A Case Study of First Person Aiming at Low Latency for Esports
This is an incremental study that addresses fairness in esports competition by emphasizing balanced low latency among competitors.
The paper tackles the problem of how low computer system latency affects aiming performance in first-person shooter esports, finding that improvements below 20 ms remain important despite prior claims of diminishing returns below 40 ms.
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.