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Game Development vocabulary · Multiplayer & Networking

Latency

Meaning in game development, with examples

/ˈleɪtənsi/nounCore term

In game development, latency means: The time it takes for data to travel between a player's device and the server or another player, usually measured in milliseconds. High latency makes online games feel slow.

In Turkish: gecikme, gecikme süresi, ping

How it is used

Network programmers say latency, while players usually say ping or lag. You measure, reduce, hide or compensate for latency; netcode techniques such as client-side prediction exist mainly to hide it.

Example sentences

  1. Players in South America have over 150 ms of latency to our European servers.

  2. We need a way to hide latency when the player fires a weapon.

Common collocations

  • high latency
  • low latency
  • reduce latency
  • hide latency
  • input latency
  • lagA noticeable delay between a player's action and the game's reaction, usually caused by a slow or unstable network connection, which makes the game feel jumpy.
  • netcodeThe networking code of an online game that sends game data between players and servers and keeps everyone's view of the match in sync despite delays.
  • client-side predictionA netcode technique in which the player's own device shows the result of their input immediately, before the server confirms it, and corrects it later if the server disagrees.
  • tick rateHow many times per second a game server updates the game state and sends it to players, measured in hertz. A higher tick rate makes online play more precise.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Multiplayer & Networking

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