? Does it make even a difference which emulator is used? I changed most default emulators.

mediamogul

@thelostsoul said in Hmm..Input Lag:

Why are most talk about NES and SNES? Just because its more popular or is there a technical reason for it?

Popularity is likely part of it, especially for the SNES, but personally I've never seen any other game library so tightly dependent on low latency than the one belonging to the NES. Make no mistake, you'll always gain a play advantage having low latency on other systems if you can manage it, but there are several titles for the NES to where the difficulty ramps up considerably when losing more than a few frames and even some to where it's debatable if you can even complete them.

dankcushions

@thelostsoul said in Hmm..Input Lag:

@dankcushions What about the other systems? Why are most talk about NES and SNES? Just because its more popular or is there a technical reason for it?

didn't i just answer this? NES emulation needs about half the power of most other systems. it's a 'simple' system that is relatively easy to emulate. these tweaks take computational power that the pi rarely has to spare.

By the way, which emulators are tested on the said article? Does it make even a difference which emulator is used? I changed most default emulators.

the supported tweaks don't involve any changes to the pi's configuration - they're safe for all systems. the unsupported tweaks are specifically for NES - it's quite clear on this on the page. you could try them on other systems, but like i said, NES emulation is uniquely performant. the only other similar performant emulators are gambette, i would guess.

they're unsupported tweaks - it's really up to you to experiment and see what works.

mediamogul

@thelostsoul

The supported tweaks also yield the best results by far. Setting a television to game mode alone feels like the difference between night and day. Setting even all of the possible unsupported tweaks feels more like the difference between night and a bit later that night.