AirPlay's minimal lag, according to my measurements, is around 130-140 ms, which renders even racing games pretty much unplayable, let alone pinball games. The latter became frustrating at around 80 ms lag; that is, that of the new Lightning connector.
With the iPad 2, as it has the 30pin connector, there shouldn't be any lag. Try disabling all kinds of intelligent zooming / picture enhancement on your TV. I'm sure it's the cause for the lag.
As I've mentioned above, play with the TV settings - try to make them as "pure" as possible. NOT any kind of picture enhancements should be allowed.
Did you have the old adapter? I think the older adapters had worse performance, but I can't say cause I never had an ipad 2 or older adapter, though men might be able to say. On my ipad 3 with the newer adapter, there is very little delay, it is barely noticeable. But so many factors come into play such as tv zoom modes, framerates, downscaling or upscaling, too. Then the ipad 4 hdmi is not true hdmi and has more lag, I am wondering if apple will do anything with the ipad 5 to make hdmi out more true hdmi, or maybe there is nothing that can be done.
I have heard that even if technology in connector stays the same, the lag will probably decrease with each generation of iDevices. As devices get faster, they will more quickly be able to compress the streaming images for sending. Old connector method does not require real time compression as it is hardware based.
I think gradually both the connector (rarely updated in hardware, more often in firmware?) and of course the iDevices will speed up, and compression algorithms will improve in quality and efficiency, eventually bringing the lag down to something negligible. (Same goes for faster wireless/AirPlay for that matter.) This is of particular importance to me since I'm very interested in using Oculus Rift with iOS, and the current lag, wired or not, would kill that. (Granted, no mobile device can push out the 3D detail and fps that the Rift demands, but I look to the future! And Oculus is looking to mobile in future as well. They've started Android experiments already.)
It's funny, every post has the word connector in it, though it is not about me. Hey, let's switch the focus to apple wireless joysticks a bit, did they talk about it at all at the iphone reveal event? I fear the icade days will be coming to more of a close soon after the new joysticks reveal, though I will always remember my icade fondly, a new day is coming, though I do hope icade makes a joystick somehow compatible with the new standard, though it maybe hard cause it has no analog sticks. The iphone 5s and 5c seem to be a little disappointing to me, the only big thing seems to be the fingerprint sensor, but to me, it is not really that important. Though the better cpu/gpu seem much better. Hopefully the new joysticks as part of ios 7 will make this cycle worthwhile.
New thread for ios 7 joystick games. http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=203992 I think I will mirror this thread with a list too in this thread since it is all about making my ipad a console with joystick support.
It's a bit of a shame that the lightning direct connection to hdmi does what it does, aka more or less a high direct quality video very similar to an apple tv broadcast instead of a true crisp tv signal like the older 30 pin gives, but it will do for now. I don't usually play games on the big screen but sometimes it's great, asphalt 8 works a treat over hdmi and so does real racing 2, but the iphone 5 and it's lightning port output has at least a few frames of lag making games a little iffy to play if they are too fast paced. I do hope it improves with the newer gen ipads, has anyone with an 5S tried the lightning hdmi cable yet?
It seems limited by the lightning connector so we're stuck with that for quite a while and that's a real shame... It seems really stupid to force a new "future-ready" connector and not think about a true hdmi integration. Well that's Apple for you....
Exactly. With my 2013 Nexus 7 and the $30, standardized (it can be used with any SlimPort device from any manufacturer) SlimPort -> HDMI adapter, there's no lag and the image quality / resolution is 100%. I'm completely fed up with Apple's stubborness, while all the other players in the mobile industry strive for using interchangeable, standardized, well-proven and well-working technologies like SlimPort HDMI output - or, for that matter, WiDi.
Why Apple forced me to be "future-ready", I got no idea. . But it is too bad that it seems like a step backwards. Would be a shame for me to go from an ipad 3 and have ipad 5 hdmi even worse and more laggy and with worse resolution. Really a shame since Apple came out with their apple joysticks, so we can play more like a true console. Well, hopefully they figure something out for the ipad 5, or future ios devices. I too am curious how the iphone 5s plays on hdmi, whether that problem with non true HDMI is still the case. Hopefully they can recify it somehow.
I'd like to hear feedback on HDMI out on the iPad Air too, if the extra cpu power helps at all. I have to say that playing Dead Trigger 2 with auto fire controls on works really well using HDMI out on my iPhone 5, the game frame rate drops to about 30-40fps but it's fully playable, the game doesn't choke and since you only need one thumb to move and one thumb to aim, it's the perfect big screen shooter without having to look down to press buttons. Think that I will start rating HDMI/AirPlay experiences, I give dead trigger 2 an 4/5.
I don't really care about the resolution that much. But I can't stand any lag/delay when playing on the tv with lightning. Maybe we are screwed and apple won't give a damn about that, because they will release an updated Apple TV soon for playing games... That would really suck(even though a new Apple TV would be cool).
