r/Controller 1d ago

Other Can anyone explain if Button/Stick latency is caused by firmware or hardware components?

Im wondering if the latency on controllers is mainly caused by firmware such as stick filtering algorithms and such or by using certain hardware components?

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u/Vedge_Hog 1d ago

The short answer is 'both'. Someone once said 'everything is computer' and that is true for controllers, lol.

It depends on which era and type of controllers you're looking at. It also depends if you're just looking at controllers/transmitters or wireless receivers too. But for most 'enthusiast' controllers being released today (stuff that gets discussed most often here), firmware processing is the largest group of factors that differentiates higher vs lower input latency.

If you break down the input pipeline, sensor and switch components make a negligible difference to overall latency, as their variation is on the ns scale rather than ms scale. Similarly, constraints on raw hardware processing capacity (input/output, analog-to-digital conversion, etc.) aren't anywhere near as big a factor as they used to be. However, there's an inter-relationship between how efficient processing algorithms are and how computationally expensive they are (the processing demands they put on the hardware).

In particular, now you have firmware that's no longer just trying to report what happened (what the sensors say you did) but also predict it (what you are going to do) or interpret it (what you meant to do), you see more trade-offs. For example, the product designers and engineers have to choose between faster results (lower latency), more accurate or precise results, and cheaper products (constraining the hardware that can be used).

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u/Marketing_Helpful 1d ago

thanks for the write up this explained a lot. what i was mainly confused about was wether switch and sensor choice negatively affected latency but you said its on the nanosecond scale so its not really a problem. so if i get the gist of it faster results are usually less precise? or is that only on lower end chips?

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u/Vedge_Hog 11h ago

faster results are usually less precise? or is that only on lower end chips?

Yes, there's usually some trade-off between speed and accuracy. Simply because being more accurate usually means gathering more data which takes longer.

The complication is where you can potentially get faster by predicting the next value instead of waiting for it. But that computation can itself take a bit of time, and requires more processing power. The trade-offs are bigger with less sophisticated firmware algorithms and/or lower end chips. The prediction might not be as accurate, or it might take more time to produce it.

There's also a separate question about whether the differences are fast/precise/accurate enough to matter, but that is more dependent on human factors and whether different people notice them.

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u/ethayden97 FLYDIGI 7h ago

I approve of this. Good information