The thing with noticing any input lag isn't strictly about the delay between a button press and the game's response. That wouldn't be feasible for appropriately evaluating the delay, given how subtle the difference can get.
It's how that lag remains significant even if it's a minuscule amount, as it affects the feel of character movement in relation to controller's inputs.
Although that doesn't necessarily translate to death sentence, a worse-controlling character can arguably make the game feel less fun to play from a lag-induced shortened reaction timing window. Particularly when considering how the games prior to the Wii U era were designed with the practically instantaneous response time of CRT in mind.
Keep in mind that one frame is 16.67ms at 60 FPS. Half-frame input latency can be felt through how long one frame hangs around before the next one. After all, human eyes are perfectly capable of reading even above 240 FPS.
Sadly, any non-powerful hardware that play retro games through software emulation is bound to introduce some degree of input lag, and runahead also has its own set of drawbacks to consider. Moreover, the framebuffer from every single modern television always have to spend a few milliseconds to generate any display and USB can't assume that all wired and wireless controllers are internally built equal for preventing delay.
The only way to completely abolish the input lag altogether is to rely on the rather expensive FPGA for hardware emulation on a cycle-accurate quality without using an USB controller, or stick with real hardware and a CRT TV.
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The thing with noticing any input lag isn't strictly about the delay between a button press and the game's response. That wouldn't be feasible for appropriately evaluating the delay, given how subtle the difference can get.
It's how that lag remains significant even if it's a minuscule amount, as it affects the feel of character movement in relation to controller's inputs.
Although that doesn't necessarily translate to death sentence, a worse-controlling character can arguably make the game feel less fun to play from a lag-induced shortened reaction timing window. Particularly when considering how the games prior to the Wii U era were designed with the practically instantaneous response time of CRT in mind.
Keep in mind that one frame is 16.67ms at 60 FPS. Half-frame input latency can be felt through how long one frame hangs around before the next one. After all, human eyes are perfectly capable of reading even above 240 FPS.
Sadly, any non-powerful hardware that play retro games through software emulation is bound to introduce some degree of input lag, and runahead also has its own set of drawbacks to consider. Moreover, the framebuffer from every single modern television always have to spend a few milliseconds to generate any display and USB can't assume that all wired and wireless controllers are internally built equal for preventing delay.
The only way to completely abolish the input lag altogether is to rely on the rather expensive FPGA for hardware emulation on a cycle-accurate quality without using an USB controller, or stick with real hardware and a CRT TV.