A Case Study of First Person Aiming at Low Latency for Esports

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of reducing local system latency in FPS esports, showing that even latency below 20 ms significantly impacts aiming performance and fairness in competitive gaming.

Contribution

The study provides new empirical data demonstrating the critical role of sub-20 ms latency in aiming accuracy and fairness in esports, extending prior research.

Findings

Latency below 20 ms still affects aiming performance.

Reducing local latency enhances fairness among competitors.

Diminishing returns observed below 40 ms in prior studies.

Abstract

Lower computer system input-to-output latency substantially reduces many task completion times. In fact, literature shows that reduction in targeting task completion time from decreased latency often exceeds the decrease in latency alone. However, for aiming in first person shooter (FPS) games, some prior work has demonstrated diminishing returns below 40 ms of local input-to-output computer system latency. In this paper, we review this prior art and provide an additional case study with data demonstrating the importance of local system latency improvement, even at latency values below 20 ms. Though other factors may determine victory in a particular esports challenge, ensuring balanced local computer latency among competitors is essential to fair competition.