Hi ,
I have created this post to explain how does exactly offset influence during playing osu!.
From the beginning , when i was just playing osu! i played it without caring about anything. Later after starting reading some various threads on forum i found out that something is wrong with my gameplay , and then i started digging in ,thinking "Hell is wrong with me". Problem was that all players (with small exceptions) , they played osu! without controlling their hand. I couldn't use muscle memory ,but why? That was unsolved question for long time ,but now i found right answer.
Problem is on technical tide . For full 4 years of playing osu! my universal offset was by default set to 0 and as most of people i didn't care about that. I analyzed this aspect.

Here , on this small paint powered diagram Ratio 1:4(3ms difference). I show you difference of latency between Image and Sound. Monitor is slower than sound.
How does this affect gameplay. Simply. We human can perfectly fit click to sound ,but in osu! before you do that you have additional aim your note, and since that note shows later than sound. desynchronization appears.You are clicking before actually the note fully appear, moreover since you have to wait on the note to appear on the screen you play osu! by eyes. Your muscle memory can't react on something that didn't show up yet.
Result ??? Manually control of muscles to synchronize that gap between sound and image. In other words you have to care bout timing by yourself not muscle memory = shit accuracy , shit unstable rate ,everything shit. In my case i was so much controlling my muscles my whole arm was wet and exhausted...
Now i adjusted timming to match themselves. Now ratio (sound to image) is equeal - 1:1

Sound is slowed down to monitor reaction time level (by guide it's 4ms)
What happens now. I've started using my muscle memory. Since i don't have to worry about image to sound timing. I can at last focus on tapping notes (sound focus) and my hand goes to the notes by itself.
I'm not fully used to it because i never felt like this in the past. Yesterday . To prove myself. I switched back from +3ms to 0ms. Desynchronization appeared 10minutes after switching it. Today i switched it back from 0ms to +3ms. Now i have to get used to it again because entering to "desync" mode destroyed feeling that i had in "Sync" mode...
Difference is significant.
This post is an answer for " You don't actually follow beat" @ "Why you aren't improving at osu!" .I wanted to show you that setting proper offset changes whole gameplay. Of course there are people that don't care about this and just play. The brains are more efficient and capable to "fill that gap somehow" In my case setting it manually to right position changed the way how i play osu!.
Attention. There can be difference between. You and Me because for example your sound card can be actually slower than monitor and viceversa.
To minimize input lag. I don't have VSYNC (limited ammount of FPS) which causes higher latency. I also do not use full screen mode which also causes higher latency.

If you don't want to read it.
If sound is synced with image = You can use muscle memory, better unstable rate, better everything
If sound is desynced with image= You have to maintain conscious to play , higher unstable rate . Play by eyes not combination of eye/hear
+ Since tablet also has latency (in my case 5ms). Brain has to sync. Sound to image to tablet. Not just only Sound to tablet...
Of course some player may not notice this fact because modern monitors have low latency, a lot of them have 1ms latency. Since i have 7 years old NEC monitor. It has 4ms latency...
Please tell me your opinion.

Wow. After reading this I can say that you definitely have done your fair share of homework and research to come up with such a detailed conclusion like this. To me, this is very interesting because I have attempted to properly set my Universal Offset, but not really take full advantage of its function. However, this post is yet to include a guide on how to actually set this Offset up properly. And even when the image and sound are synced, there is no full guarantee it will make all the maps correctly synced, since different mappers and maps have different offset. I am however very interested in learning how to configure the Offset correctly, so please include a guide

congrats on fixing your universal offset!
i look forward to your progress

i already play mostly by eyes anyway, i just use ears to correct my streaming when there starts to be a bunch of 100's

Quick installation guide.
1.Check your monitor latency.
2. No fps limit in OSU
3. No full screen mode
Set the value in osu according to monitor value ,
I have monitor with 4ms latency, sound latency is approx about 1ms. To sync it i have to put +3ms (i want to make sound exactly same slow as monitor)
+ms means that sound will appear "slower" -ms means that
Gameplay. Don't focus on accuracy (circles) , watch them but do not focus on them. Focus on tapping to the sound. Since there is no delay ,you will feel after few days that your hand is being relaxed and you do not think about it. (it moves by it own). This feeling will become natural ,but do not think about anything than tapping
Confidient tapping is most important factor for me
@congrats on fixing your universal offset!
i look forward to your progress
before i created this post... I started to testing various values of universal offset. And constant switching -3 0 +3 destroyed my "feeling" and again i have to build it up somehow :B

DahplA wrote:

Wow. After reading this I can say that you definitely have done your fair share of homework and research to come up with such a detailed conclusion like this. To me, this is very interesting because I have attempted to properly set my Universal Offset, but not really take full advantage of its function. However, this post is yet to include a guide on how to actually set this Offset up properly. And even when the image and sound are synced, there is no full guarantee it will make all the maps correctly synced, since different mappers and maps have different offset. I am however very interested in learning how to configure the Offset correctly, so please include a guide

It's not about maps being synced, but how do you actually react on desync. You have to build up confident tapping and then you will be on the road to success.

The purpose of universal offset is to sync your hitsounds to the mp3, provided that a correctly timed (mapped) mp3 is still desync. The reason for this is mainly due to your audio drivers inducing latency.

If you want to account for all the variables, there are:

1) Universal Offset.
2) Local offset.
3) Visual latency.

All you are doing is linking 1 with 3, and ignoring 2, which you will now have to adjust to match your new UO for every map your play, or the hitsounds will not sync up with the music.

Sorry, but Universal Offset has nothing to do with your monitor latency, and you should not be trying to sync visual delay with your offset, which can only work in one direction: Delaying your audio by as much as your monitor latency, which is a disadvantage from any perspective. Monitor latency is something which you should try to reduce as much as possible by optimising your video settings and - if it works for you - using the d3d hook "antilag". Everyone has to deal with some visual latency, no matter how small.

RaneFire wrote:

text

this

I never saw anybody doing this not even pro players do this

thank

warathank youanimate

obligatory no wonder i'm not rank x post


this is all theory but in reality, redundant. Proof being all the scores thus far without tampering with UAO

CptBlackBird wrote:

I never saw anybody doing this not even pro players do this

I don't even know how much of a difference 3ms would even have on accuracy ultimately, seems like it'd only really effect od11 or something. Anyone know the timing windows for od 9, 10 and 11?

Green Platinum wrote:

CptBlackBird wrote:

I never saw anybody doing this not even pro players do this

I don't even know how much of a difference 3ms would even have on accuracy ultimately, seems like it'd only really effect od11 or something. Anyone know the timing windows for od 9, 10 and 11?

It's the principle... It's a flawed exercise. It certainly won't make any difference to the OP.

Remember also that the Windows audio driver is only accurate to within 10ms. This means that the hitsounds/music will be out of sync in 10ms increments. Adding 3ms could very well add 10ms because of this limitation in Windows.

As a result, it is important to find the correct UO to avoid random variations by up to 10ms in either direction. The most stable UO is the correct one, even if it is a few ms out of sync (1-5ms... basically half of the limitation). My UO is -1. When testing however, it is +3ms nearly ALL the time (a different test map will likely yield a different value, but at least it will be consistent). Every other value tested either side of that produces random 10ms jumps. I spent a good few hours just figuring out that relying on numbers themselves is pointless because of Windows. Stability off the offset is the only thing you actually have to work with. In actual gameplay, it may still be slightly desync (1-5ms), but our brains can easily make up for a consistent difference, not a random one.

nope, you can easily still learn muscle memory with any sort if latency.

What does muscle memory has to do with universal offset?
Also universal offset exists no align visuals and audio, not to fix input lag. Another thing you are forgetting is that many people (including myself) play mostly by ear without using aproach circles.

B1rd wrote:

nope, you can easily still learn muscle memory with any sort if latency.

nobody was talking about muscle memory

dfgdhfg

I click early no matter what offset I use. What do?

You're better off learning how to be flexible because the sad truth is that there will always be mistimed maps and delayed inputs etc.
If a certain UO feels right for you, go for it. But your perception might change after a few days, which is fine as well.
Keep playing and those things will be less of a bother and you will find out what is best for yourself. We often like to find a cause and say "thats the solution" when there are so many factors affecting your view at that current day. So yeah.

TL;DR: The ability to compensate > perfect machine setup.

You're better off learning how to be flexible because the sad truth is that there will always be mistimed maps and delayed inputs etc.
If a certain UO feels right for you, go for it. But your perception might change after a few days, which is fine as well.
Keep playing and those things will be less of a bother and you will find out what is best for yourself. We often like to find a cause and say "thats the solution" when there are so many factors affecting your view at that current day. So yeah.

TL;DR: The ability to compensate > perfect machine setup.

word. Plus azer has universal offset 0, don´t want to make assumptions but he is one of the most accurate players and he wasn´t fooling around with that, just playing, you should do that. Most probably your vision about the "lack of muscle memory" will come back, feels better because you are playing new settings, once it settles only your practice will matter.

Plus azer has universal offset 0, don´t want to make assumptions but he is one of the most accurate players and he wasn´t fooling around with that, just playing, you should do that.

Well actually he was dealing with delay problems as well and he told me that for him this issue went away after he had a new pc.
t/119238

Aside from that, i can tell you a bit about my personal experience with UO.
A good friend of mine once came to my house and watched me play. He told me that as an osu!mania player offset is important. So after watching my Hit Error meter, he put my UO around +7-14. Now i didn't get at all what this UO really did (that was a year ago) and he didn't really either (for example why not -7 or -14) but i just stuck with it. But then i kept tinkering with UO trying to understand how it affects my gameplay and why it works better than 0 etc.

My logic for the last few months was that i have a keyboard delay, and this delay messes with my acc. When i played without hitsounds and listen to my keyboard, my hits are all around 60ms too late. So i thought, to counter this, ill go negative with the offset. Problem with this is that after a certain point, the timing of the hitsounds are off. So i put the UO to the end of the point where it would be off timing, if that makes any sense. Also on some days i was super pissed and kept reducing UO, turned off hitsounds, only to want them back after a while. So i just left it at 0 again.

Now after reading this post yesterday, i tried going up with the UO and it turned out better than expected. Let me remind you though that im changing the offset only so far that the timing isn't off.
So right now where I'm at: I figured out that it wasn't the delay that hit me off. I mainly play HDHR and with Hidden, it just feels way snappier and more to the beat when i have my UO at +5-20 (still tinkering with it).

It might be difficult to understand. Let me just try to go through my thought process. The problem on my setup with UO 0 is, that the Hidden notes appear too late. When you imagine a 4/4 beat: 1-2-3-4 and every number is a hitcircle, then the optimal time when a hidden note should appear is on the "-" parts, so right in the middle between the notes. When the notes appear too late, i have a mental problem. The information i will get first is the auditive feedback. In the song i hear "There comes a triple" and then the notes of the triple appear. Only if it's a few ms later, it's a problem for me. I'd much rather have the visual feedback first, so i can anticipate what will come in the song, like a pianist who looks at his notation sheet.
So notes appearing too early is better than too late (for me at least). The thing is, with a UO more than 0, it is not even too early. It sits right in the middle, like i want it to.

As an additional note, i tuned in for some osu twitch streams yesterday and Rafis was streaming. What i noticed is that he often sets his local offsets to -15;-20 etc. I think he has the same reason as me: To get the visual feedback before or right where it should be. I tend to have a way easier time playing 10.3 with a higher offset than 0.

Hope that made any sense to you guys. I just wanted to throw this out to see what you guys think about my reasoning. Don't be afraid to completely diminish my arguments. As of right now, it works for me.

As OP already said:

You have to build up confident tapping and then you will be on the road to success.

This is still the most important factor!
I believe that i have an easier time becoming confident when i have my notes in sync with the music. Higher UO doesn't make me better in any way, but it gives me better grounds to improve and make me, if only, feel like i have better settings than before. Feeling is what counts in the end, am i right?

Welp, maybe tomorrow im doing that -128310818 UO but we'll see.

Prendeon wrote:

As an additional note, i tuned in for some osu twitch streams yesterday and Rafis was streaming. What i noticed is that he often sets his local offsets to -15;-20 etc.

If he is playing DT, it is because this mod doesn't always correctly adjust the offset when speeding up the map. I also do this in some cases, although not all the time. Where the difference is problematic, it's almost always between 15-25ms. In a similar fashion, the Half-Time mod is also affected and much easier to test.

That's not to say you can't play without tampering with it, but for some people or just some maps in particular, it can be annoying.

Wow, i could have sworn that DT has offset problems. Used to notice that sometimes but never could really explain why it feels different on DT. Thanks for clearing that up

Before posting any further nonsense and doing amazing things like setting your universal offset to ±1ms, please read this thread: https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/259436
Don't also forget that UO differs from local/online offsets, and if you want all your maps to start 100ms later, you need a negative UO.

nvm then ill just focus on improving, cba about offset anymore

If you don't experience severe desync issues and are not 100% sure how it works and how it can (and will) help you, you shouldn't really touch it.

For example, my old sound card (Asus Xonar DS) had really weird drivers, and I had to set my UO to -70 for hitsounds to match the music. Usually in -+10 values you won't notice a huge difference unless you're sensitive to it, but when it's at 70ms, then that's pretty huge.
And I am not talking about input lag, there was none, it's just how the sound is getting processed.

As for the maps, often they are all within -+5ms range nowadays, rarely above that (it happens sometimes though), and that's relatively easy to adapt to, and if you really don't want to you can just use local.

Practice SSing maps with Hidden. You shouldn't depend on the video since it's naturally less precise.

Unless the map is AR11 or something, a couple frames won't impact your reaction time all that much.