A Headline Figure Hiding a Pipeline
When a manufacturer publishes a latency number, they are almost always describing signal processing latency — one stage in a chain that also includes the game engine, the OS, the GPU, and the mechanical inertia of the platform itself. The game physics engine alone contributes 3 ms at 333 Hz; GPU and USB pipelines can add a further 16–30 ms on top. A headline number may have nothing to do with what you actually feel in the seat.
Our partners at Sigma Integrale publish their full signal chain rather than a single figure — and the range tells the real story:
The motion smoothing algorithm alone spans 0–50 ms depending on conditions. Any single quoted number collapses that variance into something it is not: a specification.
Sometimes, Slower Is the Point
To simulate a car descending the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca, the platform needs to know where the car was 20–30 ms ago — that historical window is what produces a smooth, continuous pitch calculation rather than a series of disconnected jolts. Minimising latency at every stage produces output that then requires post-processing smoothing filters to mask its own artifacts. The latency was not eliminated; it was displaced. Organic, convincing motion is not the result of the lowest possible latency — it is the result of the right latency, applied deliberately.
Time Travel, Courtesy of Google
The most dramatic latency claim in recent memory came not from a sim racing brand, but from Google. At the launch of Stadia, its VP of Engineering announced the platform would achieve negative latency. The actual mechanism, once explained, was considerably more modest: Stadia would pre-buffer predicted latency between server and player, then attempt to undercut it — by running the game at an elevated framerate to act on inputs earlier, or by predicting button presses before they happened. That is a legitimate engineering technique. But it is not negative latency — it is latency management dressed in a provocative name. When the same term surfaces in motion simulation marketing, it is worth applying the same scrutiny: negative latency does not mean the platform moves before the data arrives. It means someone found a creative way to describe their buffer.
A Standard That Doesn't Exist Yet
There is currently no standardised methodology for measuring end-to-end haptic latency in simulation. Sigma Integrale have advocated with several motorsport governing bodies for exactly this — a defined protocol, open to independent scrutiny. Those conversations have not yet produced results. Until they do, ask for the methodology behind any figure you are given. If it is not available, the number is marketing, not engineering.