Google Stadia is out now for early adopters, well a few anyway

Honestly, I've no idea on how to actually accurately measure input lag. Been looking around, doesn't sound like it's even remotely easy to do. The best guides I've seen mention using a really good camera to show both the screen and key presses, which sadly the best I have is a webcam and it's not all that great either. We just don't have the funding to splash on stuff like that.

German magazine c't used a 1000 fps cam. I would guess you have some of those lying around? ;)

Oh yeah, four collecting dust in.....a local store somewhere :P

I am looking forward to some input lag benchmarks. How many milliseconds does it take from you push a button until you get a frame that is affected by it? How much does the input lag vary? Under which conditions does the input lag get too high? I would also like to see some statistics of where the latency is occurring, but this probably requires cooperates from the stadia team.

Honestly, I've no idea on how to actually accurately measure input lag. Been looking around, doesn't sound like it's even remotely easy to do. The best guides I've seen mention using a really good camera to show both the screen and key presses, which sadly the best I have is a webcam and it's not all that great either. We just don't have the funding to splash on stuff like that.

I didn't expect you to do these measurements, but I hope someone will do it and that I will learn about it. From the scientific side of this, I have found some articles about cloud gaming, but I still have questions they haven't answered yet. I have not done a comprehensive search though.

As for designing latency measuring experiments, I would look into a keylogger, measuring the time accurately, and record the desktop at the same time, with an accurate timestamp. It is probably a good idea to test both with and without keylogger and desktop recording to see if it feels different. I believe the extra latency added by e.g. obs would be predictable enough that we can compensate when analysing the results. At least within in error of about 2 ms. If I record obs with obs including a clock with microseconds, I see that the difference between the first and the second clock is about 32-34 milliseconds with a frame rendering time at around 7.5 ms at 30 FPS shown in obs stats. This shows that the previous clock is exactly one frame behind the current frame, and the timestamps match up when I step through the video.


Last edited by Ketil on 20 Nov 2019 at 1:56 pm UTC

I believe the extra latency added by e.g. obs would be predictable enough that we can compensate when analysing the results. At least within in error of about 2 ms. If I record obs with obs including a clock with microseconds, I see that the difference between the first and the second clock is about 32-34 milliseconds with a frame rendering time at around 7.5 ms at 30 FPS shown in obs stats. This shows that the previous clock is exactly one frame behind the current frame, and the timestamps match up when I step through the video.

From the few measurements that I read about, latency is estimated between 100-200 ms. So that amount of accuracy is much better than what is needed.

The trailer is cringe indeed

Well that gives me a little hope. What connection speed? How far away was your Chromecast from your router?

My internet is gigabit, on Xfinity. I don't get the full gigabit speed, but it is still plenty fast (maybe 700Mb). I did have a similar experience during the beta on 250Mb internet.

My router is maybe 15 feet away or so from where I setup my Chromecast.

I also live in Chicago; I wonder if I'm close to an edge server, which might account for my low latency.

The trailer is cringe indeed

Oh I'm sure the trailer can't be that ba....what the heck was that thing?! This is why adverts shouldn't be made while on drugs.

When I saw it I thought "Why are such drugs only given to advertising clowns?!? :D

What can an ad do more than having lots of people talking about it?

You can check the Wikipedia page on sound latency to have an interesting discussion on that subject. It seems that musicians and sound engineers have studied this for a long time.
For instance, each meters adds a 3ms sound latency; and, when earing your own voice, a 15ms latency is noticeable.
That gives you a little more respect for the work of musicians when they try to work together onstage.

I pre-ordered, and have been conflicted over the value of the service, but yesterday decided to cancel.

Originally I (probably very naively) wanted to support Stadia because it runs on Linux, and hoped the long term effect would be more Linux native games. I also thought Stadia might be the most legitimate way to play Borderlands 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. But neither of those games are available on Stadia yet, and will likely be on Steam at the same time they hit Stadia, making me wonder why I would get them on Stadia.

However, yesterday I went to the pub and didn't cancel; my Stadia kit is arriving tomorrow!

I do get a Chromecast which I wanted anyway (especially since Amazon Prime now supports it), my partner has a Pixel 3 so I'll 'borrow' that for testing, and it might be a solution for the kids wanting to replace an aging gaming laptop.

But the lack of included (free) and interesting (to me) games, means this might just end up being a tech demo for now.

People got both the hardware and code yesterday, who ordered months after the first lot did after they went up. Google messed up badly.

So someone confused a FIFO with a LIFO queue? Come on, that could have happened to the best of us! And it's not like Google has a strong standing in software development :‑D.

People got both the hardware and code yesterday, who ordered months after the first lot did after they went up. Google messed up badly.

So someone confused a FIFO with a LIFO queue? Come on, that could have happened to the best of us! And it's not like Google has a strong standing in software development :‑D.

Yup. My hardware comes tomorrow, yet I ordered start of October. There's people who ordered in June, who won't get it until December.

As for the Stadia team, they've now decided to just repeat this line to everyone who hasn't been given a code to even access the service (even after delivery of the hardware):

Hi there, we're sorry for the delay. We're aware that some users may not have received their invite codes in the expected time frame. We've now continued to roll out codes in the sequence in which we received your pre-order. Thanks for bearing with us.

I think the order in which people are getting their orders might come down to local supply. I ordered on June 6 and got both my physical order and code yesterday; however, it shipped out from a warehouse near me so maybe that is why I got it so quickly?

Hard to say, but definitely isn't as straightforward as the ordering getting reversed.

If your internet is fast enough for stedia, you can afford downloads

If your internet is fast enough for stedia, you can afford downloads

With a data rate suitable for Stadia, it can take you hours before you have finished a download and can start playing.

Finally saw some screens in PNG format. Didn't help much. I thought the screenshots of Shadow of the Tomb Raider were especially disappointing. Since I've been playing that recently, I know what to expect if everything is on full settings. But detail seems low. Even scaling the 4k screenshots down to 1080p didn't make it better. It still looks bland and washed out. I think the main problem is that the compression removes all the texture from the textures. This reduces a 4k picture to something with less fidelity than a 1080p screenshot. I suppose it could acceptable in a couch/tv setup, but on a PC with a monitor it's just bad. And it seems like the whole 4k thing red herring since none of the detail that you would expect from it survives the transmission (if rendered at all).

So for now it looks like the only people that will probably be happy with it are casual console gamers that don't want to get rid of their dedicated device. But with a very good internet connection without data cap of course. And can connect their chromecast to an ethernet cable because apparently wifi causes bad lag spikes (not too surprising).

Just FYI - I've just tested it with some co-workers on a company's network (fiber optic 1 Gbit, in Germany) using just an office-PC, Chrome browser, mouse and keyboard (controller is still in transit).

If looks FANTASTIC. We were able to spot some input lag on Destiny 2 if we looked closely, but it was very small. The game was perfectly playable.
Image quality was also satisfying. No compression artifacts, no resolution drops ect. Everything sharp and in HDR. Don't know what resolution it was, but my monitor was FullHD and it looked like FullHD.

I will test it at home later (got 50 Mbit) too see if it's still as smooth as now. But overall - I'm surprised. I was optimistic, but didn't thought it would run so well.


Last edited by Skipperro on 21 Nov 2019 at 11:50 am UTC

Obviously for smaller screens then, as in mobiles? The lag is because it is trying to produce a bigger picture obviously. Wonder if the lag would happen if you streamed it using lower resolution? Why would you want 4K anyway? 4x 1080 that's a lot of data to stream down and back up when you move on screen. Still give Stadia a year or six and hopefully they will have it sorted.:D

Just tested in on home network (50 Mbits, Munich, Germany). Same Quality as at work with 1 Gbit. I haven't played Destiny 2 before, but I've reached the city in without any problems.
If I would try to be picky, there was still slight lag while moving mouse. I've noticed it when I was looking for it, but during the normal gameplay it never bothered me - even in close combat or while aiming at moving enemy. If I was running and moving mouse sideways the same time, rotation was sometimes little stuttery, like instead of updating mouse position every frame it was updating every second frame. Moving mouse while standing still don't have this effect.

But this is all I could find. Image quality is stunning. I've got overclocked i7-7700K and Titan Xp GPU (use this PC for Deep Learning) so I'm used to nice looking graphics and visuals in Destiny 2 via Stadia are in my opinion - gorgeous!

Also, just realised - my wife was looking at YouTube videos a notebook in the same network while I was testing it. Didn't even noticed. :)


Last edited by Skipperro on 21 Nov 2019 at 3:26 pm UTC

My hardware shipped today, ETA within next two days. Not sure when I will see the code though, but it's an improvement over the December estimate.

I wonder how many canceled pre-orders?

Mine is here right now, on my desk. No code. Their support team literally doesn't have a clue when it will come.

My hardware shipped today, ETA within next two days. Not sure when I will see the code though, but it's an improvement over the December estimate.

I wonder how many canceled pre-orders?

Mine is here right now, on my desk. No code. Their support team literally doesn't have a clue when it will come.

I've just got my hardware, still unpacked, but I've received code earlier via email. Check your mailbox, it should be there.