Re: Low Latency User Input

Chiming in with my support for this!

On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 4:48 PM Marcos Caceres <caceres_m@apple.com> wrote:

> Hi Carl,
>
> Thanks again for taking the time to outline the issues. I’ve proposed this
> as a topic for the upcoming W3C Breakout day (12th of March):
> https://github.com/w3c/breakouts-day-2024/issues/2
>
> Details for the W3C Breakout day are here:
> https://github.com/w3c/breakouts-day-2024
>
> Hopefully we can get the right folks in a virtual room to discuss some
> options and a path forward.
>
> Kind regards,
> Marcos
>
> > On Dec 9, 2023, at 13:51, Carl Younger <carl.joseph.younger@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hey guys,
> >
> > Despite many advances in recent years, the Web remains a poor choice of
> platform for any application that depends on responding to user input with
> low latency.
> >
> > The APIs that handle user input (keyboard, pointer, gamepad, HID, USB,
> MIDI, Bluetooth, serial etc) generally require registering handlers on the
> main thread. As the main thread is often busy, handlers cannot (reliably
> and consistently) respond to input with low enough latency for certain
> applications.
> >
> > Affected applications include any video game that demands precise inputs
> (which is a large subset), pretty much all DAWs and synthesizers, as well
> as art programs that use touch gestures to emulate brushstrokes etc.
> >
> > The situation might be improved somewhat by extending input APIs to
> include timestamps, but exposing the APIs to Web Workers is a much better
> solution.
> >
> > Some of the input APIs can extend their spec to support workers
> relatively easily, and there has been some progress there already
> (including some implementation). Other APIs are more problematic. For
> example, keyboard and pointer events are part of the DOM API, which marries
> them to the main thread.
> >
> > I recently discussed all this with Marcos Cáceres (and others). Marcos
> advised me to contact this mailing list, as I feel that these issues will
> require a macroscopic perspective (beyond the scope of any specific API)
> and a substantial community effort to address.
> >
> > Thank you for taking the time to consider my post.
> > Much appreciated -- Carl
> >
> > The original conversation: github.com/w3c/gamepad/issues/37
>
>
>