2009/8/13 Anthony Sorace <[email protected]>: > Devon H. O'Dell<[email protected]> wrote: > // This is easily demonstrable with rhythm games (such as Rock > // Band or Guitar Hero) where latency induced by a home audio > // system (mine at home is about 15ms induced by my receiver > // and 5ms using the Xbox digital output) can have a very > // significant negative impact on gameplay when one plays > // primarily by sound. > > It's worth noting that the differences injected by typical home > components are significant enough that, at least in all the > versions of these games I've played, the designers have built in > a way for you to calibrate the audio against the video.
Indeed. Early versions of the game only allowed you to do audio lag calibration and made no video compensation (see: Guitar Hero 1 and 2; Guitar Hero 3; Rock Band was the first to introduce both). This ended up making the game even harder, because the gameplay is really a combination of audio and video cues. > // (Sound cues are easier to keep beat by than visual). > > The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a Guitar Hero set up in the > lobby, but you need to bring your own headphones. I didn't have > any on me, so tried playing by sight only. It went really poorly. Even though I'm fairly adept at these games (probably top 100ish on drums and I used to be top 50 on guitar; I'm much worse at that now), playing on mute is noticeably more difficult. A good friend of mine who was #1 on guitar for quite some time was able to do it almost effortlessly, though. If you can keep time well, it's easy. However, that assumes no video latency. If there is video latency, it sucks. --dho
