Display lag

Display lag is a phenomenon associated with some types of LCD displays, and nearly all types of HDTVs, that refers to latency, or lag measured by the difference between the time a signal is input into a display and the time it is shown by the display. This lag time has been measured as high as 68ms,^[1] or the equivalent of 3-4 frames on a 60 Hz display. Display lag is not to be confused with pixel response time.

Causes of display lag

While the pixel response time of the display is usually listed in the monitor's specifications, no manufacturers advertise the display lag of their displays, likely because the trend has been to increase display lag as manufacturers find more ways to process input at the display level before it is shown. Possible culprits are the processing overhead of HDCP, DRM, and also DSP techniques employed to reduce the effects of ghosting - and the cause may vary depending on the model of display. Investigations have been performed by several technology related websites; some of which are listed at the bottom of this article.

LCD, plasma, and DLP displays, unlike CRTs, have a native resolution. That is, they have a fixed grid of pixels on the screen that show the image sharpest when running at the native resolution (so nothing has to be scaled full-size which blurs the image). In order to display non-native resolutions, such displays must use video scalers, which are built into most modern monitors. As an example, a display that has a native resolution of 1600x1200 being provided a signal of 640x480 must scale width and height by 2.5x to display the image provided by the computer on the native pixels. In order to do this while producing as few artifacts as possible, advanced signal processing is required, which can be a source of introduced latency. Interlaced video signals such as 480i and 1080i require a deinterlacing step that adds lag. Anecdotally, display lag is significantly less when displays operate in native resolutions for a given LCD screen and in a progressive scanning mode. External devices have also been shown to reduce overall latency by providing faster image-space resizing algorithms than those present in the LCD screen.

Many LCDs also use a technology called "overdrive" which buffers several frames ahead and processes the image to reduce blurring and streaks left by ghosting. The effect is that everything is displayed on the screen several frames after it was transmitted by the video source.^{[citation needed]}

Testing for display lag

Showing the existence of input lag requires a test display (the display being measured), a control display (usually a CRT) that would ideally have no display lag, a computer capable of mirroring output to two displays, stopwatch software, and a high-speed camera pointed at the two displays running the stopwatch program. The lag time is measured by taking a photograph of the displays running the stopwatch software, then subtracting the two times on the displays in the photograph. This method only measures the difference in display lag between two displays and cannot determine the absolute display lag of a single display. CRTs are preferable to use as a control display because their display lag is typically negligible. Also, video mirroring does not guarantee that the same image will be sent to each display at the same point in time.

In the past it was seen as common knowledge that the results of this test were exact as they seemed to be easily reproducible, even when the displays were plugged into different ports and different cards, which suggested that the effect is attributable to the display and not the computer system. An in depth analysis that has been released on the German website Prad.de revealed that these assumptions have been wrong. Averaging measurements as described above lead to comparable results because they include the same amount of systematic errors. As seen on different monitor reviews the so determined values for the display lag for the very same monitor model differ by margins up to 16 ms or even more.

To minimize the effects of asynchronous display outputs (the points of time an image is transferred to each monitor is different or the actual used frequency for each monitor is different) a highly specialized software called SMTT or a very complex and expensive test environment has to be used.

Several approaches to measure display lag have been restarted in slightly changed ways but still reintroduced old problems, that have already been solved by the former mentioned SMTT. One such method involves connecting a laptop to an HDTV through a composite connection and run a timecode that shows on the laptop's screen and the HDTV simultaneously and recording both screens with a separate video recorder. When the video of both screens is paused, the difference in time shown on both displays have been interpreted as an estimation for the display lag.^[2] Nevertheless this is almost identical to the use of casual stopwatches on two monitors using a "clone view" monitor setup as it does not care about the missing synchronisation between the composite video signal and the display of the laptop's screen or the display lag of that screen or the detail that the vertical screen refresh of the two monitors is still asynchronous and not linked to each other. Even if v-sync is activated in the driver of the graphics card the video signals of the analog and the digital output will not be synchronized. ^[3] Therefore it is impossible to use a single stop watch for display lag measurements, nervertheless if it is created by a timecode or a simple stopwatch application, as it will always cause an error of up to 16 ms or even more.

Effects of display lag on users

Display lag contributes to the overall latency in the interface chain of the user's inputs (mouse, keyboard, etc.) to the graphics card to the monitor. Depending on the monitor, display lag times between 10ms and 68ms have been measured. However, the effects of the delay on the user depend on the user's own sensitivity to it.

Display lag is most noticeable in games (especially older video game consoles), with different games affecting the perception of delay. For instance, in World of Warcraft's PvE, a slight input delay isn't as critical compared to PvP, or to games favoring quick reflexes like Counter-Strike. Rhythm based games such as Guitar Hero also require exact timing; display lag will create a noticeable offset between the music and the on-screen prompts. Notably, many games of this type include an option that attempts to calibrate for display lag. Arguably, fighting games such as Street Fighter and Tekken are the most affected, since they may require move inputs within extremely tight windows that sometimes only last 1-3 frames on screen.

If the game's controller produces additional feedback (rumble, the Wii Remote's speaker, etc.), then the display lag will cause this feedback to not accurately match up with the visuals on-screen, possibly causing extra disorientation (e.g. feeling the controller rumble a split second before a crash into a wall).

Game mode

Many televisions, scalers and other consumer display devices now offer what is often called a "game mode," in which the extensive preprocessing responsible for additional lag is specifically sacrificed to decrease, but not eliminate, latency. While typically intended for videogame consoles, this feature is also useful for other interactive applications. Similar options have long been available on home audio hardware and modems for the same reason.

Display lag versus response time

LCD screens with a high response time value often do not give satisfactory experience when viewing fast moving images (They often leave streaks or blur; called ghosting). But an LCD screen with both high response time and significant display lag is unsuitable for playing fast paced computer games or performing fast high accuracy operations on the screen due to the mouse cursor lagging behind. Manufacturers only state the response time of their displays and do not inform customers of the display lag value.

References

1. ^ "Face to Face cameras, printers, ... - DigitalVersus". http://www.digitalversus.com/duels.php?ty=6&ma1=36&mo1=332&p1=3107&ma2=36&mo2=290&p2=2810&ph=12. Retrieved 2008-03-07. 
2. ^ http://hdtvlag.googlepages.com/ourtest
3. ^ http://www.prad.de/new/monitore/specials/inputlag/inputlag-teil18.html

External links

• Article on PRAD.de - first scientific approach to determine display lag (German)
• SMTT - Highly optimized display lag test software to reduce the error margin that is usual for plain stopwatch applications
• FlatpanelsHD.com - Display lag test software (Dec 15, 2008)
• BeHardware test - LCDs images delayed compared to CRTs? Yes ! (Aug 3, 2006)
• BeHardware tests 22inch TFT monitors for display lag (Dec 19, 2006)
• Article at TFT Central demonstrating 2405FPW display lag (Sep 2, 2006)
• Avs Forum posting on display lag
• Video demonstrating display lag in Quake (June 24, 2006)
• Video demonstrating display lag in UT2003 (June 27, 2006)
• TFT Central - Display lag and TFT features (Oct 29, 2008)
• Video demonstrating display lag in Windows UI (Dec 12, 2006)
• The HDTV-Gaming-Lag Report (July 21, 2006) (Note: this article is compiled from IGN reader opinions and not guaranteed to be accurate)
• Anandtech article about Input Lag (July 16, 2009)