[Bloat] Fixing bufferbloat in 2017

[Jonathan Morton]

> On 28 Nov, 2016, at 19:07, Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> (as well as VR ones)

VR gaming *is* pretty hot right now.  Even the consoles are trying to get in on it, though I’m skeptical if even the just-upgraded consoles have the horsepower to really keep up.

The big thing about VR is that latency and framerate matter about 100x more than they do with a normal, 2D-projected game, because the realism factor is stepped up by using “natural” movements to control viewpoint and aimpoint instead of interpolating a mouse and keyboard.  Most of the (reputable) VR headset guys recommend a solid 90fps and absolutely minimal input-to-display lag to avoid motion sickness.

To put that into perspective, most monitors on peoples’ desks right now top out at  60Hz, and the equivalent responsiveness of a “fairly good” Internet connection is 20-30Hz.  Fortunately, the latter mostly impacts the movements of other objects in the game world, not the player himself - but there are counterexamples, especially in competitive multiplayer games.

I’m still keen on representing network latency as its reciprocal, “responsiveness”, which carries the same unit as framerate and is thereby made intuitively intelligible to gaming enthusiasts.  Admittedly most multiplayer gamers are by now familiar with “ping” in milliseconds, but they probably haven’t done the arithmetic to relate it to framerate and thus understand its relative importance.

 - Jonathan Morton