Effects of Local Latency on Game Pointing Devices and Game Pointing Tasks

Studies have shown certain game tasks such as targeting to be negatively and significantly affected by latencies as low as 41ms. Therefore it is important to understand the relationship between local latency - delays between an input action and resulting change in the display - and common gaming tasks such as targeting and tracking. In addition, games now use a variety of input devices, including touchscreens, mice, tablets and controllers. These devices provide very different combinations of direct/indirect input, absolute/relative movement, and position/rate control, and are likely to be affected by latency in different ways. We performed a study evaluating and comparing the effects of latency across four devices (touchscreen, mouse, controller and drawing tablet) on targeting and interception tasks. We analyze both throughput and path characteristics, identify differences between devices, and provide design considerations for game designers.