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

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