EVO, Sony, and Epic Working to Reduce Fighting Game Input Latency

If people are only playing on PS4, there won't be an issue but when you go from PC to PS4, that's when you have to compensate your timing.

@Worlock_ed The latency also affects one's defence against mixups. You get more time to react if it translates to inputs quicker. It's milliseconds but it makes a difference.

To be fair, my biggest latency, along with most over certain ages is a physical one, as in the human brain and nervous system. So whilst any delay that is technical that can be improved is great, there really is still going to be people who are simply slower or faster.

Depending on age, genetics and so on.

I’m guilty of it too, I do all I can to reduce input lag, but then if I don’t keep up with mental and physical exercises that month, it’s only adding a lag no one cares to think about.

It’s like if I drive a car, I’m not going to notice all of the nuisances a rally driver would. Yet to them, change even the slightest thing to cause delay with a gearbox etc, and they’d notice.

So I guess what I’m saying is, reducing input lag, and offering more stable frames and so forth is fantastic for us all, but after a certain point, many other than people training themselves to play these games every waking moment won’t notice.

Anyway, just confirming what you’ve already said in the article really, none of this will make too much difference to the layman. But positive direction to move in nevertheless.

I’d say the biggest issue I have right now is with Unreal Engine in general on PS5, as even at my age and lack of “pro” status, playing something like Fortnite on PS5, versus my daughters Xbox Series S, there’s noticeable lag on the PS5. Like almost a mouse smoothing kind of thing.

But that’s barely noticeable to anyone I’ve asked, so maybe some of that’s in my head?! Haha.

Why does the PS5 have more latency then Xbox? I'd be interested if that was dug into a bit more instead of just casually mentioned.

I've played fighting game on Playstation exclusively my whole life pretty much and I can't tell the difference but hey I won't reject improvement.

@Milktastrophe
The difference between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-Fi Direct is far superior to Bluetooth in many way, latency being one of them.

@TheCollector316
But what about the people who use wired controllers and fighting sticks. Why are they still experiencing more latency on the PS5?

I remember playing Street Fighter II Turbo on my SNES with a wired controller and a CRT (so minimal input lag) and I was still crap.

They should work on making fighting games complete at launch & not having a zillion paid add ons lol

@IslandLogic
Are they experiencing more latency? Things that are wired in should have no latency at all.

@TheCollector316 in turnaments people always play wired. Even then playstation systems have more latency. But not only online, even the input latency is sometimes higher than on a pc.

@TheCollector316

There’s always latency.

Even wired you’re going to have some latency. From what I understand the Xbox versions of KOF XV are at 35-40ms of latency while PS4 is at around 50ms and PS5 drags up the rear at 70ms. All tests on that Reddit thread were done with wired controllers.

The PC version is the lowest at around 15-20ms. It’s one reason fighting game players have been clamoring for pro tournaments to switch to PC. But considering that big tournaments are sponsored events you use what they have available. And that’s usually a PlayStation, since Sony is a big sponsor of most tournament tours and series.

With all that said, not every game has equal amounts of latency. DBZF has significantly lower latency than KOF XV on both console platforms and the latency is roughly the same between them. PC once again has the lowest level.

In general, games based on Unreal Engine have higher amounts of input latency. That goes for shooters as well as fighting games.

@Milktastrophe

No one really knows. The KOF and SF community theorize that it has something to do with Sony’s USB controller on the motherboard or something to do with how Sony’s firmware interacts with it. All PlayStations have, for the most part, suffered from worse input latency than Xboxes. During the SFIV era, most tournaments were ran on Xbox 360 for just that reason. Back then the console manufacturers didn’t really sponsor tournaments. Some SF4 tournaments were ran on PS3, but it was uncommon especially in Europe and North America.

When Ultra SF4 came out, Sony started doing sponsor deals. Big tourneys switched to PS3 and PS4 due to Sony being a sponsor. The community was up in arms about it for a while, but eventually they settled down and accepted it.

The 8th generation was the first generation where you started seeing PC releases of almost every major fighting game. And the various communities discovered that PC took a dump on consoles in the input lag department. Ever since there’s been petitions to switch big tournaments over to PC. But considering Sony is the one hardware manufacturer sponsoring the big tournaments, it’s unlikely that’s going to change any time soon.

When you see local fan organized tournaments, they almost exclusively run PC now. Only exception to that rule is stuff like Smash, which is only legitimately played on Nintendo hardware.

I would like epic to do something about their input recognition software for pad too.
It's so much harder to do combos on kofxv than xiv.

Odd that the PS4 isn't as bad as the PS5. Is it something to do with the extra gimmicks in the DS5?
Also, does the PS5 latency reduce to near zero when cabled into the console, as the DS4 does when connected to the PS4 by cable?

@sanderson72 the additional latency introduced by the wireless connection is mostly negligible.
It's not the controller itself either, as other tests (on PC) show that the DualSense is actually very good in that regard.
So far the issue seems to be tied to the PS5 build of Unreal Engine but tbh I'm not sure if anyone tested any games running on anything else (as most current fighting games use that)

I don't have Latency that is described and i watch my Brother playing War Zone 2 having advantage in every way compared to his friends on PC . I have sense that Input lag is minimal because controls are feeling so responsive compared with PS4 but i measure Latency just from curiousity and it's 8,3-10ms and in online multiplayer is 15,7 sometimes 16,3ms and solution is cable with Bluetooth off on Console and TV especially with new smart voice remote controllers . I know person who never lost fight in Tekenn and he is playing on PlayStation now on PS5. It's not mili seconds it's combination of finding rhythm and speed of execution and of course always Lucidity. Friends on PC are annoyed by lagging, while on PS5 it is not felt nearly as much. It's strange that everything that became a trend as a dictionary these days, Hatred, Lying, Making things up and people who write about problems without even having a console, I noticed that on reddit and I hope there will be more honesty here because everything is for nothing if it's not honest. Criticism is the only way to progress, but criticism must also make sense and be honest. Life is Beautiful .