DF's measurement of input lag is inclusive of network latency, right? Button press to observed reaction = game latency + network latency. You could get network latency by measuring this for both a local and streamed game (same game) and subtract. I think this is a better way to measure the added lag because there's more going on than just the latency around a ping. There's potentially resource scheduling and other things that could add to the delay. The way DF is measuring makes sure it's all accounted for in the aggregate. If the point is that Google could make up for network lag by reducing input lag with really fast servers, I think that's a fair point.

Not sure I explained it right. The latency that DF is measuring is the time it takes to record when the input was pressed. It is like saying that input lag is based on when the button is pressed, and when that input press has a perceivable action on screen.

However, the game loop itself doesn't work like this, and input lag itself is merely the time it takes for the input to be recognized by the program.

So, lag can be caused by two things.

One, the time it takes for the input to be recorded in system memory by the program(or system) itself.
Two, the time it takes for the input to be registered by the program for it to be used within the program itself.

Generally, only two is relevant to the discussion when we're talking about traditional consoles. However, with pushing the input off site, both one and two become relevant, because the amount of time it takes for the input to be recorded within system memory is going to take significantly longer than what you have with traditional models.

I don't know if it's possible to record input lag 100%, but if one is relying on a visual cue, and high speed cameras(which themselves introduce lag), then it's not going to be accurate. It is possible to measure input timings using hardware monitors, but I'd imagine that sort of thing is well beyond the scope of this, and just measuring the time it takes for that data to be sent through a remote connection is more than enough to measure general lag time. A simple ping operation is enough to measure lag time, then you just remove anything that happens internally to the software your using, and anything that deals with the return data timing.

It's not really rocket science, and has been done for decades before DF and others made up all sorts of ways to measure it in ways it was never meant to be measured.

All that's important is if it's perceivable to the user. 160ms would certainly be perceivable. That's almost 2/10th of a second to register that a button has been pressed. that's 5-6 frames of data that are drawn before it even recognizes that you pressed a button. More likely, the actual ping was much lower for the purposes of determining input lag, as much of that time would have been transmitting the data back However, anyone that uses the internet will know that lag will vary not just from day to day, hour to hour, or minute to minute, but from packet to packet, as networks don't work by averages, they work packet to packet. Games work in a similar fashion, with each set of data being something to process into something on every game loop....a loop which runs every 16-33ms.

"A simple ping operation is enough to measure lag time" - I think we'd agree that the perceived lag attributed to streaming is more than just the network ping time. The rendered frames have to be compressed, transmitted, and decompressed before the user sees it. So as primitive as high speed cameras are, I can't see measuring how effective a streaming solution is end to end any other way...

"Everyone understands that certain regions are behind when it comes to internet speeds. "

The people here think that in order for Google to make a profit that they need to sell this service to every living person on earth.

@opc,
Exactly. The average global internet speed was 7.2Mbps in Q1 of 2017 and it's been growing at a 20-25% rate each year. No reason to think the average won't be 10Mbps by 2020. And that's just the average. Goog's can cater towards the high end of that and make bank while the rest of the world improves their internet.

No they don't need to sell it to everyone but the sensationalist media and those cheering google on need to check themselves streaming games is far from the ideal way to play games and that will continue to be the case for a while.

These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse