 Oh, that'll do the trick. Get him drinking that. A couple of months back, Nvidia published the data from a study showing that gamers running on high refresh rate monitors with faster PCs were fragging more noobs than their pleb counterparts who were running low refresh rate monitors and slower computers. Of course their conclusion was, everyone should buy better gear to make them a better gamer. The problem with their study is that while they did find a correlation between people with better equipment and people with more skills, a correlation does not mean causation. So, a lot of arguments get made about the subject of high FPS and high refresh rate gaming and how many FPS is enough before the eye can't see a difference. But one of the key components of a faster refresh rate display is not in fact the smoothness of the animation, and it is smoother, please don't be ignorant, but rather the frequency with which your eye receives updated information about the whereabouts and activities of your enemies. So today's video is all about determining quantitatively how much faster a gamer with a 240 Hertz display will react versus a gamer with a more traditional 60 Hertz display, and we invited a special guest Gavin Free of Slow Mo Guys and Rooster Teeth fame is gonna help us operate this thing to do it. I don't know how to operate this thing. Thank goodness he's here. I'll get you back. Speaking of thank goodness, thank goodness for our sponsor. Moss has updated their packs once again, and they're combining the best features from their Grande and their Black Pack into their new Moss Pack V4. Check it out today at the link in the video description. First we want to know if our 240 Hertz gamer sees the enemy sooner. That is to say we want to know if the up to 12 milliseconds of extra information actually helps him or her react faster. We also want to know on average if the smoother animations and the more frequent updates allow our gamer test subject here to kill the enemy sooner or more reliably. So here's our test rig. On the right hand side, we've got our enemy or our target, which is running a CSGO server on our high-speed local area network. Every test needs to be run exactly the same way. So what we'll do is position this computer's character in this corner right here, so it's in exactly the same spot. Then we'll use this readout in the top left to make sure that our weapon is pointed at the exact same pixel. Then what we do is we take these two contacts and touch them together, which lights up an LED on our Makey Makey right here. That is going to synchronize with our high-speed camera when exactly our target begins moving without making any noise that will alert our test subject. So we're going to be using the same monitor from Acer for both our 60 Hertz and our 240 Hertz tests, since the only variable that we're trying to isolate is the refresh rate. Each of our test subjects gets two practice runs at 60 Hertz to ensure that they're familiar with the test. Then we'll follow with three runs at 60, three runs at 240, and then four runs, two at 60, and two at 240 where the test subject isn't told the monitor refresh rate each time. So the way that this works is once again, I'm pointed at exactly the same spot, exact pixel, and then Ed, without me being able to see what he's doing, starts running at some point. Now let's talk about our timing mechanism. So it's probably a little overkill, but this here is a... What is this? Walk us through it, please. This is the Phantom Flex 4K. It's what I've used for a long time on my channel. It's about a five-year-old camera at this point. There's not really any storage media that can write so fast when you're taking in that many images, so it records to an internal RAM buffer. So it's always recording, five-second buffer, and then all I do is just stop it, and it keeps the previous five seconds. Then we record that onto some very fast flash storage. These are expensive, sadly. So the way the camera works, speed-wise, it has a certain amount of throughput it can put in, and then you just find the combination of resolution and speed that you want. So if you lower the resolution, the frame rate goes higher. Sure. So what are we going to be using? Well, that's up to you, really. I shoot everything at 4K, which will give us a max of a thousand, which would probably do pretty well in these lighting conditions. It's kind of dark at 2,000, and also we are relying on the light coming from the monitors, which I was slightly concerned about, but it looks like it's not too dark. Okay. That's how much light we have. Right. And then watch it all disappear as the frame rate goes up. So this is like how a fly sees us, like, trying to fly? That's what I always think of, yeah. It's like, we just look like that to fly. Ooh! And they can just casually fly off and flip us off, and we come nowhere close. Should I do, like, a self-slap? Or someone else could slap you. Yeah, do you want to slap me? You know it has to be pretty hard, right? We should do some test runs here. Some tests. You set up all this test just so you could screw around with a high-speed camera. This is irrelevant. You just wanted the high-speed camera to get slapped around. That's the whole reason you're here. That's the whole... That's why, okay. All right, slap it. Oh! Oh my God, I feel so bad! Oh, I am so sorry! My ears are ringing! I am so sorry! I am so sorry! Oh, you know what? I missed the trigger. Can we do that again? You did not! You, like, dragged some skin with that one. Look at that. You know, we could do new staff headshots, like everyone's face is just completely messed up. Okay, practice run time. You need to have, like, both hands over there, so I have no movement indication as to when you're pressing. Do you want me to trigger even if you miss? I mean, when you miss? Yes. I mean, if you miss? It's the moment when you invite someone out and they, like, insult you. But bonding. Bonding. Denied. So it takes me a good long while to actually even start tracking the target. That's what's going to be interesting about this test with the additional frames that you'll get. What was I doing? What was I aiming at? I hit the car! I think this video is really about exposing flaws in Counter-Strike's hit detection. What did you hit there? Because I didn't see any impact and it looked like it was right on him in your defense. Thank you. So what we learned from our first run is that the experiment looks good, but we're going to do a remedial test here with the walking speed of our target slowed down from 320 to 220. But we also want to try a remedial run here with the walking speed of our target at 220 to see if that increases our subject's chances of killing the target. So let's try one more time here. Okay. That's definitely easier. One of the measurements I'm really looking for here is time to kill, because you're still going to clearly be faster to kill the target. It's just a matter of, like, wow, I really left this to the last moment here. Oh! What did I hit? Did he have a metal skull? What was that? Probably a helmet, not a metal skull. Think a thousand is doing it for you? I think so, because that's one millisecond. There's nothing that anyone even advertises as lower than one millisecond, and I think that's considered well beyond the ability of a human to perceive anyway. It also makes the math really easy. Yeah. That's actually the biggest factor. Thank you so much again, by the way, for being here. Oh, I love this. Okay, good. Because your insight here has actually been instrumental already to us just kind of understanding what we're doing. Yeah, this is super fun for me. Rock, paper, scissors for who has to go first? Are you the kind of person who, like, say it as you do it? Yeah, rock, paper, and then you go. You go on paper? No, no, on scissors. Okay. No! Trusty rock! All right. Okay, so I'm first. One thing that's really important is that Ed is going to mix up his timing for when he starts the test, so I can't predict when the target is going to start moving. Okay, I am officially ready. Me too. Denied. Ah, shoot. Shoot, but not hit. Hey. Oh my God! How did I miss that? If it makes you feel any better, this is 84 seconds of you missing. Okay. Do you find that when you're in deep concentration and you're waiting for it to happen, do you find that you can start overthinking when it's going to happen and then you might miss it because you're thinking too much? Absolutely. Oh, shoot. Did you just fall out of the zone right there at the end? I don't know what happened. To the eye, that seemed to be the longest it took you to catch up with him. Interesting. We are now up to 466 gigs. Ooh, wow, okay. That's only like less than 20 seconds. Hold. Come on! Get in there. Gotcha. Okay. Headshot. Oh, shit. Shoot. Hit him. Oh, shit. Wow. Okay. Hey, are you ready? Wait for it. Now I'm ready. You got a piece of him. Hey, you got him. Not bad. I feel like I'm improving. See, I'm happy with my reaction time. My aim is anus. It was very tight anus. Not bad. Wait a minute. What just happened? I pressed play and oh my god, I am so sorry. That was my best attempt and he deleted it. I kind of feel like we should go until he gets a really good run here. B****. This 60 just don't do it for me. Wow. Could that have been more last minute? No, I don't think so. I didn't even see the body. Oh, that was clean. That might be my fastest one yet. Make sure you save that one. We like that one. I am ready as penis. What does that mean? I psyched myself out. Did that count? I went way ahead of him that time. So your reaction was fast, but not accurate. I was trying to go for like a wicked snapshot, but I don't have that ability. I'm literally the most experienced I could possibly be and that was my worst attempt. This is so interesting. Oh, wait, do you want to do some practice runs or have you already tried it a lot of times? Wow. All right. Oh, Mr. Confident over here. I think that was actually back and forth. I think I might be swinging faster. I see at least five tears when I play. Yeah, I think we can call that a point. Wait, so do you want me to not to save that one? Yeah, I don't bother. Got him. Let's run three. Ready? Yes. Four. What the f***? All right, everyone go home guys. That was it. Already moving before he's even fully come out. That's by far the fastest reaction we've seen. Boom headshot as the kids say, I suppose. The kids 15 years ago. Not bad. Oh, boohoo. Whatever. Not bad. Humiliation. No. No way. Did you hit me? Yeah. I felt like it. Okay, last chance. Wow. That wasn't good. What are you doing? That was a headlight. So it has been quite a few hours. The time is now 11 41 and we're all still at it. Especially Ed, who has been painstakingly compiling the data and is now sharing it with us. So your average for 60 Hertz is 257. Is that in frames? Yes, 257 frames. But that's 257 milliseconds effectively. Okay. And then 194 for 240 Hertz. So that doesn't even make sense how you could be that much faster because theoretically you should only have at best a 12 millisecond advantage. And then in the blind, I was quite a bit slower. Interesting. So I am the slowest by a long shot. Oh, you're up in the 300s sometimes. Yeah. That's an eternity. Now it could be that you waited to see the person quite a bit more and then moved to aim. I guess so. Now you were the most consistent. Consistently average. I feel like whenever I saw anything, I would just kind of spasm my hand away and try and just catch up with it later. But I think that's just down to me as just not being very good. Maybe it was more of a focus thing. Yeah. So your times to kill were actually pretty good on the 240 Hertz. This one was actually freakishly fast on 60 Hertz. 854 milliseconds. And when you consider that I had a 316 millisecond reaction time, it actually only took me half a second to kill the target once I started moving. That's really good, actually. Your next result was kind of terrible. Not as good? Was that a second and a half? So overall, kill-wise, you're the same. I missed a run. I'm at five. So we're all pretty terrible. Look at his fake humility. Yeah, I feel like there's so many more variables that aren't measured here. Like how in the zone we were and the other person psyching us out. What does that mean? I psyched myself out. Just the pressure building up. I feel like on my last attempt, I was always freaking out way more than my previous ones. Yeah, actually, that's another thing too. Like if I missed one, I was tense on my next ones. I got to make up for a bad one. If I only concentrated on being ready for the guy to come around the corner, and that was all I was thinking about, I could only do that for like four seconds until I was thinking about doing that, and it would just wreck my concentration. I mean, obviously we're watching this in slow motion, so it's very exaggerated, but this makes me wonder how I ever played anything at 30 frames a second. And I regularly do. Like if I'm playing GTA V on Xbox, that's running 30. This may have ruined me even more for refresh rates and frame rates. All right, so Gath flew home last night, but for Giggles, we spent some more time analyzing the data and found some really cool things. One, everyone's reaction times were better at 240 Hz, and strangely by more than just 12 milliseconds. If I had to guess, I'd say part of this is because it's easier to track where the target is headed, and then decide where to move the cursor before you begin to move. Two, every single test subject was more likely to kill the opponent at 240 Hz in the limited amount of time that they had. And three, the way that high refresh rate affects your gaming could end up being heavily dependent on the way that you aim. So take a look at this map of all of my shots. My accuracy and my precision were both actually very similar at 60 vs. 240 Hz. So regardless of refresh rate, I'm taking my time tracking the target and only pulling the trigger when I think I've got a clean shot. And it's funny, it's not something I've ever thought about, but it makes sense now that I'm looking at it because I'm totally one of those jackasses that grabs the sniper class so everyone else has to play medic or whatever. So for me, revealing my position is always a factor in the back of my mind. Don't pull the trigger unless I think I'm going to hit something. All right, now let's look at Edzel. Ed's more of like a flick shot kind of player, so he tends to react and shoot first and figure out the other details later. Now as the most skilled of our test subjects, he clearly benefited the most from high refresh rate and said that it helped him time the release of his shot much better as he panned across his target. Finally, there's Gav. In fairness to Gav, no one really aims only with their mouse, like it's much easier to strafe while you're trying to line up a shot like this, but his results were still far and away the worst at both refresh rates. With that said, at 240Hz, his precision was much higher. So if he was a little closer to the target, the improvement in his consistency would have definitely resulted in more kills. So in conclusion, yes, high refresh rate gaming makes a difference. It's the kind of thing we've always felt, but it was never something that we've quantified. Now I think there's still a lot more work to do investigating this. Maybe part two could involve different mouse sensitivity settings, some professional players. I don't know, hit us up in the comments if you've got some ideas, but for now, we feel like this is a pretty good place to leave it, and we've definitely learned something. Speaking of learning something, I want to teach you about our sponsor. Ring wants you to know who is at your front door without ever getting off the couch. Their welcome kit includes the Video Doorbell 2, their Spotlight Cam Battery, and their Solar Security Sign. And their Video Doorbell 2 has tons of great features. It's got a motion sensor camera, 1080p HD resolution with 160 degrees of vision, two-way audio, and it's powered by a battery or 8 to 24 volt AC doorbell wiring. Their Spotlight Camera has 1080p HD video, two-way talk, LED lights, battery or solar power sources, and a siren. The audio is great as well, and you can turn away unwelcome guests or tell them to come right in. I mean, just because someone's an unwelcome guest doesn't mean that they can't come into your house. Like, say, for example, your mother-in-law. Hey, I've used that joke before, but that's okay, it's still funny. My personal favorite is telling the Amazon driver not to run away after the second knock on the door. Like, no, I don't want the notice, I want the actual product now. So get some peace of mind with the Ring Welcome Kit. It's compatible with iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows, and you can buy it today at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching, guys. Massive shout-out to Gav from Slow Mo Guys for coming all the way out here. Make sure that if you somehow haven't heard of the Slow Mo Guys, you check out the link to his channel in the video description. If you guys like the video, you can hit that button, you can get subscribed, and maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link below. Maybe nothing specific, we'll just put some high refresh rate monitors that we like down there. Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you should totally join.