Nvidia’s GeForce Now and infrastructure upgrades deliver a startling proof of concept.
The immediate reaction online was to dismiss the idea because you cannot overcome the laws of physics.
Latency will always be a problem that cannot be conquered.
Move to a controller - an inherently laggier form of input - and you’d be hard-pressed to tell.
So how was this achieved?
There advances are plentiful.
GeForce Now and xCloud integrate the encoder into the main processor, cutting down lag.
Latency can be further reduced simply by running the game with frame-rate unlocked.
There’s no v-sync off ‘tearing’ as full frames are plucked from the framebuffer for video encoding.
Finally, GeForce Now also supports 120Hz and even 240Hz streaming technology.
The faster the stream update, the lower the latency.
There’s another factor at play too: infrastructure upgrades.
Improvements since have come from higher frequency streaming - 4K120 and 1080p240 are new additions.
It would be worse still if something like a bandwidth-sapping Steam download kicked in.
Client to server latency?
For me, it’s typically 5-7ms.
Not everyone has FTTP, of course, but within ten years?
GeForce Now isn’t a total replacement for a local console, not right now.
Right now though, xCloud is far from the killer app it needs to be.
Image quality is still problematic, there’s not enough resolution or bandwidth to replace a local experience.
Latency is far more noticeable though 60fps games claw back enough response to play out quite reasonably.
It sounds a bit like thenegative latencyclaims from Stadia so many mocked.
