This article breaks it down in wonderful detail: http://renderingpipeline.com/2013/09/measuring-input-latency...
The TL;DR is that on a "modern" stack (USB, display buffering, etc) with a 60hz display you're looking at over 100ms of input latency. You can roughly halve that with a 120hz display.
But it won't ever touch the sub-16ms latency that's possible with a "retro" 8/16-bit console hooked up to a CRT display.
A lot of those games were garbage, but damn... it felt like your brain was wired directly into the machine. A very very cool part of the experience that is being lost to time.
I also remember vector displays first-hand.. those were pretty awesome. You're never going to get a vector graphics experience ever on an LCD because LCDs are rasterized pixels not a drawn line.
No one will ever make a limited run of CRTs or vector monitors ever again, but I wish they would. People would buy them.
Perhaps in 20 years if they're still around things will be different though. After all CRTs do wear out from use.
No one will ever make a limited run of
CRTs or vector monitors ever again, but
I wish they would. People would buy them.
But yeah, they'll never be manufactured again. It would be such an absolutely massive undertaking.
I also remember vector displays first-hand.. those
were pretty awesome. You're never going to get a
vector graphics experience ever on an LCD because
LCDs are rasterized pixels not a drawn line.
I've seen folks be totally blown away when seeing something like an Asteroids cabinet in person for the first time.
Example of 10 ms latency on a phone with an OLED display: https://twitter.com/kdrag0n/status/1291213993219039232 (source code: https://github.com/kdrag0n/touchpaint)
Drawing on the screen almost feels natural with such low latency, and it's probably ine of the most latency-sensitive applications for modern computers.
I think if you use a 120Hz monitor on a Linux text console, it would be sub 20ms.
I love that one reply:
"This is incredible. Single user mode
feels like the screen updates BEFORE
pressed the keys, like it is time
travelling. I guess I've used to the
high latency on newer computers."
The remainder (a few frames' worth of latency) is from the display itself. There's something like a frame buffer inside the display if I understand correctly although implementations vary widely; some displays are good for gaming and some aren't.
If you have a chance to game with original 8/16-bit hardware with wired controllers on a real CRT it's such a treat. You can really feel the difference.
>DF Direct: CRT Displays - Was LCD A Big Mistake For Gaming?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvRyVZWuvQ4
>DF Direct! Modern Games Look Amazing On CRT Monitors... Yes, Better than LCD!
You were guaranteed a near-gaussian point in the output, and from a signal-processing POV, this makes filtering and display just really beautiful and easy to do right. For instance, you could do a totally convincing subpixel translation with no visible artifacts.
While film lets you hide these artifacts with clever tracking and angles, it's very obvious with interactive video games. There are tricks to fix this, but consumer display tech is quite inconsistent.
(and there is absolutely no reason to care, but you are making a comment, so you seem to care a little)
...the tradeoffs are really fascinating. Don't think of it as one being better. It's just a different set of tradeoffs. CRTs are objectively better at some things, and are of course also objectively worse in a lot of obvious ways.
I would say that LPs and tube amps are objectively worse than their modern counterparts in every way. But the tradeoffs involved and the subjective issues are cool and sometimes do make for a better subjective experience in some ways.
I think the best feature CRTs could provide was the purely analogue display chain in older models. Super fast "response time" and clarity.
https://www.dwitter.net/d/12335
And a more recent one with more interesting motion at faster speed:
https://www.dwitter.net/d/21705
It is interesting how even as an animation it makes it look a lot smoother than the raw upscaled pixels of the same simple graphics.
You could replace 'eval' with 'throw' and see if the output looks like sane JS
Can't comment on the others, though.
In Part 2 (monochrome) the Apple II green monochrome is spot-on accurate and the Amber MDA 80x25 textmode is pretty good except that the background contrast is quite poor. A real amber MDA monitor has much deeper blacks.
The other reason is that my shader coding experience is pretty much zero, something I should fix at some point. ;) But if someone more knowledgeable gets inspired by this in the meantime and cooks something up, that'd be cool for sure.
It takes me back to the Amstrad PCW8256 that I used as a kid.
Those double sided CF2 disks were a better disk than either the 5.25" or the 3.5" IMHO.
Not sure how they were better than 3.5" disks at that time (they might have been better than the poor quality once sold towards the end of the Floppy era), but for sure they were much more expensive. I don't miss them one bit.
cool!