Minimizing Your Lag When Playing Brawl Online (Updated 01.21.08 Wii VGA Cable Info)
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I thought it would be a good idea to inform the community of ways to reduce the latency that will inevitably come with online play. People say online is going to lag and suck, but it really does not have to if you and your friends fix your lag (and are somewhat close). (I tried to bold the important parts, because I know people will not read all of it.)
For those of you who do not know, for our purposes, latency (measured in milliseconds or ms) is the time it takes for a packet of data sent from one point to get to an other point, basically lag. Assuming Brawl has is played at 60 frames per second (fps) like Melee, each frame lasts 1/60 of a second or about 17 ms. So <17 ms total latency would give an ideal Smash playing environment. Now, you could probably play with more than that, but for very precise moves (power shielding, teching, really fast combos , etc.) much more than 17 ms would cause trouble. Also, if you adjust to time everything with a 50 ms latency, when you play in your room with much less latency your timing might be considerably off.
1) Latency from Distance
Information can only pass between points as fast as light can travel between those points, in most situations signals do not even reach that ideal speed. For a copper wire, the speed of the signal is the speed of the electromagnetic field through the wire, which should be about 1.2*10^8 ms (in theory). For a fiber optic cable, the speed of the signal is the same as the speed the photons will travel through it, which should be about 2*10^8 m/s (in theory). I will leave out the details about how I got those numbers. I suggest that everyone who really wants to play people online, get some form of fiber optic internet connection (like Verizon FiOS) even though its uncertain exactly what your signal is going through or if it really has lower latency, because of the theoretical speed difference. If you want to do the calculations, its also important to consider that the wires will not be in straight lines when calculating the latency, however below I explained a simpler way to estimate the latency from distance and internet hardware, which should be sufficient for smash purposes.
2) Latency from Internet Hardware
I do not have exact numbers for this, but for my laptop, connecting to a network wirelessly has more latency, enough to hinder good smash play most likely, compared to connecting with an ethernet cord. The Wii LAN Adapter should help reduce latency by letting you connect with an ethernet cord. Also connecting directly to your modem (bypassing your router) may reduce a small amount lag. If you are using wireless, you may want to consider not using encryption. Decoding an encrypted wireless packet may add to the latency, so turning off your wireless network's encryption while you play may also reduce some lag.
3) Latency from Video Conversion
Changing between digital and analog signals can add to latency. For example, using a HDTV and playing Wii with a analog cable can add to latency if your TV is trying to scale the signal to look better on your TV. Some HDTVs have the option to disable digital processing, which reduces lag overall (use this, even though it may look worse). Also if you have some kind of adapter that converts your signal, that may also add to latency.
4) Latency from Video Hardware
Most normal TVs using the analog Wii connecting cables should have <5 ms latency. A lot of HDTVs are known to have up to 20 ms or more of lag. If you want to play Brawl in widescreen 480p, there a few options. A low latency monitor with component input like any of these should work. If you want something a bit cheaper, you could get a monitor with little lag but no component input like these and get a component to VGA converter (like the X2vga, Vd-z3, or KD-XB). Keep in mind this will probably add a bit of lag, but will bring the cost down a lot. I am looking into finding the exact number for the latency these converters cause. If you have to get a HDTV, get an LCD TV like these. There is a somewhat new 3rd party cable that connects the Wii directly to any monitor with a VGA connection (its basically like the converters above, but in a cable form). It could be a cheap solution for playing in 480p. However, its practicality will depend on how much lag it produces and the lag of monitors available to you.
5) Other Forms of Latency
Maybe, there are other forms of latency. There is probably a bit more latency using the wireless wiimote/wavebird (around 1 ms?) versus plugging in a wired gamecube controller (should be negligable). Since the difference is so small, I suggest not to worry about the controller, and use whichever is best for you.
Finding out your Smash Latency to different places
Smash Latency: The time it takes for a signal to travel from your opponent's Wii to your Wii to that your TV plus the time it takes for a signal to travel from your controller to your Wii to your opponent's Wii again. The reason I chose to define it like this is, because this can be directly compared to the time interval you have to respond to do a certain action.
Sum the latency in each of these:
The time it takes for a signal to travel from your Wii to your opponent's Wii AND BACK to your Wii (considers distance and internet hardware)(this should be same as the result from the ping to your opponent from below)
Your Monitor/TV (should be < 5 ms, if you set it up right)
Your Controller (should be negligible, unless its a wireless controller, even then it should be small)
Your Additional Things (like converters)
A rough estimate from the math (using the speed of the signals to find the latency from distance) suggests that a good match will be possible within 500 km and a decent match will be possible within 2500 km. However, there are factors that are difficult to take into account of when finding lag from distance so its better to use the method below.
Finding the time it takes for a signal to travel from your Wii to your opponent's Wii AND BACK to your Wii: (based on ShortFuse's suggestion to use ping)
Press Windows Key + R (opens run)
Type "cmd /k ping ___" and press Enter (opens the command prompt and pings your target), where ___ is the IP address of your target (your opponent or a server you know the location of)(doesn't work if you have a firewall)
This will give you an average latency when can be used above to find your Smash Latency. An easier way would be to go to a website that finds latencies, ex:
http://www.speedtest.net/ (this website gives a general idea, but some pings are unreasonable; the direct ping probably has much better accuracy).
I think it would be a good idea if someone could put together a some kind of web tool to let smashboards members ping each other, maybe written in Java or something. It would be helpful to know who you can play before you start the battle Its sort of hassle to ping everyone you want to play.
Interpreting the Smash Latency
I defined the Smash Latency so that it is directly comparable the amount of time you have to do a certain action. Just compare the amount of time you have to do a certain technique to the Smash Latency. If the latency is more, then you will likely have trouble with it, and if it is less then you will be able to do the technique as you do normally. For example, if a technique needs 1 frame of precision, and your smash latency is more than 1 frame (about 17 ms), its likely that you will find this technique difficult to do RELATIVE TO DOING THE MOVE WITH CLOSE TO ZERO SMASH LATENCY.
This does not mean its impossible to adjust to the lag and do that technique, however if the Smash Latency changes (if you are playing a different opponent online or playing locally), then you will have to readjust to that amount of lag. The most game breaking issue will likely be inconstant latencies in the same battle. It will be difficult to guess how much to compensate for the lag when its changing significantly during the battle.
Let clarifying some things:
Bandwidth is not latency, and they are usually unrelated. It does not matter how many KB/s or MB/s your connection has. Latency is related to how fast the signal gets somewhere, while bandwidth is related to how much data gets somewhere in some time.
Smash Latency or Ping vary depending on the location of your opponent, so its meaningless to say my ping is ___ or my latency is ___ unless you specify where that is to.
