Modern HDTVs introduced a tiny but perceptible lag between receiving an image signal and displaying it on-screen. Dewi Tanner, a former employee of the developer behind Parappa The Rapper, describes how they killed the appeal of games that require ultra-sharp reflexes, such as rhythm and fighting games. [Edge]

  • Adam Haas

    This article is stupid. HDTV’s suffer from that if they are using post-processing. Most (if not all TV)’s now have a “Game Mode” which removes  ALL post-processing, making this argument completely moot.

    • madopal

      Not entirely.  That’s why the article talks about rhythm games.  You can remove the video post-processing, but not *necessarily* the audio post-processing.  Take it from me…I worked on the arcade port of big music game.  The amount of problems we had with monitors & synching the video vs. audio delay was maddening.  We patched over it, but it was never 100%.

      We had 2 LG monitors that, no matter what they said, monkeyed with the audio.  Trying to get 3 people to agree on what the lag was was nigh impossible.  That’s why I believe a lot of those games have individual calibrations.  There’s a difference per user on what seems “right”.

    • http://twitter.com/erikosterholm Erik Osterholm

      Game modes vary drastically between televisions, and while some may remove postprocessing, many TVs still have display lag in these modes.  There are hundred page forum threads on the subject (search for “input lag” instead, as that is the misnomer most of them use), and finding a low-latency television is extremely hard these days.

      In fact, there are tools you can use to measure input lag, and you’ll find that different panels in the same model of TV will often have drastically different performance, all settings being equal.  This leads people to play the TV lottery–buy a TV, find out what panel is in it, and exchange it if it’s one of the bad ones.

    • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

      I suspect that, in part, the issue is that(from a commercial perspective) developing and releasing a game becomes much less attractive if it is going to mysteriously not work properly for a nontrivial percentage of your customers.

      It’s tricky enough on the PC, where bugs of the ‘smoke particle effects have incorrect opacity in Medal of Warfare with HD66XX series GPUs on Catalyst driver 12.4′ form abound; but at least the game executable can accurately detect its software environment, and patches for both the game and the drivers are possible and often frequent. 

      If you are trying to move a console game, where hardware differences aren’t supposed to matter(and where many customers’ expectations are ‘a TV is a TV, right?’) you don’t necessarily have the benefit of accurate hardware detection(HDTV DDC data is notoriously crap, and even if it weren’t, details like ‘what model LCD panel is used’ aren’t required or provided) and TVs are only ‘patched’ when they get thrown out and replaced, in the vast majority of cases.

      Even if it works much of the time, starting out with an automatic 50-10% angry customers, on top of the ones that crop up because of genuine gameplay issues or other bugs, just isn’t that attractive…

      • bcsizemo

        ‘smoke particle effects have incorrect opacity in Medal of Warfare with HD66XX series GPUs on Catalyst driver 12.4′ form abound

        While I hardly play PC (or any) games anymore that alone flashed me back to my Voodoo 2 days with special drivers and game patches galore…

        I finished one of the Tomb Raider games without being able to see through water…(the surface was just a greenish gray color, while underwater was fine).

  • jmzero

    Rhythm games should be fine – the game can just delay the audio a bit to match the video (and can similarly adjust input to be against the proper displayed image).  Other games suffer more from a bit of lag, but even that’s overblown (and diminishing, with good equipment).

    • http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

      That makes no sense. There in no option to do that in-console, but like others have pointed out, hidden in the menu of your HDTV, there is usually an option to disable postprocessing, which is the bugbear here.

      As for lag not mattering; do you just not play videogames, or you don’t play videogames enough for it to affect your performance? Lag affects me more in STGs/shumps a LOT more than in fighting games, especially in modern danmaku/curtian-fire games.

      • jmzero

        Yes, there are options to do this at the console level – in practice it’s usually in game.  Many rhythm games have this already.  This isn’t a solution for all games, but for rhythm games it works fine because of the nature of how they use time.  The game can comfortably delay audio and input measurement to match your TV’s delay (or the cumulative delay that might result from multiple steps).

        And I didn’t say lag didn’t matter, but that the concern was overblown.  Random action games are nicer on a fast TV, but it doesn’t destroy the genre to have to adjust for a little delay.  Lots of people are still playing Ikaruga and Street Fighter IV (where screen delay is an order of magnitude smaller than network delay anyways).

  • http://twitter.com/frederikvdz Frederik

    Except that fighting games are making a huge comback. Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom, and a whole lot of other games are all comming back into popularity. With 2D style gameplay and oldschool sensibilities.

    Likewise rhythm games became mega popular on HD consoles. What killed them off was an over saturated market and an ever growing list of absurdly priced plastic instruments required to play.
    Also competitive twitch based gaming is huge on PC. It’s practicly a defining element of the e-sports scene. Starcraft is as much about speed as it is about strategie.
    Quake Live, even Tribes is back. Everything old is new again.

  • C W

    It just ~couldn’t~ be people getting bored with the genre.

    • http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

      How about: “no” 

      However, the culture around those who play fighting games has transformed due to the adoption of X-box Live and Playstation Network services.

  • Anaerin

    As mentioned in a few posts here, but I’ll re-iterate, games that are affected by issues like this one often (in the case of rhythmn games, almost always) have “calibration” options, so you can set the amount of delay to use. In fact, the instruments in Rock Band 3 have built-in calibrators that work with the game to precisely measure the delay in audio and video.

  • http://profiles.google.com/stephen.schenck Stephen Schenck

    My friends hate it when they help me move, but I’m not giving up my CRT HDTVs for this, among other reasons.

    • http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

      Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

      • http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

        Dead bodies often weigh less than a good-sized CRT, and their functionality isn’t altered when you drop them. 

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

        In the real world, the friend that you should keep is the one that packs your kitchen drawers.

  • zarray

    This is why DSes and PSPs are nice.

    • http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

      Yes, because little tiny non-adjustable screens are better than a giant adjustable screen…

  • Stahlbrand

    Yup, completely dead.  No new and vital fighting games since the HD generation of consoles.  And nothing like Super Meat Boy or Geometry Wars in the twitch-space, all due to the dreaded HD screen.

  • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

    Off topic, but it really pisses me off that when watching lots of stuff through my newish TV I can’t have the sound coming out of both the TV itself and my newish amplifier. No matter what settings I screw with, there is always just a hint of delay on the audio coming from the amp, not enough to notice the delay if I’m simply watching with one source of sound, but enough to create an annoying echo if both audio sources are being used.

    I guess it’s time I got new speakers that weren’t so bassy, or selected a TV that wasn’t so trebly (hence the want, to use both).

  • puppybeard

    In this comment thread, it looks like about 50% of people actually RTFA
    I think he’s making sense, and I can only refer to one game, but Project Eden on 360 has lag that will get you killed.

    You can send a data packet to a different continent faster than you can send a pixel to a screen these days.

    That’s what John Carmack says, and I believe him: http://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-faster-than-sending-a-pixel-to-the-screen