Relmstein points out that lag and WoW's raid encounters don't mix. Even better, he identifies it as a design issue. I think he's got that bang on.

The Theory:

I'm a firm believer that wondrous things can be created while working within limitations. When you're aware of where your walls and ceiling are, that's when you know your craft. You can create truly great things by exploring and filling that space, using much of the volume available, because you've measured it. That's how most things solid and worthwhile get made.

There are many fans of 'pushing limitations'. I can see the merits, I've accoladed the boundary-pushers too. When you see someone come up with a new paradigm, it's exciting. But I wonder sometimes how many of those paradigms are just creative ways to fill the space, with the boundaries still intact.

During the 'dot com' era, I worked in an environment where my boss often said "get it done". He didn't want to hear about any technical obstacles. I call this the Captain Kirk approach to creativity, where Scotty is expected to pull a rabbit out of a hat at the end of the day. In the real world the rabbit comes out limping from the sheer exasperation of trying to achieve the improbable.

Networked gaming:

I have a bit of an interest in latency, packetloss and all of the other issues of network connectivity. Maybe in some other lifetime I'd be a game-related network coder (my math skills lack in this incarnation), those guys have my utmost respect for working within their inherent limitations and delivering the improbable for these games.

Playing Air Warrior smoothly via a 2400 baud modem on GEnie, that fascinated me, especially when I compared it later to the laggy experience during the launch of Ultima Online, or Quake before Quakeworld. The Internet is a difficult network for games to work in, even though some things have become standardized and better understood over time.

Game designers naturally want immediacy and fluid action to work with, but when you push the limits in a networked environment, any sort of lag is going to screw it up.

There must be a ton of clever ways content can be approached with lag in mind, but most of these games just build on what's tried and true, so pushing up against the walls is inevitable. I guess we need some new paradigms. ;)

On the Audiosurf forums, someone brought up keyboard latency as something they'd like to see as an improvement to the game.

Of course, much of keyboard latency is a hardware issue, which makes me wonder why it's rarely brought up. Gamers are usually very discerning with hardware, but this issue gets ignored.

Back during the DOS gaming days, I know that my friends and I would have to hunt down keyboards that worked well with games. Not all keyboards are made equal and aside from tactile choices (squishy keys or clicky keys?), there were issues with keyboards never designed to hold down more than two keys at a time (makes strafing difficult) and of course, latency.

The only current manufacturer that lists keyboard latency in the specs that I know of is Razer, who claim a near-perfect 1ms and say that most keyboards have an abysmal 120ms response time. Logitech claims fast response times for their gaming keyboards but doesn't actually say how fast, I have noticed however that my G15 seems more responsive than previous keyboards.

I haven't had much luck searching for a benchmark tool that could accurately measure and compare keyboard latency, but if I could find one I wouldn't mind starting a project to test and track various keyboards. I know there is bound to be a difference as well in the latency added by the OS and API (DirectX's DirectInput), so some cross-platform testing could be eye-opening as well.

I don't know if such a tool is even possible, but if anyone knows of one, feel free to let me know.

We've had the gaming mouse revolution, maybe it's time for the same with keyboards. Of course I bring this up AFTER I get a G15. =)