The impalpable HD lag demon - reassurance

[parastroke7]

Just the other night, I tried playing GH II for PS2 on my Toshiba 42" HDTV. I've been trying for a good while now, and it just doesn't feel the same. It's torture to know that you're playing perfectly on time, yet the signal doesn't get there until after it matters.

Most of you will say "Hey numbskull, calibrate the lag!" Of course, I've thought of this idea before. In fact, I've tried it many times. I'm strumming perfectly to the beat of the falling eyeball, but it's a different number every single time. Just when I think I've found the perfect setting, and that I'll be able to play the opening hammer-ons of Raw Dog, my plan fails and I'm left with nothing but clunk, clunk...and clunk, as well as clunk.

Now, imagine sitting down with your brand new peripheral(s), ready to kick some ass. The game is starting up, and you can smell the plasticy smell of newness being emenated by the thing you've been waiting for over the course of many months. There it is on the screen, ROCK BAND in big white letters. You (and maybe your friends which you invited over for the special occasion) pick your mode, and play your first song. You see the first notes coming, coming, and prepare to play your first note. CLUNK! You try some more, successfully reaching a 4X multiplier, then CLUNK again! You pause it, and access the "calibrate lag" setting. Assuming the problem is fixed, you (and maybe your friends) start the song over again. Here comes that first note...CLUNK! Well what the hell? Why the lag? You drop to your knees and scream "WHY HARMONIX WHY!"

So to make that long story much shorter for the reading impared, you're impared from being good at Rock Band simply because of an HDTV lag.



Enough storytelling. I've reposted this awful forum topic because I ran a search on it, and found only one result. The problem was not addressed in full in the particular one I read, so I felt it necessary to bring it up once more. I can't imagine my disappointment if the lag issue has not been dealt with by now. The 360 and the PS3 are designed to run on HDTVs, so lag should be a problem that's been solved by now.

I apologize if this issue has already been beaten to death, but I ran a search only to find one, open-ended result. I want to know, have they solved the problem? Has there been any talk about it? HMXSean, if you're reading this, will we have to cover ourselves in holy water just to temporarily ward off the HD lag demon? Reassure me.

[Terranova]

I think You have answered your own question.. GH for the PS2 was not designed for HD tvs yes they had a option to calibrate the lag for HDTV users but it still isn't the same as Supporting HD tvs natively, looking at the vids ie gamespot etc there didn't appear to be any lag.

[logicalnoise]

did you try turning progressive scan on? Because that can help with your tvs slow upscaling. and yeah rock band is in high def on 360 and ps3 so there should be little worries as far as lag.

[DJ_Xero]

I've also noticed the calibrate tool is a little more reliable for the 360 than the PS2.

[miketoast]

I haven't had any problems calibrating the lag, I like it around 92 - 115 or so and will keep doing it until I get it in that range. Yeah it sucks but at least I can play it, I can't even ****ing play GH1 because of it, I have 3 HDTV's and no SD's, and there's no calibrate option...

[dragula]

Yah, I haven't had any complaints about the compensation for HDTV's with GH2 on the ps2, like they said anywhere around 90-110ish is fine. Just the other day I popped in GH1 to mess around with it, selected Bark at the Moon and failed out miserably. I couldn't even hit the single note parts in it hah.

Yah, being on different system designed to play in hd, as well as the new game itself too, I don't think it should even be comparable with the lag issues of a ps2 game. But, we'll see in a few months!

[Trantzz]

I completely understand your FEAR/concern regarding a potiental lag issue. Like you I hooked up my PS/2 into my new Vizio 37inch HDTV (8ms) back in late Demeber 2006. I was HORRIFIED to find out that the lag completely ruined my Guitar Hero experience. I posted many topics on it and learned I was not alone (even trying to calabrate).

My only hope was that the developers would seriously address this issue when creating the 360 version of GH2. Figuring the demographic for this version (360 users) would own a HDTV (or be in the market for one sooner rather then later). To my delight I have experienced ZERO lag on the 360 version of GH2. NO calabrate needed.

If they can do it for GH2 I am sure we can expect a perfect Rock Band game free of lag issues (saying a prayer)....

[PurpleHaze]

I think a fair few people attribute their problem to lag, when in fact it's actually a video/audio synchronization problem - and there is a difference, lag is a delay between the console and the TV/speakers, whereas a synchronization problem is a delay (either way round) between the TV video output and the speaker audio output. So, if the problem actually is lag, then the lag options in GH2 should fix it, but if it's actually a synchronization problem, then the lag options in GH2 will not fix it.

It's worth pointing out that synchronization isn't a problem limited to Rock Band, or even to gaming - it's an industry wide problem, which is why synchronization data was recently added to the HDMI 1.3 specification, although I don't believe there are many devices that actually use HDMI 1.3 yet. As an example, I get video/audio synchronization problems with my HD satellite receiver (Sky UK), their technical support have confirmed I'm certainly not the only one, and their only solution so far is to provide options to manually adjust the synchronization.

I therefore hope that Harmonix will include synchronization options, as well as lag options, in Rock Band - which should enable it to work correctly on any setup.

[parastroke7]

I can understand PS2 guitar hero having severe lag problems and having them be uncorrectable, but why X360 Guitar Hero? I've seen all kinds of problems where X360 owners had to calibrate lag.

I wasn't worried until I saw that the 360 version of GHII was having lag problems. If a game is lagging on it's native video setup ( the 360 IS an HD machine after all), then the left and right hand just aren't communicating in production.

[PurpleHaze]

I can understand PS2 guitar hero having severe lag problems and having them be uncorrectable, but why X360 Guitar Hero? I've seen all kinds of problems where X360 owners had to calibrate lag.

I wasn't worried until I saw that the 360 version of GHII was having lag problems. If a game is lagging on it's native video setup ( the 360 IS an HD machine after all), then the left and right hand just aren't communicating in production.Umm ... see my post above, I wasn't making it up ;)

The most likely cause of "unfixable lag" in GH2 is that it's not lag, it's instead a synchronization issue, and the fact that the Xbox 360 is an "HD machine" doesn't make any difference to that. For a start, there's the different "HD" resolutions (480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) - and depending on your TV's native resolution, it may therefore have to upscale or downscale the image, and that takes time, and can throw the video out of synch with the audio, even if only slightly. There's also the issue that it's fairly common for HD setups to have an external audio system, and that external audio system has no idea whether the TV has to do any additional work to process the video, and therefore has no idea whether to delay the audio to match or by how much. It's for these reasons that HDMI is being updated to include synchronization information, and why in the meantime many HD source devices now include options for delaying the audio, so that you can compensate for any synchronization issues.

That's why I said that I hope Rock Band includes synchronization options - as the existing GH2 lag options were designed to fix lag, not to fix synchronization. You could actually argue that such an option should be part of the Xbox 360 system itself, but there's no indication that's going to happen, which leaves it up to Harmonix.

It's also worth pointing out that small synchronization problems are often unnoticeable in normal usage, whereas they can be very noticeable in a rhythm dependent game like Guitar Hero or Rock Band.

If I'm wrong, then anybody from Harmonix, feel free to step in and correct me.

[Kaboobi]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?postid=330819533&highlight=#post330819533

[parastroke7]

Umm ... see my post above, I wasn't making it up ;)

The most likely cause of "unfixable lag" in GH2 is that it's not lag, it's instead a synchronization issue, and the fact that the Xbox 360 is an "HD machine" doesn't make any difference to that. For a start, there's the different "HD" resolutions (480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) - and depending on your TV's native resolution, it may therefore have to upscale or downscale the image, and that takes time, and can throw the video out of synch with the audio, even if only slightly. There's also the issue that it's fairly common for HD setups to have an external audio system, and that external audio system has no idea whether the TV has to do any additional work to process the video, and therefore has no idea whether to delay the audio to match or by how much. It's for these reasons that HDMI is being updated to include synchronization information, and why in the meantime many HD source devices now include options for delaying the audio, so that you can compensate for any synchronization issues.

That's why I said that I hope Rock Band includes synchronization options - as the existing GH2 lag options were designed to fix lag, not to fix synchronization. You could actually argue that such an option should be part of the Xbox 360 system itself, but there's no indication that's going to happen, which leaves it up to Harmonix.

It's also worth pointing out that small synchronization problems are often unnoticeable in normal usage, whereas they can be very noticeable in a rhythm dependent game like Guitar Hero or Rock Band.

If I'm wrong, then anybody from Harmonix, feel free to step in and correct me.

hahah. I'm sorry Haze. Much like a whippersnapper, I totally didn't process what you were trying to say on the post above this one.

I think I understand it better now. All we can do for now, though, is cross our fingers as hard as we can...to the point where cartilage can be heard snapping for anyone within earshot.

[PurpleHaze]

hahah. I'm sorry Haze. Much like a whippersnapper, I totally didn't process what you were trying to say on the post above this one.

I think I understand it better now. All we can do for now, though, is cross our fingers as hard as we can...to the point where cartilage can be heard snapping for anyone within earshot.No worries :)

The way I see it, all they need to do is change the existing option to a video only basis, and add a separate option and calibration for audio - that should be enough information to work out both the lag and the synchronization difference between the video and audio.

[PurpleHaze]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?postid=330819533&highlight=#post330819533

And, just for reference, I'll include the contents of that link:


"I think this might be interesting enough for a big blog post on rockband.com. We did a massive in-depth analysis to where lag was being introduced, and found some really suprising things that caused us to write a whole new calibration system, as well as some other insanely cool stuff on the hardware end."

Good to know, that sounds pretty reassuring. And I would definitely be interested in a Harmonix blog on that topic.

[jpw21683]

Haze, you have described the exact problem I've run into with GH2 on 360.

As for my setup, I have a Sanyo PLV-Z4 720p projector and a Yamaha RX-V661 receiver. On the PS2 version of GH2, there was a delay in my projector upscaling the widescreen 480p image from the PS2 for display, so calibrating the lag to around 40ms-60ms fixed the problem.

I have my 360 running at 720p, so there is zero video lag whatsoever. However, the audio is slightly out-of-sync. The audio is BEHIND the video; this makes the built-in lag calibration useless, as it's used for when the video is behind the audio. My receiver's built-in audio calibration is useless to, as it can only DELAY the audio up to 100ms. (And yes, I've made sure it's set for 0ms.)

I thought that my receiver might be doing some kind of processing, delaying the audio output. However, even with the audio set to "Straight Thru" it does the same thing.

I've tried both optical and analog connections, two different 360s, and three different A/V receivers, and they all display the sync problem with my projector. I wonder if one of the new HDMI 360s would work?!? Prolly not...

So please, Harmonix, for the love of God, include some kind of A/V sync tool in Rock Band. I have been a puchaser of Harmonix games waaay back since Frequency. I bought the 360 GH2 w/2 guitars, after already owning it and two guitars for PS2, for the following reasons: pretty HD graphics and EXTENSIVE downloadable content (including the GH1 songs, which I'd finally be able to play on my setup!). I've been extremely disappointed and frustrated, as the game is essentially unplayable on expert. Rock Band looks amazing, and I want to play it, so PLEASE make it so I can!!!

[theLoser]

I'm still stuck in low def so I rarley get lag.

theLoser

[hmxsean]

So please, Harmonix, for the love of God, include some kind of A/V sync tool in Rock Band.

We are doing everything within reason (and a few things outside of that) to make this as painless as possible. I can't pretend to know the ins and outs of this as well as some, but there are people working really hard on this issue who are far smarter than I. So that's good. Because if I was working on it the solution would be to have a program in the game that makes fun of you if you have a better television than me. Not a good workaround.

[jpw21683]

We are doing everything within reason (and a few things outside of that) to make this as painless as possible. I can't pretend to know the ins and outs of this as well as some, but there are people working really hard on this issue who are far smarter than I. So that's good. Because if I was working on it the solution would be to have a program in the game that makes fun of you if you have a better television than me. Not a good workaround.

Thank you for the reply, kind sir! I can sleep easier at night knowing this.

Your solution sounds pretty good too, but hopefully the real one will be a little more helpful. :)

[parastroke7]

I have confidence in HMX to make this game lag / sync problem free, for all. I just hope the problem really is fixed this time around.

[PurpleHaze]

I wonder if one of the new HDMI 360s would work?!? Prolly not...As I understand it, the 360 models with HDMI are currently only using HDMI 1.2, and therefore don't include the new video/audio synchronization of HDMI 1.3 - so I don't think it would make any difference.

[McDeezy]

If it really comes down to it. I'll play on an OLD CRT TV. I dont mind at all.

[WildWalker]

The lag is an issue with your Screen, not the game, so not much point giving it the Why Harmonix Why bit really.

If your TV is slow to process the signals, then yeah your gonna get lag. Also, depending on what your Screen is doing (upscaling/scan coverting/post processing) the delay (lag) may not be constant, causing lag with differing delay times.

On your Screen, if you have any toys (like the ones that try to make the image look better) then turn them off, then your screen will do less image processing.

WW

[PurpleHaze]

"I think this might be interesting enough for a big blog post on rockband.com. We did a massive in-depth analysis to where lag was being introduced, and found some really suprising things that caused us to write a whole new calibration system, as well as some other insanely cool stuff on the hardware end."
Just for reference, the blog mentioned above has now been posted: link (http://community.rockband.com/index.php?do=/public/blog/view/id_497/)

It's an interesting description of the problems and solutions, and it sounds like they really have covered all of the bases this time, including A/V synchronization calibration and options - which is excellent news.

[jpw21683]

Just for reference, the blog mentioned above has now been posted: link (http://community.rockband.com/index.php?do=/public/blog/view/id_497/)

It's an interesting description of the problems and solutions, and it sounds like they really have covered all of the bases this time, including A/V synchronization calibration and options - which is excellent news.

Thanks for sharing the link, PurpleHaze. That is excellent news indeed!

And WildWalker, why don't you read before posting? As I explained in my previous posts, on GH2 for the 360 video is being displayed BEFORE the corresponding audio plays. If this were an issue with my display, aka video lag, the video would display AFTER the audio plays. (And for the record, my receiver is set for 0ms delay, so I have no idea what's causing the problem.)
Is it too much to ask to see if the game will work with our setups before dropping $200+ on it?

[jpw21683]

After reading that blog entry, I was intrigued after reading the following:


This gets worse again if you’re sending a 5.1 signal, since creating and sending the signal adds even more audio latency

I set my Xbox 360's audio to stereo, booted up GH2, and now there's zero lag! The game plays perfectly! I can't believe I hadn't thought of this sooner.

It's a bummer I'll have to switch it back to surround sound when playing another game, but oh well. Back to expert single-player mode!