It's not a 'normal' scale of quality like having different levels of PC hardware.
It either works perfectly, or is completely unplayable.
There's a low cap on the maximum market size based on peoples internet quality.
Anyone who's written game netcode(either as a hobby or professionally) knows that you build the game design and game engine from the ground up to tolerate latency.
For action games most of the time it's all about building a game design where you're predicting(either via physical location or other player's actions), except in the few rare cases that do time-rewinding(most fighting games, some FPSes that combine both, most notably Counter-Strike). This is usually handled by dead-reckoning[1]
For large scale, low bandwidth games(AKA RTSes and the like where gamestate is deterministic) that's handled via lock-step[2]. The gamestate is 100% deterministic and all clients move together with a shared set of inputs in "lock step".
Both of these approaches can be tolerant to latencies up to ~600ms(back in the ole 28.8/56k days of '97 SubSpace[3] was doing ~300 players in one zone with a high skill curve and a robust netcode). They usually mask it with client side reactions that are then reconciled with the server in a robust way. If you're just dropping video frames over a network stack none of that is available to you no matter how fancy your FEC or other tricks are.
Somehow I've now got the urge to go dust off the Continuum client again and boot up SubSpace.
[1] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131638/dead_reckoning...
[2] https://meseta.medium.com/netcode-concepts-part-3-lockstep-a...
[3] https://store.steampowered.com/app/352700/Subspace_Continuum...
I can deal with 1080p playing old ps2/3 games through an online service, or modern with the same resolution but high settings with snappy controls.
I cannot play a game with noticeable input lag whatsoever, even if it was at 4k HDR 144hz.
But the prediction is exactly what makes it feel unresponsive. So the human perception is input lag, regardless of what causes that feeling.
You'd think that "serious gamers" would obsess over the merits of games (mechanics, plot, level design, gameplay, etc), not the technical minutiae of framerates and input lag. That term always seemed odd to me.
Generally, I agree. But to me, input lag and performance does impact.
Like watching a movie cam rip with choppy audio. You can still admire the film, but it's not going to be a pleasant experience compared to watching it in the cinema.
> I cannot play a game with noticeable input lag whatsoever, even if it was at 4k HDR 144hz. People are surprisingly tolerant of different latencies. Many Vsync implementations end up with 4-5 frames of latency, which ends up around 75ms, and consoles that run at 30FPS (or 20 FPS like some N64 classics!) can be in excess of 100ms. If the game is designed around it, people will adapt (just like people adapt to 24fps movies).
I agree though, if you want games to feel like your is physically connected, 10-20ms is what most folks in the VR industry are targeting.
They will be playing with bluetooth gamepads (5ms latency) on their TV (10-20ms latency) using Wifi (5-10ms latency), so the internet streaming delay of <10ms from an edge server will be barely noticeable.
For example, Stadia is featuring "Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris" which is a perfect game for high-latency unskilled casual play.
(FWIW I heavily use Steam's streaming client so I'm pretty familiar with most of the failure modes, it doesn't work great for everything but is convenient when the game style and network performance overlap)
Look at how people use javascript for client side coding but go or rust for the back end -- the service provider pays for back end resources and they are always going to be niggardly when it comes to cpu, gpu, etc.
At first I was surprised by the playability of Stadia at such a slow connection myself but even though I cannot play shooter games I wouldn't go as far to call the experience I get with the 10 Mbps connection 'unplayable'.
a) in a metro area that has a major internet exchange. Hurricane Electric's list of pops is a decent start: http://he.net/ip_transit.html Some of those locations are more well connected than others though. In the US, prime exchanges are really LA, SF/SJ, Seattle, Reston, New York, Miami, Dallas, Chicago. If you settle near a lesser exchange like say Denver, you'll probably have good connectivity to many networks, but many services don't have a datacenter in Denver. Also, some companies are trying to put their big datacenters farther north to save on cooling and energy costs, so bias north if possible; however, if you want excellent connectivity to South America, much of that goes through Miami.
If you're in Canada, Vancouver or Toronto are your best bets. In South America, Sao Paulo or Bogota (but note, connectivity is sparse between countries, it historically all went through Miami, but that's changed a bit). In Europe, Amsterdam, London or Frankfurt? In Asia, Singapore or Taipei. In Africa, Johanesburg. In AU/NZ, reportedly it kind of all sucks, but Melbourne/Syndey/Auckland are okish.
b) not on DSL; usually it's run with settings that guarantee you 20 ms ping to the first hop. Be careful because some of the DSL providers imply fiber to the home, but really mean fiber to the DSLAM (or whatever it's called today).
c) fiber is better than cable, but cable is ok as long as the company isn't incompetent. Comcast is much maligned, but their network is actually pretty good; local areas could be mismanaged though.
d) you need to actually put potential addresses into the sign up for service pages. Put the one you're looking at, as well as the neighbors; if you get prompts like 'you've already got service, would you like to manage it', that's a good sign that they probably actually service the address. Listed available speeds to addresses that are current customers are more likely to be accurate as well. If there's a public utility fiber, check their fiber map, but don't expect to hear back from them with firm availability or not in time to make a decision on your prospective living arrangement.