Let's revisit the Win 4 screen latency issue, something they need to get rid off for Win 5
People don't talk about this enough. It's a massive hinderance to the quality of gameplay. especially in fast paced or knee jerk reactions in games.
This was posted a few years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/gpdwin/comments/1448rqi/gpd_please_fix_the_win4_input_lag_issue/
It showcases a whopping 3 frame latency vs GPD win 3, and you can only imagine what latency the win 3 has, as these are probably not high quality near-0 ms displays we're dealing with. like your actuqal desktop monitor.
3x16 (frame time) is 48, 48ms of latency + whatever else the base latency is. Most perceivable latency starts at 50ms for video according to google. In audio recording, 10ms is noticeable in audio latency, so in reality 50ms is probably forgiving until you have to do fast paced gameplay, which is when below 50ms is noticeable anyways. Alone, it's manageable, for most applications, but it can be felt in some cases, again, in faster paced games, or accuracy dependent games.
My issues I've experienced:
- Emulation. On retroarch, I usually crank the frame delay as high as I can to reduce latency. Going from the win 3 to the win 4, I could feel it on some games. You can do run ahead latency to compensate but I prefer frame delay. It can feel a bit sluggish. The issue with frame delay is that it is more process intensive to get higher numbers and reduce latency.
- Frame generation and it's latency stacking on top of the screen's latency. I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 and the gyro and car controls are so sluggish with LSFG on. It looks amazing, but the gameplay is so out of sync sometimes that it hurts the gameplay experience.Frame generation is great tech and I could be playing it at 60 fps. LSFG 3.0 just released and greatly reduced the latency. It went from unusable to usable but sluggish. It wouldn't be an issue if the screen latency wasn't bad and adding onto it.
- competitive or fast gameplay. Now these devices aren't probably going to get you the best results for playing against people online, but they could help a lot by making everything as optimal as it can be. Reaction time is super important here, Every ounce of latency adds up to how slower you are to everything else.
GPD focuses on utilizing the best hardware for their controller so we get the best experience. We have tactile triggers and high quality sticks, compared to when I started on the win 1, which had rubber membrane buttons that would break over time, and one of the worst dpads i've ever felt before, but now, everything is top notch, which brings me to my point:
If they're focusing on making everything optimal why skip out on making sure the screen works well? Latency is a lot more important than people give it credit.
GPD, please focus on this and make sure the win 5 doesn't suffer the same issue.