PlayStation Move controller lag detected, analyzed
By Tim Stevens 
posted March 18th 2010 10:28AM
posted March 18th 2010 10:28AM
When Sony unveiled its PlayStation Move (nee Arc) controller at the GDC last week, it came along with some impressive promises: it would only cost developers 2MB of system memory (out of 256MB on offer) and it would respond to user inputs within a single frame of animation. Our own experiences with the thing felt a bit more laggy, and now Eurogamer is echoing those impressions and putting a bit of science behind them courtesy of a 60fps Kodak Zi6 camcorder. By filming the controllers and their on-screen representation, the site's tireless statisticians calculated an actual lag (including that of the display) of 113ms -- 
ZOOMMGGG!!!
@n0ne
http://zomgitscj.com :P
had to link that , it looks so similar :P
@n0ne There is a lag. It's because every time you move the controller and the camera has to locate the glowing globe, it then thinks to itself 'WTF is that?' before calculating the new position.
@Kid Red:
I'm tired of coming to this website and seeing pictures of glowing dildos.
113ms reponse it's all over for Sony now : /. Any check what the wii is. Cause I bet it near double that.
@ZeroHour682 I second that. A Wii vs Move comparison please.
@ZeroHour682
Damn that's even than Natal 100ms...
@ZeroHour682
Meh. I remember playing Quake online with 150ms pings just fine.
@25i Yes they are built and function differently, so in many cases they aren't really comparable. However, they both do share the ability to point at places on a screen, so I do think that at least for that feature they could be fairly compared in terms of lag/responsiveness.
@25i
I'd love for you to explain this, so I could wrap my fragile little mind around it. From what I can tell, the Wii and Move both use a two piece control system with a wand style controller in your main hand that can track it's position via use of a camera, and a analog style controller in the off hand for movement and extra buttons.
@25i
Why must you be so insulting? So what if they use different technologies. They both do the same exact thing: Control games.
If I can use the move controller in CoD4 then I would want to know what the lag is for pulling the trigger on both machines. Is that so hard for you to wrap your gargantuan cotton filled melon around?
@azuravian
Maybe he was referring to more technical differences, but I see the difference as just the level of gaming. The PS3 is a gamer's gaming system, with a high price tag and high quality components, which means that people will expect a very high quality gaming experience with the PS3. The Wii on the other hand is much less expensive and aimed at a different demographic, therefore it's not expected to have as high a quality experience.
@PlatinumSkeet
According to Eurogamer, mentioned within that same article, they explain that their same methodology resulted in a 200ms lag for the Natal.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digital-foundry-vs-project-natal-article
Regardless, clearly both Move and Natal have time to improve lag before its released later this year.
@25i The Wiimote has an infrared camera at its tip. Its the reason candles work instead of a sensor bar, which doesn't sense anything really, it just emits infrared light.
@25i
So a regular PS3 controller is similar enough to Move that they can compare the lag (as stated in the article), but the Wii controller and move are not similar enough, partially (in your view) because one has a camera and the other doesn't??
As someone else said, they both control video games; they do not have to be similar for someone to calculate how much lag there is between inputting a command into the controller and the results of that command showing up on the screen.
@25i
And herein lies your problem. Making claims about things being so radically different, when you have no clue about the technology behind one of them. The Wii remote works because it has a camera built into it. Also; really, you're going to lead with the 5 year olds and geriatrics remark that has been beat to death already. If it wasn't for the Wii and its motion controls that have (sales-wise) performed so well, there would be no Move. Period.
@25i They are both game controlers smart ass, and lag is lag, what ever game or platform you play, but you should stick with the leapster smart guy.
@mr88 Yeah, the wii is only $80 less then the ps3, and a wii controler is over $100 with motion plus and nunchuck. The wii is an expencive toy, ps3 is a cheap media appliance.
@ZeroHour682
that's a high horse you're sitting on 25i, yet out of everyone, it appears you know the least on the topic. The difference in technologies is irrelevant, the input method is the same and that makes it a fair test.
so its faster than the dualshock 3? Sign me up.
@CoreyMac Reading up on the source and more coverage, it isn't fair to use these numbers against each other, in fact I think Engadget could've done a better job in stating that the Move was tested on a demo disc. So, we are comparing to one of the 3 most controller-laggy games that they previously tested, while a games like RR7, VT3, Ninja Gaiden clocked in closer to 65ms delay.
@CoreyMac
What is suprising is that the lag on the DS3 is that bad. Why do people buy into THAT?!?!
I should be surprised I guess......but I am not at all
Wonder why they still have the Zi6 and not the Zi8
The frame-rate will be the same at 720 i guess. So nvm.
Yay lag!
@GenericMessage
both the Zi6 and Zi8 have almost exactly the same features, but the Zi6 is 3x times cheaper
@commenter7
lawls. Not at all
Zi8 records in 1080p at 30fps and 720p at 60fps. It also has an external mic jack, E.I.S., and a rechargeable battery. To name a few differences
And for your three times cheaper argument, there is only $70 difference MSRP between them
Next time, try not telling what Kodak products do and don't do to a Kodak employee. lol
113ms?
I love how Sony was marketing this for first person shooters (See their latest ad) 113ms in a FPS is the difference between life and death....In the game at least.
@Gamecheater
What multiplayer game would 113ms of lag be the difference between life and death when everyone has the same 113ms lag?
@CoreyMac You are assuming that everyone is using the same hardware. And it sounds like OP is assuming 113 is worse than an alternative when this article didn't make it sound that way, more like this could save your life. A more comprehensive study is required regardless any conclusions we can draw as of yet.
@juanvaldez I think I'm assuming some software titles will allow the move while not requiring it, I think that's a safe assumption without reading otherwise though.
@Gamecheater - so, you are telling me you have reflexes and response times where a TENTH OF A SECOND makes a difference to you? Really? Did you know that the average response time from thinking to clicking something like a mouse is something like a quarter second or more?
You probably shouldn't let too many people know about your freakishly fast skills, or some men in dark suits with sunglasses may show up at your door, then take you to some me in white coats who will throw you in a lab to test your superhuman reflexes out. And probably dissect you. Alive, is possible.
I'm just sayin...
@Gamecheater
So would Halo 3 qualify as an FPS? Just asking since in the Gamasutra article it has a lag of 113-167ms. Not that the comparison of a highly polished FPS held up as the pinnacle of FPSs by many to an essentially beta game is relevant or anything...
@Vrmithrax I might be getting too technical for this discussion. But a 1/10 of a second is the proper way to analyze this as the important thing is the difference from the fastest alternative to the input method you use; the marginal cost, of input, if you will. Now, we add that to the response time it takes, the quarter of a second that you mention, now the quarter of a second is negligible because if you play against the computer then the program takes this into account and discounts for that fact with the difficulty level. If you play against humans, you are dealing with the same reaction time, more or less, so that is a wash. So, a tenth of a second lag in controller functionality (I'll argue a 1/20th of a second due to my emphasis on the marginal cost of input) is somewhat important if it can mean the difference between a head shot that takes someone out before he gets the shot on you that might take you out, resulting in a double-kill, versus one where he's lying on the floor dead and you live.
@Vrmithrax
You haven't played any modern shooters, have you?
@Vrmithrax
So you're telling ME no one will notice 100ms of added lag?
Have you ever played a first person shooter other than halo? Any FPS gamer can notice a 100ms difference. Try playing any FPS game on a server where your ping is 100ms. Then try a server that has 200ms ping. There's a huge difference.
If you think ping is different that input lag - You're wrong. You have to send your actions to the server so the server can process what you're doing (No, not everything is done on your computer/console), And that is considered input lag.
@Gamecheater
You arent getting it. The DS3, a regular PS3 controller, frequently has over 100ms of lag as well so get over it.
If the game is running @ 60 fps w/ 113ms lag, it is more like 6.78 frames of delay ;)
@charsoxer
Thank you. That was my math as well.
@charsoxer Well, that is certainly far closer to 10 than 1, but I've added the extra points of precision to the post just the same. Thanks.
113ms might not seem like a lot, but in the hands of Chuck Norris, it's the difference between life and headshot.
@InspectorEngadget lol it's been awhile since I have heard a good chuck Norris joke
depending on the kind of game people play, it can range from "it doesn't matter" to "OMFGITSRUININGMAHGAEMPLEY!!!1"
the obvious answer is for sony to supply a time travelling delorean, to accelerate ourselves 113ms into the past so the lag is eliminated. problem solved ;)
Yes and another contributor to lag is the very HDTV you play it on, sometimes the controller is blamed whereas its actually the lag of the TV. Samsung sets, for instance, can add a good 20ms to the lag simply because of all the picture processing going on in modern sets. Samsung sets should be in Game picture mode apparently to minimise the lag, according to some reviewers. Unfortunately Game mode gives you extreme contrast and oversaturated colours too so I never set it on my Sammy TV.
.
Thats at least what I blame when I fail at Wipeout HD.
Freakin' lag!!! Kick the laggers!
uhhhh I'm taking valuable seconds away from Kratos final performance for this!??!
DAMN YOU ENGADGET!!!!
LMAO
Impossible. I must have read a dozen times in every single Natal thread that PSMC would have perfect lag free 1:1 control.
Have a game similar to Fabel 2/Oblivion and have the motion controller working and I'll be buying PS3 in a heartbeat.
60fps is 1000 div 60 = 16.666666666ms
Question 1
Are we sure the camera captures at a constant or is there a possibility of delay and catchup ?
Question 2
If the camera captures at 1 frame per 16.7ms then any result can only really be a multiple of that ?
While this is perhaps a good way to measure lag it is not an accurate way to measure it.
It's interesting how accepting hardcore gamers are with sluggish response times.
The GT test, hmm, so what's the lag in a real world car, or in pulling a trigger to the gun responding.
I think wii gets away with lagging. I personally can't stand lag in multi-human-player but if it's human vs comp well the comp is suffering along with u so it balances out.
It seems equivalent to the olden days when copping it in the one pixel of toe would kill you off and one would swear a bloody doom down on the game.
How's about ye olde seperate chip handling controller input with a dedicated path to the business end. N I thought the whole multicore cell chip thing was so stuff could dedicate and hive?
The title is misleading and everyone is jumping to conclusions here. This is not the "PlayStation Move controller lag". The lag you see here is the total round trip lag from human input through game processing and out to the display, including all the lag in the LCD.
So basically 113ms is input lag + processing time + output lag.
Unfortunately, the processing time varies greatly by game and the output lag varies greatly by what TV and such you have the system connected to.
This person who took this had no way to figure out how much is processing time and how much is output lag, so has no way to subtract them off and calculate the actual controller lag.
So this figure is really only valid for this one setup and should only be compared against other measurements taken on this game and on this setup (display). Yet many people don't understand this and are trying to compare it to ping times or frame rates in Modern Warfare or such. In short, chill out guys until we have a figure we really can do some comparisons with.