How latency works exactly in games?

[IIIl]

For example on Counter-Strike if you have 70ms latency in a server and other player has 20ms, am I gonna see him first, he gonna see me first?

[Lurick]

They are going to see you first by 50ms. It takes you 70ms to get a response from the server and it takes another player 20ms to get a response.

[BulletSponge]

lets say you are connected to the closest server and you have 70ms it will take 70 millisecondss for the server to respond to actions but someone who is closer to the server who has 20ms it will take 20 milliseconds for the server to respond making the person closer to the server have a advantage.

[minibois]

You will never know for sure with 'lag compensation' though.

Having a low ping can also hurt you - or rather be good for the other person. If you think about this the other way; if you duck behind a cover, a person with higher ping might still have a bit of time to still hit you before you are behind said cover on his screen.

[impure]

The local client predicts where other players will be between server pings (which is why you get rubber banding if you don't have a stable connection). So you will see each other at about the same time.

[Otto_iii]

I see now you were talking about network latency, in that case usually the peeker has the advantage, and the observer has the disadvantage, so if possible its good to work this into your playstyle where possible.  There are a lot of videos about this, any youtube search with "peekers advantage" will show you some examples. 

That said i somehow read your title as "How Low Latency Works...", discussing about monitor input latency, somehow, because im tired and bored and wrote all this, and im too lazy to delet it now 

Semi-offtopic ramble

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#1. Low Latency (Both AMD and Nvidea) is designed to reduce latency In situations where games utilize 97% or higher of your GPU.  This is almost NEVER a issue with CSGO (maybe on some very old systems), but is with many more demanding games like fortnite, battlefield, pubg, even overwatch etc.  If you lock the frame-rate to whatever will utilize less then 97% utilization (ideally with ingame methods, not RTSS), you get a 30-50ms latency reduction whether you use "Low Latency" or not.  Turning "Low Latency" on can still help if you are using 97-100% GPU briefly, say a smoke grenade goes off etc and you dip below your cap, and in a few games still helps a tiny bit if already set below 97% utilization, but the biggest gains are had by simply running the highest frames you can without exceeding about 97% GPU utilization.
 

 

#2: If you are using free-sync or g-sync, ALWAYS lock the frame-rates about 10% below (it depends how well said game maintains that cap without exceeding it, 10% is usual safe margin) max rated speed for freesync/gysnc monitor, you get a massive 50ms latency penalty while moving in and out of f/g-sync range.  Worst case situation is locking a game to 75hz on 75hz monitor, 120 on 120hz monitor, or 144hz on a 144hz f/g-sync monitor as it will constantly be moving in and out of f/g-sync, incurring 50ms lag spikes...

Alternatively don't use G-sync or Free-sync if you can simply maintain minimums above your monitors refresh rates, but for games besides CSGO, Rocket League, that may require some extremely expensive hardware for 144hz+ monitors, if possible at all in certain games. 

this is a TLDR of video below.

Hope that helps even if it wasn't something you were asking. 

[Praesi]

Thats why i killed so hard with average 9ms in CS 1.6 ^^

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 11/18/2019 at 2:37 PM, IIIl said:

For example on Counter-Strike if you have 70ms latency in a server and other player has 20ms, am I gonna see him first, he gonna see me first?

It doesn't matter in the end because of server lag compensation.

 

At fixed intervals, the server is going to consider the player's inputs and the player's latency and update accordingly. Source has lag compensation to account for various players' latencies (https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Lag_compensation) Ars Technica also has an article on lag compensation for fighting games, but this can be applied in general (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/explaining-how-fighting-games-use-delay-based-and-rollback-netcode/). The end result is the server sending the clients a new game state and the clients adjust accordingly.

 

The only thing that maybe seeing someone else for a split second is you know where they are, so there's that. But it won't help you with actually landing a hit.

[IIIl]

thanks for the answers!