Wireless keyboard and mouse latency

[charlie21]

My parents recently upgraded their keyboard/mouse setup to a wireless pair. My little brother, who spends the majority of his waking hours playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein, swears that they don't respond as quickly in his game as the corded variety. He especially complains about the mouse. I told him that he was just making up excuses, but what do you guys think? Is there a penalty associated with going from a corded PS/2 to a USB wireless setup? Can this be part of the reason I spend most of my time dead in CounterStrike?

Charlie

 

[littlegohan]

ur brother is correct

and ur dismal record in
CS is due to two things

skills and ur mouse

with skills being the more important factor

 

[charlie21]

Anyone have any numbers on this? I couldn't find any. It makes sense, but I couldn't find any stats.

Charlie

 

[charlie21]

Okay, found a link, looks like the higher end optical solutions are capable of performing on par with their tethered cousins.

Charlie

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: charlie21
Okay, found a link, looks like the higher end optical solutions are capable of performing on par with their tethered cousins.

Charlie

I play a lot of Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer games.

I use the old Logitech Cordless Mouseman Wheel (the one with 5 buttons and a big contour design ball mouse) and I have never noticed any lag difference between it and a Logitech Mouseman Wheel (corded). Maybe I'm just old and slow.

Ok, I read your link and the white paper posted on that page. Sounds like marketing hype to me. Logitech claims a 2.5 times improvement from "old" wireless mouse technology Reports per Second to 125 times per second. That means the old tech delivered 50 Reports per second. That's 1 report every 0.02 seconds, or every 20 milliseconds. I suppose that it's possible that someone with really fast reflexes could detect the lag, but it doesn't seem very likely.

That being said, I want a MX700!

 

[mrman3k]

Okay, I just got the cordless Logitech Elite duo which comes with the cordless Elite keyboard and some craptastic cordless mouse. As for the keyboard, there is no lag that I can detect. However, the mouse is a completely different story, it has lag problems and is making me suck in CS, so I just have been fooling around in CS until my MX700 arrives. Then I would say I have the ultimate cordless desktop. I decided against the MS Bluetooth combo since the mouse still doesn't seem as good as the MX700. Plus I don't need 30ft range. By the way, the cordless Elite works up to 8ft for me with no problems when Logitech only claimed 6ft. So I have been very pleased by this keyboard. The mouse I just don't know what to do with it.

 

[charlie21]

MrMan - That's the same setup that I have and that is exactly how things feel for me. I remember the first time I plugged it in that I thought the mouse felt just a tad sluggish. No worries with the keyboard, though. This makes sense though, the mouse has a little more work to do than the keyboard.

tk149 - I've seen my brother play, he's pretty quick...

No, seriously, I read that in the whitepaper and I follow your math, but I noticed it also mentioned that it does not exceed 125 reports per second because of limitations inherent in the USB bus. So I guess another question would be is how much latency (if any) do you incur going from PS/2 to USB? With USB, evidently the average latency is ~20ms. Not a lot, but let's say you have a 150ms ping to your game server, and that 20ms delay causes you to miss the boat on a packet getting sent out. Now that will lead to a tangible delay. I never really noticed much until I started gaming online, and my little bro is adamant about this. Any avid online gamers out there with wireless setups?

Charlie

 

[HalfCrazy]

I'm using a wireless Logitech keyboard on my system. I had there wireless ball mouse but after I had the mouse for a while. The darn mouse would stop working because the rollers would not move. I got so sick of it I bought the Logitech 'Optical Wheel Mouse' corded.

For the keyboard proformance I can't see or feel any lag. I can take the keyboard 2 rooms away from the computer and still use it. It's very hard to see the monitor though walls.

 

[stultus]

MX700 here, no lag at all.

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: charlie21
MrMan - That's the same setup that I have and that is exactly how things feel for me. I remember the first time I plugged it in that I thought the mouse felt just a tad sluggish. No worries with the keyboard, though. This makes sense though, the mouse has a little more work to do than the keyboard.

tk149 - I've seen my brother play, he's pretty quick...

No, seriously, I read that in the whitepaper and I follow your math, but I noticed it also mentioned that it does not exceed 125 reports per second because of limitations inherent in the USB bus. So I guess another question would be is how much latency (if any) do you incur going from PS/2 to USB? With USB, evidently the average latency is ~20ms. Not a lot, but let's say you have a 150ms ping to your game server, and that 20ms delay causes you to miss the boat on a packet getting sent out. Now that will lead to a tangible delay. I never really noticed much until I started gaming online, and my little bro is adamant about this. Any avid online gamers out there with wireless setups?

Charlie

Good point. My Cordless Logitech Mouseman Wheel is PS/2, not USB. Another 20 ms lag from USB added on to the 20 ms lag inherent in the mouse RF processing/broadcast itself for a total of 40 ms would definitely be perceptible (especially for kids with their darn fast reflexes). In Wolfenstein, it'd be the difference between a frag and being fragged.

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I'll remember to stick with PS/2 mice from now on.

 

[charlie21]

Originally posted by: tk149

Good point. My Cordless Logitech Mouseman Wheel is PS/2, not USB. Another 20 ms lag from USB added on to the 20 ms lag inherent in the mouse RF processing/broadcast itself for a total of 40 ms would definitely be perceptible (especially for kids with their darn fast reflexes). In Wolfenstein, it'd be the difference between a frag and being fragged.

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I'll remember to stick with PS/2 mice from now on.

Actually, I misphrased that. The 20 ms is the average reporting time of a standard wireless mouse. I gathered that from that the Logitech white paper. I have no idea how fast the USB bus operates in comparison to PS/2. I just dug up an old corded PS/2 mouse and I'm headed out to GameSpy right now. Just for scientific testing purposes, of course.

Charlie

 

[tk149]

Originally posted by: charlie21

Originally posted by: tk149

Good point. My Cordless Logitech Mouseman Wheel is PS/2, not USB. Another 20 ms lag from USB added on to the 20 ms lag inherent in the mouse RF processing/broadcast itself for a total of 40 ms would definitely be perceptible (especially for kids with their darn fast reflexes). In Wolfenstein, it'd be the difference between a frag and being fragged.

Thanks for bringing up this topic. I'll remember to stick with PS/2 mice from now on.

Actually, I misphrased that. The 20 ms is the average reporting time of a standard wireless mouse. I gathered that from that the Logitech white paper. I have no idea how fast the USB bus operates in comparison to PS/2. I just dug up an old corded PS/2 mouse and I'm headed out to GameSpy right now. Just for scientific testing purposes, of course.

Charlie

Let us know what your results are!

 

[charlie21]

Nope, doesn't matter, I still suck.

Charlie

 

[Rhombuss]

The wireless keyboard shouldn't be a problem, as it's not a matter of tracking. But wireless technology in mice still has a few ways to go. I stopped using Microsoft's Wireless Intellimouse Explorer after a few hours of gaming and went back to my Explorer 3. The delay won't make too much of a difference in RTS or RPG games, but for FPS games, it can throw you off a lot. Apparently, Logitech's MX700 is the closest thing to 0 delay in wireless mouse technology at the moment.